I came across this in my Bible reading today:
He has told you, O man, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God? – Micah 6:8
These are famous words and they are often passed over glibly, or used for some sort of over-realized eschatology, where we demand that all worldly problems are fixed as our expression of gospel faithfulness. We will settle for neither end of that spectrum. We must always have one foot in this world and one foot in Heaven. Two mistakes are easy – to have both feet planted in Heaven, which is to say, ‘who cares about this world? It’s all going to burn up anyway, so let’s just bunker down and be glad that we are saved.’ This will not do according to God’s Word. We are disciple-makers, we love our neighbors as ourselves, and we are to care deeply about justice and suffering in the world – that has been God’s heart from the beginning, and we’re to reflect that. So we are not escape artists, but instead we pray faithfully, thy kingdom come, on earth (now!) as it is in Heaven.
But we don’t make the other mistake either, which has both feet planted in this earth right now – that we see our calling as fixing societal ills and basing our hope in that kind of redemption and reconciliation. We will always leave disappointed if that is our hope. We have no promise that things will get better – in fact, they have often gotten worse depending on where and when you live. But that doesn’t mean we don’t try to make things better, as an expression of that love of neighbor and search for justice! We must just do that with the other foot in Heaven, for that is our ultimate hope. We don’t find ourselves in despair then when things don’t go our way or justice is denied. For the suffering person, either by oppression, systemic injustice, or a life-threatening illness, there is hope for a better day – an eternal peace only secured by the blood of Jesus Christ on the cross.
So we have one foot in the world and one foot in Heaven at all times. And then we take direction from God’s Word regarding what we do with our time – we do justice, it’s active, it’s participatory – we care about what’s going on in our neighborhoods, and we help. We love peace – shalom, that hesed in the Hebrew. We pursue that end in our communities, whether that is by acts of mercy or hospitality – it is the work of God’s people to do this, and as the text reminds us, it is required of us by God. And in addition to these activities, we are to be humble – to be teachable and not know-it-alls. It’s required by God, so that’s pretty important. Take note and be sure your Christian life is not just Sunday morning, it’s not just doing the things by the book Pharisaically, but rather you are a compassionate, intentional Christian.