What Christian Hedonists Love Best

It is also the spring of life for the Christian Hedonist. For what the Christian Hedonist loves best is the experience of the sovereign grace of God filling him and overflowing for the good of others. Christian Hedonist missionaries love the experience of "not I, but the grace of Christ which is with me" (1 Corinthians 15:10). They bask in the truth that the fruit of their missionary labor is entirely of God (1 Corinthians 3:7, Romans 11:36). They feel only gladness when the Master says, ``Without me you can do nothing'' (John 15:5). They leap like lambs over the truth that God has taken the impossible weight of new creation off their shoulders and put it on his own.

Without begrudging they say, "Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our sufficiency is from God!" (2 Corinthians 3:5). When they come home on furlough, nothing gives them more joy than to say to the churches, "I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has wrought through me to win obedience from the Gentiles" (Romans 15 :18) . "All things are possible with God!"-in front the words give hope, and behind they give humility. They are the antidote to despair and pride-the perfect missionary medicine.


Missionary Incentives of Sovereign Grace

This great confidence of the missionary enterprise is given again by Jesus in John 10:16 with different words:

I have other sheep that are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will heed my voice. So there shall be one flock, one shepherd.

Notice three powerful encouragements in this text for frontier missionaries:

1. Christ does indeed have other sheep outside the present fold! They have been "ransomed from every tribe and tongue and people and nation" (Revelation 5:9). The children of God are "scattered abroad" (John 11:52). No missionary will ever reach a hidden group and be able to say God has no people there.

This is precisely how the Lord encouraged Paul when he was downcast in Corinth and confronted by the "impossibility" of planting a church in that rocky soil.

And the Lord said to Paul one night in a vision, "Do not be afraid, but speak and do not be silent; for I am with you, and no man shall attack you to harm you; for I have many people in this city." (Acts 18:9-10)

In other words, take heart! It may look impossible, but God has a chosen people (the "other sheep" of John 10:16), and the Good Shepherd knows his own and will call them by name when you faith fully preach the gospel.


Jesus MUST Bring His Other Sheep

2. This leads to the second encouragement for missions in John 10:16, namely the words, "I must bring them also." Christ is under a divine necessity to gather his own sheep. He must do it. He must do it. But of course this does not lead to the hyper-Calvinistic17
notion that he will do it without using us as means. William Carey, "father of modern missions," did a great service to the cause of Frontier Missions when he published in 1792 his little book entitled, An Enquiry into the Obligation of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens.  

God will always use means. Jesus makes this plain when he says, "I do not pray for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word" (John 17:20). Nevertheless, Carey believed, as the Lord taught, that he was helpless and that it is really Christ who calls and saves and works in us what is pleasing in his sight (Hebrews 13: 21) . After forty years of spectacular accomplishment ( for example, he translated the entire Bible into Bengali, Oriya, Marathi, Hindi, Assamese, and Sanskrit, and parts of it into twenty-nine other languages), William Carey died; yet the simple tablet on his grave reads, at his own request,

WILLIAM CAREY
Born August 17th, 1761
Died June, 1834
A wretched, poor and helpless worm,
On Thy kind arms I fall.

The great encouragement from John 10:16 is that the Lord himself will do what is impossible for "poor helpless worms" like us. "I have other sheep that are not of this fold; I must bring them also."


They WILL Hear His Voice

3. The third encouragement from this verse is that the sheep he calls will surely come. "I must bring them also, and they will heed my voice." What is impossible with men is possible with God! When Paul was finished preaching in the city of Antioch, Luke describes the result like this: "As many as were ordained to eternal life believed" (Acts 13:48). God has a people in every people group. He will call them with Creator power. And they will believe!

What a power is in these words for overcoming discouragement in the hard places of the frontiers! The story of Peter Cameron Scott is a good illustration of the power of John 10: 16.

He was born in Glasgow in 1867 and became the founder of the Africa Inland Mission. But his beginnings in Africa were anything but auspicious. His first trip to Africa ended in a severe attack of malaria that sent him home. He resolved to return after recuperation.
This return was especially gratifying to Scott, because this time his brother John joined him. But before long John was struck down by fever. All alone, Peter buried his brother, and in the agony of those days recommitted himself to preach the gospel in Africa. Yet again his health gave way and he had to return to England.

