1 - Introduction - Living like a real Christian Justice - A People For Others | Page 7

joy. Through the blessing of the upright a city is exalted, but by the mouth of the wicked it is
destroyed.”
Proverbs 11 v 10 speaks of “the righteous” as a discrete grouping within the city.
This seems to rule out the idea that the writer is thinking of Jerusalem or some other
Israelite city. He says that God’s people within the city are to “prosper” as a way to benefit
the city.
The teaching and work of Jesus
The call to build Jerusalem and the call to the exiles to seek the peace ofBabylon are both
important backdrops to Jesus’ call that his followers be a “cityon a hill” (Matthew 5 v 14).
Jesus calls his disciples to be God’s urban alternative—to form an alternate city within the
city—that is visible to all (on a hill). Jesus travels to the great city, Jerusalem, to make his
sacrifice for sin. The bookof Hebrews tells us, “The high priest carries the blood of animals
into the MostHoly Place as a sin offering, but the bodies are burned outside the camp. Andso
Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy throughhis own blood”
(Hebrews 13 v 11–12).
The ministry of Paul
In Acts 17 Paul goes to Athens, the intellectual centre of the Greco-Romanworld, and then
in Acts 18 to