EMQ » Oct – Dec 2024 » Volume 60 Issue 4

First Mission

Summary: After the birth of the church, the first mission begins in Jerusalem with the healing of a man with a disability at the temple gates. This should not be surprising because people with disabilities appear throughout the Scripture narrative and especially in Jesus’s earthly ministry.

By Dave Deuel

On the day that the church was born, the Lord of heaven and earth opened a floodgate of firsts. The day of Pentecost marked the dawning of a new chapter in the history of redemption. Including Israel, God began forming a new people through the gentile ingathering consistent with his promises.^[i]

As in the Old Testament, the mighty acts of God, the very content of the multilingual message on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:11), positioned the events of early Acts within God’s redemption plan.^[ii] The gospel writer Luke, continuing his salvation historical account by also writing Acts, wants his readers to understand (1) the church’s birth as a continuation of Israel’s history and message, and (2) the church’s infant growth in Jerusalem before it moves out to Judea, Samaria, and the four corners of the earth.^[iii]

To the early church, Luke-Acts recorded what God was doing and how people were responding to him and living out their faith.^[iv] Within hours of the church’s first infant breath, it witnessed a new mighty act of God – the healing of a man whose disability left him begging beside the path leading into the Jerusalem temple gates.^[v] Crucially, it all began at the temple at the time for prayer.^[vi]

But why the temple? It is amazing that a book of the Bible narrating the church’s inception has so much to say about the temple. The spiritual center of Israel, the temple, was a theater for God’s mission to his people, Jews and Gentiles. What is more, Luke’s first book in the two-part story, the Gospel of Luke, begins and ends at the temple.Considering that important events happen at the temple, should we not be surprised that Luke’s account of healing the lame man should also take place there?^[vii] The stage was set.

The Church’s First Day

Jesus prepared his apostles for the first day.

Jesus tells the 12 that they would receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon them, and they must witness first in Jerusalem (Acts 1:8). Jesus gives no commission in Acts because he already has issued one: “Go into all the world” (Matthew 28:18–20, see also Luke 24:46).[viii] But prior to the church’s first day, he instructs his apostles to follow a priority of mission movement – Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the earth (Acts 1:8).[ix]

They must reach out first to the temple city Jerusalem, next its broader Judean region, and then neighboring Samaria before going beyond to the ends of the earth. After giving the apostles their final instructions, Jesus ascends into heaven. He leaves them to complete his mission, but not without first authorizing them to do his work and empowering them with the Spirit.[x]

On the Church’s Birthday, its Mission Began

To help us understand Jesus’s role as king, Scripture uses the imagery of royal mission.^[xi] In that day, a king or other high official sent administrative staff on missions to conduct the work of his kingdom.^[xii] According to Luke’s gospel, Jesus had sent out the 12, and then 72,^[xiii] both missions with the same intent of announcing Jesus’ visit to the towns and villages of Israel as well as healing people and “reproducing the ministry of Jesus.”^[xiv]

The mission’s trajectory reached from Galilee to Jerusalem. But with the birth of the church in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost, the mission changed. To conduct this initial phase of Jesus’ plan, the apostles did not need to leave Jerusalem, not even the temple precinct.

That day, Jerusalem was a global amphitheater for God’s mighty acts. Members of the Jewish Diaspora, a microcosm of the world, had come to Jerusalem to worship. As Jesus, the Messiah-King began to build and administer his church from heaven (Matthew 16:18) in the Jerusalem mission, a lame man begged for alms at the temple gates (Acts 3:1–10). What does the lame man’s response teach us about disability in the church’s first mission?^[xv]

The Church’s First Mission

God’s Disability Story Unfolds in Scripture

God created a world without disability and that was ruined by the Fall. He then issued his law to protect and provide for people with disabling conditions.^[xvi] In wisdom, Job applied God’s law when he reported, “I was eyes to the blind and feet to the lame” (Job 29:15). Also following the law, David responded to Mephibosheth’s disability need by granting him land and workers to conduct his employment (2 Samuel 9:1–13).^[xvii]

