Christlike In His Mission

January 2011

In his book Radical Discipleship, John Stott discusses the essence of the goal of discipleship: to model our lives on the life of Christ. In the last few articles I’ve written about four ways Stott believes we are to emulate the life of Christ: being present and available in humility to others (being incarnational), serving God by serving others (people of the towel and basin), loving God and loving others (including loving ourselves properly by doing self-care), and enduring in hope on the journey to our union with Christ (being willing to live sacrificially and finishing well).

One last concept: we are called to model the way we do missions on the pattern Christ showed us.

Missions is born first in the heart of God (John Piper). We are imitators. Jesus prayed “Father as you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world” (John 17:18). He is asking his Father to do more than send the disciples into the world, he is asking for the same sending strategy he came with.

After the resurrection, Jesus commissions: “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you” (John 20:21). We must do missions as copycats. Jesus was on mission to save, and interacted with Jews, Greeks, Phoenicians, Romans, prostitutes, tax collectors, women, sinners, and the sick, and anyone else who cared to hear the voice of truth.

Jesus defines his mission activity as making disciples. His ways and means of doing that is to teach them to obey all my commandments (summarized as loving God and loving others). His power to do the missions is his continued presence in the person of the Holy Spirit. Where Jesus went, how, why, what he said, and to whom must define missions to us as well.

Allow me, further, to suggest 3 other ways to be like Christ in his mission work.

First, we must go on the same mission Jesus went on, the full restoration of the cosmos under the rule of God. We have no other assigned mission. In John 12:24-25 Jesus tells us that to do the same mission we must be ready to die the same death. In fact he says unless we die we won’t multiply or “produce many seeds.” In order to gain grounds in missions we must first die. Dietrich Bonheoffer said that when Jesus bids a man to follow him, he bids him to come and die. Missions begins with a funeral; ours.

Missions is much more than paying for a mission trip, donating clothes, filling a bucket or shoe box with goodies for people in need overseas or next door. It is that to be sure, but it is mostly self-denial, and cross carrying. This kind of going is a way of life not just an occasional going. We are sent people. 24/7. We live missionally (as missionaries) when we fall to the ground and die to ourselves so that others can hear, repent, trust, see, and enter the kingdom of life. This is the way Jesus would commend missions to us.

Second, in John 13:14-15, Jesus went on his mission with an attitude, a menial servant’s attitude. He wasn’t taming savages, or showing a better economic future, or helping people reach their potential. He went on his knees begging the Father to save and relishing the privilege of serving. He cried over Jerusalem because they would not let him serve them.

In 2002 I took a youth group on a mission trip to Montreal. We painted apartments for a whole week in an area where people had so very little and were dependent on government handouts, and the goodness of others. I was so proud of our youth because there was such a serving attitude among them. We were crammed in a van for two days of driving. We slept on cement floors on sleeping bags. We worked in afternoon temperatures of over 100 degrees. I never once heard any of the students complain. I learned from these students. The people we served thanked us profusely. Honestly, the privilege of serving them was far more in line with Jesus’ attitude. Though he was heaven’s commander in chief, the served the lowliest of people, silent as a sheep before the slaughter. Through us he still does.

Last, we go on missions with a borrowed authority, Jesus’ authority as John 14:12 teaches. The authority for missions comes from above. Jesus taught, healed, prayed, and lived as a man under authority that he amazed many who were open to it. In turn, he gave us authority to bind sin, be sheep among wolves, be shrewd but harmless, proclaim boldly that he is Lord, and be peacemakers in this world, to name just a few missions.

Michael Ramsey says: “We state and commend the faith only in so far as we go out and put ourselves inside the doubt of doubters [Thomas], the questioners [Nicodemus], and the loneliness of those who have lost their way [Samaritan woman, Mary Magdalene, the Prodigal].” Nothing gains more traction and influence among those we are sent than when we enter the lives of others on Jesus’ authority, not ours.

We walk as he walked (1 John 2:6) and we will accomplish greater things, he promised. The mission is not done but it’s his, so we must go. The attitude is ours to develop and monitor. The authority is his. May it be so!

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