Living Sent PART IV

by Landon Reesor

I’ll be honest with you, this John 17 passage is a pretty familiar one to a lot of people.  I’ve read it and heard it hundreds, if not thousands of times, in my life.  And almost every time, it’s been summarized with the phrase, “in but not of”.  In other words, as Christians, we’re in the world but we’re not to be of it.  And that’s correct … kind of.  We are in this world.  We do live and breathe and exist in this physical life and on this globe.  And while we are here, we are to always remember that our nature has been changed and we are not the same as the people around us.  Oh yeah, and we’re not supposed to go back to how we were and allow our new selves to be corrupted by the old vaules, beliefs, and behaviors that still characterize the fallen world around us.

But when we say that we are “in but not of”, I think it’s a misguided and misleading summary of this passage.  It’s not about being “in but not of”.  It’s about being “not of but sent into”!  Being “sent” is the major theme and purpose of the passage.

If you think about it, the “in but not of” mentality is an incredibly defensive approach that puts us in a  passive posture towards the world around us.  It almost paints a picture of us as believers sitting in the corner, twiddling our thumbs, biding our time and trying not to get soiled or influenced by the world until our time on earth is done and we get to go to Heaven.  That mindset can easily translate into a process where we as believers focus our attention on putting up walls and barriers to protect us from the outside culture while we construct Christian communes and isolated communities that insulate us from the negative influence of the world around us.  That mentality leads to disconnected lives that have little or no impact...

That isn’t the way Jesus lived!

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