The prophets anticipated a day when people with disabilities would no longer need the law’s protection and provision because God would deliver them once and for all. In the Gospels, Jesus launched his messianic mission to reverse the effects of the Fall and to fulfill the law by healing many people with disabilities. Acts is a foretaste of disability hope as people with disabling conditions are provided for, protected, and engaged in the church for God’s glory and their good.^[xviii]

But while the law protected and the prophets predicted hope, another current of disability need emerged, one more difficult to detect or understand – including people with disabling conditions in the church community. Days prior on the day of Pentecost, Peter’s sermon cited the prophet Joel looking forward to a future day when all the marginalized would be included fully into the people of God (Joel 2:28–32). It is no wonder that the healing of the lame man was the first miracle to follow the Pentecost message. A new day for disability inclusion had dawned.

In vivid imagery, the Old Testament pictures people with disabilities on life’s road.^[xix] The law passages that admonish protection and provision for people with disabling conditions also present an image of people with disability in motion. They are active among the masses, not lifeless, stationary, and isolated.

In the same way that one must never put a stumbling block or obstacle in the way of someone who is blind,^[xx] neither should they mislead a blind person “on the road.”^[xxi] What is more, Scripture pictures people with disabilities moving on the road of life. When Job claims to be “eyes to the blind and feet to the lame,”^[xxii] what does it mean to “be” eyes and feet except that you need to see where you are going, and you need to walk without stumbling or falling to get there.

Luke also uses thoroughfare imagery as a powerful scripturally pervasive literary device in Luke-Acts. As James Morgan explains, “…even in its figurative uses – [it] has the intrinsic force to describe movement and transformation, leaving one domain and entering another.”^[xxiii]

Even when road imagery is not specifically stated, people with disabling conditions are pictured moving along on the road of life, believing the gospel, being transformed, and growing spiritually, just like everyone else. In Luke-Acts, the focus of the story about Jesus and what the risen Lord did.^[xxiv] He brought people on the road while transforming them from the domain of death to life. No wonder Jesus said, “I am the way.” (John 14:6). Luke takes the road imagery to a new level as he ties it to Jesus’s mission, not just life’s journey.

Luke also uses road imagery from Isaiah 40 to make several different points.^[xxv] First that the church itself is called “the way.”^[xxvi] Then, he signals the importance of the way leading to the temple by specifying the time of day, and particularly by identifying the temple location for the lame man’s salvation.^[xxvii]

When Jesus proclaimed his mission charter in the Nazareth synagogue (Luke 4:16–30), he read the Isaiah scroll in support of his mission including, “to bring sight to the blind” (4:18). To Isaiah’s prophecy about a royal Jubilee proclamation (Isaiah 61:1–3), Jesus added a line saying that the Spirit of the Lord is upon him to proclaim recovery of sight to the blind, taken from another Isaiah passage (Isaiah 42:7). Blindness unites physical disability with spiritual alienation from God and the community. Jesus healed and advocated for care for people with disabling conditions as he encountered them on his mission road.

Not long after, Jesus instructs the 12 about the Parable of the Great Banquet mission (Luke 14:7–24). In the parable, Luke also portrays the church’s inclusion of people with disabilities as a great banquet table around which people with disabling conditions gather. In Luke 14, a passage rooted in the law, Jesus instructs religious leaders that they are far better off inviting people with disabling conditions to their banquet than they are their wealthy friends who wouldn’t come anyhow.

Returning to road imagery in the Parable of the Great Banquet, Luke uses four different types of thoroughfares. The housemaster commands the servants to go to the broad roads and narrow passages. The housemaster is urgent. If you can’t find enough guests on the crowded streets, then look in the back alleys. But then intensifying, he talks about going out to the country roads and hedgerows. These four different thoroughfares mentioned support the message with climactic stair-stepping effect. Uniquely, Luke 14 contains all four major thoroughfare terms in one passage underscoring its importance.^[xxviii]

Recall that the disciples had previously gone out on two missions as the 12 and the 72. They were familiar with taking all kinds of roads and paths on their missions to extend Jesus’ invitation to his kingdom. After all, in missions, priority is usually given to the main routes which are faster to travel and where one encounters the most people. The back alleys, country roads and hedgerows might be ignored due to fewer people and slower access. Not surprisingly, the marginalized are often found on the back roads.

