Making the lowly feel at home is Christlike ministry.
At present there is a “fabulous family home” in Dublin South Center selling for just 7,500,000 euros (about $10.25 million U.S.). With a mere million-and-a-quarter down, said family would only have a nine million dollar mortgage! Described as “a stunningly elegant and meticulously appointed Georgian residence on the quiet and sunny south side of Fitzwilliam Square,” at Number 24, it isn’t far from Number 9, once the fashionable home of Francis Huchinson. There, in November of 1829, a small group of believers began gathering regularly in the drawingroom for the Lord’s Supper, prayer and the study of God’s Word. They were all landed gentry, some of them owning large estates themselves.
But as the truth they were discovering ran over the wall, it also bore fruit among the lower class. The believers realized that their place of meeting would be uncomfortable to those not accustomed to such rich surroundings. Edward Cronin wrote: “We soon began to feel as humbler brethren were added to us that the house in Fitzwilliam Square was unsuited. This led us to take a large auction room in Aungier Street for our use on the Sundays…”1
What an illustration of the principle expressed to the Roman saints: “Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low estate…” (Rom 12:16). My dictionary defines “condescending” as “displaying an attitude of patronizing superiority.” But the word “condescend” expresses the Greek word sunapago which occurs just three time in the New Testament. Apart from this reference, it is translated “carried away” (Gal. 2:13) and “led away” (2 Pet 3:17), both with a negative connotation. But J.?N. Darby thought that idea was closer to the meaning, and so translated the verse, “Have the same respect one for another, not minding high things, but going along with the lowly.” In other words, think about how they feel, and rather than expecting them to fit in with your lifestyle, move in their direction instead.
Francis Newman wrote this description of Darby: “Every evening he sallied forth to teach in the cabins, and roving far and wide over mountain and amid bogs was seldom home before midnight…The poor Romanists…looked on him as a genuine saint…The stamp of heaven seemed to them clear in a frame…so superior to worldly pomp, and so partaking in all their indigence…That a dozen such men would have done more to convert all Ireland…than the whole apparatus of the Church Establishment was ere long my conviction….”2
In describing another saint of that time, R.C. Chapman, Frank Holmes said: “After Mr. Chapman had lived for a time in Barnstaple, he took a house in New Buildings. His idea was to…live amongst the poor.…Its cottages were very small and simple. Strange odours sometimes assailed the nostrils of its inhabitants, for beyond the end wall there was a tan-yard. All this presented a contrast to the circumstances in which Chapman had lived in London…He afterwards said that at his conversion he knew that pride was likely to be his besetting sin, so he presently went to the town where he had on occasions driven in a carriage and pair with coachmen and footman…and there lived in a workman’s cottage in a side street. ‘My pride never got over it,’ was his typical comment.”3 May the Spirit show us how to do this in our day: condescending—going along with the lowly—without being condescending.