How would he ever pull out of the desolation and depression of those days? He had pledged himself to God. But where could he find the strength to go back again to Africa? With man it was impossible!

He found the strength in Westminster Abbey. David Livingstone's tomb is there. Scott entered quietly, found the tomb, and knelt in front of it to pray. The inscription reads,

OTHER SHEEP I HAVE
WHICH ARE NOT OF THIS FOLD;
THEM ALSO I MUST BRING.

He rose from his knees with a new hope. He returned to Africa. And the mission he founded is a vibrant, growing force for the gospel today in Africa.

If your greatest joy is to experience the infilling grace of God overflowing from you for the good of others, then the best news in all the world is that God will do the impossible through you for the salvation of the hidden peoples. "With men it is impossible, but not with God; for all things are possible with God."

You Will Receive Back a Hundredfold

The second great incentive in Mark 10:17-31 for being dedicated to the cause of Frontier Missions is found in verses 28-30.

Peter began to say to [Jesus], "Look, we have left everything and followed you." Jesus said, "Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundred-fold now in this time, house and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal

This text does not mean you get materially rich by becoming a missionary-at least not in the sense that your own private possessions increase. If you volunteer for mission service with such a notion, the Lord will confront you with these words: "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head" (Luke 9:58).   

Instead the point seems to be that if you are deprived of your earthly family in the service of Christ, it will be made up a hundred-fold in your spiritual family, the church. But even this may be too limiting. What about the lonely missionaries who labor for years without being surrounded by hundreds of sisters and brothers and mothers and children in the faith? Is the promise not true for them?

He Makes Up for Every Sacrifice

Surely it is. Surely what Christ means is that he himself makes up for every sacrifice. If you give up a mother's nearby affection and concern, you get back one hundred times the affection and concern from the ever-present Christ. If you give up the warm comradeship of a brother, you get back one hundred times the warmth and comradeship of Christ. If you give up the sense of at-homeness you had in your house, you get back one hundred times the comfort and security of knowing that your Lord owns every house and land and stream and tree on earth. To prospective missionaries Jesus says, I promise to work for and be for you so much that you will not be able to speak of having sacrificed anything.   

What was Jesus' attitude to Peter's "sacrificial" spirit? Peter said, "We have left everything and followed you." Is this spirit of "self-denial" commended by Jesus? No, it is rebuked. Jesus says, "No one ever sacrifices anything for me which I do not pay back a hundred-fold-yes, in one sense even in this life, not to mention eternal life in the age to come." Why does Jesus rebuke Peter for thinking in terms of sacrifice? Jesus himself had demanded "self-denial" (Mark 8:34) . The reason seems to be that Peter did not yet think about sacrifice the way a Christian Hedonist is supposed to.   

How is that?

The response of Jesus indicates that the way to think about self-denial is to deny yourself only a lesser good for a greater good. You deny yourself one mother in order to get one hundred mothers. In other words, Jesus wants us to think about sacrifice in a way that rules out all self-pity. This is, in fact, just what the texts on self-denial teach.

If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it. (Mark 8:34-35)18

The argument is inescapably hedonistic. Saint Augustine captured the paradox in these words:

If you love your soul, there is danger of its being destroyed. Therefore you may not love it, since you do not want it to be destroyed. But in not wanting it to be destroyed you love it.19

Jesus knew this. It was the basis of his argument. He does not ask us to be indifferent to whether we are destroyed. On the contrary, he assumes that the very longing for true life ( 1 Peter 3 :10) will move us to deny ourselves all the lesser pleasures and comforts of life. If we were indifferent to the value of God's gift of life, we would dishonor it. The measure of your longing for life is the amount of comfort you are willing to give up to get it. The gift of eternal life in God's presence is glorified if we are willing to "hate our lives in this world" in order to get it (John 12:25). Therein lies the God-centered value of self-denial.



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