My food is to do the will of Him who sent me and to finish His work. (John 4:34)
God Sent His Son
Whatever the will of the Father was, Jesus made it His priority to fulfil it. The work of forgiveness and redemption is for lost humanity. The desire to demonstrate the love of God. The commitment to reveal God and indicate what true humanity was about. The quest to express and establish the rule of God. All these and more were about fulfilling the will of the Father.
The adversary desired to do everything possible to dissuade Jesus from doing just that. Whether tempting in the wilderness or in Peter rebuking Jesus for outlining the mission that had to go through the cross, it was vital that every effort was made to get Jesus off track. Yet all those efforts only had the effect of deepening the determination and commitment of Christ to complete the mission and fulfil the Father’s will.
The episode where Jesus talks with the woman at the well offers the disciples a valuable insight into what it means to live for the Father. They thought that someone had fed Jesus as they returned to Him. Yet they discovered that His appetite was filled by something of far greater worth than physical food. Indeed, when the devil sought to tempt Jesus with food, Jesus referred to the only bread that mattered.
This zeal and focus on only doing what the Father told Him to do put Him at odds with other people’s agendas, and it certainly upset the religious status quo of the day. The connection and relationship between Father and Son, defines why such opposition and resistance made no difference to what Jesus was doing. That unity between Father and Son was something on display in the years of ministry. This unity, however, was evident from eternity past to eternity to come. This was a relationship that had always been about honouring and loving the other.
Jesus knew where He came from, and He knew who He belonged to. This was key in propelling Him to value higher than anything else, having that driving desire to do what He was sent to do.
So God sends us
God does not send out people without establishing a relationship with them. And throughout that relationship, He reaffirms and commits to the relationship first and foremost. He loves us and chooses us to belong to Him. He commits Himself to us in steadfast love and faithfulness. He invests His character in the relationship. This is the base in which we affirm our identity in the relationship, and that generates through the Spirit a desire to be pleasing to the Father just as the Son did.
Thus, when we are called, it is out of what it is to belong to Him. And that belonging then underlines how what we’re doing is in a similar way to the Son. We recognise that He has prepared work for us to do – so we want to carry on with the work so that we will fulfil His will. Some of us get the impression that the relationship is very much like a child with a parent who is constantly expressing needs that should be met and hoping God will fix it. The idea, however, is for maturity to become more like Jesus. Though Jesus accepted the support His Father gave Him, the dynamic was still very much about what He did to fulfil what the Father required. He was careful to serve, because He knew that’s what His Fathe wanted. He was careful to speak only the words that were given to Him by His Father. That presence of mind to be careful in serving and speaking can very well be our portion because we know God expects us to talk and demonstrate with action. This is all, however, still based on the relationship that He establishes with us as He affirms us and fills us with the power to do what is important to Him. That is to fulfil His will.
Our challenge is to see what it means to be sent in this way today. What does it look like in our relationships, work activities, serving, and conversations? How can we reflect on how our belonging propels us to desire to fulfil the will of the Father? How do we express that on the individual and communal level?
As the Father sent the Son, He is sending us.
For His Name’s Sake
C. L. J. Dryden
Shalom
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