AN EXCERPT FROM ‘TO TRACE A RISING SUN’
THE BELIEVERS IN COLOSSAE HAD DEVIATED. A long stone’s throw from the thriving community in Ephesus—the only community to not receive a corrective letter from the apostle Paul—the Colossians had begun to get muddy with their Christology.[1] Paul wrote to clear up the water in their well. Unlike the Galatians, who got lost along the way of the Gospel’s implications,[2] the Colossians got confused on the centerpiece of the Gospel itself. Rather, Himself. They got confused about Jesus.
His letter opens with brief greetings, a short prayer, and then a loaded exposition of who Jesus is, laying a powerful ultimatum before Colossian Christians: Jesus is either everything the prophets, apostles and He Himself say He is, or He is nothing at all. As Charles Spurgeon so simply put it, “If Christ be anything, He must be everything.”[3]
He must be.
This is why—and only how—the Gospel has such explosive implications. This is why Golgotha is of cosmic consequence. If He is anything, He is everything—or nothing at all. He is the image of the invisible God, and thus supreme and sovereign over everything.[4] He can thus demand preeminence and deserve the highest Name in all the heavens, earth and everything under the earth.[5] He will forever receive the unadulterated worship of every creature.[6] Every knee will bow to Him. Every tongue will confess His Lordship.[7] Worship is a unique gift in this age of “believing without seeing.”[8] It will be quite different when the Son of Man is exalted in His glory while all our thoughts, intents and secret things are laid bare for every eye to see.[9]
In this way, Paul could hinge the legitimacy of Christian disciple- ship on the resurrection of the saints upon the Lord’s appearance at the end of the age. If we are not resurrected, this whole thing is a farce and there’s no one on earth more pathetic than our lot.[10] Why? Because Jesus said He is the Resurrection.[11] If He isn’t, He isn’t anything else He claimed to be either and we should all go home. If Christ be anything, He must be everything.
The age-ending Day of the Lord will expose every wicked thing and reveal every holy mystery kept hidden from our eyes until then. The “Desire of the Nations”[12] will be seen in full splendor, and all our questions will evaporate with the sin which so easily and dreadfully ensnares us. The “Branch of the Lord” so faithfully and graciously extended to a bloodthirsty humanity will be seen for all He is—beautiful, glorious, and worth everything we gave Him while we had it in our hands to offer.[13] We will not dread eternity with Him. We will not resent His reign. We will not resist His hand. The dim mirrors removed and shattered, our eyes will see Him fully and clearly. Adoration will erupt from our hearts and rush from our lips: “You are everything You said and more.”
Put simply, “You’re everything.” Nothing else will matter.
When I was twelve years old, I heard an Indian-American couple share their story at Calvary Chapel in the States. My family was new to the Protestant circuit, having just begun to step away from the Catholic community (which is to say nothing against the Catholic community; this was just my journey), and these folks were the first frontier laborers I'd encountered. I had never heard of such an occupation before—and my first impression was bleak. You sold your house to do what? Move back to India? Isn’t it hot there? You did what with your red sports car?! ...I wish I had a red sports car...
I spent my tumultuous high school years in a thriving youth ministry run by a church not far from my house. It was led by good people who love Jesus and love His Word. They’re still in my life, and I’m so grateful for them. Yet I still nearly became a statistic—”one of those” kids who leave high school, leave youth group, stop going to church and get their worldview from their Twitter feed. We could see it coming even then; evangelical paragroups had already done the research to empirically prove what we could ourselves clearly observe. Most of our American youth group disciples were leaving the church at eighteen and falling away by the time they were twenty. If they’re anything like me, they were trying to make sense of the point of everything. Nobody wants to waste their time. Even fools spend their lives on what they think is wise. Good leadership can’t save us (helpful as it is), and the inch-deep faith of immaturity can’t plumb line us for the long haul. We had—and have—questions, and we needed—and need—answers that can stand up to the full force and fury of our tensions and doubt. And at some point, we need to grow up and own our confrontation with truth and lies. We need to know where we land and stand in the bigger picture. And we really need to know Jesus.
Maybe you’re reading this and you’re older than I am. Maybe you’re wondering what to do with the twilight of your life in this age. Maybe you’re in high school or college and you’re wondering what the point is, wondering what to do with all the decades ahead of you. Maybe you’re wondering what to do with the Bible, and how to make sense of it all. Wondering why we live in this age with all these stories and all our promises and limitations, all our dreams and all our handicaps. Wondering what Jesus really has to do with anything. Wondering if He’s better than a hot ride. Consider this: one day you’ll be old (either in this age or in eternity), and you’ll look back over your life and have the luxury of retrospect to discern the decisions you made. Even the bad ones. And you will, with certainty, stand before Jesus one day. You will either mourn your missed opportunities to love Him well in this age or you will celebrate every sacrifice with new clarity on how trivial everything else was in light of who He is. We will all reckon with how we reconciled and resolved ourselves to this question: What is Jesus worth?
When Alexander Duff reflected on his life in 1831, he’d by then spent decades in ministry in India. He was staring into the twilight years of his life on this side of time, and he knew it. As he looked behind him, he remembered the vibrant life of a young, healthy, intelligent man with all the world before him, and he remembered when he packed his bags. He remembered when and why he made the decision to board a ship to India. He remembered why he stayed every time a ship sailed east. As an old man, he recounted:
“Well can I trace the dawn, the rise, and the progress of any feeble missionary spirit that I have to the readings, conversations, and essays called for by the student Missionary Association in St. Andrews.”[14]
Duff was part of a group remembered as the “St. Andrews Six.” He and a handful of his buddies helped found and give leadership to a student society committed to funding missionaries from the United Kingdom to the unreached and unengaged areas of the world—at a time when people became missionaries kind of because they couldn’t be trusted to do anything else. It was not regarded as a dignified position, and the resources given to it (in both money and manpower) reflected that. But Duff and his friends were provoked by men like William Carey, who’d sailed to the other side of the world to tell people who didn’t know about Jesus about Jesus. They dug into the Scriptures, read a bunch of missionary biographies, prayed together, ate together, and wrestled through it all together. Many of them concluded the burden of responsibility for stewarding the Good News of the Gospel of the Kingdom fell upon them simply because they were members and ambassadors of the Kingdom. None felt called to preach or pioneer. They just couldn’t shake the testimony of the Word of God that Jesus was worth it and the unreached deserve it.
