The Gospel Comes with a House Key: Practicing Radically Ordinary Hospitality in Our Post-Christian World

by Rosaria Champagne Butterfield

And who, you might ask, is God’s elect? Anyone with a broken spirit and a contrite heart. The Bible records this for us: “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise” (Ps. 51:17). If you worry about who you are before the Lord, pray that he will give you a broken and contrite spirit. Christ calls sinners to saving faith. The gospel call is for you and me and every person in the world.

The job of an ally is to accompany someone in her suffering and to carry some of the load of cross bearing. The job of an ally makes the cross lighter, not by erecting or supporting laws that oppose God’s law, but by being good company in the bearing of its weight. By accompanying your friend in suffering. By standing close and staying near. By answering the phone at midnight, or, better yet, inviting her to move into your home while she wrestles with sin, the flesh, and the Devil. We are not extending grace to people when we encourage them to sin against God. Grace always leads to Christ’s atoning blood. Grace leads to repentance and obedience. Grace fulfills the law of God, in both heart and conduct. When we try to be more merciful than God, we put a millstone around the neck of the person we wish to help.

Are Christians victims of this post-Christian world? No. Sadly, Christians are coconspirators. We embrace modernism’s perks when they serve our own lusts and selfish ambitions. We despise modernism when it crosses lines of our precious moralism. Our cold and hard hearts; our failure to love the stranger; our selfishness with our money, our time, and our home; and our privileged back turned against widows, orphans, prisoners, and refugees mean we are guilty in the face of God of withholding love and Christian witness.

And even more serious is our failure to read our Bibles well enough to see that the creation ordinance and the moral law, found first in the Old Testament, is as binding to the Christian as any red letter. Our own conduct condemns our witness to this world. Shame on us. Our post-Christian world has not taken away our Bibles or the Holy Spirit’s convicting rebuke on our Christ-owned consciousness. We have done this through high-minded moralism and unrepentant sin. And now we must be salt and light in a world that knows we have blown it. We will wear the title of hypocrite—and rightly so—until we repent to God and love our neighbor in word and deed. Now is the time to know our stuff and roll up our sleeves. Reconciliation starts with repentance.