Missional Motivation

After John the Baptizer denies being the Christ in John 1, he sees Jesus and tells his disciples, "Look, the Lamb of God." Next we read, "When the two disciples heard him say this, the followed Jesus." What a great picture of true discipleship. John gathered men to himself with the purpose of leading them to follow Jesus, the Lamb of God. Not merely a teacher or moral philosopher, but the God-man who would lay down his life as a justice substitute (the Lamb) for his guilty disciples. In turn, the power of grace fueled by the indwelling Holy Spirit in the lives of Jesus' followers would transform them into a missional people. For later in the narrative, Andrew, who was one of those original two disciples of John, went and found his brother Simon (Peter), and "brought him to Jesus." So the answer to the question of how to motivate people like me to become missional is not beating them over the head with the law of mission, it is leading them over and over again to the Lamb who was slain, because it is the grace of God in the gospel that is the power and motivation for mission.