Jesus’s Ongoing Mission Follows the Path to the Temple Gates (Acts 3:1–10).

God’s plan for disability follows a mission thoroughfare. Jesus not only sent the disciples out on earlier missions two-by-two, but also prepared them for a lame man’s request for alms. By personal example and detailed instruction, Jesus trained the apostles to think about people with disabling conditions as part of his mission. They must follow the footprint of their Master.

Acts 3:1–10 tells the story of Peter and John encountering a lame man by the temple gates. The lame man’s healing beside the gate to the temple was not coincidental. Peter and John had heard Jesus’s parable of the Great Banquet and understood its implications. In thoroughfare terms, this man stationed himself at the gates of the broad path to the temple gates. Others had brought him from the alleyways, back roads, or hedgerows where the marginalized resided to a thoroughfare where passersby could not ignore him. And that is where the newly sent apostles, found him, engaged him, and gave him the good news of salvation through faith.

No careful reader of Luke-Acts would have missed the connection between the banquet and road imagery, and the lame man’s healing. The lame man may have been carried to his position beside the path; but following an Old Testament pattern for people with disabilities, he was moving.

God’s pathways lead to a vibrant and full house. James Morgan captures the big picture including the connections with Jesus’s Luke 4 personal mission charter and Jesus’s teaching about disability inclusion in the Great Banquet in order that his “house might be full” (Luke 14:23). Finally, he draws connecting lines by healing the lame man in Acts 3:1–10 in a way that frames the passage within its broader conceptual framework in salvation history:

“The overall picture illustrates for the reader what Jesus said he would accomplish (e.g., his interest in the needy in the Nazareth episode, Luke 4:18) and has already accomplished (e.g., various healings, Luke 4:38-41; 5:13, 24; 6:10, etc.). The image also anticipates that Jesus – and later his disciples (Acts 3:1–10) – will continue to show concern for people from among the marginalized and despised (e.g., the blind beggar and Zacchaeus).

As his disciples begin to fade from the spotlight in the climactic movement to Jerusalem, Jesus performs what the servant in the parable was sent to do, namely, to bring people into the kingdom of God regardless of their social status. In fact, this illustration, as appropriated by Jesus, will be tangibly demonstrated through certain reception scenes that take place on thoroughfares, among other spaces, in which Jesus or his disciples bring physical and spiritual healing for Jews and non-Jews.”^[xxix]

As 27.5% of the New Testament, “Luke-Acts is not a detailed philosophical treatise on soteriology, Christology, or ecclesiology; rather, it is a narrative revealing and portraying salvation, its agents and beneficiaries.”^[xxx] Jesus, having instructed the Jewish leaders that people with disabilities would sit at his table, underscores the place for them in his mission.

After commissioning his apostles to carry on his mission with his authority and the Spirit’s enablement, they began the Jerusalem phase of the assigned mission by healing a lame man. The man with a disability is carried to a spot beside the way to the temple to ask alms of passersby but by healing follows the way into the temple leaping and shouting praises to God, thus becoming a member of “the Way.” ^[xxxi] The imageries of mission and way coalesce powerfully.

In a moment, the healed lame man goes from outcast to model worshipper and mission agent as he stands before the people as living proof of God’s power to save and to heal. For an undetermined time after that, he traveled with the apostles on the mission road to testify to the apostle’s credibility and God’s greatness, much to the displeasure of those who would like to silence him and them. “Faith in the name of Jesus is how the lame man is restored to perfect health.”^[xxxii] What is the bigger picture the roads illustrate for us?

What the texts do evidence is an outreach to those on the edge of society. Appreciation for God’s way leads into values that care about such people in contrast to the way that the world has cast them aside. Jesus’ involvement of and concern for the women, the poor, the lame, and the blind shows that God cares for the entire spectrum of people. The community Jesus forms must also care about such people, even giving special attention to them. This is one of the ways the new community’s values contrast with those of the world.^[xxxiii]

God’s missions go to the edge of society over the broad roads, back alleys, country lanes, and hedgerows to seek and to save lost people with disabilities, help them grow spiritually, and give them full participation in the church’s mission. In twenty-first century parlance, God’s missions are fully inclusive. God is removing obstacles for those with disabling conditions and using them to communicate the gospel.

