Archives for April 2020

Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Submission | Part 3: Objective | Part 4: Priorities | Part 5: Resources | Part 6: Struggle

There’s one more element essential to a successful mission. Most of the time, you want the results of what you’ve done to continue.

Once in a while, you’re given an ad hoc task, something that just needs to be done, now, and then we’ll go on to other things. But most of the time, you want the work you’ve invested in to continue. You want the company, or the charity, or the neighborhood watch, or whatever, to keep carrying out the mission that you set up.

You want a legacy.

And for that to happen, you need to do two things.

First, you need to set up a sustainable process or system. You need to organize things in such a way that things will run smoothly in the future. These days we often hear about scalability, which means that not only does the system need to run efficiently, but it needs to be able to grow—ideally, exponentially—and still run efficiently.

A significant part of Jesus’ mission was ad hoc; that is, it was something that only he could do and that would never be repeated. His core mission, “to give his life a ransom for many” (Mt 20.28), was something no one else—not even the Father or the Spirit—could do, and it would happen once and only once (Heb 10.12). His death would have an eternal legacy, in that its effects would continue forever, but it would not be an ongoing work to be carried out by successors.

But Jesus also took on the mission of building his church (Mt 16.18), which he designed to be a functioning, organic institution with human leadership and an active mission over an extended period of time. He would be present with it, even though bodily absent (Mt 28.20), but the church would need leaders “on the ground,” so to speak, and a system for perpetuating that human leadership.

So Jesus personally selected the first generation of leaders (Jn 15.16) and trained them—though they seemed to be remarkably non-perceptive students—and then, on departing, saw to it that they would have both the insight and the power they would need to get the organization off the ground (Jn 15.26). And under the Spirit’s guidance, those apostles set up personnel policies (Ac 6.1ff; 1Ti 3.1ff; Ti 1.5ff) that not only disciplined the leadership-selection process but also scaled nicely through the exponential growth that soon followed.

Through the centuries, despite organized, powerful, and highly motivated opposition, the church has demonstrated itself to be surprisingly sustainable and scalable.

The second thing you need is clear communication of mission objectives through time. You need the succeeding generations to understand and embrace the core of the mission.

Jesus handled the communication in at least two ways. First, as we’ve noted, he sent the Spirit to empower that first generation of leadership—the apostles—to write down a reliable record of the mission, in what we now call the New Testament. For the life of the organization, it would have a written record of the Founder’s intent and the means of carrying it out.

Second, the same Son-sent Spirit indwells all future hires—both management and assembly-line employees—to enable their understanding of the mission, from the inside out (1Co 2.12-16) as well as their motivation and ability to carry it out (Ac 1.8).

And so, to the surprise of no one except the enemies of God, the church continues. It has survived—no, thrived—through persecution, through corruption, through the seductions of power and prosperity, through wildernesses of all kinds, and will continue until the gates of hell are visibly and irreparably crushed and the King has returned.

And, by the grace of God, we too can leave a legacy of those we have discipled, those who will carry on the work with the same empowerment granted to us. And if history is any indication, many of those who come after us will exceed what we have done, by the power of the Spirit and to the glory of the great God.

Photo by Jamie Street on Unsplash

Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Submission | Part 3: Objective | Part 4: Priorities | Part 5: Resources

“Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty”
(Theodore Roosevelt)

Or, as his line has been simplified, “Nothing worth doing is ever easy.”

I’m leery of universal negatives. Is it possible that something worth doing, somewhere, was easy, once? And without omnipresence or omniscience, how could we possibly know?

So maybe TR was exaggerating.

But the principle generally holds. It’s likely that missions worth pursuing are going to be difficult.

College degrees. Marriage. Child-rearing. Entrepreneurship.

Difficult.

What, then about divine missions? Sanctification? Evangelism? Saving the world?

Difficult.

The mission Jesus accepted from the Father was extraordinarily difficult. Paul tells us that he left a condition of equality with God (Php 2.6)—Jesus himself refers wistfully to “the glory that I had in you before the world was” (Jn 17.5)—to be “made in the likeness of men” (Php 2.7). Now, just that is an infinite step.

