Doing Justice and Loving Mercy: Compassion Ministries, Mentor's Guide, MG16

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D O I N G J U S T I C E A N D L O V I N G M E R C Y : C O M P A S S I O N M I N I S T R I E S

Doing Justice and Loving Mercy (1) The Urban Congregation

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Welcome in the strong name of Jesus Christ! After your reading, study, discussion, and application of the materials in this lesson, you will be able to: • Outline the priority of justice and mercy for the ministry and work of the Church of Christ. • Show from Scripture how the Church has been granted the sober responsibility of demonstrating God’s justice and mercy in the world today, called to demonstrate this first to its own members, in a kind of “home grown” quality of Christian love. • Recite how the grace of God underpins and shapes our theologies of justice, mercy, and love, and lay out the implications of experiencing God’s grace in our approaches to justice and mercy. • List the basic elements involved in the rationale and practices of justice and mercy in the life of Israel, God’s OT community. • Give the basic theological rationale for the Church as God’s kingdom community, and its call to justice and mercy in this age, and specifically for the urban church. • Give evidence of the significance of the two objects of God’s justice and mercy, i.e., the members of the Church and those outside. • Discuss the four channels through which God manifests his love: the family, the Church, care societies, and the state. • Recount the six key principles which should inform our care-giving as local congregations as we seek to demonstrate God’s justice and mercy in our urban communities.

Lesson Objectives

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Created for Good Works

Devotion

Eph. 2.1-10 - And you were dead in the trespasses and sins [2] in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— [3] among whomwe all once lived in the

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