It’s not that I think missionaries are the only true Christians. It’s just that I think Jesus is worth it and the unreached deserve it. This is not a book about missions. This is a book about the beauty and worth of Jesus.
So we have to talk about missions.
With only 0.005% of Christians serving as missionaries to unreached peoples, and only 0.1% of the global evangelical income given to missions— and with just 1% of that presently given to efforts on the frontier[15]—I have a hunch I’m not the only one with a bleak first impression of global missions. We love our square footage and red sports cars. But if statistics reveal anything, most Christians meet their Maker with that bleak impression. And if Scripture tells us anything, the Day of the Lord will fact-check us all.[16]
At the risk of a cliché, the world looks a bit different than it did a few years ago. The Syrian Civil War was, at the time, just another conflict emerging out of the Arab Spring—nothing to be said for genocide, chemical warfare, or the splintered bodies of children in the rubble of ancient cities. Osama bin Laden had been tossed in frigid waters, and a bunch of drunk college kids who were learning how to read when 9/11 happened danced in the streets of D.C.. The American Church squabbled a bit over Chick-Fil-A and Duck Dynasty controversies— and had the audacity to call the backlash “persecution.”
Even then, the term “10/40 Window” was a buzzword in the evangelical subculture. Even then, there were gaping holes in the Great Commission. Even then, millions bookended their lives with breaths devoid the name of Jesus. Even then, minarets summoned the 1.6 billion Muslims alive today to bow their knee to a god who can neither see them nor hear their prayers—five times a day.
We in the West weren’t confronted then with street bombs, cafe sieges, or YouTube terrorism. We weren’t confronted with black-clad jihadis launching a production company to showcase their slaughters to the world. In our bubble, brutal scourges were in history books, and the post-modern world had evolved to democratic “coexistence.” We’re a few generations removed from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and no one taught us the term “caliphate” in grade school. Westerners professing the name of Jesus weren’t confronted with faces of men, women and children who have never heard His Name. We weren’t confronted with angry nations who’ve heard a distortion of the Gospel at best, or with our self-preserving reluctance to bear them a witness worthy of the Name we claim.
We are now.
Generations are “justified” by what they give birth to.[17] Our children will bear testimony on that Day—did it bother us that He was blasphemed? Did it bother us that lives were born and buried without ever being given witness of the Kingdom? Did it bother us that two thousand years after His ascension, we avoided unreached households because we feared their hostility? Will they inherit apathy, or will they meet our King with expectations of His majesty and worth because we taught them every sacrifice is insignificant compared to His glory?
When we were uniquely confronted with a Christless world, how did we respond—were we willing to gamble the Great Commission against our volatile 401(k)?
Duff’s testimony affirms the fact that we have to understand the story. We have to understand who Jesus is, what He is doing, and where we fit in the narrative. What rights do we have? What responsibilities do we bear?
I believe it would serve us well to know the story—to borrow Duff’s words and “trace the sun,” so to speak.
It’s been several years since I scorned the testimony of those Christ-exalting laborers, and but a few since I first stepped foot on Muslim-majority soil. Western churches are still full of twelve year olds wondering if Jesus is better than all their other options, all their other desires. I pray someone will tell them with their lives that He is. Western nations are still full of believers grappling with the implications of the fact that He is—better than legitimate pleasures, better than sins, better than blasphemies.
If He is, it is fundamentally unjust that He is scorned across the earth. If He is, He changes everything.
Let goods, kindred and red sports cars go.[18]
Stephanie Quick (@quicklikesand) is a writer/producer serving with FAI. She lives in the Golan Heights and cohosts The Better Beautiful podcast with Jeff Henderson. Browse her free music, films, and books in the FAI App and at stephaniequick.org.
[1] USCCB. “Letter to the Colossians.” Accessed September 11, 2016. http://www.usccb. org/bible/colossians/0.
[2] See the letter to the Galatians
[3] Charles H. Spurgeon, “Christ is All” (1871). Accessed September 11, 2016. http:// www.spurgeon.org/sermons/1006.php. Our friends at Scripture Type have a beautiful lettering of this quote available here.
[4] See Colossians 1:15–20
[5] See Philippians 2:9–10
[6] See Revelation 5
[7] See Philippians 2:10–11
[8] See John 20:29
[9] See Romans 2:16
[10] See 1 Corinthians 15:16–20
[11] See John 11:25
[12] Haggai 2:7
[13] Isaiah 4:2
[14] Stuart Piggin and John Roxborogh. The St. Andrews Seven: The Finest Flowering of Missionary Zeal in Scottish History. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 2015, p. 48
[15] The Traveling Team. “General Statistics.” http://thetravelingteam.org/stats. Accessed 16 February 2015.
[16] Isaiah 2:12–22; 4:2; Romans 2:5–8; 3:19; I Corinthians 3:10–15; 4:4b–5; II Timothy 4:1; I Peter 4:5; Revelation 22:12
[17] Matthew 11:19
[18] This line is a wordplay on Martin Luther’s “A Mighty Fortress” hymn:
Let goods and kindred go
This mortal life also
The body they may kill
God’s truth abideth still
