We also have to raise questions about the use of our money and other resources. We're going to have to ask how our money should be used? How much should we really use on ourselves? How much is going to be necessary to do the Lord's work? How much are we going to use for the benefit of other people?
Another way we are going to have to be distinct is in our priorities. We're going to have to learn and act upon the fact that our priorities as given to us in the Word of God are not the world's priorities. Above all, we're going to have to speak about what God does in the human heart by a miracle to transform people as the essential cure to the problems of society.
In addition to a clear grasp of our authority, a second way in which we have to be distinct is in our theology. Contrary to what the world's theology says, we all know that people are not basically good, and therefore all one needs to do is work a little harder. The Word of God tells us that things are not that way at all. Things are terribly, even desperately, wrong. Speaking spiritually, men are dead in their trespasses and sins, and what we need is a miraculous work that only God can do.
The nature of God’s City also affects death and sorrow. We know now what it means to die, but death for the Christian is not like death for the non-Christian. For the believer it's an entrance into life. As for sorrow, Christians know what this is, too. We truly grieve for many things, but not as others who have no hope, according to the teaching of the Apostle Paul. In other words, as we come to this great vision of the holy city, the Christian utopia, we come to it as a reminder of what we are now, what we are growing into as we are conformed to the image of Christ, and what we shall one day be.
The literature of the world is filled with utopias, but all of these utopias are different from the one that we find in the 21st chapter of Revelation. In it we read of the New Jerusalem coming down from heaven as a bride adorned for her husband. The remainder of the chapter spells out the details of that revelation, which differs from the human utopias we have seen in literature.
