I guess the thing with Jesus is that what He was primarily doing was demonstrating His credentials as the promised Messiah. The question then becomes, what did He commission the Church to do? And first and foremost, it is to proclaim repentance and forgiveness of sins in His name, making disciples, baptizing and teaching them to observe everything He has commanded.

Now, having said all that, I agree with you entirely about the effect of the Gospel. The fruit of the Gospel truly at work in anyone’s life is most certainly going to be good works and loving one’s neighbour. And ‘everything He has commanded’ also includes loving our neighbours. So we can’t (and shouldn’t want) to escape from that. But we don’t love our neighbours out of obligation, or to try to earn (or keep) favour with God, but rather because we believers have been shown such love and grace that we could do nothing else.

I wonder whether there is a distinction to be made between what the church (collectively, as the gathered assembly) is to do, and what individual believers are to do? Of course, there is overlap, and everything that the gathered church does is through individual believers, but I’m not sure there aren’t useful distinctions to be made.

There is also a discussion to be had about what constitutes a good work, of course, and I would go along with Luther there – it includes especially the mundane everyday stuff (changing diapers, serving one’s neighbour through one’s job, etc) . And I would further argue that passages such as Matt. 5:1–20 that are primarily referring to the ‘good works’ of Gospel proclamation (as opposed to the ‘charitable deeds’ of Matt. 6 that are to be done in secret), but that is probably a study for another time.

In summary, I am very happy for the church to get involved in the community in practical ways (as long as people are not coerced, and as long as these things are not turned into duties or obligations that are somehow needed to keep favour with God), and I think that can be a helpful way of building relationships and creating avenues for the Gospel message of ‘Christ crucified for sinners’ to be proclaimed.

But such activity should never be a substitute for proclaiming the Gospel, which is the problem I am seeing all too frequently in the UK and in much of the US. My video and post here are really trying to speak to that error. The last thing I want to do is to berate anyone for serving and loving their neighbour! That’s why I had the word ‘also’ in my script, and I started by commending the charitable deeds