God Healed Two Lame Men in the Church’s Early Mission

That day, John and Peter ascended to the temple at the hour of prayer (about 3 p.m.) – the time that priests offered sacrifices. Those present knew that the law forbade priests with disabilities from offering sacrifices.^[xxxiv] This prohibition caused some to develop more stringent restrictions on people with disabilities, sometimes to the point of isolating them.^[xxxv]

But this day, a man with a disability boldly entered the temple still clad in his beggar’s clothing. It is no coincidence that the first recorded miracle in the early church’s mission was the healing of the lame beggar. Acts was written to assure individuals and groups that they were part of God’s plan for the mission of building his church. Disability was part of the church’s mission from the very start.^[xxxvi]

Luke repeats the healing of a lame man. The account of Peter healing the lame man (Acts 3:1–10) is almost identical in structure and content with the Apostle Paul’s healing another lame man (Acts 14:8–10). The doublet underscores God’s commitment to people with disabilities in response to his laws protecting and providing for them.^[xxxvii]

In the biblical worldview, Jews and Gentiles encompass the entire global population then and now. The two healings of lame people that immediately testify to Christ when they are healed pave the way for disability-inclusive mission to the ends of the earth (Matthew 28:18–20 and Acts 1:8). People with disabilities are commissioned, called, and gifted to serve in missions just like anyone without a disability.^[xxxviii]

God’s Salvation Message Eclipses the Lame Man’s Newfound Mobility

Peter and John did not just heal a lame man, they shared with him the gift of eternal life, a point that the passage emphasizes.^[xxxix] But one other first in the church must not go unnoticed: The first person Luke records as personally evangelized, one-on-one, had a disability.

Jesus commissioned his apostles to evangelize people including those with disabling conditions beginning with Jerusalem.^[xl] We note that the man remained with Peter and John for a while. In fact, we do not know when he left them, or if he did. Presumably, he assumed a role in the growing church along with countless people who remained disabled, all fully included in the Lord’s work.^[xli]

A New People of God

The church’s birth at Pentecost introduces a new manifestation of the people of God. Old Testament imagery of administrative missions on a variety of thoroughfares provides a new perspective on how we should view and treat people with disabling conditions. In the church’s first mission, the path leading up to the Jerusalem temple plays a crucial role. As the spiritual epicenter of Judaism, it was a strategic place for a lame man to sit begging beside the way leading to the temple gates.

But instead of alms, he receives the gift of eternal life in addition to restored mobility. Leaping and shouting for joy, the man enters the temple, and worships with those amazed at his miracle. This precedent-setting episode in the church’s mission story demonstrates that God breaks down barriers to receive the worship of a man with a disability. In the early church people with disabilities were “treated as equal members of the community of faith.”^[xlii]

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[i] I. Howard Marshall says, “Acts is primarily about God’s action in offering salvation through Jesus Christ to both Jews and Gentiles and thereby creating a new people.” See I. Howard Marshall and David Peterson, eds. “How Does One Write on the Theology of Acts?” In Witness to the Gospel: The Theology of Acts, 16. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998).

[ii] Darryl Bock explains, “At the beginning of his two volumes [Luke-Acts], Luke emphasizes that God has made promises. The material on the birth of Jesus in Luke 1–2 makes it clear that God is carrying out a plan according to his promise and that he will deliver his people” (A Theology of Luke and Acts: God’s Promised Program, Realized for All Nations [Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2012], 122). John Squires maintains, “Our contention is that this theme – the plan of God – functions as the foundational theological motif for the complete work [Luke-Acts]” (“The Plan of God in the Acts of the Apostles,” in Witness to the Gospel: The Theology of Acts, ed. I. Howard Marshall and David Peterson [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998], 22–23).

[iii] As regards the genre or type of literature, “the best analogies for Luke’s work are the historical works of the Old Testament, and perhaps post-Old Testament Jewish histories such as I Maccabees” (Darryl W. Palmer, “Acts and the Ancient Historical Monograph,” in The Book of Acts in Its Ancient Literary Setting, vol. 1, ed. Bruce W. Winter and Andrew D. Clarke [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1993], 2). Maddox identifies Acts as “theological history” (R. Maddox, The Purpose of Luke-Acts [Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1982], 16).

