2 Corinthians 3:12-18
For many years I envisioned the primary tool in accomplishing the Great Commission as evangelism. Of course we know to succeed outreach has to be bracketed by intercession and follow-up but verbally sharing the gospel was to me the dynamic responsible for any growth the kingdom of God had or would ever enjoy. Today’s passage is an excellent one to help explain why I no longer see evangelism (in this traditional sense) as the only dynamic of the Great Commission. I will never forsake the telling of the old old story but today I see another essential ingredient of kingdom expansion. That is; living brightly…..
….our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like him. (2 Corinthians 3:18)
Have you ever wondered how the Church grew so rapidly in the first 3 hundred years? By our standards they were very under-equipped. Their pastors did not come weekly with a sermon prepared from the Bible and various commentaries. For one, the Church was 350 years away from having a Bible and another; their pastors were not hired professionals. They were simply those in the body who had been recognized as their gifts for nurturing and equipping became visible within the community of saints. They had no printing presses for books or tracts. They had no means of mass communication or transportation. They had no real estate of buildings. So then, what accounts for the explosion of Christianity? The Church had a supreme advantage over us; simplicity. They did not have much beyond each other, trouble and, most importantly, the Holy Spirit, who was teaching them to live out of the new Life that was now theirs through a brand new covenant with God.
This new covenant enabled both Jew and Gentile to draw near to God as their Father. God was no longer a distant and angry deity who had, long ago, etched His 10 Commandments into stone tablets. No. God had now taken up His stylus and had begun writing His story on human hearts which were no longer hard like stone. And, He gave a new covenant to them exceedingly greater than the Law of Moses. God had now torn the veil in the temple in two, offering those entrusting themselves to Christ, face to face access to the Living God. In the midst of scarcity and hostility, there was simplicity, where all they really had was Christ living inside and among them. The consequence? Something incredible began to happen….
….. when God is personally present – a living Spirit, that old, constricting legislation (the Law of Moses) is recognized as obsolete. We’re free of it! All of us! Nothing between us and God, our faces shining with the brightness of his face. And so we are transfigured much like the Messiah, our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like him.
The Great Commission was being well fulfilled by people who probably had no clue what it was. They were just living out their lives alongside others who wondered about the changes they were witnessing among their friends, neighbors and relatives. The first disciples had laid hold of an essential dynamic of the Great Commission; living brightly – becoming the light of the world – reference points of eternity in a temporal decaying world.
They had no need of holding crusades. They were the crusade! The Holy Spirit was expressing Himself through the Body of Christ (not just the Church staff) in a variety of powerful ways. They had another tremendous advantage. Church attendance had not yet been invented. These primitive and simple people were spared from the snare of that debilitating concept. They had become the Church and their lives were individually and corporately radiating credibility for the Carpenter who had conquered death and His kingdom which He claimed had come. In the heat of persecution, in the company of each other, they were being….
….transfigured much like the Messiah, their lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters their lives and they became like him.
Father, grant us the grace to repent of our misplaced priorities and dependencies. Grant that we would return to the simple message of Christ alone – our sufficiency in all of life and the hope of glory. Help us to see that we ourselves are the essential and intended good news – those stories that You are daily publishing that the world would read and believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that in believing, all might have life in His name. Amen.