“It’s time to do good.” Why exactly? In his article on our annual motto, District Apostle Michael Ehrich (Southern Germany) gives two or three good reasons.
New Apostolic Christians are forward-looking. The return of Christ is the goal of our faith. It lives in our hearts, and we are preparing for it. Our annual motto can therefore be interpreted as, “Use the time until then to do good.” I see our motivation based on love.
Doing good out of love
We seek to act according to the Lord’s example and always keep in touch with Him in prayer out of love for Him. We look to Him in all situations in life and accept His gifts of salvation. We cannot do anything better for ourselves.
In the parable of the Good Samaritan, we see the great importance of acting on our love for our neighbour. We need to look when someone needs help, and act without ifs and buts. In addition to helping with earthly matters, love for our neighbour can be expressed in many ways, for example in sympathy and affection or intercession.
Love your neighbour as yourself—we only wish the best for ourselves. The best thing we can wish for our neighbour is salvation in Jesus Christ. We reveal love for our neighbour when we proclaim God’s will to save in the present stage of His plan of salvation. Words are not enough. Because wherever we are, whatever our circumstances may be: through our actions and conduct, through what we radiate, we bear witness to our faith.
So we do good—for our neighbour as well as for ourselves—by modelling our lives on the gospel, trusting in God, and making a priority of those things that are lasting.
Doing good as if we were doing it to the Lord
There is another aspect to doing good. In Jesus’ discourse on the Last Judgement, He gives examples of various situations in which it is important to help others (Matthew 25: 31). In doing so, He identifies with His own who have been helped in hunger, thirst, illness, and so on: “Inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me” (Matthew 25: 40). If we do good to the followers of Christ out of faith, it is as though we had done it for the Lord.
Our concern and support for our brothers and sisters in the congregation can also extend to their life of faith. We do not need a ministry, for example, to share experiences of faith with others with the aim of encouraging, comforting, or strengthening trust in the Lord. The best we can do is to help them reach the goal of faith.
In the Lord, we find everything we need until His return. We do ourselves good when our expectation of His return and our endeavours to become worthy for this event are blessed at His altar.
Photo: Jürgen Dietz