Ends and means
I appreciated Ligon's reference to Derek's sermon on Ezra, and the need for us to match our personal performance with our pulpit ministry ('Study. Live. Preach', below).
That thought was on my own mind recently as I've been reading through John Allen's biography of Demond Tutu - Rabble-Rouser for Peace. On one occasion Tutu was preaching at a funeral in the
'We have a cause that is just. We have a cause that is going to prevail. For goodness' sake, let us not spoil it by the kind of methods we use. And if we do this again, I must tell you that I am going to find it difficult to be able to speak up for liberation. I will find it difficult - it is already difficult in this country to talk the truth, but if we use methods such as the one that we saw in Duduza, then, my friends, I am going to collect my family and leave a country that I love very deeply, a country that I love passionately' (p226).
To which the biographer adds: 'Some in the crowd booed'. But Tutu was right: the rightness of the cause does not excuse every method used to secure it. For those of us who are in the ministry, there is a very pertinent point here: the justness of our cause, and the power of our Gospel, demands that our methodology accord with it. And our own personal behaviour, as well as the behaviour of our people, is part of that methodology.
Isn't that what Paul urges Titus - that we should model integrity, and that we should teach people to 'adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour' (Titus 2:10). Godly lives are the icing on the cake of all our theology.