Saturday
Saturday
The Cross and Mission
I tell you the truth, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.
John 12:24
Among the pilgrims in Jerusalem there were some Greeks. Evidently, neither the philosophy of Greece nor the religion of Judaism had satisfied them. They were still spiritually hungry. So they came to Philip (perhaps because of his Greek name) and asked him, “Sir … we would like to see Jesus” (v. 21). Jesus’s reply to their question was indirect but clear in its implications: “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified” (v. 23). In other words, those Greeks had asked at precisely the right time, for he was about to be glorified, that is, revealed in all his glory. That hour we know from elsewhere was the hour of his death.
Jesus went on to develop an agricultural metaphor. If a seed remains in the dry, warm security of the granary, it will never reproduce itself. It has to be buried alive in the cold, dark grave of the soil. There it has to die. Then out of its wintry grave the springtime corn will sprout. One could sum it up in a simple rhyme: “If it clings to its own, it will remain all alone, but if it dies, it multiplies.” Of this fundamental principle the cross of Jesus is history’s supreme example. If he had clung to life, the world would have died. But because he died in the godforsaken darkness, there is life for the world.
Tony Lambert in his book The Resurrection of the Chinese Church wrote, “The reason for the growth of the church in China … is inextricably linked to the whole theology of the cross. The stark message of the Chinese Church is that God uses suffering … to pour out revival and build his church.”
Another link between the cross and mission was Jesus’s claim, “But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself” (v. 32). His promise seems to combine the literal and the figurative. The primary reference is clearly to his being lifted up on the cross (v. 33), and indeed the cross exerts its own magnetism. But he is also lifted up figuratively whenever he is faithfully proclaimed. We rejoice in the universal appeal of Christ crucified, an appeal that is irrespective of ethnicity, nationality, class, gender, and age.
For further reading: John 12:20–33