CHAPTER 117
Serving the Son for His Surpassing Glory
David Bryant
David Bryant, founder of Concerts of Prayer International, currently gives leadership to Proclaim Hope! Formerly a pastor and then minister-at-large with the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, he served as the first national coordinator for what became the Perspectives Study Program. He is the founder and creative director for ChristNow and author of a number of books focused on prayer, revival, and missions, including his recent Christ Is NOW!
Adapted from Christ Is all!, 2004. Used by permission of New Providence Publishers, New Providence, NJ.
I have heard it said among believers: “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.” Of course, there’s great truth in that. But at the close of this Perspectives journey, I think you can see it would be much more appropriate to say it this way: “God loves His Son and has a wonderful plan for Him, to bring all the nations to His feet as Lord of all, and He loves you and me enough to give us a place in it.” Let’s investigate this promise more closely.
We’re accustomed to thinking of God’s love for the world as the most radical love of all. After all, John 3:16 sums it up in the minds of most believers. Because of the Father’s vast love for the world, He gives His Son. But look again at John 3. Just nineteen verses later we find, “The Father loves the Son and has placed everything in His hands” (v. 35 NIV). Steve Hawthorne puts it this way: “While it’s true that the Father loves the world so much that He gave His Son, the greater love is that the Father loves the Son so much that He gives Him the world!”
Caught Up in the Grand Narrative
In C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, four children playing hide and seek in an English country manor take shelter in an old wardrobe, only to discover that it holds more than just moth-balled coats. It is magical. The back of the wardrobe empties into another dimension—a land called Narnia. Immediately, the four are thrown into the midst of a story already well underway, involving a conflict between the White Witch (who has made Narnia always winter but never Christmas) and a grand lion named Aslan (the Christ figure in Lewis’s drama). Not only are the children included in the story of Narnia, but they become key players as they follow Aslan in delivering the inhabitants of Narnia from the witch’s spell and transforming the kingdom into all it was meant to be. Once they enter the wardrobe, their destiny becomes sealed with the destiny of Aslan!
The same has happened to everyone who has been transferred “from the dominion of darkness” and has been “brought . . . into the kingdom of the Son he loves” (Col 1:13 NIV). We’ve been summoned to be part of a narrative far greater than we could have imagined—a larger purpose, a longer story, a higher calling. We’ve stepped into something rooted in an ancient history, contending with a more formidable enemy, and fulfilling a far more glorious purpose, one that invites all the earth into eternal transformations. Our story is about a Lion who reigns supreme, portrayed as a Lamb at the center of the throne of the universe (Rev 5:5–14).
God loves His Son and has a wonderful plan for Him . . . and He loves you enough to give you a place in it. His plan for His followers empowers them to declare His glory in selfless love, and thus to draw many from every people to willingly serve Him. Ultimately, the demonstrations of His love and glory throughout history will stand as witness against those who refuse Him, so that every knee will bow, by either redemption or judgment, to confess His kingship over all (Isa 45:22–24; Phil 2:9–11).
Like waves ascending up a beach in the momentum of an incoming tide, despite periods of ebbs and flow, His missionary purpose cannot be stopped. God is writing no other story. For twenty centuries Christ has never ceased to advance His global work among the nations. Never is a day wasted. He has not failed to keep His promise that He would be present with those He sends “all the days until the end of the age” (a literal translation of Matthew 28:20). He always meets them wherever He sends them. There is no place His ambassadors go where He has not gone ahead of them. Exerting the fullest, God-granted authority over all heaven and earth, He sets the stage for their arrival before they get there. He works through them as they speak or serve in His name. And He sustains the impact of His reign long after His servants have moved on.
With full determination, this mission-sending God has narrowed His sights on our generation. He sees more than two billion people still largely unevangelized. He knows multitudes have no knowledge of His Son—that have no one near them, like them, to even begin to tell them. But He refuses to leave Earth’s peoples in this hopeless condition. What is the goal of God’s story? To achieve the most comprehensive glory for His Son, a relational glory in which He will be loved and served by a great host of people drawn from every people. Their love will forever magnify the wonders of His salvation and the supremacy of the Messiah.
