Christian relationships bound in truth are expressed in the way we pray for one another, the burdens we share with one another, and the sympathy we have for one another. Let us be faithful to pray that all is well with body and soul of our brothers and sisters in Christ!

One of the books of the Bible that I have come to appreciate over the years is the letter of Third John. This short letter from John the Apostle to his beloved brother Gaius is packed with timeless, practical principles for members of Christ’s church. But there is one verse that is specifically helpful when we consider how we as brothers and sisters in Christ should pray for one another. I believe if God’s people would consider the ways John prays for Gaius in this letter and begin to pray for one another in this way, not only would our prayer lives grow stronger, but relationships in the church would also grow deeper, and the souls of men and women would be strengthened.
In the second verse of this letter John writes,
Beloved, I pray that all may go well with you and that you may be in good health, as it goes well with your soul.
This prayer of John lays out three clear ways in which we can and should pray for one another as those who are walking in the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ:
Wellness in Circumstances (v. 2a)
Beloved, I pray that all may go well with you…
Think for a moment what “all may go well with you” could include. Consider how it would change our prayer and our relationships within the church if we committed to praying that all may go well with specific members of the body. First of all, we would need to know more about the different areas of their everyday lives. We would need to spend time talking to them getting to know them on a deeper level. This in itself would strengthen the relationships we have as we walk in truth together.
Praying for the general well-being of the church family would mean we are praying for their life within the church, their family life, their vocation, their ministry, and their financial well-being.
Wellness in Body (v. 2b)
Beloved, I pray…that you may be in good health…
This is one we are usually devoted to. Our prayer meetings, personal prayers, and family prayers are often filled with prayers for those who are sick, those who have been injured, and those who may be facing death. This is good and right for the church to do. When people are going through times of physical suffering and affliction, they need not only the comfort of God to persevere, but the wisdom of God to understand what he is seeking to teach them during this season of life.
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Prayers that are not offered in and through Christ are like undelivered letters. They remain unread, unopened, and most significantly, unheeded. Anyone who has not put their faith in Jesus and approached God through him does not have access to him. Your prayers are undelivered, landing in God’s infinite dead-letter office. The Bible is very clear on this point. ‘There is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus’ (1 Tim 2:5). 

We have been going through Hebrews recently in church. The key headline from Sunday’s sermon was that, in Christ, we can have real confidence before the judgement seat of God. We can access God confidently through the Lord Jesus.
One of the side points I made in that sermon – in passing and it was not in my notes – was that unbelievers have no right of access. Specifically, I noted that God does not hear the prayers of unbelievers. That is to say, if you do not trust in Jesus, God does not hear your prayers.
Of course, by that, I don’t mean God cannot hear the words coming out of people’s mouths or the thoughts in their heads. Of course he knows and hears those things. He knows and hears everything. So, in the sense that he knows when unbelievers are praying and knows exactly why they are praying and what they want, God hears their prayers in that sense.
But what I mean is that God does not grant them a hearing.
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The story of oppression cannot be told with reference to one race, one sex, one class, one nation, or one civilization. The problem of injustice goes deeper, past the identity obsessions of our age, all the way to our identity as fallen human beings.

As Americans continue to debate critical race theory (CRT) and its place in our schools and our national self-understanding, the discussion in some Christian circles has turned to questions about possible similarities between a Reformed doctrine of sin and CRT’s emphasis on the pervasiveness of oppressive systems and structures.

For example, in a new book, Reformed Public Theology, one contributor argues that “Reformed theologians describe the pervasive effects of sin while using comprehensive terms strikingly similar to CRT.” The author then quotes from the famous Dutch statesman and theologian Abraham Kuyper:

“The stronger, almost without exception, have always known how to bend every custom and magisterial ordinance so that the profit is theirs and the loss belongs to the weaker. Men did not literally eat each other like cannibals, but the more powerful exploited the weaker by means of a weapon which there was no defense.”

I have already seen these lines cited many times on social media, to the effect that, like CRT, a Reformed doctrine of sin leads us to believe in the near inevitability of systemic injustice. What should we make of this argument?

An initial response is to admit that powerful people often do bend customs and ordinances to favor their interests. The weak often are mistreated by those who have the connections and influence to get away with it. In American history, this has meant that whites too often protected their power by mistreating those who were not white. Even in a country deeply influenced by Christianity, oppression is more common than we would like to think.

So far, so Reformed.

But there are problems with connecting the ideology of CRT with the doctrine of the Reformed tradition.

For starters, it’s strange that Kuyperians—who talk so much about redeeming culture, transforming the city, and renewing the arts—can sound so defeatist when talking about the systems and customs of Europeans and their descendants. If the leading proponents of CRT are to be believed, centuries of profound Christian influence in the West have produced little more than a stream of atrocities and injustices. So much for Christ the transformer of culture.

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