When we love our earthly cities we set for ourselves a mission that is wrongheaded no matter how well-intentioned it sounds. Instead of having the mission of making disciples for Christ, churches speak of being “for the city,” or for the “human flourishing of all in the city.” But this is not the mission Christ sets for us or took for himself. Christ, as we have seen, does not come for the flourishing of all humanity, but rather that his church might flourish.

(Read Part 1 and Part 2)

For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come. (Heb. 13:14)

Part III: Why it is important to love the correct City.

My concern finally is very practical. When pastors and church planters orient their efforts for serving Christ in terms of loving their earthly cities, they miss the mark that Christ has set before us. If we aim our love toward the earthly city, rather than the true City of God—the church—then we live for the wrong mission, we proclaim the wrong message, and we use the wrong methods.

Getting our mission right

When we love our earthly cities we set for ourselves a mission that is wrongheaded no matter how well-intentioned it sounds. Instead of having the mission of making disciples for Christ, churches speak of being “for the city,” or for the “human flourishing of all in the city.” But this is not the mission Christ sets for us or took for himself. Christ, as we have seen, does not come for the flourishing of all humanity, but rather that his church might flourish: “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Eph. 5:25).

We are called to make disciples; not to transform cities, but to make disciples; not to work for human flourishing, but to make disciples. These disciples are citizens first of their new city, the City of God: “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God” (Eph. 2:19). We help to make disciples who are citizens of the city we are to love, the City of God, seen now in the church.

While it is true that the advance of the church is generally good for society, because salt and light improve a place, yet “human flourishing” is not our biblical mission. Our mission, given to us by Christ, is to see the City of God flourish, not the City of Man.

Augustine understood this. He pointed out that Rome lived for the safety and glory of the Roman kingdom, their brand of human flourishing.  By contrast Augustine called the church to live not for temporal peace and affluence, but to bring into the world the eternal life of the City of God.

But since those Romans were in an earthly city, and had before them, as the end of all the offices undertaken in its behalf, its safety, and a kingdom, not in heaven, but in earth—not in the sphere of eternal life, but in the sphere of demise and succession, where the dead are succeeded by the dying—what else but glory should they love, by which they wished even after death to live in the mouths of their admirers? (Augustine, City of God, 5.15)

The citizens of Rome lived for their own safety, in the sphere “where the dead are succeeded by the dying.” The citizens of heaven are to live instead “in the sphere of eternal life.” Let us not be usurped today by the misguided and ancient values of Rome.

As great as it sounds to love the city, it is simply the wrong mission for the church. One recent “love the city” video enthused: “The whole city being transformed by the gospel so [this city] can be the most gospel-centered city in the world.” That sounds wonderful, doesn’t it?

The problem is simple: this is City of Man-centered and not City of God-centered. The same video had a quote that makes it clearer that they were for the City of Man more than for the City of God: “Our vision is for the city, not for the church in the city. The church is there to serve the city.” The church in this theology is a tool to achieve their greater end: the building up of the City of Man, this particular city. You might call it “city-olatry.”

While we may hope that the impact of a gospel ministry would, for example, help individuals find sexual wholeness in their lives, it would be wrong to take sexual wholeness as the primary goal of the church. What church website reads: “City Church exists to bring about the transformation of the sexual lives of the people of this city.” Why not? Because while it is a right byproduct of a gospel ministry, it is wrong to take this as the primary mission. Taking it as the mission would lead to the wrong emphasis, just as would taking city transformation as our goal.

Of course, as the body of Christ grows in any place, salt and light spreads. The individual disciples, and indeed the collective impact of the City of God, may be such that the fortune of a city is temporarily improved and transformed. But this only happens when we have the right mission. With the wrong mission we are of no help to either the City of God, or of man.

Also, when we set the transformation of the earthly city as our mission, we may easily become frustrated with the slow impact that typically comes as we work to extend God’s reign through the church. Pastors frustrated that they cannot really build up the City of Man, may abandon the ministry altogether, seeking other means to achieve what was the wrong mission anyway. Loving the wrong city gives us the wrong mission. That is no way to minister.

Loving the City of God means a pastor will be guided by the biblical mission of the church. Loving the church, the City of God, they will seek the flourishing of the Eternal City using eternal means. They will aim for the glory of Christ as seen in the glory of his church. They will evangelize and disciple, equip and train, shepherd and discipline, in order that the body of Christ in any city, town, or place may be built up.