[iv] James M. Morgan, Encountering Images of Spiritual Transformation: The Thoroughfare Motif within the Plot of Luke-Acts (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2013), 217.

[v] The healing of a lame man in Acts 4 is described as a “sign and wonder” (4:30), terminology for God’s mighty or righteous acts.

[vi] Bock aligns God’s plan fittingly with a road: “The road that they shared was a new road because of the coming of Christ and the new era, but paradoxically it was an old road as well, since such rejection was promised by the prophets and practiced earlier by the nation” (“Scripture and the Realization of God’s Promises,” in Witness to the Gospel: The Theology of Acts, eds. I. Howard Marshall and David Peterson, [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998], 62).

[vii] The narrative framework for this study is Dave Deuel, “God’s Story of Disability: The Unfolding Plan from Genesis to Revelation,” Journal of the Christian Institute on Disability 2, no. 2 (Fall/Winter 2013): 81–96.

[viii] P. T. O’Brien, Gospel and Mission in the Writings of Paul: An Exegetical and Theological Analysis (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1995), 133–39.

[ix] Jesus’s mission followed the practice of early Torah missions appearing throughout the Old Testament. See Dave Deuel, “Early Torah Mission,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 60, no. 2 (2017): 301–16.

[x] Schnabel offers a working definition of mission: “The term ‘mission’ or ‘missions’ refers to the activity of a community of faith that distinguishes itself from its environment in terms of both religious belief (theology) and social behavior (ethics), that is convinced of the truth claims of its faith, and that actively works to win other people to the content of faith and the way of life of whose truth and necessity the members of that community are convinced” (Eckhard. J. Schnabel, Paul the Missionary: Realities, Strategies, and Methods [Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2008], 22).

[xi] The imagery of a herald announcing good news is likewise rooted in the ancient Near East. See Robert Warren Fisher, “A Study of the Semitic Root BSR, ‘to bring good tidings,’ from its Earliest Known Occurrences through the Old Testament Usage,” a dissertation presented to Columbia University, 1966.

[xii] The ancient Near Eastern conceptual basis for this study is set forth in D. Deuel, “Mission at Arrapha,” Tradition and Innovation in the Ancient Near East Proceedings of the 57th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale at Rome 4–8 July 2011, ed. Alfonso Archi in collaboration with Armando Bramanti (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2015), 355–68.

[xiii] Luke 9:1–6 and 10:1–16 respectively.

[xiv] Eckhard J. Schnabel, Early Christian Mission: Paul and the Early Church Volume 1 (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 320.

[xv] Luke conspicuously includes people with disabilities like the lame man in Luke-Acts. See Joel B. Green, “‘Salvation to the End of the Earth,’ (Acts13:47): God as Saviour in the Acts of the Apostles” in Witness to the Gospel: The Theology of Acts, eds. I. Howard Marshall and David Peterson (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), 92.

[xvi] Leviticus 19:14 and Deuteronomy 27:18.

[xvii] Poverty was a devastating result of disability. The healing of the lame man without giving alms draws on this tension: “The use of possessions as an index for catastrophe or blessing is truncated in the healing of the lame man (Acts 3:1–10). The lame man anticipates alms as a potential blessing. But rather than make a dole out of the community of goods, Peter shifts the focus from possessions to the lame man’s body” (Robert L. Brawley, Centering on God: Method and Message in Luke-Acts [Literary Currents in Biblical Interpretation; Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1990], 199).

[xviii] Deuel, “God’s Story of Disability,” 81–96.

[xix] Morgan, Encountering Images of Spiritual Transformation, 7–16.

[xx] Leviticus 19:14.

[xxi] Deuteronomy 27:18.

[xxii] Job 29:15.

[xxiii] Morgan, Encountering Images of Spiritual Transformation, 126.

[xxiv] Morgan, Encountering Images of Spiritual Transformation, 204–6.

[xxv] Luke 1:17; 3:4b–5; 7:27; and 20:21.

[xxvi] John 14:6; Acts 9:2; 22:4, 14.

