There was a great movie that came out nearly 15 years ago called Saving Private Ryan. If you love war movies, like me, you must have a copy of the movie somewhere in your collection. It was a Steven Spielberg masterpiece about the story of a group of U.S. soldiers during World War II that go behind enemy lines to retrieve a paratrooper (Matt Damon) whose brothers had been killed in action. This group of soldiers led by captain John H. Miller (Tom Hanks) had just come out of the war and was preparing to depart for America when the news of this new mission came up. The film is a powerful depiction of sacrifice and courage for the sake of rescuing another. It is also a wonderful depiction of the rescue mission that we all have as disciples of Jesus who have been saved out of the world and still live in it.

Jesus saves people out of the world. He was sent two thousand years ago on a rescue mission for the world because God the Father loved the world so much and sent Jesus as a missionary to “demonstrate” his love (Jn 3:16).  But we, who have been recued through Jesus, do not paradoxically leave this world though we have been saved out of it. Rather Jesus as our captain sends us back into the world on a rescue mission to save others (Jn 17:18). Therefore we have been rescued so that we can rescue many others from the wrath of God on this world.

This kind of mission involves making adaptations to our lifestyle in order to get to the places of those that are lost in sin and deception around us. It involves using every opportunity (financial, educational, social, etc) that God blesses us with to declare and demonstrate God’s love in Jesus Christ. The mission is difficult because our reputation seems to hang in the balance. We want to be holy and separate and yet relate with the world around us so that our message remains relevant.  But Jesus never separated himself from the world in order to save people out of the world. That would be like preaching sermons from heaven over a loudspeaker to the dying, deaf, doomed world below. Rather Jesus left where he was and humbled himself to relate with the world that needed saving. He made himself nothing as we read in Philippians 2:6 taking the form of a servant and being obedient to the point of death. Jesus considered himself as a servant to all for the sake of saving them. We too therefore should take the same form of a servant in our rescue mission. The Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9:19 that he makes himself a servant to all in order to win others for Jesus. John Piper calls this kind of lifestyle walking a razor’s edge in life. It is a life of immense freedom from the system of the world and yet submitting oneself as a servant to all men for Jesus’ sake.