The Other Side of NT Christiandom

[Pard]

This is something I have been thinking upon. I have not yet brought it before God, I don't know why, probably some silly notion that I ought to get a head around an idea before I go to God with it, when in truth my head around an idea has nothing to do with when I should approach God, nor should I even bother getting my head around something because only God can help us understand the nature of things.

Anyways! It has been on my heart and mind, of late, to wonder about the other Christians in the NT, the "silent Christians". We only read the letters and the stories of the apostles as they preached TO these "silent Christians", but we never hear or even get a grasp of who these people are.

I just finished reading "Crazy Love" and when I walked away from it I get this terrible guilt that I was going to school to be a lawyer when I really ought to just give that money for school to some homeless guy and then jump on the next plane to Kenya. Well, I know that may be a little extreme, but then this get me to thinking about the other Christians in the NT. We see the preachers and the missionaries and the teachers, but we never see the students, the receivers of these Words. Now I know we don't see them because their story isn't really important to our salvation, to our growth and to our knowledge, but still, it serves as a reminder and as a point of ease of heart when we look at them, because surely their entire community didn't decide to get up, throw down their tools, and become missionaries in turn.

They helped people around them, we see this because Paul writes about it. But then we have to assume that they got their money from somewhere, right? That somewhere must be a job. So surely these people are workers, doers, just like the right of us. That's reassuring to me. They were just regular Joes but they had salvation. They were just workers, business men, farmers, but they had salvation just as much as Paul or Peter or John. They were justified, not by their occupation, but by their faith. They didn't need to carry their crosses clear across the Middle East and into western Europe! They carried their cross from their house down to the corner store, out to the fields, into the building of their work, and back home again each night!

Good news huh?!

 

[cyberjosh]

What you say is true. Note this also: The 'regular' people played a huge role simply in that the Gospel was meant to be self-propagating by impacting locales and regions of people walking in faith, the ekklesia, who would in turn reach out to their surrounding local communities and spread the Gospel, so that they could also do the same thing again - all in a localized area until it is entirely converted to Christ. There are not only long-distance missionaries (the ones that get singled out) but those long-distance missionaries also unite local communities so that they can become the sustaining force for local missionary (short-distance/at-hand) work so that the long distance missionaries can move on and not have to worry about the Church falling apart in their absence. This is how Paul operated, and he even assumed that baby Christians (like the Corinthians) could survive without his constant presence (though he wrote to them at least three times). It is the 'normal' people that hold the communities together and give vitality and real form to the Church in the daily life of faith. And without definite local representation in communities what would the Church be?

Christian Lawyers can be just as much a light for the faith locally as missionaries abroad. Just make sure that you are demonstrating the faith God has called you to step out in, else you could miss your calling. Even the long-distance missionary may have been called to rather be a lawyer instead, if God had a greater plan for him at home! So at home or abroad, follow God's calling and leading.

God Bless,
~Josh