Get Your Pretense On!

112 • Get Your Pretense On!

pater ), servant (of a master, kyrios ), or disciple (of a teacher, didaskalos ). Other images of those under authority include the shepherd ( poimen ) who tends a flock that belongs to another, the worker ( ergates ) hired by the landowner ( oikodespotes ), the apostle ( apostolos ) commissioned by his superior, and the sheep ( probaton ) obeying the voice of the shepherd. It is interesting to note that even though the disciples are being prepared for spiritual leadership in the Church, Jesus places far more emphasis on their responsibility to God’s authority, than on the authority which they themselves will exercise. There is far more instruction about the role of following than about the role of leading [italics mine]. 20

Jesus as the Perfect Pattern of a Representative of God

After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them on ahead of him , two by two, into every town and place where he himself was about to go. ~ Luke 10.1

The one who hears you hears me , and the one who rejects you rejects me , and the one who rejects me rejects himwho sent me .

~ Luke 10.16

While it is clear that representation as a concept is bound up in most of the images of ministry in the Scriptures, Jesus himself most perfectly fulfills the duties of being the emissary of God. His life and ministry reveals a clear pattern of what I will later describe as the principles (process) of representation. For instance, Jesus received an assignment from the Father to lay his life down for his sheep (John 10.17-18). He was resourced and empowered for his mission by God’s unbounded entrustment of the Holy Spirit (John 3.34; Luke 4.18). Jesus engaged in the mission with wholehearted and unreserved obedience (John 5.30;