{"id":2763,"date":"2020-04-22T09:11:14","date_gmt":"2020-04-22T13:11:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ec2-18-221-120-76.us-east-2.compute.amazonaws.com\/?page_id=2763"},"modified":"2020-04-22T09:11:14","modified_gmt":"2020-04-22T13:11:14","slug":"the-light-of-the-world","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/societies.newchurch.org\/phoenix\/from-the-pastors\/the-light-of-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"The Light of the World"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lately I\u2019ve been thinking a lot about outreach, or about sharing the Lord\u2019s truth with those who may not yet have heard it. The simple fact is that the Lord told us\u2014commanded<\/em> us\u2014to share His truth with everyone. Virtually every Christian knows the Great Commission, the Lord\u2019s last words in the Gospel of Matthew:<\/p>\n

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Go\u00a0therefore and\u00a0make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am\u00a0with you always,\u00a0even\u00a0to the end of the age. (28:19-20)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Lord\u2019s commission to His disciples at the end of the Gospel of Mark is even shorter and more direct:<\/p>\n

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Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. (16:15)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The word \u201cgospel\u201d has come to be almost synonymous with \u201cthe Christian message,\u201d but the word itself simply means \u201cgood news.\u201d And what is this good news? That Christ rose from His tomb on the third day? That\u2019s part of it. But of course, it\u2019s so much more than that\u2014the good news is that God is on our side, that hell is powerless against Him, that heaven is real, that salvation is possible\u2026. The good news runs on and on. It wells up like a fountain of living waters. The Christian message is alive with hope and with illuminating light, and at no point is the good news \u201cover.\u201d The whole of the Lord\u2019s Word is His gospel, and His Word is infinitely profound.<\/p>\n

What we\u2019re commanded to share with \u201call the world,\u201d then, isn\u2019t something we can fit on a brochure or a postcard. It\u2019s not enough for us to make our \u201cpitch\u201d\u2014to trot out our carefully worded thirty-second speech\u2014and then dust off our hands and go home and have no more to do with the gospel. Which may be quite disheartening, because talking to a relative stranger about one\u2019s own religion for even just thirty seconds takes a substantial amount of courage. If that\u2019s not enough, then the bar is really high. What are<\/em> we supposed to share with the world, then?<\/p>\n

In the Gospel of John, the Lord gives His disciples a command that says a lot about what the Great Commission really means. He says:<\/p>\n

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A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another. (13:34-35)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This commandment is perhaps as well-known as the Great Commission, but I don\u2019t know how often they\u2019re treated\u2014as I believe they should be\u2014as simply two different phrasings of the very same commandment. The Lord sends His disciples out before all the world, bearing His teachings, bearing His good news, bearing His love, bearing\u2026 Him. The gospel has life unto itself because it is His <\/em>truth. It is from Him and it is Him\u2014He is the Word made flesh (John 1:14). We make ourselves know to the world as His disciples when we let ourselves be made images and likenesses of Him, loving as He loves. In a word, then, what we are to share with all the world is\u2026 the Lord. He said to us:<\/p>\n

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You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all\u00a0who are in the house. Let your light so shine before men,\u00a0that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. (Matt. 5:14-16)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

We can be thrown by the commandment to let \u201cour\u201d light shine. Surely the light the Lord wants us to share is not the light of our own brilliance or our own accomplishments. However much we might like to share that sort of light with the world, it\u2019s pretty obvious that promoting ourselves doesn\u2019t serve His purposes. To my mind, the quality of the light that we are to share is captured best in this statement from the Lord\u2019s own Word:<\/p>\n

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Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. (Isaiah 60:1)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The glory of the Lord\u2014the power of the Lord, the light of the Lord, the love of the Lord\u2014wells up like living water in those who give their lives to Him. And He says let it shine! Take away the veils! It is not ourselves that are glorified when we set that light on a lampstand: the glory belongs to our Father in heaven. It\u2019s not for our sake that we shine, but for His\u2014for the sake of the great and beautiful work that He has commanded us to do, the work of sharing the warmth of His <\/em>presence with the world. \u201cI am the light of the world,\u201d He says (John 8:12, 9:5). And He says, \u201cI\u00a0am\u00a0in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you\u201d (John 14:20). The glory of the Lord has risen upon us, and He exhorts us: share it.<\/em><\/p>\n

Letting that light shine is more complicated than finding the right words to put on a postcard, and takes considerably more courage. The good news isn\u2019t something we can put out there and then walk away from. More than anything else, letting the glory of the Lord shine in us has to do with living a life of charity, a life in which He can be present. He commanded us, \u201cLet your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works<\/em>\u2026\u201d (Matt. 5:16). He also said, \u201cBy this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another\u201d (John 13:35). We can share the gospel without words\u2014and in fact, none of our words will ever be able to hold the fulness of the good news.<\/p>\n

And, all that being said, the Lord also commanded us to go to all nations, teaching them to observe all things that He has commanded us (Matt. 28:20). Words have a place in the sharing of the good news. More important than exactly what we say is the courage to speak in the first place. Our God will guide us, if we\u2019re willing to put ourselves and our voices into His hands (Matt. 10:19). His goal is to make Himself known to every human heart that is willing to receive Him, for the sake of giving us joy in His heavenly home. If we make ourselves willing vessels, He will do good. He will find a way to do good\u2014in us, and through us.<\/p>\n

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Most assuredly, I say to you, he\u00a0who\u00a0receives\u00a0whomever I send\u00a0receives\u00a0Me; and he\u00a0who\u00a0receives\u00a0Me\u00a0receives\u00a0Him\u00a0who\u00a0sent Me. (John 13:20)<\/em><\/p>\n

As many as received Him, to them He gave the\u00a0right to become children of God\u2026. (John 1:12)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u2014Rev. Jared Buss, June 2019<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this article Rev. Jared Buss asks what it is that Christians are called to share with the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3940,"parent":17,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2763","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","blog-style1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/societies.newchurch.org\/phoenix\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/societies.newchurch.org\/phoenix\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/societies.newchurch.org\/phoenix\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/societies.newchurch.org\/phoenix\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/societies.newchurch.org\/phoenix\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/societies.newchurch.org\/phoenix\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2763\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/societies.newchurch.org\/phoenix\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/17"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/societies.newchurch.org\/phoenix\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/societies.newchurch.org\/phoenix\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/societies.newchurch.org\/phoenix\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/societies.newchurch.org\/phoenix\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}