“And we have seen and we testify,” wrote the apostle John, “that the Father has sent his Son as the world’s Savior” (1 Jn. 4:14). This verse sums up the pattern we find in the prayer Jesus prayed on the night he was betrayed to be crucified. In John 17 he spoke of his mission – he was sent by the Father to go into the world. And his duty in the world was to declare the Father’s words. This caused the ones that the Father had given him to come to him and believe that he was sent from the Father.
That John was one of those whom the Father had given to the Son is evident from his testimony, “we have seen.” The Father gave them to the Son, so that he might give them eternal life; Jesus said that he protected them while he was with them, so that none of them were lost. The obvious exception to this was Judas the betrayer; he was not lost due to the Son’s failure but as a direct fulfillment of prophetic Scripture. These very disciples who had been preserved by Christ during his earthly ministry became witnesses for him after his return to the Father in heaven. After his resurrection Jesus told them, “As the Father has sent Me, I also send you” (John 20:21).
Be Jesus to the World?
Some see in this a mandate for social action as part of the church’s mission in the world. They say that Jesus is calling for an incarnational ministry on the part of his disciples, drawing a direct comparison in John 17:18 between his being sent in the incarnation and the sending of his disciples into the world. When he was on earth Jesus cared for the physical needs of hurting people, and since he has gone, they reason, we must be his hands and feet. Since Jesus healed the sick, we ought to build hospitals and organize vaccination campaigns. Since he fed the multitudes with loaves and fish, we ought to dig wells, purchase goats, donate staple foods, and provide meals to the homeless.
These may be good things to do, although we can overestimate their benefits and ignore potential drawbacks. As difficult as it can be to admit, American generosity around the world can do more harm than good at times. We create dependency that dehumanizes the very persons we are trying to help, and we sometimes trample on cultural differences. This undermines our sincere attempts to minister the gospel.
But leaving these practical concerns for the moment, there are other reasons to reject seeing social action as a necessary part of the church’s mission. There is a fundamental disconnect between building hospitals and Jesus’ healing ministry. He healed without the aid of physicians, diagnostic tests, or medicines of any kind; I have yet to see a missionary doctor do the same. And it’s the same with Jesus’ other works. He fed thousands with a few loaves and some small fishes, but that’s a far cry from taking retail food items that are about to expire and giving them to families in need. No soup kitchen chef has yet turned a handful of potatoes and a pound of bacon into enough soup to feed an entire city. As Dave Doran explains, “The Lord’s works were miracles—He fed the hungry by turning a few loaves of bread and fish into enough to feed thousands as a display of supernatural power.”1 The same can be said for his miraculous healings. Doran sums it up well: “His miracles were unique and served the special purpose of authenticating His Messiahship.”2
Furthermore to equate the incarnation of the one and only Son of God, a unique and unrepeatable historical event, to these sincere and generous acts of love by Christians is to cheapen that which is priceless. Yes, Jesus identified himself with us in our humanity, but his incarnation was about much more than that, as we have already seen. He was making manifest the glory of the invisible God, so that sinful men could see him and believe (John 1:14, 18), and he became “like his brethren in all things, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people” (Heb. 2:17). In short, without Jesus’ incarnation, salvation would be impossible! We must not trivialize this doctrine by comparing it only to showing compassion for the suffering of others.
The Ministry of the Word
Jesus’ incarnation was not just about God making himself visible to men. The Son came according to the Father’s will so that he could declare the Father’s word to the world. In fact, it is impossible for anyone to become a disciple apart from the word. It is this word, which Jesus declared to his apostles, that has now been given to us. Again, John wrote in 1 John 4:14, “And we have seen and we testify that the Father has sent his Son as the world’s Savior.” Jesus came to bear witness to the Father’s word in the world, and the men and women who first received that word have in turn delivered it to us. So Jesus prayed, “not only for these [the apostles],” he said in John 17:20, “but also for those who believe in me through their word.” If we are going to fulfill Jesus’ commission in John’s Gospel—“As the Father has sent Me, I also send you”—we must be committed to the ministry of the word. The Father sent Jesus to make his name known to the disciples, and Jesus sent his disciples to make his name known to the world.
The word is essential for discipleship. It is only by God’s word, faithfully recorded by apostles and prophets and preserved by the church through his good providence, that unbelieving sinners are brought to faith. It is by God’s word that these disciples, then, are purified and set apart to do God’s work in the world. It is by God’s word that believers are able to be one, just as the Father and the Son are one. And it is by God’s word that the world is brought to the knowledge that the Father, who loved the Son, loves his disciples also. None of these things happens apart from the ministry of the word.
This explains why we are committed as a church to carefully and consistently preach God’s word. It is why we have Sunday School classes that focus on teaching children Bible basics, while adults engage in one-on-one Bible study. It is why we encourage reading Scripture daily and in our Sunday gatherings, and why we meet mid-week for prayer and theological training. Our priorities as a church flow out of this understanding of Jesus’ mission from the Father and for his disciples.
1Doran, David M., For the Sake of His Name, Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary: 2018, 55.
2Ibid.