2. " As the Father hath sent me, even so send I you." Mark the deep significance of that resounding " as " and " even so,"
1 J. Parker.
352 CHRIST'S MISSION AND OURS
The parallel involves disparity. He is God, and we are but men. He came to atone, and we but preach His sovereign atonement. This and much more is implied in the fact that in this text two different Greek verbs are used, which are translated by the common word " send." The sending of Jesus was a grander sending far than the sending of us. He represents God more intimately and vividly than we can ever represent Him. But if there be this disparity there is in many respects a wonderful identity between His mission in the world and ours. The tenses of the verbs in the original indicate this in a very generative manner. " As the Father hath sent me " — the tense shows that the commission is still in force — " even so send I you." The idea is that our commission is but a continuation of His in another form. The duty of the Christian is practically equivalent to the mission of the Christ. " As the Father hath sent me, even so send I you."
^ The word " send " which He uses concerning Himself is not the same word " send " as that used concerning His disciples. He speaks of Himself as the Apostle of the Father ; He says, in effect, "My Father hath delegated authority to Me," but He never delegated authority to His disciples. The word used concerning them was simpler, and merely indicates that they are His messengers. He dispatches them under authority, but He holds the authority within His own grasp.
Thus the commission of Matthew harmonises with the declara- tion of John : " All authority is given unto me ; go ye, therefore," and be My messengers and preach My Gospel. Jesus has never delegated His authority either to man or to men, to synods or to conferences, or even to unions ; He holds it still Himself.
This is not to degrade the office of the Church; it is to indicate the fact that He brings the Church into such union with Himself that she is to exercise His authority. She is to be the instrument through which He carries out the purposes of God. God delegated all authority to His Son ; and His Son calls into living and vital union with Himself all believers, and they become the instruments through which He carries out the work of God.
And I think the same meaning is found in the words He used on another occasion, when He said, " My Father worketh hitherto, and I work " ; and then, presently. He brought into association with Himself all His disciples when He used the plural and said, " We must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day."
If this be the meaning of the text, then the mission of the Church in the world is the mission of Christ. Ho is the Sent of
ST. JOHN XX. 21 353
the Father, still the living and present Worker ; but the Church is His Body — bone of His bone, flesh of His flesh. " He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit." And as the Church of Jesus Christ realizes her actual and vital union with Christ, she becomes the instrument through which He moves to the accomplishment of His work.^
^ But to be a true disciple is to think of the same things as our prophet, and to think of different things in the same order. To be of the same mind with another is to see all things in the same perspective; it is not to agree in a few indifl'erent matters near at hand and not much debated ; it is to follow him in his farthest flights, to see the force of his hyperboles, to stand so exactly in the centre of his vision that, whatever he may express, your eyes will light at once on the original, that whatever he may see to declare, your mind will at once accept.*
II.
The Mission of Chkist and Our Mission.
The Mission of Jesus Christ to the world may be expressed by three great words — Revelation, Redemption, Salvation.
1. It is a mission of Revelation.
He came to declare the love of the Father's heart. The Father entrusted to the Son the manifestation of His love. " Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren." " But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." The love of the Father to a guilty and dying world was the substance of the Redeemer's message. " God so loved the world," it began. How it would have gladdened that poor prodigal in the parable if he had heard in the midst of his hunger and loneliness that his father tenderly cherished his memory still. He would not then have waited till the pangs of insatiate hunger drove him to his father's presence, if perchance it might yet be open to him, as the only alternative with death. Had a message from the father found him and called him home again, full joyously would he have trodden the homeward path. And so God loved the world in its rebellion and misery — shameful rebellion, no doubt, and merited misery; but