The pastor is then encouraged as he sees the City of God built up in the fellowship of the saints. Even in the midst of the City of Man, which may be in decay, the Kingdom of God moves forward. The City of God advanced during the decline of Rome, the destruction of Berlin during the Third Reich, and under the communists of Moscow. The flourishing of the City of God, indeed, may occur best when the City of Man is at its worst.

This is the calling of pastors: to build up the City of God, the church, not the City of Man, the world: “And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ” (Eph. 4:11–12).

God does not send us into the world merely to make the City of Man more habitable, but for the very inhabitation of the City of God. This is the mission given to us. Let us embrace it fully and not allow the world to give us another mission.

Getting our message right

Our primary call as the people of God is to proclaim to the world the good news of Christ so that they might repent and believe and become disciples, walking in newness of life and grace-enabled obedience: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:19–20).

When we love the wrong city, it leads us to deliver the wrong message, calling people to human flourishing, rather than calling people to life in Christ through faith and repentance. Flourishing-for-all sounds so right, so good, so godly, it is difficult to see what is wrong behind it. But Jesus did not come to make any worldly city flourish: he came to build his church: “I will build my church” (Matt. 16:18). This he did through the power and message of his cross: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15). Anyone who would repent and believe on Christ would find everlasting life as a child of God: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). This eternal life is a life that begins in this world and transforms a person.

Loving the City of Man rather than the City of God may lead us to proclaim a social gospel, and perhaps to ignore, or deemphasize, the real Gospel. If we fail to clearly proclaim the Gospel and substitute in its place the social gospel, we may produce some few who do good works, who lobby for justice, who campaign for candidates, but who lose their souls in the bargain. They have never truly found forgiveness and holiness in Christ: “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul?” (Mark 8:36–37). We may indeed lead them to alleviate a bit of suffering in this life, but usher them into an eternity of misery without mercy. By far the most effective mercy ministry we can do in anyone’s life is to point them to the eternal mercy of God in Christ.

Furthermore, when we do really preach the Gospel, not all will flourish as a result of our proclamation. Indeed, when we preach the Gospel, those who ultimately reject it, do not flourish by our preaching but rather ultimately find death and judgment: “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned” (Mark 16:15–16).

Indeed, because God is a just God, it will be worse for those who know something of Jesus but ultimately reject him, than it will be for those who have never heard of Christ: “For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them” (2 Pet. 2:21).

The goal of the church in proclaiming the Gospel is not “human flourishing.” For when we proclaim Jesus this may create divisions, pain, and warfare in the world: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household” (Matt. 10:34–36).

When we wrongly love our cities, instead of the glory of God in his church, then we deliver the wrong message. Rather than warning of judgment and a call to repentance and life in Jesus, we preach only a milky pabulum of human flourishing. But this is not the message of the Gospel.

When we love the City of God, then our message is clear and it is powerful: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Rom. 1:16). We proclaim Christ, his glory and grace, calling everyone to find life in him through repentance and faith. People of all kinds come to repent and believe. They become citizens of the eternal city. Their lives are transformed as they find new life in Christ: “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). Then, wonder of wonders, their families, businesses, and relationships are transformed. Indeed, they may even impact some portion of their city as salt and light, helping it to be transformed in some ways, as we have seen in awakenings down through the ages.

However, this transformation of the City of Man, to whatever extent it may occur, is a byproduct of, not the goal of preaching the Gospel. Therefore, if we proclaim the message of human flourishing for all, the social gospel, not only will we fail to build the City of God, but the good that might be done for the City of Man by those citizens of the City of God is also lost. Our call then is to proclaim Christ such that he may save people, transform them, and change their lives in this world, by making them citizens of the next.

Getting our methods right

When we love the wrong city, loving our earthly cities instead of loving the Church as the City of God, then we naturally utilize wrong methods, the tools of social reform rather than the means of grace. We substitute the methods of the social gospel for the method of the Gospel. We substitute feeding the hungry for feeding those who hunger for the Word: “‘Behold, the days are coming,’ declares the Lord GOD, ‘when I will send a famine on the land—not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD’” (Amos 8:11).

This is not to say that we should never feed the hungry; Jesus certainly did on occasion. There is an important place for ministries of mercy in the life of the church. But if we primarily focus on the physical needs of others, who will focus on their vital spiritual needs?

Many agencies in the world focus on the social and physical needs of people. It is uniquely the call of the church to help people find eternal life in the only way that possible: by faith in Christ: “Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Matt. 6:31–33).

