March/April 2003
It's Not About Us!
by J. Michael Feazel
| We seem to find ourselves more comfortable with the idea of the law fulfilling love than we are with the idea of love fulfilling the law. |
John the Baptizer was an amazingly popular figure. Everybody in Jerusalem and people from all over the Judean countryside went out to listen to him preach (Mark 1:1-8). But they didn't just listen -- they responded; they confessed their sins and were baptized! Not only was John popular, he was also successful.
For all his popularity and success, though, John was strikingly different from the average man. Many people respond to great popularity and success with a certain degree of pride and swagger. But from the beginning, John the Baptizer was different.
"Not About Me"
Perhaps you have seen the slogan, "It's not about me." That was the root of John's message. He preached about someone else, someone who would come after him whose sandal thongs John did not consider himself even worthy to tie.
John wasn't interested in the limelight. He wasn't interested in the praise or admiration of others. He was interested in preparing the way for someone else, and he didn't let personal ambition get in the way of doing his job well.
John was a baptizer. Among the preparations he made for the coming of Christ was the task of preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. For those who listened, John's baptism marked the laying aside of human pride and coming empty-handed before God for mercy. Baptism was symbolic of a new spiritual birth, of entering into a new form of life.
If you have repented of your sins and been baptized as a Christian, you have no doubt discovered that actually entering that new life, becoming that new person, is another question entirely. When we try to do that, we find ourselves fighting our old ways, but losing so often we can easily fall into despair.
That is, unless we trust God to be who he really is for us in Jesus Christ!
All this repenting, believing and passing through the waters of baptism have meaning only because God makes them have meaning. Only because the Son of God took the indescribable action of becoming one of us -- living sinlessly as one of us, dying on the cross as one of us, being resurrected as one of us, ascending to and being received by the Father as one of us, does any of this stuff make any sense at all.
It makes sense because God, in his divine freedom to be who he wants to be for our sakes, makes it make sense.
A Lesson in Humility
God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in Jesus Christ, and to reconcile to himself all things in heaven and earth through Christ's death (see Colossians 1:19-20).
That is the way God chose to make us into a new creation. The Son of God took humanity into himself, and in his perfect, obedient sacrifice of love, he reconciled humanity to God. In faith, we can rest in him.
John's ministry was a ministry of humility. Baptism is an expression of humility. The Son of God humbled himself to become one of us for our sakes. And the new life in Christ that is the gift of our Creator and Redeemer to us is a life of humility.
It's not about me. If it were about me, what would I do? How could I heal my own past, my present and future? How could I redeem my own faults, sins, betrayals and rebellion? How could I secure my future or the future of those I care about?
No, thank God, it's not about me. It's about Jesus Christ, the Son of God incarnate for our sakes. He is the one who heals our personal history, redeems our every dark sin, secures our future and gives us deep peace and rest.
Praise be to God that we can drop all our airs of superiority and pride, and humble ourselves before the mighty hand of God, because he is truly our all in all.
-- J. Michael Feazell