The ABC’s of Life & Mission
Where do we start? Where did Jesus start?
Matthew 3:16-17
When He had been baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened to Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting upon Him. 17 And suddenly a voice came from heaven, saying, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”
Jesus lived in obscurity in ‘sleepy hollow Nazareth’. Then suddenly He became a 30-year-old overnight sensation. What happened at His baptism can serve as encouragement to us in our life and mission.
At the river, He began His public ministry with approval from His Heavenly Father: “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”
He was living by faith like any man under God’s covenant, pleasing to God, and now at His baptism gets a public thumbs up at the very start. Talk about having your back covered by an approving Father. The fact that Father God approved of Him publicly showed the hearers that Jesus belonged to Him. He was boldly declared to be God’s Son. Yes He functioned as a prophet, priest and king, but it was His sonship that speaks of divinity, of family belonging, and serves as a further foundation for fruitful life and mission.
The presence of the Holy Spirit at this moment, not only speaks of the ‘trinity’ being involved in this, but also of Jesus commission where the abiding power He now enjoyed was soon put to use in turning the water into wine at the Cana wedding. The dove like God of peace was soon to crush satan under Jesus’ feet in His ministry and final work at the cross where His blood took away all of our sin.
So, the ABC’s of Jesus’ life and mission are: acceptance, belonging and commission.
Let’s settle it. God is for us too. We are His sons.
John 1:12
12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children (sons and daughters) of God, to those who believe in His name:
We are accepted in the Beloved (Ephesians 1:3), we belong to Him (Romans 8:14) and are commissioned
with the power of the Holy Spirit to live life and mission (Acts 1:8).
Have at it. Enjoy your ABC’s.