Therefore, our primary method for ministry to the world—not our only method, but our primary method of ministry—is to proclaim Jesus: “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation” (Mark 16:15).

Interestingly, in an often misinterpreted passage used to advocate for the social gospel, when Jesus wanted to explain to the disciples of John the Baptist that the Kingdom of God had arrived, Jesus very explicitly did not say that the poor are fed. Rather he pointed out that the evidence of the arrival of God’s kingdom is the preaching of the Gospel to the poor, not the alleviation of their poverty: “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them.” (Luke 7:22) There were two signs mentioned here that accompanied the ministry of Jesus, the miraculous healing of diseases and death—a sign that he and the Apostles were given to accompany their proclamation—and the preaching of good news to the poor.

We in the non-apostolic age are primarily given this sign: preaching good news to the poor. What a terrible mistake then to replace the power of the Word for the poor with a series of anti-poverty efforts, or even a worthwhile soup kitchen. Yet the church today often lives as if Jesus said: “Tell John what you have seen and heard . . . the poor have good soup served to them.”

Augustine saw this distinction very clearly and cautioned the church away from making the physical good of people—human flourishing—the primary goal of the church, because human flourishing is the primary goal of the world, not the church.

Thus the things necessary for this mortal life are used by both kinds of men and families alike, but each has its own peculiar and widely different aim in using them. The earthly city, which does not live by faith, seeks an earthly peace, and the end it proposes, in the well-ordered concord of civic obedience and rule, is the combination of men’s wills to attain the things which are helpful to this life. The heavenly city, or rather the part of it which sojourns on earth and lives by faith, makes use of this peace only because it must, until this mortal condition which necessitates it shall pass away. (Augustine, City of God, 19.17)

This is true of social-gospel initiatives. They may be good works, they may even be part of what we may do in our service in the world, but if we take them as the primary ministry of the church, we will have disarmed the church by removing its most powerful weapon: “For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds” (2 Cor. 10:4). If we lay down the methods of spiritual warfare, the means of grace—prayer and Word, sacrament and discipline—we neutralize the church’s power, and leave her impotent. Pastors who love the wrong city may abandon their first love, they may neglect the means of grace—even the very church itself—giving up the pastorate in order to pursue their mission by means that seem more effective: politics, ecumenical city-wide campaigns, and social programs.

However, when we love the right city, the City of God, we naturally take up her methods, the means of grace, which have great power to change lives and even the world: “My speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God” (1 Cor.  2:4–5). It is the church, as means of grace, as strategy and method, that will most effectively advance the building up and health of the City of God on earth.

Certainly, as we use the right methods and the church grows, she will have a positive impact of being salt and light in any culture. Indeed, a long-term study of the impact of evangelical missions found just this correlation. (“The Missionary Roots of Liberal Society,” by Robert Woodberry). Why not then aim for the goal of cultural transformation if using the right methods has that possible eventual impact? Because those cultural impacts are the byproduct of loving the church. If we do not love the church and so use the means of grace, whatever we achieve will be less than what we might have achieved. It is a great paradox, like what C. S. Lewis wrote about in Mere Christianity concerning the need to aim for heavenly life, not earthly life: “Aim at Heaven and you will get Earth ‘thrown in’: aim at Earth and you will get neither.”

Our very call as “Ministers of the Gospel,” is to use the ordinary means of grace, spiritual methods, to build, not the City of Man, but the very City of God.

Conclusion

The Bible teaches the people of God to love a city, that is certainly true. However, the city we are to love is not the earthly city in which we live, but the heavenly city in which we possess citizenship, and which is now manifest before us as the body of Christ, the church. This is the city we are to love, and building her is our mission, as we proclaim the message of grace, using the methods of grace, so that the grace of God itself may transform all that it touches: “On the holy mount stands the city he founded; the LORD loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwelling places of Jacob. Glorious things of you are spoken, O city of God” (Ps. 87:1–3). Indeed, it is the case, and should always be, that: “Glorious things of thee are spoken, Zion, city of our God!” Which city you decide to love makes all the difference. Let us love the city that Jesus loved, the City of God.

Accordingly, two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self. The former, in a word, glories in itself, the latter in the Lord. For the one seeks glory from men; but the greatest glory of the other is God, the witness of conscience. The one lifts up its head in its own glory; the other says to its God, “Thou art my glory, and the lifter up of mine head.” (Augustine, City of God, 14.28)

Dr. Thomas D. Hawkes is a Minister in the Presbyterian Church in America; he resides in Charlotte, North Carolina.