Did you sign up to be Jesus?

Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. John 14:2.

This passage always struck me as overly optimistic of Jesus, or at least narrowly applied. After all, Jesus did some pretty amazing things, and while select saints through the ages have done remarkable things as well, it’s been hard to accept this as a blanket statement applicable to the Church universal. I certainly cannot say that I have seen this evidenced in my own life.

Of course, the notion of what it means to be a Christian, namely that we allow Christ to live His life through our bodies in a very literal and practical sense, would seem to provide an answer to this quandary. If Jesus did those things while on earth, and He lives in us while we live on earth, then he can do the same things or even greater things as we make ourselves available to Him. I get that.

But “even greater things that these”? That’s a pretty bold statement for the Son of God to make. Basically, “you’re going to do more astounding and revelatory and miraculous things then I did to convince you that I am the Son of God, and therefore, God.” And it seemed to me that Jesus was perhaps just trying to buck up the troops, stir our spirits to avoid those feelings of helplessness that so often overwhelm us.

But this evening a thought occurred to me that put a whole new spin on this. If every Christian is supposed to be the embodiment of the Spirit of God on earth, like Jesus was, if we’re all going to be the ambassadors of God to the world like Jesus was, the thought went, if in essence we’re all going to be little jesuses (or “christians” aka christlings) then what really is happening is that there will be a hundred Jesuses in the local church, a thousand in the town, a million in the country, a billion in the world.

A billion Jesuses.

Isn’t that something? We marvel at what one Jesus did in three years with no technology or global outreach, without the New Testament to read or the history of the Church to learn encouragement and humility from. Even if none of the billion Jesuses are as perfect and submissive as Jesus Himself, if we’re only a quarter as obedient, that’s still a quarter of a billion Jesuses on earth.

And maybe this is one of the ways in which we will do greater works than the one Jesus who started it all. By sheer numbers! Now don’t get me wrong; this only works insofar as we are walking in surrender to the life of Jesus in us. Down through the ages well-meaning (or not) Christians have done incalculable damage to the name of God through their own misguided efforts to forward the Kingdom according to their own wills and intentions. And misguided is the absolutely correct term, since they are being guided by their own flesh that they’re trying to rehab into perfection, instead of giving up on ever saving the Sin-man and exchanging their wills for God’s will. That’s what Jesus did; more to the point, that how Jesus did what He did on earth. If we don’t realize and accept and obey that principle, then we’re a billion Sin-men and –women trying to do God’s work our own way, and Jesus is not going to show up for that.

But imagine what the Church would be like (I mistyped “life” there, but it’s appropriate) if we all strove to cease striving, we all tried to give up, we all decided to surrender our will, and let Jesus be Jesus in and through us. What could an army of Jesuses do in this world? Care to find out?