know this because it is quite possible for us to become so aware of our wretched tendency that we grow oblivious to God's redemptive capacity. Jesus did not die on Calvary simply to fulfill prophecy from the Old Testament. Neither did he suffer and die as a human sacrifice to appease an angry deity. The Bible clearly and frequently says that ours is a God of love and mercy. Jesus died on the cross to show the extent to which God will go to reveal to us just how much we are loved. The cross is one of the most dramatic reminders of God's unmerited and unending grace. At the cross, we are assured there is more love in God than sin in us.
Paul says our first need is for forgiveness and power over sin. In Colossians 1:22, he paints a beautiful picture of what the Cross does for us. "He has now reconciled [you] in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him" (RSV).
Put the truth of the Cross as the wisdom and power of God another way. The Cross is the throne of God's saving power.
Halford E. Luccock used to laugh at the hymnal that has as number 364 Jesus Demands My All; then, at the bottom of the page, it reads, "For an easier version, see Number 365." There is not only no easier version for eternal salvation; there is no other version than the Cross of Jesus Christ. The Cross is the throne of God's saving power.
A preacher wrote me a letter expressing his opposition to the position I had taken in my lecture on evangelism. The point that he argued against was my contention that what we think of Jesus Christ will determine what we do about evangelism. I was pleading for a recovery of belief and commitment to the uniqueness of Christ as God's way of salvation for all humankind. I was also calling into question the belief in universal salvation.
The fellow shared a story from a lecture he had heard over twenty years ago. The only thing he remembered about it was the exchange between the theological lecturer and an overly enthusiastic super-evangelical student. The student asked the impertinent question, "When were you saved?" The professor thought for a moment. "When was I saved?" he asked rhetorically, then paused. "I was saved two thousand years ago."
The writer used this to argue against the point of my questioning universal salvation, the belief that eventually everyone is going to be saved. He offered the story to refute my position, but I take it as support. Our salvation occurred two thousand years ago—on the Cross of Jesus. The Cross is the throne of Christ's saving power.
Do you remember the words of the liturgy of Holy Communion? "Jesus Christ who made there, by the one offering of Himself, a full, sufficient sacri-fice for the sins of the whole world." So it is; so it shall always be. The Cross is the throne of Christ's saving grace. And, as the revelation of God in Jesus dying on the cross, it tells us that there is more love in God than sin in us.
QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION
What does it mean to be a Christian with power and authority? There is more love in God than there is sin in us: how might the truth of this statement affect your life today? How does what we think of Christ influence how we witness and how the church practices evangelism?
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THE GREAT COMMISSION
MATTHEW 28:16-20
The last words of Jesus to his disciples represent the marching orders that are to be followed until he returns. We call it "the great commission." Wise observers of the mainline denominations have said "the great commission" has become our "great omission." There is not a single major mainline church that is growing significantly in membership in the United States. At least four of the major mainline denominations—Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Lutherans, and Methodists—have internal battles that threaten schism.
JESUS' MINISTRY—AND OURS
At the beginning of his ministry, Jesus announced his mission:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. (Luke 4:18-19 KJV)
At the close of his ministry, Jesus commissions us for Kingdom work:
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 things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. (Matt. 28:19-20 NKJV)
Register what should be obvious: only disciples can make disciples. Our mission statement in The United Methodist Church is "To make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world." Discipleship means following Jesus to the end that we are transformed into his likeness. Here is our problem. Most members of our churches do not have any compelling sense that their primary vocation as Christians is to practice those disciplines that will form them into the likeness of Christ—that the dynamic of being a Christian is the understanding of and conformity to the clear teachings of Jesus.
DISCIPLE-MAKING
Making disciples, then, is more than making "converts." How have we missed the point that the command of Jesus is to "make disciples"? Salvation is for more than forgiveness; it is also a matter of thorough moral and spiritual transformation.
Over 150 million people in America claim to be "born again" Christians. We have to question what that means. If all "born again Christians" were disciples, would there not be greater signs of the transforming power of Christ at work in the world?
Another problem is that, too often, in mainline churches, we have substituted an ideological social agenda for the Christian gospel. When our mission agenda is only a social action program that is devoid of any acknowledgment of sin and satanic power, then there is no need for repentance and forgiveness.
Religious pluralism and inclusivism have played havoc with our mission enterprise. Pluralism denies Jesus as God's unique gift of salvation, and inclusivism offers universal salvation. When these prevail, there is no passion for the Great Commission. We cannot denigrate the uniqueness of Christ as God's way of salvation, diminish the authority of Scripture, or idealize pluralism and inclusiveness as redemptive within themselves and have anything that will demand commitment, sacrifice, and a response to the call to go to the ends of the earth to share it.
Most observers of the Christian scene in the United States would contend that we are in a setting not much different from the time when Jesus gave the Great Commission. That means we must become "apostolic" in our passion and style of sharing the gospel.
Seventy million individuals in the United States are under the age of eighteen. Nearly one million foreign-born people immigrate to this country every year. Thirty-two million people in America speak some language other than English as their primary language. We have more unsaved and unchurched people in our nation than ever before in our history—172 million. Ninety percent of the population of the United States lives in urban settings. The Great Commission and an apostolic style demand that we "go to" all of these persons, not wait for them to come to us.
PASSION FOR SHARING CHRIST
Christ requires an apostolic passion. For the apostles, Jesus Christ was the good news. This conviction is the only power that will give us the passion to be for our age what the first-century Christians were for theirs. What we believe about what Christ can do for persons will determine how we order our life as disciples and the life of the Christian community of which we are a part.
