Biblical Religion
Acts 9:36–43
She was full of good works and acts of charity. Acts 9:36
Christianity has a gospel of salvation from sin, and flowing from that is a practical calling to help and serve other people. Yes, Christianity calls people to turn from sin and respond to Jesus Christ in saving faith. But if they have done that, it then calls them to serve others also.
Before the coming of Jesus Christ, there were no hospitals in the world. If somebody got sick at home, there would have been family members to take care of them. There were doctors, but there were no hospitals. Nobody established institutions to take care of those who were ill, certainly not those who were poor and unable to pay for their treatment. But where Christianity came, the light of medicine followed and hospitals were founded everywhere.
Before Jesus Christ came, there were no orphanages in the world. People did not care for children who had no parents. Letting orphans die was considered the best thing. Even worse, good Greek and Roman families would expose their own children to perish from the elements if they thought they had enough children. That is the way the people of those days treated children. If by some means some rejected child should manage to grow up to a reasonable age, even then nobody would take the child in. Generally, such children fell into male or female prostitution.
There were no leprosariums in the world before the coming of Jesus Christ. Everyone feared leprosy and fled at a leper’s approach. There was no compassion or humanitarian care for those who were suffering as a result of this disease.
There were no disaster relief organizations in the world before the coming of Jesus Christ. You never in all of ancient literature read, for example, of the community in Rome getting together to take up an offering to send to the starving poor in Egypt. Yet at even this very early stage, when the Christians were for the most part quite poor themselves, you find the apostle Paul going around the Greek communities collecting money to send to the poor in Jerusalem because there had been a famine there. Christians felt a tie to one another and to other men and women because of a common humanity.
There were not even any great schools in the ancient world. There was education, of course. But there was nothing like common education. There was no concern for those who did not have means. Christians brought that concern. It is Christians who have gone into the cities of the world and have hunted out the poor, the young, the sick, the uneducated and have brought them into schools to train them and give them skills that enabled them to be something other than destiny would seem to have chosen for them.
This is just biblical religion.
Taken from Come to the Waters by James Boice ISBN 9798887790954 used with permission from P&R Publishing, Phillipsburg NJ 08865
Scripture quotations are from the ESV (the Holy Bible English Standard Version) copyright 2001 by Crossway a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. All rights reserved.