Who Dares Do Greater Works Than Jesus?

Many times I've seen a young pastor, newly ordained, on fire for the Lord and ready to do great things. But then he is called to serve a small, insignificant parish with worship attendance of 50 or 60 and members with no greater zeal than to pay their pastor's meager salary and keep up maintenance on their little church building. After a few years of frustration this young pastor is tired of praying for something to happen and filled with doubt about his calling into the public ministry. With apathetic eyes he gazes upon these words from the Gospel of John and shrugs his shoulders in disbelief:

"Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father. Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it. - Jhn 14:12-14 ESV

Where are the greater works? Where are the miracles, the huge crowds pushing to follow Christ, the healing of crippled and wasted bodies, even the raising up of the dead? Perhaps the whole enterprise of the great kingdom of God is a sham after all! Or perhaps he doesn't have true faith and God's power is withheld from him and Jesus is seeking out someone else with deeper convictions.

So our young pastor loses his kingdom zeal and begins to plod along like a slug, plagued by doubtful resolution. He is not one of the chosen great ones. No glory is to be his and all he can do is to accept his fate as best he can and wait for the end of his weary life-long journey.

Did Jesus thus present to his disciples with a most discouraging word and are the days of greater works at an end? Where is God's kingdom of glory and majesty? What does our Lord mean to say to this young pastor and to any one of us?

Begin by asking what the works of Jesus were? Listen to Jesus himself answer your question. His disciples had been sent to buy lunch in a Samaritan village. When they returned they urged Jesus to eat, but he said to them, "I have food to eat that you do not know about." So they wondered if someone had already brought him something to eat. To this he replied,

"My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. Do you not say, 'There are yet four months, then comes the harvest'? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest. Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, 'One sows and another reaps.' I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor." - John 4:34-38 ESV

The harvest awaiting Jesus and his disciples stood before them. The Samaritan woman Jesus had met there at the well had been married to five men and the man she was currently with was not her husband. Her life had been filled with failures, disappointments, disobedience and despair. And yet Jesus reached out to her. With insight and concern he led her to believe in him as the promised Messiah. And with this new faith burning in her heart she raced into the village to bring others out to see him.

Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony, "He told me all that I ever did." So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, "It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world." - Jhn 4:39-42 ESV

Jesus' food was to do his Father's will and to accomplish that work. The work of the Messiah, the Christ, was to offer his life as a ransom for sinners like this woman and all the sinners of the world. He has completed that work. On the cross he cried, "It is finished!" (John 19:30) The verb translated as finished is the same as to accomplish (Greek teleioō) above.

The only work any of us may do now is to believe in Jesus, trust in his work of salvation upon the cross and humbly submit to his call and leading. This is what Jesus urged when the Jews chased after him after he fed them by the thousands. They wanted to make him their bread king. Jesus answered them,

"Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal." 

Then they said to him, "What must we do, to be doing the works of God?" 

Jesus answered them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent." - Jhn 6:26-29 ESV

Much, much more needs to be said about this greater works issue. We all want earthly goods, glory and greatness. It is part of our sinful nature. But I must urge my fictional young pastor to rethink his Call from Jesus and submit to our Lord's guiding. Open your eyes, young man. There before you in your miserable little parish is a person struggling with the same sin as the Samaritan woman. Lead her to her Messiah. Teach her to trust in his love for her—even her. Love her as does Jesus and see what harvest he will accomplish. That is your greater work! You can ask for no greater work than to bring a soul to Jesus.

More on this another time. 

Stages of faith

In a previous post I talked about doubt and about the one we have called Doubting Thomas. Doubt does not mean the loss of faith. In fact, Paul Tillich once wrote that doubt is not the opposite of faith; it is one element of faith. He also said, "The old faith must die, eaten away by doubts, but only so that a new and deeper faith may be born." We who are physical or spiritual parents are concerned that faith in the Risen Christ, the forgiveness of sins and the hope of eternal life be passed on and claimed by our children.

To that end we must be aware that this faith has four basic stages:

1. Experienced faith (preschool and early childhood)— in this stage children imitate our actions. They learn to pray the Lord's Prayer, for instance, but certainly do not understand all the meanings of the words. This is simply what we do in our family. This is how we act. 
2. Affiliate faith (childhood and early adolescent years)—Here is where the Christian community begins to be important. Children belong to a group, Sunday School for instance. The group lives and acts in certain ways. So the child imitates what the group does. This is what WE believe and do. This is OUR group or OUR church.
3.  Searching faith (late adolescence) — At this stage the boy is moving toward manhood, the girl toward womanhood. He or she asks, "Is this what I believe?" We spoke about Doubting Thomas. He would not merely accept what others said. He needed to find out for himself. At this stage of faith the believer adds the head to the heart of the earlier stages.
4. Owned faith (early adulthood) -- The maturing believer arrives at this stage only by moving through the searching stage. The young person must deal with doubt. Is this what I believe? We pray that our children will indeed discover what Thomas found. Christ is alive. He is risen indeed. Then they will join Thomas to kneel before the Christ and say, "My Lord and my God." This is an owned faith, not one that others believe. This is the strong, personal faith that openly bears witness to Jesus, a faith the believer is willing to die for.

William Barcley writes:

If we believe someone, we do no more than accept whatever statement that person may be making at the moment as true. If we believe in someone, we accept the whole person and all that that individual stands for in complete trust. We would be prepared not only to trust the spoken word, but also to trust ourselves to that purpose. To believe in Jesus Christ is not simply to accept what he says as true; it is to commit ourselves into his hands, for time and for eternity. 

Certainty is attained through doubt. The man who insists on being sure is going to arrive at a solid and lasting faith, far more certain than the person who glibly repeats things he has never thought out—and which he does not fully believe. Doubt serves that person. Thomas fought his way through doubt to the solid conviction that Jesus Christ was his Lord and his God. Legend says that he went on to become the Apostle to the people of Syria and India.

One more thing about the stages of faith. They are not so clear as the paragraphs above may suggest. We must deal with these stages throughout our lives. Little children ask questions, as do teens. And so do mature adults. Believers of all ages have times of certainty. We celebrate them. On Easter Sunday we shout, "Christ is risen!" And our friends respond, "He is risen indeed!" However, there are times of questioning. Do not despise such moments. We must beware of simply going along with the crowd. There are even times when we must stand against them. Only by working through these times of doubt do we grow.

Perhaps it is best that we do not refer to Thomas as Doubting Thomas—a person we do not want to imitate. Perhaps we should call him Thomas The Confessor. He was, after all, the only one among that crowd of trembling, insecure disciples who openly confessed his faith in Jesus as his risen Lord and God.
May we all come to the same place on our faith journeys.