How would you like to move to the dump? To live in a place that, frankly, stinks, and is filled with things and people that can hurt you, and crawling with things that give you the creeps? To submerge yourself in an environment that you find, every moment and in every place, utterly disgusting?

If Lot “vexed his righteous soul” living in Sodom (2P 2.8), how much more was Jesus vexed when surrounded by sin, and sinning, and sinners? How abominated was his perfect heart by the deep sin that perpetually enveloped him?

He moved to the dump.

That in itself was unimaginably difficult.

But Paul tells us there was more. Jesus “became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Php 2.8). Physical pain and moral injustice all rolled up into one intense experience of suffering.

And all along that road toward climactic evil, there was constant struggle.

At the point of near-starvation—for reasons that aren’t explicit in the Scripture—Jesus faces his great enemy in a series of epic temptations. He wins, of course, but immediately afterwards receives special care from angels sent, apparently, to bring him back to strength (Mt 4.11)—how did he make that strenuous climb back up to Jerusalem after a 40-day fast?

He faces other difficulties. He’s homeless (Mt 8.20; Lk 9.58)—though he has friends who take him in, but as you can imagine, that’s hardly the same. He’s looked at askance, even with hostility, by the religious establishment, and his hometown folks reject his early claim to Messiahship, even trying to throw him off the local cliff (Lk 4.29). Even his family, apparently, thinks he’s lost his mind and are embarrassed by him (Mt 12.46; cf. Jn 7.5).

And he endures it all, even to the death of the cross.

Why?

Among other possible reasons, because, as we’ve noted before, “he learned obedience by the things he suffered” (Heb 5.8). I don’t understand—and neither do you—how he could “learn obedience” or anything else. But we all understand that working out makes us stronger, and championship teams practice, and boxers spend time with the road work and the speed bag.

Nothing worth doing is ever easy.

And winning the short-term battles, day after day, is ironically part of the means of bringing us to eventual long-term victory.

If Jesus’ endurance through hard things was part of the recipe for the success of accomplishing the mission, how much more is it so for us?

God takes us through hard things, and we think that’s proof that he doesn’t really love us.

Au contraire, my friend. It’s proof that he does.

He’s building our endurance, building our muscle, taking us through the experience of small victories, to prepare and indeed empower us to win the Big Ones.

He’s equipping us for the mission, even as we’re in the midst of it.

Embrace the struggle. Feel the burn.

It’s the way to win.

Photo by Jamie Street on Unsplash

Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Submission | Part 3: Objective | Part 4: Priorities

Throughout this series we’ve found ourselves wrestling with the concept of Jesus’ subordination to the Father—an outgrowth of what theologians call the “hypostatic union” of two natures—the divine and the human—in the one person of the Christ. It’s a mind-boggling concept, and it shows up again here, as we consider Jesus’ evaluation and use of resources.

On the one hand, Jesus is fully God, in complete possession of all the divine attributes, including the so-called non-communicable ones: omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, and immutability. He has life in himself, and he is in need of nothing outside himself to accomplish his will and to defeat his enemies.

On the other hand, he says repeatedly that he relies on the Father to know things (Mk 13.32) and to do things (Jn 5.30). How does that work?

As I often tell my students, “The answer to your question is that I don’t know; but thank you for your tuition money.”

All that to say that in the Gospels we see Jesus making use of resources to accomplish the mission. He knows where to get the help he needs (!), and he avails himself of that help.

What are those resources? And how does he use them?

We’ve noted before that Jesus takes prayer seriously. On occasion he prays all night, between busy days (Lk 6.12); some Bible students have suggested that those occasions preceded especially significant mission events, such as the selection of the apostles. Of course we can’t forget his prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, which not only lasted far longer than his disciples’ ability to stay awake (Mt 26.36-46), but was also at a level of intensity that none of us has ever experienced (Lk 22.44). It appears that Jesus’ prayer took a lot out of him but also, paradoxically, provided him with ongoing strength for his mission.

