Being preceds doing:A call to sanctification preceeds a call to christian ministry

By: Ransomed ransom

The bible takes an uncompromising stand on what I will like to call “the being versus the doing equation” of a Christian believer. Let me explain. “Being” stands for what and who we are as persons. It stands for our character, our nature, our redeemed and re-created self in Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 5:17). It is our ontology, our essence. “Doing” on the other hand represents what we do, our works, our karma, our behaviour, the fruit of our ontology. “Being” is ‘I’ on the inside; “Doing” is ‘I’ on the outside, the expression of my “being”. In the context of Christian ministry, the first is my Christian character, the second my Christian ministry.
The biblical position on the “being versus the doing equation” is that when God calls a person He chooses for His work, He first addresses the issue of his ontology, his being, the person he is on the inside, recreates it and then goes on to commission him to the task of Christian ministry. The sequence is: ‘being’ (ontology) first, ‘doing’ second. What concerns God first and foremost is the person on the inside. The bible is full of references to the man’s inside as opposed to his outside. The human heart, which is the seat or the hub of his ontology (his being), is spoken of time and again. The believer is encouraged to look into his interior and take care of it for God looks to the inside of a person in contrast to man’s habit of looking and focusing on the outside. God speaks thus to Samuel concerning David’s appointment as the new king and in the process, spells out this biblical criterion: “But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the lord looks at the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7).
Jesus too all through his life and ministry asserted this same ontological fact as of primary importance in one’s relationship with God and the resulting spirituality. He applied this same centripetal principle in his conversations with the Pharisees and the Sadducees and constantly confronted the religious establishment of his day which was highly externalized with it, always brining out the issue of inner versus the outer, the issue of ‘being’ being first and only then the ‘doing’. In Matthew chapter 15, while answering ‘the Pharisees and the teachers of the law’ concerning their question about washing of hands before eating (an external issue), Jesus moves to the inside of man, to man’s heart and says, “Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man ‘unclean’. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what make a man ‘unclean’; but eating with unclean hands does not make him ‘unclean’” (Mat. 15:17-20). Clearly, for the Lord, the heart of the matter is always the human Heart! There are many other places in the bible that emphasize this heart issue. Here are some verses as examples for you to consider: Jeremiah 17:9,10; Ps. 44:21; Proverbs 4:23; Mat. 5:28; 1 Cor. 14:25.
There is a beautiful paradigm passage in the Old Testament that brings out this uncompromising biblical principle. It is found in Isaiah chapter 6, which records Isaiah’s commissioning to the people. For the purpose of this article, we want to focus on the first nine verses of Isaiah 6 and quickly go through the sequence of events therein.
1. Isaiah’s vision of the Lord in all His glory and majesty; Isaiah’s encounter with God (verses 1-4)
2. Isaiah’s response to the vision and his ontological realization (v 5)
3. God’s initiative to a prepared spirit; God’s remedy to Isaiah’s ontological realization (v 6,7)
4. God’s call for a man to go for Him (v 8a)
5. Isaiah’s response (8b)
6. God’s ‘yes’ for Isaiah to go (v9)
Do you notice the sequence and the progression in the above verses? The sequence here is critical. Here is the conclusion: an encounter with God leads to an encounter with self (v 1-4 and 5). This is the ontological realization or enlightenment of a person where he sees the actual condition of his being i.e. of his inside. God then deals with the ontology of this ‘realized person’ and deals with it through the finished work of Jesus Christ His Son – cleansing and guilt taken away (v 6 and 7). The person is sanctified (or set on the road to progressive sanctification) and his spirit is primed or prepared for God. The God-man relationship is re-established. God and man become friends again, (yes, even Father and children) and God now can ask of man something to do on His behalf. Now, God can entrust us with His jobs (v 8and 9). This is where ‘doing’ begins. This is where workers of good are not “evildoers” but become the cause of God’s praise (Matthew 5:16). This is where God’s expectation of good action, be it plain good works or Christian ministry, begins for the Christian believer. Not before.
Tragically, something very opposite is happening in Christendom. A very serious anomaly has taken over the community in the wake of what I call “the ministry syndrome”. It is a virus that spreads by the minute and corrupts its hosts – the individual Christian believer, the church and various Christian organizations, both in India and abroad, wholesale. It is proving to be very costly for the Indian church in terms of its spiritual quality and consequently the salt and light role it ought to play in society. It is the reversal of this biblical norm of ‘being’ preceding ‘doing’. This is tragic and very dangerous. We have gotten into the serious error of breeding a generation of Christians who are ministry obsessed (activity possessed!), always doing something ‘for the Lord’ while neglecting or even totally bypassing the essence of Christianity: our intimate relationship with the Lord and our God-dominated and God-operated interior life. Such have become our seminaries, our organizations, our Christians groups and our ‘active and alive’ churches! Life no longer seems to mean the Lord and our intimacy with Him; it is work, Christian work and ministry, events and programs, seminars and conferences, after which we can coolly go back to our life divorced from God!

In the seventh chapter of Matthew’s gospel and its 22 and 23 verses, Jesus makes this very stunning statement: “Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’ Vow! What a shocking statement by none other than the Lord himself! Why does Jesus label these workers of good as “evildoers”? What was their evil? Evildoers? These men who prophesied in Jesus’ name, drove out demons in Jesus’ name and performed miracles in Jesus’ name will be called “evildoers” by Jesus Himself? What was their evil? We ought to meditate. A very disturbing statement indeed for Christians who ‘do’ without paying attention to their state of being in relation to God! Christian, be warned!

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