[xxvii] Brad Blue, “The Influence of Jewish Worship on Luke’s Presentation of the Early Church,” in Witness to the Gospel: The Theology of Acts, eds. I. Howard Marshall and David Peterson (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), 482–3.

[xxviii] Jean-François Racine says, “To identify the recurrence of the thoroughfare motif in the plot of Luke-Acts, Morgan relies on the occurrence of specific terms: ὁδός (road, 40x; 20x in Luke; 20x in Acts), τρίβος (path, 1x), πλατεῖα (broad street, 4x), ῥύμη (passage way, 3x), and φραγμός (hedgeside path, 1x)” in a Review of James M. Morgan, Encountering Images of Spiritual Transformation: The Thoroughfare Motif within the Plot of Luke-Acts (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2013). in Review of Biblical Literature 4 (2015).

[xxix] Morgan, Encountering Images of Spiritual Transformation, 91–92.

[xxx] Morgan, Encountering Images of Spiritual Transformation, 201.

[xxxi] Regarding the poor including people with disabilities in Luke-Acts, Darrell Bock says, “This group receives special attention in the gospel, for God consciously reaches out to them. The gospel is said to be for them. It is a way of showing that those whom society forgets are special to God; the gospel is truly for everyone” (A Theology of Luke and Acts, 352).

[xxxii] Block, A Theology, 81.

[xxxiii] Block, A Theology, 358.

[xxxiv] Leviticus 21:9.

[xxxv] For example, going biblical restriction, the Qumran community that left us the Dead Sea Scrolls barred people with disabilities from its membership. See 1QSa 2.5–6. For a discussion of this point and its implication in the book of Acts see James D. G. Dunn, The Acts of the Apostles (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1996), 39–40.

[xxxvi] Jacob Jervell, The Theology of the Acts of the Apostles (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 129. “Acts is not a general historical treatise, but addressed to particular people doubtful of their right to be the people of God. Luke therefore writes history as an attempt to solve the problems of his church, not addressing the church as a whole, but one particular group of people in a situation very different from ours” (Jervell, The Theology of the Acts, 129).

[xxxvii] G. Walter Hansen, “The Preaching and Defense of Paul,” in Witness to the Gospel: The Theology of Acts, eds. I. Howard Marshall and David Peterson (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), 307.

[xxxviii] See Dave Deuel, “Developing Young Leaders with Disabilities: A Ministry beyond Our Wildest Dreams,” Lausanne Global Analysis 5, no. 1 (January 2016): 22–28. For comprehensive treatments, see the Lausanne Occasional Papers 69, https://lausanne.org/occasional-paper/disability-concerns-lop-69 (6.8.24).

[xxxix] “It is not accidental, … that we find in the Gospels much more use of the mundane sense of the words for salvation than we do in Acts. This is because in Luke’s way of thinking salvation in the fuller and more spiritual sense comes about because of Christ’s death and resurrection, and the means of receiving the benefits of these climactic events is through the Holy Spirit, who is not sent before Pentecost to be and convey God’s soteriological blessing” (Ben Witherington, III, “Salvation and Health in Christian Antiquity: The Soteriology of Luke-Acts in Its First Century Setting,” in Witness to the Gospel: The Theology of Acts, eds. I. Howard Marshall and David Peterson [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998], 154).

[xl] Luke 24:47.

[xli] Michael Fiorello believes that although people with disabilities faced many challenges, God’s desire was that “The disabled were to be treated as equal members of the community of faith (Exodus 20:2; 22:21; 23:9, 15; 29:46; 34:18; Leviticus 19:13–14; 21:16–23)” (The Physically Disabled in Ancient Israel, 181). In another place the author argues, “The theological statement of divine enablement regardless of the degree of human functionality dispels the myth that Hebrew literature disdains human disability” (Fiorello, The Physically Disabled, 129).

[xlii] Fiorello, The Physically Disabled, 181. Fiorello lists illustrative passages: Exodus 20:2; 22:21; 23:9, 15; 29:46; 34:18; Leviticus 19:13–14; 21:16–23.

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EMQ, Volume 60, Issue 4. Copyright © 2024 by Missio Nexus. All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced or copied in any form without written permission from Missio Nexus. Email: EMQ@MissioNexus.org.