The Gospel is health care
How do you know you’re in the kingdom of God?
What does the Gospel look like when it comes to life?
Someone once demanded that the Christ prove himself, his Gospel, and his kingdom.
The Christ responded with this proof:
Go tell John [the Baptist] what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them (Gospel of Luke 7:22).
Do you notice that in the proof the Christ gave about himself and his kingdom, all of it has to do with the health and strength of bodies and none of it has to do with “spirituality”?
Health–meeting the actual, real-life needs of human bodies–is the essence of the Gospel and the kingdom of God. At least if you believe it the way the Christ tells it.
Re-read the Gospels and it is plain to see: Jesus of Nazareth’s ministry was as much a public health project as it was a preaching campaign.
I would go so far as to say that public health was more important, more the point of Jesus’s work, than preaching. In other words, Jesus didn’t heal so that he would have an audience for his preaching. He preached so that he would have a people to heal.
Even though the Christ did say that his kingdom is not of this world (Gospel of John 18:36), he did not mean that his kingdom has nothing to do with this world or that it is not for this world. When the New Testament sets out to prove that the kingdom of God is real, the proof it gives is always what the Christ and his Christians are doing for bodies.
In short: If we take the Christ at his word, the kingdom of God is not a “spiritual” kingdom; it is very much a physical kingdom. It is a realm for human bodies.
Again, the words of the Christ:
Go tell John [the Baptist] what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them (Gospel of Luke 7:22).
The author of the Gospel of Luke later wrote a sequel, the Book of Acts.
The Book of Acts begins with the Christ going up to heaven and the Spirit of the Christ coming down to fill and form the church of Christ on Earth. The author of the Book of Acts describes the church of Christ caring for human bodies the same way the Christ cared for them. It is the care and feeding of human bodies that proves the Spirit of the Christ is in the church of Christ.
The Book of Acts is the story of the church of Christ feeding, healing, housing, and meeting every bodily need of its members.
It is how the church of Christ cares for bodies that makes it the church of Christ and the vanguard of the kingdom of God in the world.
The current public health crisis is a chance for the church of Christ to not just respond to the bodily needs of its members and neighbors, but to reclaim the fullness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. To remember that the Kingdom of God is here and now for human bodies and not just for spirits in the “sweet by and by.”
How might the church of Christ in America reclaim and restore public health as the essence and foundation of the Gospel?
Grace and peace.