The Greatest Failed Missionary

At the end of the last post, I asked if the daunting responsibilities of followers of Jesus "have to include harrowing questions of doctrinal rectitude, presented to us so often by the denominations as though theological distinctions of dizzying complexity and ramifications are what stand between us and the kingdom of heaven?"

As I said, to try to answer this, we will turn again to the ministry of John.  In Matthew and Luke, John the Baptist sends two of his disciples to ask Jesus, "Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another?" (Matthew 11:3, KJV).  Mind you, this was after both gospels make plain that John was acquainted, albeit from afar, with the works of Jesus.  Jesus does not give John's emissaries some new theology to carry back to their master; Jesus responds with a reiteration of those works, as though the mere facts stand for themselves.  John was going to have to make do with that:

"Go and shew John again those things which ye do hear and see: the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them.  And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me" (11:4-6).

Miracle upon miracle--and then "the poor have the gospel preached to them"--as though that were as much a miracle.  A more important thing to consider about "the poor have the gospel preached to them" is a point I touched on previously: many of those who heard Jesus, or heard his disciples in his lifetime, had only a few such exposures, or for only a brief time.  In the first century, as we have the grind and misery of the lives of the poor so often described in the gospels, "the poor have the gospel preached to them" did not refer to some urban ministry of twice-a-week sessions.  To say "the poor" in the context of the gospels is, often, to say "the sick," or "the dying;" or "the infirm," or "the condemned."  Often the poor had only the most glancing experience of hearing preaching about the outreach of God to them, such that coming to true faith would be--to the eyes of man--the most improbable of miracles.

In contradistinction to this is Jesus' argument--as jarring as it seems to us--that John the Baptist knew all a mortal could, and did all a mortal could, to attain the kingdom of heaven, yet had presumably not done so:

"Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist: notwithstanding he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he" (11:11).

But does Jesus not help us to understand why John might not (yet?) be of the kingdom of heaven?  It could always be said that John might not be saved because he was not preordained for salvation--if one would want to make that assertion in the middle of Jesus talking about the preaching of the Gospel.  Or one might shrink from that, as a person withdraws from something loathsome.

Jesus does help us understand--as we shall see.  But we must remember that he does it in the context of the gospel preached to the poor--not the stable, not the well-off, not the gainfully-employed.  Jesus gives us the explanation of salvation in the context of John the Baptist, a paragon of dedication to the truth, and a paramount example of a person who had innumerable opportunities to carefully consider the teachings of his faith and the ministry of Jesus.

Yet John had not grasped the truth.  In the next post, in light of Jesus' further discussion, we will explore why.