The Church as Influential
Another picture of the church on Revelation 21, as Kenneth Gentry points out in his book The Book of Revelation Made Easy, is of the church being influential. In verse 16 there is a picture of the city of God being a cube of 12000 stadia in length, height and width. Now, as large as this is, you definitely can’t fit every human being who was ever saved into that space. So this must be a symbolic picture of a great and wide area – and for Gentry it is symbolic of a great influence that the church will exert in the world.
Influence Through Faithfulness
As we’ve seen earlier in the week, the ultimate fulfillment of these things is still coming, but in the meantime they represent spiritual realities, and so our lesson for today is that the people of God should be influential in the part of the world in which they are placed. This is, once again, a common theme in the Bible – John’s not just making stuff up here! The people of God are always called to influence the world around them by their love, their holiness, their worship.
Jesus instructed us to go and ‘make disciples of all nations’ (Matthew 28:18-20), so that more and more people come to know about Jesus, are influenced by His message, and go and make more disciples. The church should be a growing organization – Jesus also once pictured the church as a seed that grows and expands to great proportions (Matthew 12:31-32). And yet another picture that Jesus uses is of salt – we are to be the ones who are “salty”, preserving and bringing flavour to the world around us.
What sort of influence do you have? Perhaps you are saying to yourself “I have no influence.” Well, you’ll be surprised. Every interaction in your day has the potential to be influential! It might be somebody close to you – a family member. It might be a co-worker or client. It might even be a nurse or carer, or even a stranger in a shop or on a train or on the phone. The question is: will you make sure that the interaction is an influential one?
Impact Through Kindness
You can do that by showing a kindness that might be unexpected. By offering compassion in a difficult situation. By extending some encouragement and upliftment to somebody in need.
You could also be influential by taking a stand against evil, by refusing to be swayed by ungodliness.
Or you might simply take the time to listen to somebody who needs an ear to bend.
Whatever it might be, as a follower of Christ and a part of His bride, the church, yours is a great calling to stand tall in the world around you, and influence it, being – as Paul puts it – the “aroma of Christ”.
Like a great big city that expands the whole world, let us the church have a great influence by living for Jesus and like Jesus in every interaction today.
