Jesus lived a FULL life. He lived a PERFECT life. He lived a WHOLE life. From the moment he arrived in a manger to the moment he ascended into those clouds, he was combatting and rectifying this broken and separated reality that human beings and all of creation seem to be completely subjected to. Jesus' ministry can often be hard to pin down on what was his primary objective. We often want to pick one expression of his time on planet earth as the most significant.
Often we find that this primary act of Jesus was expressed through his death on the cross, and rightly so, this was significant. This issue of sin and the suffering it produces is settled in this wonderful and beautiful act.
Some people look more at his teachings and his acts of compassion as a man as the primary expression. His wisdom and mercy become the guiding principles in how we should follow him.
Some people find that his death was only the beginning of something great and that really his resurrection was the primary purpose of his life on earth. Everything else was just a lead up to the moment where he defeated death itself and overcame the devil once and for all.
If your anything like me, reading through the Gospels in particular and trying to clarify with absolute certainty what the main thing is... well, it can be really exhausting. The moment I find myself settled and secured that I finally "got it", that I have complete revelation on this stuff, I find myself being painfully and excruciatingly humbled by another aspect of who Jesus really was and what he really came to do. I start to wonder in these moments if I'm missing the point. What if Jesus came not just to be glorified on how he put some things back into place by a few scattered events throughout his life, but what if everything he did was a massive, all encompassing expression of God's love that we will never, EVER be able to get our minds fully around?
Jesus' ministry to the world was HOLISTIC. Body,soul,mind,heart... he literally made it possible for us to be whole in every single area. How did he do this, you might ask?
Through his...
LIFE
DEATH
RESURRECTION
My proposition then is how do we learn to appreciate the breadth of his ministry in all that he did? How do we encourage a broad and HOLISTIC approach to following Jesus where we don't allow ourselves to get too pigeonholed into only focusing on one of the areas mentioned above?
You can see this quite a bit in Christian ministries. We get really focused on one of the amazing expression of Gods love and grace to the world through Jesus.
We get a revelation of Jesus' compassion on the sick, poor, orphaned and widows. We allow ourselves to be consumed with his heart and mercy for anyone who is in any kind of need. We see how he provided for the masses with fishes and loaves. We see how he ate and fellowshipped with the rejected and despised. We read about these things and we are inspired to go and do things like set up hospitals, aids clinics, shelters, counseling centers, orphanages etc. We see how Jesus responded to the physical needs of this world and we are compelled to follow.
Then we get a revelation of Jesus' radical and miraculous authority over spiritual and dark afflictions of the soul. We read about how he commanded a legion of demons out of a man and sent them into a pack of pigs. We read about how he spit in dirt and touched people's eyes with his holy mud. How he got words of knowledges about people he had only just met. As we read these things, of course we begin to be inspired on how God might want to use us in similar ways. So we set up whole schools and programs to train us in the supernatural. We desire to have access to this supernatural authority Jesus walked in, in both his life and through his miraculous resurrection.
Then we get a revelation of Jesus on the cross. How much pain and affliction he went through... all for us. How be hung and bled and eventually died to free us from our own self inflicted misery. We see the destructive power of sin and the bondage it holds us in, in both this life and the next. As we truly understand the mercy of God through this act of Jesus we are overwhelmed with a sense of total gratitude and appreciation. So we go about trying to convince the world through whatever means necessary the urgent and compelling truth of the cross. We set up schools, ministries, programs, outreaches etc. with the sole intent of learning how to preach this beautiful Gospel.
Now, obviously all of the above mentioned revelations are God breathed, scriptural and profound. I asked myself recently if I were to sit down with Jesus now, interview style, and try to get him to nail down once and for all his crowning achievement, that his response might leave me somewhat hanging. I wonder if he would be almost confused by the question. I wonder if his answer would come across more like this...
"I did nothing apart from what the Father was saying to me. In those acts of obedience and dependence on him I was near to him and whole. From the brightest to darkest moments of my life on earth I experienced a WHOLE and FULL life in him. That is my crowning achievement."
As I grow in my life and calling I want to be blown away by the FULL measure of Jesus manifest in and through my life. Sure, there will be seasons where I focus more on certain aspects of what that fullness really looks like being expressed in and through me. Times where I dig deep into word and work on my hermeneutics (if you don't know what that word means,honestly, don't worry about it). Times where I focus on radical evangelism and proclamation as a means to make it more of my lifestyle than and event. Seasons where I busy myself with setting up schools, programs and ministries to equip others to know God more. Moments where I draw aside and sit in absolute silence and stillness and allow my life to be completely uncluttered and absolutely solely focused on intimacy with the Father. But the challenge remains to always allow myself to experience the HOLISTIC love of the trinity in every aspect of my life and the lives of those around me.
To never arrive, to never settle, to never feel like i've achieved.
But to rest in the fact that Jesus' Life, Death and Resurrection reach deep into my WHOLE being, continually conforming me to himself.
When you see someone who is incredibly confident and secure in who they are or what they're good at there's a good chance that they had a loving father early on speaking the truth consistently into their lives. A father who was generous in his approval of that child and a child who constantly, above every other person around them, was starving for their father to affirm them in whatever it was they were doing. I know that this is isn't an absolute rule and that not every single confident and whole person fits into this category. I do think you'd be shocked though at how high the percentage of people who are, how many did have this amazing and simple foundation in their lives.
I unfortunately didn't have this. So that leaves me with a interesting conundrum; how do I go about being secure,confident and whole in my life?
It's quite simple actually.
I follow Jesus' example of asking the Father non stop what he thinks about me, what he feels about me. I ask him for his heart for the people around me, I ask him if I'm doing a good job in loving those people. I ask him and only him to validate me and bring truth and definition into who I really am.
A CONFIDENT, WHOLE, LOVED son of the most high God.
You are so right. It is hard to pin down the most important thing that Jesus did. After my son's death, I have concluded that putting death to death is His supreme act of love. Death destroys the possibility of having a future. With that problem solved, you can have a future, and indefinite time, and a stage on which to play out life; and that gives the option for many other problems to be resolved. Most importantly, it solves the problem of separation-- from God and those we love. I loved the way your post provoked thought.
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