As disciples of Jesus, Christians should be growing into His likeness. This means we should become more and more like Him, and it seems this should include all of His attributes, behaviors., and so on. We often study the Scriptures to find these attributes, and different people have produced different models of Jesus’ activities.
However, in addition to the many detailed accounts of them, the gospels include many statements that summarize Jesus’ activities. These tend to repeat the same three things over and over, so perhaps they represent a way to think of His actions in a way that we could grow into.
Specifically, the synoptic gospels describe Jesus as teaching, evangelizing, and healing every sickness and disease. While John doesn’t use the same technique in his gospel, the categories still apply.
Reflecting on the summary statements, it seems reasonable that they could be used as a framework for our own discipleship. Perhaps this is even part of the reason for having such statements in Scripture and why they are repeated so many times.
While everyone may not be able to participate in all three aspects of Jesus’ ministries, congregations certainly should be able to cover them all. In fact, it seems that doing so would make a good explicit goal for any congregation. Even if a pastor doesn’t feel called to be active in all of the ministries, there’s no reason that the whole congregation shouldn’t be. After all, shouldn’t a local body of Christ reflect discipleship of Jesus rather than of the pastor?
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