Jesus also makes much use of Scripture. It’s obvious that he had committed much of the Hebrew Scripture to memory, and this in a day when literally no one had copies of the Bible lying around the house. We assume he received an education in the Scripture that Jewish boys typically received in those days, and that he would hear the Torah scroll read from at synagogue every Sabbath, but it appears that he took notes and meditated much over what he heard. I’ve often wondered how his mind worked as he came to understand (Lk 2.52) that various Messianic passages were in fact talking about him; how over a lifetime he assembled these key texts into the discourse he delivered that day to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus (Lk 24.27).

At any rate, he was prepared to use the Scripture, and he did. With the deftness of a fencer, he stymied the Jewish religious leadership with his questions, from the age of twelve (Lk 2.46) to full adulthood, when, perhaps with a twinkle in his eye, he asked the experts, “How does David call [his Son] ‘Lord’?” (Mt 22.41-46). When arguing against the Sadducees, who denied life after death—and also denied the entire Hebrew Scripture except for the writings of Moses—he cites not the clear words of Job—“Yet in my flesh shall I see God”—but, knowing the Sadducees would scorn that passage, selects the words of the Angel from the bush: “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob!” thereby not only silencing them, but reinforcing the plenary-verbal reliability and authority of the Scripture in the process. And during his temptation by Satan, when, as we’ve noted before, he was at his absolute weakest, he responded to every wile of the devil with a lucid, apt, and devastating correction carefully chosen directly from the Scripture (Mt 4.3ff; Lk 4.3ff).

And while we’re talking about the temptation, it’s worth repeating something from an earlier post—that Jesus apparently saw the temptation, and the other world-shaking struggles he endured, as resources too, experiences that would make him stronger toward the completion of the mission (Heb 5.8).

There’s much for us to learn here. If Jesus relied heavily on Scripture and prayer, and learned to use them both skillfully, how much more should we? If he embraced suffering as not only the Father’s will but the means to accomplish the Father’s will, how much more should we?

We, who are not omnipotent, most surely need the resources he treasured and whose use he mastered.

Photo by Jamie Street on Unsplash

Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Submission | Part 3: Objective

As Jesus labored to accomplish the Father’s will, he didn’t do so randomly. He was strategic; as we’ve noted before, he understood the objective clearly, and he kept himself focused on it.

But he wasn’t just slashing his way wildly through the jungle of God’s will. He thought not only about what the objective was, but about how best to get there. He laid out tactics, among which was calculating the best ways to achieve the goal and prioritizing his time and resources to best effect.

We see evidence of that throughout his life.

• To begin with, even as a boy he calculated that “being about my Father’s business” was more important than getting back home to Nazareth right after the feast. It’s puzzling to us that he didn’t let his parents know what he was up to, but the Scripture doesn’t tell us everything, and we know that whatever he did was right. But regardless, his priorities were clear.
• He submitted himself to John’s “baptism of repentance”—a baptism he didn’t need—because it was “necessary to fulfill all righteousness.”
• He accepted the Spirit’s driving him into the wilderness for great difficulty—have you ever fasted for forty days and nights?—only to face the far greater difficulty of temptation by Satan when he was at his very weakest. Why was this important? Oddly, we’re not told, in so many words. He’s going to defeat Satan at the cross (Heb 2.14); why this bizarre confrontation? We can only speculate. Perhaps he benefits from the exercise of being tempted (Heb 5.8); perhaps he wants to provide an example for us; perhaps there are scores of other reasons. It’s a priority, that’s for sure.
• He prioritizes people. When he’s on the way to heal a dying son, and when the mob is pressing on him from every side, he feels—he notices—the believing touch of a frail woman on the hem of his robe (Mt 9.20). He’s paying attention in the midst of the chaos. He’s on mission.
• And speaking of chaos, after days of constant ministry, listening, touching, healing all who come, he prioritizes rest for himself and his weary disciples. ”Come on, men,” he says, “let’s get out of here and get some rest. Let’s get something to eat” (Mk 6.31).  He has three years to save the world, without mass media or telecommunication technologies, and he takes time off, because rest matters. It speeds you toward accomplishing the objective.
• Sometimes he gets away not for rest, but for a different kind of labor. Sometimes he goes off by himself to pray—and some of those times, he prays all night (Lk 6.12). This is certainly not rest. But it’s just as important.
• And as the climax of the mission approaches, he identifies and prioritizes the most important things even more aggressively.
  • He sets his face like flint to go to Jerusalem (Lk 9.51).
  • He takes a moment during the Passover meal to send his pseudo-disciple off on his deadly mission: “What you do, do quickly” (Jn 13.27). “Let’s roll,” indeed.
  • He pauses to wash the disciples’ feet (Jn 13), leaving them a lesson and life pattern that they will never forget.
  • He summons them from a safe room to the Garden, where he knows danger waits (Mt 26.46).
  • On the way he pours out his heart to them regarding the things they’ll need when he leaves them—though he knows that they’ll understand none of this anytime soon (Jn 14-16).
  • When Peter does Peter, Jesus rebukes and redirects his godless efforts, and even pauses, during his arrest, to reattach the servant’s ear (Lk 22.51).
  • Throughout a star-chamber trial, conducted in direct violation of multiple Jewish and Roman laws, Jesus never objects, never defends himself, and in fact speaks only rarely and only in ways that incite the prosecution (Mt 26.64).
  • On the way to the cross, he speaks wisdom to random weeping women (Lk 23.28).
  • On the cross, he exercises the duties of the firstborn toward his mother (Jn 19.26).

