How should we be present and faithful in the broader world as Christians? Jesus’s memorable saying is that Christians are to be the “salt” and “light” of the world (Matt. 5:13-14). Salt preserves and enhances, and light illumines the world, exposing the damages of sin and pointing forth the way forward, and the way up back to our Creator. Christians, therefore, are called to a two-directional witness: up towards God as the light of the world and horizontally to our neighbor. As grace restores nature, the gospel transforms us not to become like oil, hovering over water, but as leavening agents that reform and re-orders cultures towards the love of God and neighbor.
How, exactly, does this take place? And what, exactly, does this reform and re-ordering look like? The answer might be surprising: it looks like keeping in view the spiritual mission of the church, and seeing how it is that the love of God re-orders our relationship to the world.
When we think about the mission of the church, and we can refer to the work of the visible pilgrim church in two ways: as an institution, and as an organism. As an institution, the work of the church is to point to God and the gospel, in the preaching of the word and the administration of the sacraments, and in the care for widows and orphans in the diaconate ministry. The church as an institute is a “colony of heaven”, as Abraham Kuyper argued, and the gospel is not proclaimed as a means of social or political reform, but to point us to the life in union with Christ in the heavenly places (Eph. 2:4-6).¹ The gospel addresses humans as sinners in need of redemption, and this same gospel is signified by the sacraments in baptism and the Lord’s supper. The church, therefore, should witness to the fact that the kingdom of God is not of this world, but is to be brought down by the act of God alone – and Christians are light to the extent that they reflect back the “Father of lights” (James 1:17). In other words, the only reason the church can be a beacon of hope, a city on a hill, is if they are first and foremost receivers of the light of the world himself (John 1:9-10). We can forgive because we were first forgiven, and we can give mercy only because God was first merciful to us. Our light is not our own but a light from above, and we have no light to shine unless we first receive it from God. Thus, our witness points not to ourselves but to the Father “in heaven” (Matt 5:16).
But precisely because the Gospel comes from above, the church as an institution is also nourishing the church as an organism and the salt of the earth. The organism of the church refers to the visible church as scattered individuals in every sphere of life. What we receive on Sunday as we gather is displayed within our contexts and cultures as we scatter. The transformation brought about by the gospel is not a transformation of being (ontology), but a restoration to our natural destiny: conformity to God, by faith now and consummately in heaven. Christians are “renewed” and “created after the likeness of God” in true knowledge, righteousness, and holiness (Eph. 4:24, Colossians 3:10). Christians are thus not aliens to the natural order but are becoming more fully human. After the fall, we are image-bearers in our being, but we are not imitating God in our acts. In Christ, however, we are again enabled to imitate God as we did before the fall, and more: we are promised a glorified existence that is itself guaranteed by our regeneration now. Christian obedience is thus true, normative, human behavior. As we receive the gospel and are being sanctified to Christ’s character, the true Adamic Son of God, we are re-conformed to who we were made to be.
Herman Bavinck thus argues that it is precisely because the Gospel is not a “political or social system” that it shows us its “permeating power”: “It was this, that heavenly, spiritual matters, that the kingdom of God and his righteousness in Christ, are a tangible, completely trustworthy reality and that their value infinitely exceeds all visible and temporal things.”² The gospel reforms all of society by re-ordering our loves: because we love God above all else, we can, for instance, let go of a love of money that might turn toward exploiting our neighbor for our own worldly gain, or forego our domains and seek the liberation of the oppressed. And yet, as we do this, we are not bringing about the kingdom on earth now – but merely witnessing to the kingdom to come. Everything created is good and to be “received with thanksgiving”, and for it is made “holy”, Paul writes, by “prayer and thanksgiving” (1 Tim. 4:4-5).
The gospel, then, is a pearl of great price: union with Christ and being brought back to God is an end in itself, and not a means to some other good – and yet, it’s a union that is so rich, and so transformative that it will be a reforming power. Christians, be salt and light now: and yet, we can only do so if we point to the one who is the Light of the world.
1 Ad de Bruijne, “‘Colony of Heaven’: Abraham Kuyper’s Ecclesiology in the Twenty-First Century,” Journal of Markets & Morality 17, no. 2 (Fall 2014): 445-490
