This is the forth in an 8 sermon series following Greg Ogden's Essential Guide to Becoming a Disciple: Eight Sessions for mentoring and Discipling.
Back in my university days, when I was a Bible and Theology major at Eastern Mennonite University, I remember getting on a side-track for a couple weeks wondering what it meant to pray “in Jesus’ name”. This was back in the 80’s and the TV preachers were making a fortune telling people that God would give them anything they wanted as long as they asked for it “in Jesus name” and believed whole-heartedly that they would receive it (and a donation helps).
Back in my university days, when I was a Bible and Theology major at Eastern Mennonite University, I remember getting on a side-track for a couple weeks wondering what it meant to pray “in Jesus’ name”. This was back in the 80’s and the TV preachers were making a fortune telling people that God would give them anything they wanted as long as they asked for it “in Jesus name” and believed whole-heartedly that they would receive it (and a donation helps).
Their magic formula wasn’t working for me and so I
decided I wanted to debunk the TV preachers.
I talked to a professor. He
recommended a few books. And off to the
library I went to do some research. I
found that the phrase “in Jesus’ name” had a much deeper, richer meaning than it
simply being a magic formula we tack onto the end of a prayer to make it
official.
As a child I was taught to always end my prayers with
“in Jesus’ name” because you’re talking to God and that’s the proper way to do
it. The theology behind that idea was
that with us being sinners, we are not worthy on our own to ask God for
anything and so we ask our prayers on the basis of Jesus’ worthiness, his name. In my research I did find there was a small
taste of that Sunday School belief. We don’t
just presume upon God, but…God loves us and will hear our prayers regardless of
whether we understand our sinfulness or use the proper format.
In my research what I found mostly was that the
phrase “in the name of” has to do with location and association – where you
stand and who you know. When an
ambassador is sent from one country to another she goes “in the name of” the
country that sends her to represent its citizens’ interests. She stays in an embassy which is considered
by the host nation to be territory of the ambassador’s home country. And, the work she does she does with the
authority granted her by her home country.
Likewise, to pray “in Jesus name” means that although
we are here away from the heavenly kingdom in which our citizenship lies, we are nevertheless
located “in him”, “in Jesus” as he stands in the presence of God the Father. We are Jesus’ embassy here on earth. The Holy Spirit binds us to Jesus so that
Jesus is in us and we are in him sharing in his relationship with the
Father. Our existential reality is as
Jesus prays in John 17:20-22. Jesus asks
the Father (and his prayers are answered) that we who have heard the message he
gave to the first disciples may be one just as he and the Father are one, the
Father in him and he in the Father. Jesus
asks that we be in them and our unity be complete in them, we in the Father and
Son and they in us because Jesus has given us his glory, the Holy Spirit.
To be “in the name of Jesus” is to be in the
existential reality of living in the eternal life of knowing the Father and
knowing Jesus the Son whom he sent because they have given us the Holy Spirit. Our location, where we are at, is in the
loving communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We are their representatives here.
So also, just like ambassadors sent abroad we are in
the world—this broken, hurting, vicious, twisted, beloved by God world—“in the
name of Jesus” as his ambassadors with a message of salvation to new life now
and yet to come when Jesus returns, a message that we embody in our own lives which
have been changed by him by the power of the Holy Spirit and which we embody in the love
we share for one another which comes from God the Father and God the Son in the
presence power of God the Hoy Spirit. So,
who we know is Jesus and what we represent from him is his saving reign.
Years ago when I finished seminary and was waiting
for my first call I stuck around the school and got an additional masters
degree in New Testament Studies studying particularly Paul and his
letters. So you can trust me when I say
that when Paul talks about salvation he nowhere talks about it in terms of how
we get into heaven when we die, but rather salvation is our being adopted right
now into the family of God the Father and Jesus the Son; and, the Father claims
us as his own children whom he loves as much as Jesus the Son something we
experience right now by the presence of the Holy Spirit. Salvation entails a "saved from" and so
salvation is deliverance right now from a life lived like parentless children
enslaved by sin and evil who pursue their own demise, but now free to live
honourable lives with the rights of being beloved children of God.
If Paul and John sat down and started talking about
salvation, John would bring up eternal life. Like Paul, John would also not
talk about how we get to heaven when we die but rather about knowing the Father
and Jesus the Son in the Holy Spirit.
Eternal life is what we have now in a relationship with God in Christ
and that relationship is salvation, salvation from the life of perishing that
comes about because we do not know the love of God the Father who loves the
world so much that he gave his only begotten Son over to die for it. Knowing the love of God, the love of God the
Father for the God the Son, and the love of the Son for the Father, and knowing
ourselves to be included in that love right now, this is salvation right now,
eternal life right now, adoption right now as Paul would say.
When Jesus tells his disciples to go into the world
discipling all peoples baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son
and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey his commandments, that command
to baptize has two meanings. One, as
Christ Jesus’ ambassadors we baptize with, under, or “in” the authority of the
Father, Son and Holy Spirit that he has really vested in us by giving us the
Holy Spirit binding us to himself as his representatives. But two, we baptize people “into” the name of
the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. If
salvation is that we are adopted into the family of the Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit, then the act, the rite, the sacrament of Baptism is signing the papers.
Back to Paul, Paul’s primary way of talking about
Baptism is that it is participation in Jesus’ death and resurrection so that it
is no longer we, ourselves, who live but Christ living in us. For the baptized disciple there is no more
talk about me, myself, and I and what I want in life. Rather, it is about allegiance (faithfulness)
to Christ Jesus demonstrated through living in the new family in God in Christ
and bringing honour to the new family name.
Understandings of Baptism being the sign and symbol of washing from sin
and the Christian version of circumcision are secondary to baptism being our
dying and rising with Christ to really live a real new life in him in the
family of God, a life that really will endure for ever.
Baptized into the name of the Father and of the Son
and of the Holy Spirit means we are dead to all our old allegiances and are now
really raised to new life into the loving communion, the loving Family of the
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and this new life in Christ is to be our foremost
allegiance. It doesn’t matter whether we
were baptized as babies or as adults. For
now, we bear the family name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and to do that
honourably means being sacrificially compassionate, kind, forbearing,
forgiving, generous, hospitable, joyful, peaceful, and self-controlled to
everyone…and the Holy Spirit living in us, the Family DNA so to speak, makes us
able to be this way. Friends, you are a
new creation, adopted children of God who are eternally alive in the family of
God. Live accordingly. Amen.
