At the heart of the Mission Focused Men podcast/blog is the belief that Christian men don’t want to fail in the mission Christ has assigned to them. It turns out that the Christmas season is a great time to sharpen our focus on what OUR everyday mission as Christ-followers IS because we better understand what CHRIST’s mission WAS. Jesus’ mission was NOT merely to come down from heaven, die for our sins, and then whisk us back to heaven when we die. If that had been JESUS’ mission, then OUR mission would be basically waiting around until we die! So, what was Jesus’ mission, and how does that impact our daily life?
To understand why the Messiah had to come we need to go all the way back to what Adam’s original mission was. God’s purpose in creating Adam was to bear his image, to reflect the very nature of God. Since God is the ultimate, creative ruler, Adam and Eve are given their own kingdom to rule and care for. Adam and Eve were to develop the potential of their kingdom by being fruitful to produce other image bearers, and with the Law of God written on their conscience, by shaping emerging culture as earth’s potential is unleashed and their descendants specialize and interact with each other creating culture.
The two verbs describing Adam’s specific task were AVAD—to make the garden fruitful, and SHAMAR, to protect the garden from harm. However, when Adam yielded to temptation, aligning himself with the rebellion of Satan and his angels, Adam brought decay into the garden instead of fruitfulness, and harm into the garden instead of safety. God’s curse upon Adam and Eve was that the kingdom they were to rule righteously for the High King became enslaved to Satan, Sin, and Death. Earth, which was to be a physical, visible picture--an image—of the kingdom of God in heaven, became, instead, a visible expression of rebellion against God’s rule and a picture of the devastation that sin brings to all of life. God’s glorious creation is still good, and beautiful, but it is marred by sin. Adam’s fallen kingdom, now ruled by Satan, sin, and death, became a kingdom described by the word, darkness. Adam’s kingdom became a kingdom of darkness. This kingdom is what Jesus came to change. For example:
- Paul tells us that it is from this dark kingdom that believers are rescued, He has delivered us from the domain of DARKNESS and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son (Col 1:13)
- Jesus said, And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the DARKNESS rather than the light because their works were evil.
- The Apostle, John, wrote: This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in DARKNESS, we lie and do not practice the truth (1 John 1:5-6).
- Paul describes a category of demons as cosmic powers over this present darkness (Eph 6:12).
The Messiah that God promised to his people was not one who would free them from the despots Rome, Assyria, or Babylon as some Jews thought, but one who would overthrow the far more vile and powerful despots, Satan, sin, and death—the rulers of the kingdom of darkness. So, the Christmas story begins:
The people who walked IN DARKNESS have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone….For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore (Is 9:2, 5-7).
The Messiah’s role in undoing the tragedy of Adam and Eve’s rebellion had been hinted at in God’s pronouncement of the curse upon the serpent. God had said, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel” (Gen 3:15). This verse has been labeled the protoevangelium, the first announcement of the gospel. One day a second Adam would come to win back the kingdom lost by the first Adam. He would overthrow Satan, crushing his head, removing Satan and the effects of sin from his creation and establish his everlasting kingdom of justice and righteousness. All of life on planet earth would be redeemed. In the meantime, Adam’s descendants would be in for the fight of their lives. As one scholar writes,
Genesis 3:15 prefigures history as a conflict between the ‘father of lies’ and the champion of God. The followers of darkness will cling desperately to their power and imagined victory while those who follow the rightful King are busy reclaiming the creation in His name. We are participants in this battle which is fought upon the panorama of history” (All of Life Redeemed, Bill Ingram).
The coming of the Messiah means empowering Christ followers to reclaim culture, recovering Adam’s original two callings from Genesis 2:15, The Lord God…put him in the garden of Eden to WORK it and KEEP it. As we have often seen, to keep (AVAD in Hebrew) means to cultivate, to develop, to help to succeed. Godly masculinity means spending ourselves so others reach their potential, bringing health, wholeness, reconciliation, and life everywhere we go. We are especially drawn to the poor, the homeless, the broken, and the lost, because at the root of Jesus mission is restoring everything broken by sin. Adam’s calling to keep or protect the garden is also renewed in Christ’s calling to Christian men. Adam, through his sin, invited Satan into his kingdom. The Messiah, God, Himself, was the only one who could defeat the Evil One and his minions. Colossians 2:15 reads, When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them. Although Paul tells us that Satan was ultimately defeated at the cross, he is only disarmed in some sense right now, not destroyed. He and the fallen angels remain to resist the spread of Christ’s righteous kingdom of light over the earth.
