For Christ’s love compels us… he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.
2 Corinthians 5:14,15 NIV
What took you so long?” my friend asked me. I had no answer. An overwhelming sadness welled up within me and I began to weep. His question made me consider more deeply the urgency of God’s call to mission.
The Apostle Paul heard in a dream a man from Macedonia calling to him. Over the years God has supplied me, too, with “voices” urging me, compelling me, to share the life-changing truth about Jesus. This time it was in the Kankanaey language and coming from Rudy, who lived in a remote mountainous tribal village of the Philippines. It was to these amazing people God sent me many years ago, straight out of seminary. Much shorter than I, as were all of his fellow tribesmen, and with a thick mass of unruly black hair and a wide contagious smile, Rudy had been the very frst in his village to hear about and believe in the Savior. This is why his question absolutely crushed me.
On that afternoon our conversation had turned toward history, and the gospel, of course, seeing as it was still so new to him. “How long have you and your people known about Jesus?” Rudy asked me. “How many generations?” (This oral and past honoring people could name their ancestors back far more generations than I could.)
“Wow,” I said, “a very long time, Rudy. Maybe seventeen generations. Maybe more.”
And then came his question: “What took you so long?” I knew instantly what he meant. In all of those centuries why did we not get the gospel to his village, to his ancestors? I had no answer, no defense. “Oh, Rudy,” I said, as tears welled up in my eyes. Rudy reached up with his hands and pulled my head down to his shoulder, and there I wept for the loss of his ancestors and the guilt of mine.
“Pakawanenka, kabsatko,” he quietly said to me. “I forgive you, my brother.” He understood that as he shared the loss of his ancestors, I shared the failures of mine. He spoke God’s reconciling grace to me, and not only to me, but to all of us, all of us who have known of Jesus for many generations and yet have failed to make him known to others.
I picked up my head, wiped my tears away and smiled at him. He smiled back and said, “May I ask you one more question?” “Sure,” I said. This was a second question I would never forget: “Is it okay if we don’t take so long?” He paused for a moment to watch my reaction and then broke into a loud, joyful laugh. He knew he didn’t need my permission. He was assuring me that he and his people were ready now, and that they were, in fact, compelled to share the good news about Jesus with the other villages in his valley and well beyond. Within the next few years they made sure that every person the length of their valley had heard about Jesus, and today Rudy helps to pastor his village’s thriving Lutheran congregation.
Rudy was, and still is, for me a remarkable example of someone embracing what we call “the commissioned life.” Those many years ago, he and the other believers in his village were moved by the Holy Spirit to adopt Chapter 5 of 2 Corinthians as their theme: “Christ’s love compels us… he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.” This is all it took for Rudy. This was all he needed. “Why would I live for anything or anyone else?” he would ask me. He was compelled by the love of Jesus.
The “commissioned life,” my friends, is a compelled life. It is the life I saw lived out in Rudy’s life and village. May we be so compelled, not so much by the “Great Commission” itself, but by the overwhelming and grace-filled love of Jesus. May we be so compelled by our Lord’s sacrificial death and victorious resurrection that we want nothing more than to live for him and not for ourselves.
That, my friends, is the commissioned life. It’s the life I want, and I pray that by faith it is the life you want. It is the only way that we, along with Rudy, will make disciples of all nations. Why would we live for anything else?