Our Glorious Future: the Beautiful Fullness of the End-Time Church
I heard many times when I was younger that “God loves me and has an amazing plan for my life.” In an American context, this often meant some combination of a sense of destiny, promotion, blessing and favor, and social and ministerial success. I did not know back then as a new, young believer that the Greco-Roman influence of Western culture on the Church has created a highly individualized sense of destiny for young believers. The modern reorientation from God as the center or heart of all things to mankind as the center also contributes powerfully to a sense of personal destiny, or “my destiny.” As I began to gain a better understanding of the Scriptures in their ancient context, however, a very different story became clear to me.
The Bible is meant to be understood as a collective story, one shared by millions of very, very unique and different individuals who often have nothing in common apart from loving Jesus. When we have that shared reality, however, we have everything in common that matters. The journey we are on, into the highest and deepest places of pleasure and joy in experiencing and maturing in the love of the Father, is a journey that transcends history, culture, ethnicity or financial status or station. Rich or poor, mighty or hidden, every man, woman and child around the world and every person who has ever lived has a heavenly invitation to engage in this Gospel story of heart transformation.
When greatness in the eyes of the Lord truly is found in “first and great commandment” love and in Sermon on the Mount obedience, then anyone and everyone is a candidate to achieve this kind of greatness. Beyond the commonality of our collective journey, the corporate achievement of this end is the critical element of the Father’s plan to vindicate His name amongst all who accuse Him, reject Him or diminish Him as the only Worthy One to rule the nations of the earth.
Our heavenly Father has an almost singular focus in His leadership of the Church. His consuming desire is to see all the saints walking in the fullness of Jesus’ first and greatest commandment to love the Lord with all of their heart, soul, mind, and strength. The Father’s desire for us also happens to be the fullness of how we were made to function as human beings. The activity of the Spirit is therefore at work everywhere to stir and awaken love and a desire to please the Father everywhere that sincere love for Jesus can be found in this hour of history. Our common state in the present is that we are saved by grace through faith, filled with the Holy Spirit of God, and stirred by that same grace to love God with all our heart. Our common journey is to overcome the internal and external obstacles set before us in the world and to lay hold of mature love for Jesus, fully given to and obedient to Him, by His great help and leadership. While our occupation and ministry assignments can be a critical part of this journey, these areas are not the defining elements of our life in Christ. Our “destiny” is to be men and women who love Jesus. Our unique callings and assignments are far, far less critical in defining and shaping us in greatness than is this central calling to love, which is shared by every saint.
The apostle Paul understood this. As a Jew, his thinking prior to salvation involved a widespread, national salvation for all his people as they collectively expressed the Law of Moses together faithfully. Upon his salvation, this thinking did not shift to a Greco-Roman individualism. He would have seen intimacy with Jesus by Word and Spirit as the means for the collective Church to be joined together and empowered to accomplish this end. The Church would fulfill the Law by expressing the first and greatest commandment, the one that summed up all the commandments of the Lord and the whole of the Law. The Church’s believers would come into the fullness of the love of Jesus, together.
This end informed Paul’s prayer life and is therefore reflected in every one of his recorded prayers in his New Testament letters. Looking again at his prayer in his letter to the Ephesians, we can catch a helpful glimpse into his heart, and more importantly, into the heart of the Spirit in this present hour for the Church:
For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height—to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Ephesians 3:14–19
This sets our individual journey into context. The key phrase in this prayer is that we “may be able to comprehend with all the saints” (verse 18). If we had a more pronounced sense of how truly connected we are in destiny, we would feel differently about the denominations and expressions of Christianity that frustrate us, or that we have written off entirely. The Baptists cannot come into the fullness of their destiny in Christ apart from the Assemblies of God. The Pentecostals cannot come into the fullness of their destiny apart from the Episcopalians. The fullness of God’s plan for the Church cannot be fully realized without the whole Church. We must therefore wrestle through our temptation to exaggerate ourselves and our destiny, or worse, to dismiss ourselves and diminish our small but significant part in the plan of God for the Church.
We must grapple with what makes us valuable to God and what our place is in His family and in His plans for the immediate future. Our personal, intimate, individual journey into the grace of God unto mature love truly matters because each of us is very significant and valuable to God. Our prayer life matters. Our acts of service matter. Our fight to overcome offense—the pain of being forgotten, overlooked, misunderstood, or mistreated—matters so much to the Father, who is championing our journey into being beautified by love. As we remember that God is moved, and as we gain a clearer sense of why He is moved, and as our longing awakens to go where He wants to take us, we grow in courage to stay with the long and arduous way into full joy.
When we understand the plan of God better, this way forward together makes much more sense. It is impossible to get the attention of the nations in a helpful way by powerfully transforming one man or woman, or even by igniting a handful of churches and ministries with the flame of holy love for Jesus. Bringing forth the fullness of the whole Church across the world in one generation, however, so that worldwide she would burn with deep, loyal, unshakable love for Jesus—this would shine forth as an irresistible witness to all peoples of the true beauty of Jesus.
When we understand the plan that all men and women who are in Christ share, we can find our place in a bigger story and take courage from a collective journey that we are all engaging in together. The courage I gain from this understanding empowers me to go on my individual journey into maturity in love for Jesus, because I can see where my weak, small journey matters in light of the Father’s global plan.