Skip to main content

 ANOINTED FOR MISSION AND MINISTRY

In John 20:21 Jesus states clearly that as the Father had sent Him, He was sending His disciples. That promise and command given by Jesus was not just for those in that room the evening after He rose from the dead. It is for all followers of Jesus Christ down through the ages.

Being fully God and fully man, Jesus became the Messiah when, being baptized by John, the Holy Spirit came down and anointed Him for mission and ministry. Messiah means “anointed one.” Jesus Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary and then anointed with the Holy Spirit and power for His mission and ministry.

We are born of the Holy Spirit when in repentance we believe Jesus and surrender our whole lives to His Lordship. We are then to be baptized in the Holy Spirit, anointed for mission and ministry as well. The Holy Spirit, dwelling in followers of Jesus, lives in them the resurrection Life of Jesus Christ. We must be born of the Spirit and then anointed by the Spirit.

Jesus told His followers whom He had already made into new creations when He breathed on them saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” that they were to be clothed with power from on High. Being new creations with a new Life, they were going to need the Holy Spirit’s power to live that new life.

Peter, on the Day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came upon the 120 gathered followers of Jesus empowering them to live the new life they had received, made an amazing claim about God’s promise. He said that people must repent of their sin, turn to God, be identified with Jesus in His death and resurrection through baptism and they would receive the gift, the anointing of the Holy Spirit JUST AS the 120 had received. Peter states that this promise was for those present that day, their children and as many as God would ever call. That means ALL followers of Jesus Christ are meant to receive that anointing, that release of the Holy Spirit for mission and ministry.

It is in surrendering all of life to the ongoing work of life-transformation by the Holy Spirit’s power that the church extends the Kingdom of God in this age. The Holy spirit, the Sovereign Lord, does not partially indwell the believer. He comes to live fully in the life surrendered to Him. His Life in us makes us part of the Body of Christ. One would expect that IF the church IS the Body of Christ, then the life and ministry lived out through the church would look like the Life, mission and ministry of Jesus Christ that we can read in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Jesus doesn’t “partially” live His life in His followers; He lives His full life in them transforming them, guiding them, correcting them, empowering them to do His will, His way. Together, as His church, His Body on earth, He means to demonstrate and manifest the Kingdom of God through us as He did in His earthly ministry.

Since Jesus Christ is the same yesterday today, and forever, we should never lower our expectations that somehow the church is just meant to limp on through history with mere word and not the demonstration of the Holy Spirit and God’s power. Our faith is never meant to just be grounded in human oratory, but in the power of God.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

 THE FOLLY OF IDOLATRY Martin Luther said that the human heart is an idol factory. The truth is that we were created to know and live by the gracious rule of and in the Presence of God who created us. Our peace, our understanding of meaning and purpose can only be truly grounded in God who created us for that meaning and purpose. The rebellion of Adam and Eve, their decision to do the opposite of what God said would make for life, resulted in spiritual and ultimately physical death. They chose to believe they needed something more than what God had provided. Their doomed attempt to try and live life without reference to God as the ground of meaning and purpose did not make life fuller, but emptied it. They wanted to decide what was good and what was evil without God and the disintegration of human life was the consequence. Rather than living in the Presence of God and by the gracious rule of God all around them, they turned from wholeness to brokenness, from fulfilment to scarc...
Post a Comment
Read more
  WORKING AGAINST ALL HUMANITY 1 Thessalonians 2:15-16 “They fail to please God and WORK AGAINST ALL HUMANITY   as they try to keep us from preaching the Good News of salvation to the Gentiles. By doing this, they continue to pile up their sins.” WOW! What a startling statement! St. Paul is making it crystal clear that those who oppose and work to prevent the proclamation of the Gospel are actually “working against ALL HUMANITY.” Why would he write that? It is because the only means of the restoration, reclamation and salvation of humanity is what God has done for all people through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That is the essence of the Gospel: Jesus Christ. To oppose and try to silence the presentation of the Gospel is to work against the reclamation of all humanity. Who would want to work against ALL humanity? Satan is the name by which he is known. He hates ALL humanity because every human being still bears the image of God, albeit that ima...
Post a Comment
Read more
  TIMING Years ago, I head an old preacher say, “The right thing at the wrong time is the wrong thing.” That statement is an offense to the culture being worshipped world-wide today. There is a lust for the immediate, as a line from an old movie stated, “Immediate gratification takes too long!” We want faster internet, immediate responses to our texts, mobile orders at the ready when we walk into Starbucks. What we want, we demand to have NOW. We are masters at justifying ourselves. “Well, we’re engaged already and we’re going to get married anyway, so what’s wrong with us living together and being sexually intimate now?” God’s timing in human relationship is not arbitrary, it is protective and covering. Sad to say, even some who call themselves followers of Jesus Christ choose to justify their living in sexual sin now, because they promise that they will one day get married. The context where sexual intimacy finds its true meaning and purpose is in the covenant of marriage. ...
Post a Comment
Read more