This is a man not only focused on a difficult and costly mission, but constantly prioritizing every decision, every action, in light of that mission.

Sometimes I think like that. But much more often, I don’t.

That needs to change.

Photo by Jamie Street on Unsplash

Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Submission

We’ve noted that Jesus understood his need to submit to the Father’s will and to depend on the Father’s power to accomplish his mission—and that if he did, then we most certainly do.

Something else we see in Jesus’ thinking during his earthly mission is that he clearly understood and remained focused on the mission. He knew what he was here for, and he committed himself wholeheartedly to that goal.

What was the goal?

He stated it more than once, in various ways that reflected different aspects of his mission.

• To begin with, he understood that the Father had sent him (Jn 3.16).
• The chief mission was to die as a payment for human sins—
  • The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many (Mt 20.28 // Mk 10.45).
• But that mission involved other specific activities as well—
  • Seeking the lost: The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost (Lk 19.10).
  • Calling sinners to repent: I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance (Lk 5.32).
  • Bearing witness to the truth: For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth (Jn 18.37).

And remarkably, he devoted himself to the mission with a steely determination unwavered by the cost.

• When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem (Lk 9.51).
• What shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour (Jn 12.27).
• Your will be done (Mt 26.42 // Lk 22.42).

So what do we see in Jesus’ accomplishing of the Father’s will?

• Understand the mission.
• Stay focused on getting it done.

As in the previous post, we find these elements challenging our understanding of the relationship between Jesus’ earthly submission to the Father and his equality with the Father as a member of the Trinity. And again, our puzzlement about those things only makes us more certain that we, who call Jesus Lord, must all the more understand the mission God has given us and stay focused on getting it done.

So what is the mission?

There’s a lot of discussion about that. :-)

I’d suggest that the overarching mission—the meaning of life, if you will—is to manifest God’s glory, by our living and our dying:

• Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God (1Co 10.31).

Everything else we do, on any day, in any arena of life, we should calculate to point others, as well as ourselves, to the great glory of our Creator and Master.

That gives everything meaning. It makes everything great, eternally significant.

There are no trivial activities, no trivial decisions, no trivial thoughts. Everything we think or do is heavy with consequence.

The Scripture gives us some specifics as to the ways we ought to glorify God—

• We ought to cooperate with the Father’s plan to conform us to the image of his Son.
  • Those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers (Ro 8.29).
  • And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another (2Co 3.18).
• We ought to do what Christ tells us to—as the Son did for the Father.
  • If you love me, you will keep my commandments (Jn 14.15).
• And in doing that, we certainly ought to obey the last command he gave us.
  • Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you (Mt 28.19b-20).

That’s the mission. Now we focus on getting it done. We evaluate every thought, every decision, every action against the mission. Are we getting there?

Or not?

Photo by Jamie Street on Unsplash