Adam’s original calling to work and keep the garden is recovered by our leader, the second Adam, and filled with special meaning when we realize that the Messiah’s mission in coming to earth was to overthrow the kingdom of darkness to establish the kingdom of light. The Christmas story shouts to us that Christian men are called to a relentless battle with the kingdom of darkness and to care well for those broken by sin.
Three Ways to Battle Darkness as Agents of the Kingdom of Light
A. Walk as children of light. Paul wrote to the Ephesians, At one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them (5:7-11). When we realize that seeking first the kingdom of God means seeking first the kingdom of LIGHT, personal integrity becomes foundational. There is no place for hiding our sin. As long as we keep our secret sins hidden, they have tremendous power over us. Notice the link between bringing our sins into the light and Jesus cleansing our dirty character: God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son CLEANSES us from all sin (1 John 1:5-8).
When it comes, for example, to sexual sin, it is imperative to bring the sin into the open by finding a safe confidante in a pastor or accountability partner to confess to. Otherwise, the sin will maintain its hold on is. Joe Dallas, a trainer of the Every Man’s Battle workshops observes: Sexual sin thrives in the dark. If you’re caught up in any sexual vice, one thing is certain; the secrecy surrounding your behavior is what strengthens its hold on you. However ashamed you may feel about admitting your problem to another person, the reality is this: YOU CAN’T OVERCOME THIS ON YOUR OWN. IF YOU COULD, WOULDN’T YOU HAVE DONE SO BY NOW?
Our king IS light. We can’t serve him and keep hiding parts of our lives from him.
A second part of walking in the light is winsomely taking a stand for biblical truth which is what Paul seemed to be referring to in saying to expose the works of darkness. We certainly have a tremendous responsibility to expose the darkness of sin by our example of right living. As firstfruits of the new creation, we are called to show the world the glory of God’s new, restored humanity, living out the upside down values of the kingdom of God. But this word, expose, has a tone to it of going beyond example, of reproving and convicting. Here is the call to strong men to winsomely stand for truth in the culture. One such man was a Navy pilot named Tom Joyce. He was assigned the command of a west coast F14 squadron after both the commanding officer and executive officer were removed because of the Tailhook sexual abuse scandal. The carrier was deployed from San Diego, then Tom picks up the story.
As soon as I had opportunity, because we were going into our first port visit, I got all my guys together—thirty-six officers in the Ready Room. I said, “I know what the background of this squadron has been. You’ve lost a CO and an XO because of that. But things have changed. Here's what I'm going to do. We're heading into a port visit tomorrow, and if it comes to my attention that any of you men has done something immoral behind your wife or girlfriend's back, I'm going to send you home. I don't care where we are on the deployment, I'm going to send you home and 1) you will pay your own way home, and 2) you can knock on the door and explain to your wife or grilfriend why you came home.
You could hear a pin drop in that room. The meeting ended. One young Lieutenant came up to me and asked, “Permission to speak frankly, Sir?” I gave him permission.
He said, “You’re an idiot” (I wasn’t expecting that much frankness). He continued, “You can’t dictate your morals on us. You can’t tell us what we can and can’t do on our own free time in port.”
I told him, “Number one, adultery is a violation of the Uniform Military Code of Justice. It’s against the law. Number two, go ahead and push me. You’ll be the first to go.”
We came home six months later on December 23rd….I led a ten plane formation over the flight line at Miramar Naval Air Station, thousands of friends and family members waiting for us to come in.. As the Co, I landed first. So as each pilot took his flight gear off, I went up, shook his hand, and said, “On behalf of a grateful nation, I welcome you back to the United States. Thanks so much for your great work and encouragement to me, following my leadership. Now go see your family and Merry Christmas to you.
