Proclaiming and Living the Gospel

Today, we had the privilege of visiting the ancient cities of Ephesus and Aphrodesias. It’s been swelteringly hot here, but Rod and Libby have been good shepherds: constantly seeking out little patches of shade for moments of respite, reminding us to drink plenty of water and apply lots of sunscreen. And the things that God has been teaching each one of us have already made this trip well worth the effort. 

It’s a surreal thing to walk along the roads in Ephesus (still paved with their original stone) and know that Paul, John, and countless other disciples of Jesus also walked them thousands of years before. We sat in the theater at Ephesus and read from Acts 19, the exact place where some of the events in that chapter took place. Even though I already knew in my head that these events happened to real people in real places, this trip is giving them a sense of… gravity that they didn’t have before.

The first thing that stuck me today was the early church’s commitment to both love God AND love their neighbor. They very clearly stood out from their society: first because of their commitment to live in a way that honors God, instead of living in sin. Instead of living in sexual immorality like the rest of their culture, the early church was committed to the sanctity of marriage. And instead of worshipping the whole pantheon of Greco Roman gods, they proclaimed the rule and reign of the one true God.

But these Christians also stood out because of their commitment to love their neighbors: when unwanted babies were abandoned outside the city gates to die or be taken as slaves, the Christians took them into their homes and adopted them as their own children. They didn’t just proclaim the gospel: they LIVED the gospel.

It can feel so easy to separate these two things: to focus on right living so much that you forget to love your neighbor… or vice versa. It’s been convicting to see these Christians’ efforts to do BOTH. Because there truly is no distinction between the two.

The other thing that struck me was the way that these Greco Roman gods acted as counterfeits to the true God: their temples provided shelter to the foreigner and refugee, feasts for the people, and drinking (living) water for the entire city. People made sacrifice after sacrifice to try to earn blessings from them, but lived in fear of angering them. The goddess Artemis was said to have fallen from the sky into a tree in paradise named the Tree of Life. When Caesar Augustus took power, he declared himself to be the Son of God, High Priest, and Savior, among other things. Every emperor after him was also deified: depicted in propaganda in scenes of military victory, dominating enemy nations, elevated to the same level as the gods.

And yet… all of these temples are now in ruins. No one worships Caesar anymore, but the Word of God has not changed. And He is still on His throne.

He is the true shelter for the oppressed, the food for the hungry, the living water for the thirsty. Instead of demanding that we make all the right sacrifices and check all the right boxes, He gives His love freely and extravagantly.

And instead by taking power by force, like the Roman emperors, He gave up power and became a servant, a man, and stood in our place. He took the cross: the symbol of Roman domination, and turned it into a symbol of His victory. The emperors demanded, “your life for mine.” Jesus declared, “I give my life for yours.”

That, my friends, is a God worth worshipping.

In a world that’s still full of counterfeits, that is a God I would gladly give my life to.

Lauren Pinner