Living Sent   PART II

by Landon Reesor

In John 17.14-17, Jesus is praying His “high priestly prayer” for His disciples and all of the believers that would come after them (that includes us!).  In that prayer, He says …

I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. – John 14.14-19 (ESV)

As I read through that passage, the first thing that strikes me is that we, as Christ followers, are different from the world around us.  Jesus says that He has given us the Father’s Word and that His Word has changed us.  The result is that we are no longer “of the world” any more that He was of the world.  That phrase “not of” comes from the negative form of a Greek word that means “I exist”.  It speaks of our identity, essence, and origins.  The bottom line is that after we embrace Christ our very nature is radically altered.  We aren’t the same people we were before.  Our beliefs, values, attitudes, and actions are different.  A change has taken place and now continues in us.  Scripture says that the old things of our lives go away and that all things become new.  We are different.

And that difference, that change, creates conflict and tension with the world around us that hasn’t embraced that Word yet.  Jesus says that the world literally hates us because of the change in us.  Hate is a strong word and yet it is exactly what the text communicates.  There is an anger and animosity between the world and the Church.  Even when we live lives of compassion and kindness, even when we predicate the sharing of the Gospel with an act of generosity and sacrifice, there is still a friction between who we are and what we believe and who the people of the world are and what they embrace.  That difference between light and dark, life and death, hope and despair, truth and lies is inescapable no matter how much love we share.  I’m convinced that compassion needs to precede our communication of the truth and that sometimes the world won’t listen to our message because our behavior towards them hasn’t given them any good reason to.  But the bottom line is that the tension between the Church and the world inescapable.  Jesus was the most compassionate person to ever walk on this planet.  He embodied the Great Commandments of loving God and loving your neighbor.  Yet the world hated Him and rejected Him because of His Word and claims to truth and that same experience is waiting for us.

Come back tomorrow for Part III...

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