Summary
The Heartbeat of the Mission
To love the Lord our God is the heartbeat of our mission—the spring from which our service overflows, across the street or around the world. The mission itself never changes: to proclaim and live the truth in Jesus' name. Following the cross as the crux of the matter, and the candle that reflects Christ's light, this third movement gets to what actually drives the Christian outward into the world.
Paul names that engine in 2 Corinthians 5:14: "the love of Christ urges us on." The Greek word translated "urges" means to control, to compel, to hold in one's grip. Paul was being accused of being an insane fanatic for proclaiming Jesus, but he was not driven by duty or temperament. He was gripped by the love of Christ. That love had taken hold of his words and his actions, and it would not let him go.
What gripped Paul is the substitutionary atonement: "one has died for all, therefore all have died." The little word for means in place of and on behalf of. God's wrath against sin requires a death to set things right, and Jesus drank that cup willingly in our place. As 2 Corinthians 5:21 puts it, "for our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." 1 Timothy 2:5–6 names Jesus as the one mediator who gave himself a ransom for all, and Romans 5:8–9 declares that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us, and now, justified by his blood, we are saved through him from the wrath of God.
"Therefore all have died." When Jesus died, our sin died with him. This is baptismal language. Romans 6:3–4 teaches that all who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death, buried with him, and raised to walk in newness of life. When God looks at the baptized, he does not see a sinner who deserves wrath. He sees Jesus Christ. He sees us through the blood of Jesus—pure, righteous, welcome at the throne. Galatians 3:26–27 says that as many as were baptized into Christ have clothed themselves with Christ. We are no longer the blemished sheep, no longer scarlet with sin, but clothed in his righteousness.
This changes how we live. "He died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them" 2 Corinthians 5:15. Sinful flesh keeps tugging us back toward taking care of number one. Jesus exposes that pull in the parable of the rich fool in Luke 12:16–21: a man whose fields produced abundantly, who could have fed countless families, but chose instead to tear down his barns, build bigger ones, and tell his soul to eat, drink, and be merry. God called him a fool. That very night his life was demanded of him. The Christian life is not characterized by self-love, but by the love of Christ that compels us outward.
That is why the early church in Acts is such a fitting model. The first disciples shared the gospel verbally, proclaimed salvation in the name of Jesus without ceasing, and would not stop even when arrested, beaten, and dragged before the council. Their boldness flowed from the same love that gripped Paul. Acts 1:8 maps the trajectory: Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth—concentric circles of mission that begin at our doorstep and reach to the world. Equipped through teaching that shows us who is in our mission field, how to engage them, and the boldness to do it, every Christian is sent. The old model said the church does ministry while the people help. Acts flips it: the people of God do the work of witness, and the church equips, supports, and sends. To love the Lord our God is the heartbeat of that mission—and so we sing, and so we live.
Video citations
- "Heartbeat" Nov 4, 2018 — Alright, honest, honest question, how many of you have had this hymn stuck in your heads for a couple weeks now? Anyone? Anyone? I see a couple hymns. I was driving along and last week, just,…