When we go to the gates of hell to battle for the lives of men and women who are trapped there, we go knowing that we will lose the battle. We lose the battle because losing is the only way to win.
When the church arrives at the gates of hell, we will do the same thing Jesus did in His life and ministry. We will die. We do not lay siege to the gates of hell to fight against the people we find there. We camp out at the gates of hell to love and serve the people who are trapped there.
When we follow Jesus to the hellish places on earth we will die to ourselves in the process. Our dreams, our hopes, our longings, our rights, our power, our money, our prestige, our authority, all gets discarded. Just as Jesus laid aside His honor and glory so that He might rescue us, He calls us to lay aside similar things so that we might rescue others.
Though he rightfully could have demanded service and worship from all, he served the lame and the sick by healing them, the demonized by delivering them, and the outcasts by befriending them. This is what the kingdom of God looks like. It looks like humility. It looks like grace. It looks like service. It looks like Jesus (The Myth of a Christian Nation
).
Loving our enemies and returning evil with good has the power to accomplish things that the weapons of war can never dream of.
Someone has to stop the endless cycle of violence and hatred, and it is Jesus who showed that these things stop with Him. It is not that the downward way of Jesus into love and service “works.” It usually doesn’t work—at least, not as the world defines it.
The reason Jesus models this way of losing rather than winning is because it models the way of God. God is kind to the unloving, generous to the selfish, and forgiving to the unjust.
Losing our life for others “is not a stratagem for getting what we want but the only manner of life available, now that, in Jesus, we have seen what God wants” (Resident Aliens
But this downward way into service and sacrifice does not lack joy, peace, and fulfillment. It is on the downward path, it is at the gates of hell, it is with the redeemed enemies of God, where the party of the Kingdom of Heaven rages most fiercely.
It is here where men and angels sing and dance together to the song of the redeemed.
Jeremy,
I apologize that this comment is going to be off-topic but it seemed the most direct way to ask you. And I thought others might want to know your views, too.
Since you work in prisons, what was your view of Chuck Colson and his prison work?
Ooopph. What a question!
I liked Chuck Colson. I think he did some great things. I think much of what he said and did through Prison Fellowship was helpful. I think he had some great ideas with this book Justice That Restores
.
Aside from this, I don’t have much to say. We do not use any sort of Prison Fellowship material or volunteers where I work. We do participate in the Angel Tree program for Christmas…
Thanks.
I’m reminded of the Red Cross Aid worker who was brutally murdered in Pakistan last week for helping out as a doctor to heal the sick. Not only did they kill him they dishonored his body by chopping off his head. That dedication to work for those who had no hope by giving them hope in a most dangerous part of the world, to me is working at the gates of hell. I don’t know if he was a Christian as many who do not believe in Jesus are also willing to give up their lives for the good of mankind. Will he be with the Lord now if he was not a believer. According to most Christians the answer would be know. I think we all need to be ready to be surprised when we wake up after death to see where we are and who is also there.
Clive
Oooh! Suggesting that Jesus Christ IS the SAME yesterday, today and forever, are we? WOW!
-Mark (just another crazy Canuck… hey, we’re practically nationalistic cousins Clive; you hailing from the Mother Land and all)
Hi Mark, well I was born in the Falkland Islands or as the people from Argentina prefer to call her the Malvinas I left there with my Mum when I was 7 and came to Old Blighty.
I love the concept of Church but we all need to get out more and storm the gates of hell, because no one else is.
On Monday night I will be with four other Christians from my Church, meeting in our Church community centre to pray for our brothers and sisters in Christ who are persecuted relentlessly in every part of the world. These people are not foreigners but the indigenous people in places such as North Korea, Colombia, Nigeria, India, China, Eritrea and various Islamic countries. They are at first marginalised, bullied, tortured, imprisoned yet will nor recant their faith in the Lord Jesus so they eventually die from their brutalization or murdered.
Thats about as close as I get to the gates of hell. Yes I do certainly need to get out more. Maybe God may kick my butt so hard I will land right at the gates. Maybe he is biding His time until I’m ready.
Love Clive