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Mega-city Churches 6: Facing the world

June 10, 2007

The Son willingly laid down his life for us. That is part of the core of the message that gathers people into churches. But it places disciples in an entirely new position.  Paul put it this way, “we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.” 2 Cor 5.14.

Disciples are dead people granted a new life by Jesus who took them to death in his death, and raised them to new life in his resurrection. So disciples have no claim over their lives anymore. They owe their life to Jesus. In fact the life they are living is not their life but rather his life which he is living in them. This means they can only sustain this new life by trusting Jesus to  continue to live his life in them.

They are on a perpetual life support system. But an utterly reliable one which provides an entirely different kind of life – a life lived in the company of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and filled with the life of the living God.

So if their life is now under the direction of Jesus – in what direction is it facing? It is facing in the direction not of heaven but of the world. Disciples are being sent to all parts of the world – to all the nations and ethnic groups. They are being sent specifically to make disciples from those groups.

And to gather them together into churches. The disciples that Jesus first gathered were called to be together. More than called. Because they had their life by their relationship with Jesus, they were necessarily together as part of him. No wonder that the apostles could describe the group of disciples as the body of Christ. They realised that they were the embodiment of his life now.

He had already given them some instructions about this. He said that people would know that they were his disciples by the fact that they loved one another as he had loved them.

The gathering of the disciples together therefore has them facing inwards as well as outwards. Always going out with the message from the Father and gathering together in the body of the Son where the Spirit of God meets with them and builds them together as one body. And that building together is one of the hardest parts of discipling.

Dale

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