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N.T. Wright: Why Good Leaders Misunderstand Jesus

Frank: One of the main points of your book centers on reclaiming the prophetic witness of the church to speak to those in power when they are violating God’s will. What would you say to those who would argue that in the NT, we only see the Apostles speaking to power when they are being prohibited from preaching the gospel? Are there exceptions to this in the NT? If there aren’t, why should we assume that the church should speak to power on matters outside of prohibiting the gospel from being proclaimed?

N.T. Wright: As soon as anyone announces that God is becoming king, they are speaking the truth to power whether or not the powers realize it. Paul in Acts ends up in Rome speaking of Jesus as Lord and God as king, right under Caesar’s nose, with nobody stopping him. Of course, this comes out even more clearly when the authorities try to stop the Apostles bearing witness to Jesus, but it’s there all through, following the mandate given in John 16 about the Spirit convicting the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment. The Spirit does that, of course, through the church.

Frank: You argue in the book that part of the church’s ministry is to help the poor and feed the hungry. What is your response to the person who says that if this were the case, wouldn’t we see examples of the church helping the poor of the world in the book of Acts and in the Epistles? We do see examples of this in post-apostolic history. And in the NT, we see the church helping the poor who are part of other churches. But we don’t see any examples in the NT of the church helping the poor of this world (so the argument goes). What is your response to this line of thinking?

N.T. Wright: Paul and Barnabas went up to Jerusalem in Acts 11 with aid for the poor because of the famine. At the end of their visit (if that’s the same visit as Galatians 2:1-10, which I think it is), the Jerusalem Apostles ask them to “go on remembering the poor,” and Paul comments “which very thing I was eager to do.” A recent remarkable book by Bruce Longenecker (Remember the Poor: Paul, Poverty, and the Greco-Roman World) shows that care for the poor was much closer to the heart of the Pauline mission than we have normally thought.

Of course, the early church was a very small community, and the first imperative was to be sure to look after any poor Christians that needed it. But already in Galatians (6:10), Paul is telling folk to “do good to all, especially those of the household of faith,” and in Philippians, he urges the church to “let everyone know how gentle and gracious you are,” which may well have a sense of Christians reaching out in love to serve their neighbors.

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