God loves His Son and has a wonderful plan for Him . . . and He loves you enough to give you a place in it.
World Christians: Out of the Box and into the Drama
Though every Christian is called into the thick of Christ’s global cause, many are not actively involved as God intended. Some are asleep, some are on retreat, while others are determined to make their lives count. Some huddle in the shadows of unbelief. Others run the race before them, setting no limits on how or where God will use them. Some are determined to make Christ’s global cause the unifying focus—the context—for all they are and do. They are willing to be broken and remolded to fit in His worldwide mission wherever they can make the most strategic impact.
Some Christians flourish in outwardly focused discipleship while others seem satisfied to just sit in (what I call) “boxes of peasized Christianity.” Sincerity and doctrinal convictions may be similar for both. But it’s unmistakable when Christians live for the consummation of God’s redeeming purposes among all peoples. What shall we call this distinct group of Christians? Let’s call them world Christians.
Some world Christians become missionaries who cross barriers of geography or culture to bring the gospel to those who can hear no other way. But every Christian is meant to be a world Christian, even if you physically “stay” in familiar places to provide the sacrificial love, prayers, training, money, and quality of congregational life that backs the work of those who “go.”
World Christians are day-to-day disciples for whom Christ’s global cause has become their integrating, over-riding priority. World Christians are heaven’s expatriates, camping where Christ’s kingdom is best served. They are members of God’s global dispersion, reaching the unreached and blessing the families of the earth.
The Person-Driven Life
Several years ago, megachurch pastor Rick Warren found another way to describe what it means to live as a world Christian with the helpful phrase “the purpose-driven life.” The idea of being impelled and focused on God’s global concerns has encouraged many. But, in the long run, to flourish in a purpose-driven life, first we need to know what it means to live a Person-driven life. For all of our activities and general support for kingdom work, many of us may not be, in fact, the Person-driven people we thought we were. World Christians live in a quiet exhilaration that springs from the confidence that Jesus will ultimately be loved as Lord by all peoples. They know that they are part of a movement toward the glorious climax of history, in which all of the stories of every people will ultimately be completed and converge in Him. Mundane affairs of daily life are tinged with the taste of the powers of the age to come because Jesus Christ Himself is in their midst. Having encountered the Son of the Father who stands among them as the assurance of all the glorious things to come (Col 1:27), they continue to dwell under the upraised hands of this Risen One—the One whose blessing has become their commission, which they joyfully serve before His ever watchful, majestic gaze (Luke 24:50–53).
God loves His Son and has a wonderful plan for Him . . . and he loves you enough to give you a place in it. World Christians have focused their hopes on Christ fully and obey Him faithfully.
World Christians: Serving a Monarch, Not a Mascot
In so many of our churches, I fear, Jesus is regularly deployed as our mascot, as if our life struggles were something like a football game. Once a week on Sunday, Jesus is presented as if He were something like a mascot, trotted out to the field to cheer us up, to give us new vigor and vision, to reassure us that we are “somebodies.” We invite Him to reinforce us for the great things we want to do for God. He rebuilds our confidence. He gives us reasons to cheer. He confirms for us over and over that all must be well. We’re so proud of Him! We’re so happy to be identified with His name. Enthusiasm for Him energizes us—for a while.
But then, for the rest of the week, He is pretty much relegated to the sidelines. For all practical purposes, we are the ones who call the shots. We implement the plays, scramble for first downs, and improvise in a pinch. Even if we do it in His name, we do it with little reliance on His person. There’s scant evidence that we think of ourselves as somehow utterly incapable of doing anything of eternal consequence apart from Him.
As contradictory as it may seem, many of us have rede-fined Jesus into someone we can both admire and ignore at the same time! To be our mascot, we’ve redesigned Him to be reasonably convenient—someone praiseworthy, to be sure, but overall kept in reserve, useful, “on call” as required. We’ve come to Him as far as we need Him, and no further.
