Knee Jerk Devotional: April 13, 2021
John 17: 13-19
Passage:
Now I'm returning to you.
I'm saying these things in the world's hearing
So my people can experience
My joy completed in them.
I gave them your word;
The godless world hated them because of it,
Because they didn't join the world's ways,
Just as I didn't join the world's ways.
I'm not asking that you take them out of the world
But that you guard them from the Evil One.
They are no more defined by the world
Than I am defined by the world.
Make them holy—consecrated—with the truth;
Your word is consecrating truth.
In the same way that you gave me a mission in the world,
I give them a mission in the world.
I'm consecrating myself for their sakes
So they'll be truth-consecrated in their mission.
Over the years one of the things that I have become more attuned to in the Scripture is this idea that Jesus saved humanity to something not simply from something. Too often we think of salvation only in terms being saved from separation from God. We rarely consider the reality that we have been saved for a purpose.
One of the first passages in the Scripture that I memorized was Ephesians 2:8-9, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith —and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.” It’s a great little passage. The problem is that the thought doesn’t end in verse 9. It continues into verse 10, “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
That’s right.
For those of us who follow Christ we were saved to something for a purpose.
Jesus came into the world with a mission. His mission was to reconcile the world and to demonstrate the kind of ultimate self-sacrificial love that is required to do such a thing. We too are in this world with a mission. That mission is to demonstrate for the world how self-sacrificial love reconciles the world.
Yes, that’s right. We are to love the same way that Jesus loved.
Yes, that’s right. We are to be agents of reconciliation in the same way that Jesus was.
To live this way demands that we set our egos aside. To live this way demands that we intentionally seek to reconcile broken relationships. It means that we are to be the ones who first extend grace, mercy, and forgiveness.
To be on mission for Jesus is not about trying to “win people for Christ” and is about loving well.
Remember the commission for the believer is to make disciples. That is, to teach others to live as Jesus lived, which is to love as Jesus loved.