The Repairers of the Breach IV: How to Be Primitive, Poor and Postmodern Simultaneously
Study Guide and Supplemental Links

Is solidarity with the poor "salvation by works?"

• James 2:14-17
• I John 3:17, 18
• Matthew 5:16

  Solidarity with the poor is faith ________ works.

And it begins, according to Isaiah 58:6, 7, with "your own ________ ."

Read, "From your own _____________ ."
But also read, "From your own ____________ ."

• The poor are not only out there—the poor are also in here—in "our own" Family.
• In fact, the Old Testament treatment of God's solidarity with the poor is almost exclusively devoted to the poor _________ the community of faith.
• Deuteronomy 15:7-11:
  • See also Matthew 26:11
  • The ________ you will always have with you.

And what did the primitive church do for the poor?

• Acts 2:41-47
• Acts 4:32-35
• Acts 6:1-7
• Are these examples a call to egalitarianism?
  • "egalitarian": of, relating to, or believing in ___________ and __________ equality.
  • E.g., Mao Tsetung's communist China
  • But what God in Holy Scripture champions is _______________ of _____________ :
    • Equal access to the gospel.
    • Equal access to the good earth.
    • Equal access to food, water, health-care and education.
  • If God champions equality of opportunity, then how come He says the poor will always be with us?
    • God, who ___________ those who suffer, __________ those who suffer in our midst to see what we will do!
    • The poor are our __________ opportunity to exercise the ____________ __________ .

And that was the secret of the primitive church in Acts!

• John 13:34, 35
• "As Christ had loved them, the disciples were to love one another. . . . They were to reveal a specially tender love for all of the same faith." [Mss 160, 1898]
• Their loving solidarity for each other—poor and rich alike—became their most potent ________________ strategy!
• "If we would humble ourselves before God, and be kind and courteous and tenderhearted and pitiful, there would be one hundred conversions where now there is only one." [Welfare Ministry 86]

"By this the world will know that you are My people."

Answers: that; flesh; family; Family; within; poor; political, social; equality, opportunity; loves, leaves; golden, Golden, Rule; evangelistic.