First Priority?

What’s a higher priority to God – that people experience a saving relationship with God or that people have their physical needs met?  One way to answer that question is to say that it’s a false choice; God desires both.

That’s true, and in fact I myself have given that answer over the years.  But I like what Christopher Wright says in The Mission of God in a section of his book entitled “Primacy or Ultimacy?”  He asserts that the question shouldn’t be about “priority” for priority implies urgency, time priority, and that everything else is inferior.

Yet when you or your students encounter a person who is homeless on the street, should the first thing you do be to talk to them about Jesus?

Instead, Wright argues that helping people experience a saving relationship with God is perhaps not our first step but it’s our ultimate goal.   He writes, “Mission may not always begin with evangelism.  But mission that does not ultimately include declaring the Word and the name of Christ, the call to repentance, and faith and obedience has not completed its task”  (p. 319).

I think Wright is right.  And if we can help our students engage in that type of justice, I think we’ll be on the right track.

©2008 Fuller Youth Institute