It is important to distinguish Christ as savior from Christ as example. Because Jesus saves me from sin and death, I want to live a Christ-like life, but living a Christ-like life doesn’t save me. “We preach Christ crucified,” Paul said, and the church preaches, but is the church Christ-like in the way we do mission?
The four Gospels report the suffering of Jesus, and most of us have heard those accounts for decades. We can gain new appreciation for the cross from the fifth Gospel. Fifth Gospel, you say? Yes, that’s what Isaiah has been called. In four passages about the suffering servant, the church from day one has seen prophecies about Jesus. Jesus’ mission is not to sit comfortably in a church pew.
“I gave my back to those who strike, and my cheeks to those who pull out the beard; I hid not my face from disgrace and spitting” (Isaiah 50:6). “He had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not” (Isaiah 53:2-3). Though trusting in His Father, the servant had his moments. “I said, ‘I have labored in vain; I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity” (Isaiah 49:3-4).
We do believe Jesus is our savior, but I – maybe this is just me – don’t see the suffering Christ in the way many congregations do mission. Christ says, “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners,” and “sinners” meant disreputable people shunned by us upstanding folks (Matthew 9:13). “This is the love of the cross, born of the cross, which turns in the direction where it does not find good, which it may enjoy, but where it may confer good upon the evil and needy person” (Martin Luther). Are we Christ-like if we let social agencies do this for us?
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