During my time as a missionary in Islamic contexts, I often encountered the question “When did Jesus ever say that he is God?” The most common rebuttal is when Jesus said, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). And read the next few verses: the Judeans “picked up stones again to stone him … ‘for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God’” (31, 33). Jesus also says, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). Who can forget “before Abraham was, I am”? (John 8:58).
In John’s gospel, these statements contribute to the doctrine of the imago Dei, the “image of God.” First emerging in Genesis 1:26, when God creates humans in his image, this doctrine later finds Christological fulfillment because Jesus, being the only begotten Son of God, is the express image of God (John 10:30, c.f. Rom. 8:29, 2 Cor. 4:4, Col. 1:15, and Heb. 1:3). John’s gospel provides two related doctrines: the agnus Dei and the missio Dei, the Lamb of God who is the Son of God, and the mission of God. These three doctrines—imago Dei, agnus Dei, and missio Dei—provide one coherent shape to Christ’s life, and therefore the shape of our lives as sons and daughters of God, adopted in Christ and spurred by the Holy Spirit’s movement.
This is the divine work of Pentecost: to be in Christ is to become partakers of the renewed image of God in Christ, which in turn means being sent out in the mission of God. What is that mission of God? It is to proclaim Christ as the Lamb of God, in whom all image-bearing creations can find forgiveness of sins, renewal of life, and adoption as sons and daughters of God. Or perhaps we could be pithy: Do you want to be like Christ? Then go out into the world like Christ and forgive others as he did. It is not possible to become conformed to the image of God in Christ, to experience our transformation as sons and daughters of God, without also partaking of his mission to forgive others in Christ.
A Brief Scriptural Sketch of Sonship and Mission
In Genesis 1:26, God creates humans in his image and breathes his Spirit into them. Adam and Eve are referred to as the “generations of the heavens and the earth” (Gen 2:4), or sons and daughters of God. However, sin and death mar and disfigure this divine image of sonship in us. Our worldly pursuits are like plastic surgery—we try to refigure our disfigured image. This self-inflicted disfiguration requires divine adoption and our healing.
When the Gospel of John proclaims, “But to all who did receive [the Son], who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:12-13), and John the Baptist proclaims, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world,” (John 1:29), it is as though he proclaims that now this adoption and healing can begin. Now, men and women can find that divine image restored. In Christ, they can become one more true and whole reflections of the Divine Father.
Thus, God’s Lamb walks about, working signs and wonders, inaugurating the resurrection, or the refiguration of disfigured dead sons and daughters. All this happens by the operation of the Holy Spirit working in and through this Lamb. After all, he descended upon this Lamb in John’s gospel, as a dove, both disclosing and authenticating Jesus’ Paschal identity and ministry (John 1:32).
The Holy Spirit’s abiding presence is shared with all those sons and daughters who believe in Christ. Thus, Jesus repeatedly promises the abiding presence of the Comforter, whom he will send, not only to guide us into all truth, but to empower us to become proclaimers of this truth (John 14:16-17, 16:7-15). What is that truth? None other than that Jesus, the crucified and risen Son, the Lamb of God, takes away the sin of the world.
After Jesus fulfills this ministry, after he reminds Mary at the empty tomb (John 20:17) that he, and she, and his brothers, have one Father, he breathes his Spirit onto his disciples (John 20:22), echoing the imagery of our primordial origins of being created in the image of God. This is also the first time in John’s gospel that Jesus refers to his disciples as his brothers, implying the fulfilment of the promised belief and adoption in John 1:12-13. Jesus then sends his brothers out: “As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you” (John 20:21). In other words, forgiveness, sonship, and mission cohere into one distinct shape of our life in Christ.
The Pentecostal Movement of Sending
This movement of sending and being sent is multifaceted. For example, the Holy Spirit is sent from the Father to the Son (John 1:21). The Father loves the world so much that he gives, or sends, his Son into the world to save it (John 3:16). Jesus promises to send the Holy Spirit to his disciples, his brothers and sisters, and then does it by breathing, sending the Holy Spirit to us. He then sends us out into the world, in the same way his Father sent him, to forgive others. One could say that God’s identity is one who sends, as each person of the Trinity is either sending or being sent. Thus, to bear God’s image, is to be sent into the world to forgive others. This is the mission of God, that his adopted sons and daughters, like his only begotten Son, go out into the World by the power of the Holy Spirit, as we realize our identity in him.
Considering Pentecost and Church Growth
In recent years, essays have focused on the decline of mainline Christian bodies in the West, including especially the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada. These essays, grounded in objective numbers, often project that these denominations could cease to exist in less than a handful of decades. If God is subject to statistical projections, then these predictions will be fulfilled.
But God is far more than this. He is not the Lord of the dead, but of the living. Yet these statistical projections must be recognized. Something is wrong. Have we forgotten that the Spirit has been breathed upon us and he is in us? What if we permit the Spirit to compel us to live into our identity as sons and daughters of God, restored in Christ, to experience forgiveness, healing, and wholeness by the Paschal sacrifice of the Son of God?
And in the sure and certain knowledge of Christ’s restoration of his fallen brothers and sisters and the grace extended to us, what if we allow the Holy Spirit, the same Spirit who led Jesus to the Cross, to kill that in us which is not of God, and compel us into the world to forgive and heal others, as we have been forgiven and healed?
As adopted and forgiven sons and daughters of God, we should reclaim this identity, die to this world with Christ Jesus our elder brother, and be sent out to proclaim the hope of resurrection in Jesus. In this, the Spirit does his work of renewal and recreation.
The Rev. John D. Sundara is the Vicar for Worship and Evangelism at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church, Houston, TX.