Every one of these guys—they didn’t want to say it publicly—but nearly every one of these men would shake my hand, grab me close, and say, “Thanks for holding me accountable. Thanks for helping me do the right thing.”
That is what it looks like to walk as a child of light, bringing light to a dark place.
B. Paul identifies another very specific way to function as agents of light: stop grumbling. He writes, Do all things without grumbling or disputing, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world. One of the more serious sins of the Children of Israel was grumbling against God (see Deut. 32:5). Grumbling and complaining about their circumstances comes naturally to those who are lost and don’t know the love of Christ. They don’t know the sovereign God who might be using those difficulties to get them to come to him. Why should they trust him?
But to Paul, how could a child of God grumble about the situations God ordains? We know the love of a God who bought us out of slavery to the taskmaster, Sin, at the cost of the blood of his own son. We know that God is a loving heavenly father who loves to give good gifts to his children. Complaining, especially for Christians, is a form of public disloyalty to the God who is in charge. How could those who get to call the Holy One, Abba, be so disloyal?
On the positive side, when we express the contentment of child-like trust that all things will work together for good, our cheerful spirit leaps out at those around us. Proverbs 15:15 says, the cheerful of heart has a continual feast. Contentment is a choice to be loyal to God. It is to adopt the heart attitude of Habakkuk who like Job faced affliction but, in the end, chose to trust in the goodness of God that was beyond his comprehension. He closed his Oracle: Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation (Hab 3:17-19).
God reveals to us through Paul that loyalty to our God by refusing to grumble is so striking to the fallen world that it will stand out like a brilliant star on a dark night.
C. Agents of Light are committed to showing the reality of that kingdom through their good deeds. Jesus said, You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven (Matt 5:14-16).
The grand apologetic for the gospel is our good deeds, our ministry of mercy. Our good deeds get the attention of the world. Tim Keller observes,
Mercy has an impact. It melts hearts. It removes objections. It forces respect out of those even hostile to the gospel. Our good deeds glorify God in the eyes of the world ….The Roman emperor, Julian tried in the fourth century to revive a paganism that was dying before the spread of Christianity. As part of his plan, he ordered that hospices must be established in every town for poor relief. “It is disgraceful that…while the impious Galileans (i.e. Christians) support both their own poor and ours as well, all men see that our people lack aid from us.” (Ministries of Mercy: The Call of the Jericho Road, Tim Keller).
How is that for a public report on Christian's good deeds? Good deeds are simply acts done to benefit others, with no motive of reward. This part of our mission as men makes perfect sense, when we go back to Adam’s calling to cause the garden to flourish. A gardener neither destroys nature nor leaves it the way it is. He cultivates it, bringing out its potential, enhancing its beauty, usefulness, and fruitfulness. God expects his servants to bring all creation under his lordship. The fall caused the fragmentation of man’s relationships. Man became alienated from God, from each other and from nature itself. Now sickness, hunger, natural disaster, social injustice, and death dominate. As we recover Adams original calling to help the world around us flourish, we help others overcome obstacles to developing their potential (AVAD) and protect them (SHAMAR) from a hostile environment. These actions are known in Scripture as good deeds as well as mercy ministries. Here is a truth about being light to the world around us that is worth mulling over during this Christmas season:
Doing good deeds that alleviate human suffering when we see it is such an essential mark of being a Christian that it can be used as a test of true faith. Mercy is not optional or an addition to being a Christian...As agent of the kingdom, the church seeks to bring substantial healing of the effects of sin in all areas of life, including psychological, social, economic, and physical (Ibid).
Let’s ask God to help us do a better job of letting the world around us see the kingdom of light, by flooding our portion of the world with good deeds.
For Further Prayerful Thought:
- In your own words, what is the significance of Isaiah’s prophecy, The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone (Is 9:2)?
- Why is hiding our sin inconsistent with following Christ? What protections does a person need in a friend in order to confess honestly his struggles with sin?
- Do you agree that complaining is a form of disloyalty to God? What is the line between expressing our feelings (a good, thing) and a grumbling attitude?
- Why does it make sense that the way to win lost folks to Christ is for them to see us constantly doing good deeds to benefit the most needy around us?