If we insist on Jesus coming along with us as a helper in our games and excellent adventures, we will inevitably tame Him as our mascot. World Christians are just as likely as anyone to appeal to Jesus as a helper. But they rouse themselves fully awake to Christ, to be engaged in His greater story.
If we insist on Jesus coming along with us as a helper in our games and excellent adventures, we will inevitably tame Him as our mascot.
Psalm 110: A Biblical Template for World Christians
Psalm 110 is the most frequently quoted Old Testament passage by New Testament writers. Why is that? Why, out of all the ancient promises, did the first disciples turn to this hymn time and time again? The answer is obvious. This one text spoke more clearly than most about who and where the ascended Jesus was, and at the same time, it spoke clearly about who they were as His willing servants in the midst of a tremendous conflict.
The LORD says to my lord:
“Sit at my right hand
until I make your enemies
a footstool for your feet.”
The LORD will extend your mighty scepter from Zion, saying,
“Rule in the midst of your enemies!”
Your troops will be willing
on your day of battle.
Arrayed in holy splendor,
your young men will come to you
like dew from the morning’s womb.
The LORD has sworn
and will not change his mind:
“You are a priest forever,
in the order of Melchizedek.”
The Lord is at your right hand;
he will crush kings on the day of his wrath.
He will judge the nations. (Ps 110:1–6 NIV)
Psalm 110 pinpoints the single greatest reality unfolding around us today: the lordship of Jesus Christ. The drama of His increasing kingdom interprets both the front page of our newspapers as well as the frontlines of our mission. From the viewpoint of Psalm 110, we can see that peoples and events everywhere are being woven into Christ’s reign, whether they know it or not. No matter how far from the center of divine activity people may seem to be, Christ engages every human domain. He engages kingdoms of finance and commerce, entertainment and education, industry and labor, the arts and sciences, rulers and governments. There is not a square inch of any sphere of existence beyond His jurisdiction. Installed as Messiah, His promised work of universal restoration is underway. His lordship is becoming increasingly visible among all peoples, as God works through His people. Because of Him, the whole earth boasts wondrous potential for experiencing and expressing God’s glory.
Psalm 110 makes clear that Christ has been exalted, not because He has vanquished His enemies like some ordinary imperial power on conquest. Instead, Christ has been exalted to rule even amid tremendous opposition. Even though He could, He does not conduct a conquest using violent, coercive power to crush His enemies in this age. Ultimately, at the final hour of this age, He will bring forth “the day of His wrath” (v. 5), in which He will subdue every rebellious power. But at this time, we find ourselves in His “day of battle” (some translations read, “Your day of power” in v. 3), contending in a war of liberation for His glory among all peoples. Because He is so worthy, because His cause is so just, and because His love is so winsome, millions of people are gladly serving Him every day, many of them suffering at great cost. His ultimate supremacy over all things emboldens them to lovingly serve the nations on His behalf and for His surpassing glory.
Taking a cue from Psalm 110, world Christians rise to serve Him every day, willing and ready “from the womb of the dawn” to volunteer freely to be with Him wherever He is engaged. He does not commandeer them; instead, they volunteer—to serve Him and fulfill His global purpose.
Ultimately, we aren’t trying to obey a “missionary vision.” We obey Christ Himself. We refuse to give our allegiance to programs or projects or personalities that may be related to Christ’s global cause, but which are often, at best Christlike, and at worst nearly Christless, in their focus and impact. World Christians are determined to be Christ-ward—to give the preeminence to the supreme Son of God. We’re not merely copying Christ or simply trying to do what He would do. Rather we’re determined to join in with what Jesus is doing, pressing His kingdom forward in this hour.
God loves His Son and has a wonderful plan for Him, to bring all the nations to His feet as Lord of all, and He loves you and me enough to give us a place in it. 