Mere Missions

T he C hurch : E quip • 167

Lord of Harvest to send workers into the harvest field of lost souls. And when He responds, and He will because His desire is that none should perish, then the local church is the only place for these workers to have their calling recognized. It is here that they can be identified, apprenticed, commissioned and released into missions. 2. Another subtle scheme that Satan is focused on is to malign the necessity of submission to authority. He has been at this since before the creation of the world. It was his rebellion to submit to the authority of the Creator God that caused His banishment from Heaven and ultimately to eternal damnation in the Lake of Fire (Rev. 20.10). In his own pride, arrogance, and un-submissive spirit, He was banished from heaven to earth, and brought this same spirit to our first parents in the Garden of Eden. His half-truth, “Did God say,” set into motion a questioning of submission to the Authority of God. And as we know, their rebellion led to their downfall resulting in death, pain, struggle, and sorrow. To this day, the knowledge of good and evil binds us to question authority. To submit to another, whether visible (humanity) or invisible (God), grates against our drive to be like God, i.e., to be our own authority, our own god. Jesus enters into time and history and lives out what submission to authority looks like as the Son of Man. He was submissive as a child to his earthly father and mother, “And he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was submissive to them” (Luke 2.51a). His ministry starts with submission to John through baptism, “But Jesus answered him, ‘Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness” (Matt. 3.15). Jesus’s life was unashamedly and perfectly submitted to the will of God the Father, “For I have come down from heaven (sent), not to do my own will but the will of Him who sent me” (John 6.38).

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