As the Worldwide Church of God sharpens its focus about what God has called it to do in the world one thing is becoming very clear: We do not choose for ourselves where God wants us to serve in the Body of Christ. For a good reason: the Mission is not ours, but His.
We know Revelation 13:8, the Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world. Other passages confirm this truth, that we are recipients of what God has had on his mind for all eternity, the task of adoption and bringing “many sons to glory” (Hebrews 2:10). God effects this in a way which flows from out of His very nature. Seventeen years ago the Great Triune God opened our eyes to see that He exists in perfect, mutual, communion as Father, Son and Holy Spirit (2 Corinthians 13:14). Now we are beginning to trace out the practical implications of ministry in the Spirit (Galatians 5:16).
WCG youth leader Jeb Egbert explains this in terms of family relationships. He expounds the all-embracing, initiating love of the Father, incarnated in the sacrificial love of the Son and revealed to selected human beings across history in the embracing work of the Spirit (John 15:26). The very love that binds Father, Son and Holy Spirit in unity is shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:1-5). The Spirit is that powerful agent of the Godhead that illuminates the Father’s love for the Son to all people – we thus come to God through the sovereign over-ruling activity of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. The Spirit teaches and reveals – it reveals to us the responsive and reciprocal love between the Father and the Son (John 14:26) in eternity.
Moltmann says: “The Church participates in the creative mission of the Spirit…It is not the church that has a mission of salvation to fulfil, it is the mission of the Son and the Spirit through the Father that includes the Church, creating a church as it goes on its way.” This puts the emphasis where it should be – back on God not on us!! No burnout here, no backsliding here, but perpetual renewal available in the Spirit (2 Timothy 1:6).
Since 325 AD, Christian thinkers have seen across Scripture the dynamics of the mutually reinforcing life within the Godhead. The Father initiates all by fixing His free, undeserved love upon those He wills to be His (1 John 4:8). Love is the special characteristic of the Father (John 14:23; John 3:16). The Son, beloved and begotten by the Father in eternity before all time, is the perfect expression of the Father’s care and concern (Hebrews 1:1-3) – the express image of the Father, so much so that to worship the Son is to worship the Father (John 5:23).
Jesus, the Firstborn to be perfected among many brethren, is also the ultimate Apostle sent into our darkness to bring the lost back to the Father by His redeeming sacrifice. That is accomplished through the energizing mission of the Holy Spirit (Hebrew 9:14; Romans 1:4). The Son and the Father send forth the Spirit to call men and women and children to faith in Christ (Acts 4:33), the Forerunner of our salvation (John 16:7). (See J.I. Packer, Quest For Godliness.)
All of this is rooted and grounded in divine love, the “glue” that binds Father, Son and Spirit in mutually interpenetrating love from all eternity (peri-choresis). It is the outspreading of that divine love that adopts us as God’s children (Ephesians 1:5). Since love never fails, God’s purposes will be accomplished in a renewed creation (Romans 8:21; Revelation 21:7). Amen.