Jesus Peopled

What Did Jesus Do?

...what sort of people ought you to be in loves of holiness and godliness...
2Peter 3.11

The Father first “peopled” the earth with, well, the first people—Adam and Eve. By virtue of the Fall the earth was thereafter peopled by sinners. By the time of the generation of Noah the Father had grown so fed up with man that he actually regretted having created them, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land...for I am sorry that I have made them.” (Genesis 6.7) Yet, the Father would re-people the earth, exclusively from the descendants of Noah, for Noah, alone among his generation, found favor in the eyes of the LORD (Genesis 6.8). Sadly, the effect of the Fall corrupted Noah (A drunk!) and his sons (One, a voyeur; the other two, kind of “backwards.” See Genesis 9.21-23)

So, the world was all too soon again peopled with sinners, bold sinners, bold enough to aspire to build a tower to reach all the way to heaven, thereby giving man the opportunity to ascend to essential parity with God himself (See Genesis 11.1-9). Yet again, there was the world, peopled full of sinners pretty much everywhere the Father turned. That is until Abram so believed and obeyed God that it was reckoned unto him as righteousness (Genesis 15.6). Notwithstanding the gift of this imparted righteousness to Abram/Abraham, the descendants of Abraham, who were to be saved by the law, proved to be sinners like all the other nations.

Thus it came to pass that the time Father had ordained for his Son to be sent into the world arrived, so that the Son might re-people the earth with sinners saved by grace. And so a new people began to people the earth, Jesus people, if you will. Oh, they were sinners like everyone else, but unlike everyone else, they had been saved by grace through faith in Jesus as God's Son, the Savior, the Messiah, the Christ. This is how the Jesus people came to be known as Christians, making the answer to Peter's question, “what sort of people ought you to be,” Jesus people, Christians who, by the power of the Holy Spirit, live lives of holiness and godliness after the example of Christ himself. People diligently working out their salvation, living at peace, and hastening the coming day of God by fulfilling the mission appointed to the Church by the Lord. There's was a calling to be a people constantly sent out into the world to make disciples, to reproduce themselves, to people the world with sinners saved by grace through faith, who would be found without spot or blemish, and at peace among themselves in that fateful day of God that would come suddenly and unannounced like a thief.

You see, it had always been the Father's plan to people, or, more accurately, to re-people the earth in and through the Son. Jesus came on a peopling mission, so to speak, and he charged his Church to be a missional Church that would perpetually go about the business of peopling the world, so that all God's elect should reach repentance as they wait for new heavens and a new earth to come and take the place of the old heavens, and the heavenly bodies, and the earth itself, all of which will be dissolved by fire and the judgment of God (2 Peter 3. 12-13).

If you, who are reading this, already have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ it is because you have been “peopled” by the Holy Spirit through the ministry of Christ's missional Church. If you don't yet have such a relationship with the Lord, today might be the very day Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, is going to make you one of his people. As for we, the people of Jesus, our call is simple: follow the Lord, and make a new people for the Father in and through the Son. That's what Jesus did.

S.D.G.

Jim
www.jimwilkenministries.org
Marion, NC
PS 37.4