Reflecting on an Age-old Question About the People of God

Scripture Verses that Caught my attention today: 2 John 10-11 Do not receive into the house or welcome anyone who comes to you and does not bring this teaching; 11 for to welcome is to participate in the evil deeds of such a person.

Observation: these verses seem to be inconsistent with Jesus and the early apostolic witness.

Application: It’s an age-old question, really; to what extent are the people of God called to stand apart from the rest of the world and to what extent are they to engage with the rest of the world?

In the Old Testament there were many admonitions for the people of God to stand apart. They weren’t supposed to intermarry with people of other nations, they were, at times, called to completely wipe out other nations to the extent that no-one was to be left, presumably with which to intermingle. And occasionally in the New Testament we’ll find a more exclusive claim as well, such as in the verses above.

But Jesus himself certainly didn’t seem to operate that way. He not only met with the social outcasts that the religious leaders regularly shunned (tax collectors and sinners), he also met with the very people whose heritage was a result of mixed marriages (Samaritans, the religious leaders hated Samaritans. They were considered the traitors, the sell-outs. Hence the Parable of the Good Samaritan would be, to them, an oxymoron—there was no such thing as a GOOD Samaritan!). Later, in the book of Acts, the mission to the Gentiles became of profound importance.

So I read the verses above and I’m struck by he dichotomy. In 1 John we are told that perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18). But in the verses above there seems to be a fear of sorts in welcoming those who do not believe that Christ came in the flesh. Don’t we have to engage with such folks? In the book of John it says of its testimony, “but these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name (John 20:21). How would folks ever hear of such testimony unless they were welcomed into the community where such lessons are taught?

This week there is a movement of protest within the Lutheran Church. Presumably by the end of the week there will be another Lutheran Church body, a split-off from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) of which I am a part. The new Lutheran Church Body will likely be called the NALC (North American Lutheran Church). At that point the main streams of Lutheranism in the USA will be the ELCA, the LC-MS (Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod), the WELS (Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Church) the LCMC (Lutheran Churches in Mission for Christ), and the NALC. The NALC leaders and followers presumably believe that this new church will somehow be more faithful to Scripture and traditional Lutheranism. I wish them well, but I’m not convinced. Like every other denomination and non-denomination on earth, they will have a tendency to be more faithful to some parts of Scripture than to other parts of Scripture. Like the ELCA, and the Baptists, and the Methodists, etc., they will do some picking and choosing. They will no doubt do their best to do it faithfully. But then again, so do we. We do not agree on the results because, well, it really is a complicated question. To what extent are the people of God called to stand apart from the world and to what extent are the people of God called to engage with the world? The answer is actually both. We are called to stand apart from the world but also with the world. How best to do that has always been a subject of lively debate.

Prayer: Lord, I pray that some good work is done in your name through every church body on earth, in spite of our many shortcomings. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

(Scripture Readings today included: Jeremiah 37-39, Psalm 79, 2 John)