There are two ways to look at your life. You may regard it as belonging to yourself, as something under your control. Almost every one of us has been encouraged at one time or another to “take charge of your life.”

The other view of life regards it as belonging to somebody else. This is the view of life that the Scriptures constantly take. “You are not your own,” they say, “you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body” (1 Cor. 6:19, 20). “It was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed . . . but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect” (1 Pet. 1:18, 19).

This view is really the only reasonable way to see your life. How much control did you have over your coming into the world? How much say do you have about leaving it? Consider the factors that influence and control you. You might have very little say-so even while you are in the world. Anyone who will stop and deal squarely and honestly with himself for one moment will see that his life clearly is not his own.

This is the view of life that Jesus took. His life, he declared, was not his own. The words he spoke were not his own words; he simply spoke the words that were given him by his Father. He didn’t figure out his own life plan. He said that he simply did the things that his Father had shown him. He came from heaven, not to do his own will, but to do the will of him who had sent him. By approaching life this way, he showed us the best way to understand ourselves: I am not my own. My life belongs to Christ just as his life belonged to God.
If my life belongs to Christ, then it’s my business to be of use to Christ wherever in this world I happen to be at any time. I have no right to serve myself. I have no right to do whatever pleases me. My business is to be of use to him.

I think all of us must have a great deal of sympathy with the man Jesus delivered from demons. He wanted to stay at Christ’s feet. If I had been him, I would have wished to sit down at Christ’s feet and stay there, too. But Christ knew perfectly well that the man’s first duty, as one who now belonged to him, was to go out and be of service. “Go home to your family,” he said,” and tell them how much the Lord has done for you” (Mark 5:19).

Jesus tells us the same truth in Mark 16:15, “Go into all the world and preach the good news.” In English there are two imperatives, but there’s only one in the original language. Jesus did not emphasize the word “go,” but the word “preach.” He assumed that those whom he saved would go, that their compassion would be as broad and their hearts would go out as widely as his own. It would seem very clear that if someone belongs to Christ, his business is to be of use to Christ, wherever he may be.

Think of how Christ lived his own life. What was his purpose? It was a missionary life from beginning to end. He said of himself at the start that he had not come “to condemn the world, but to save the world” (John 3:17). Old Simeon, as he took the little child Jesus in his arms in the temple, looked ahead to see in him that light that was to inflame the nations. Matthew looked back and saw that the nations ? “the people living in darkness” ? finally saw “a great light” in him (Matt. 4:15, 16).

Although he came at a time when Jews and Gentiles were divided by a caste line sharper than any between Brahmin and untouchable, he resolutely refused to acknowledge any racial lines. Jesus felt compassion on the Galilean crowd who seemed like sheep without a shepherd; he also wept for the other sheep who were not. of the Jewish fold. He loved Samaritans and touched Roman soldiers. He cared for people of the whole world.

At the end of his life, he summed up his desires with those clean-cut commands that close the Gospels. Some have sneered at the missionary enterprise, because they feel it rests on a few detached statements of Christ. But, if you cut off Christ’s last commands from the Gospels, Christ’s missionary purpose would still be just as radiantly clear. He said enough, he did enough, he was enough, to make it perfectly plain that anyone who calls himself Christ’s, and is faithful to him and not hypocritical in discipleship, must have a sympathy as wide as his Lord’s.

Although his life would be enough to persuade us that we must have hearts as large and compassion as wide as his, I’m glad that the final commands are so brilliantly clear.

Recall the last words of Matthew:
“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” (Matt. 28:19,20)
Recall the equally unmistakable clarity of Mark:
“Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation.” (Mark 16:15)

Remember the last chapter of Luke: “Repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations.” (Luke 24:47)

You find the words again in Acts:
“You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:8)

So as the clouds came rolling down to catch him up from our sight, the last words that men heard from his lips were “to the ends of the earth!”

If we belong to Christ, our hearts must feel for the world’s need as Christ’s heart felt for that need. We must see people as he saw them. We must hunger for the world’s redemption with the same intensity with which he hungered for it, and we must be willing, even as he was willing, to die for its life.

We have to have compassion as wide as Jesus’, otherwise we risk our own spiritual lives. It is one of God’s laws, as inexorable as any of his natural laws, that no man can keep spiritual blessing to himself. God will not let him do it. He will turn such blessings to ashes.

When Paul quoted Christ’s words, “it is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35), he gave us the very kernel of all of Christ’s teaching on spiritual life. Whoever or whatever would save its life shall lose it - whether it is a student group, a church, an individual Christian or even a mission agency.

What do people often say in response to all of this? “There is so much need here at home.”. Need for what? Need for lawyers? There are already almost twice as many lawyers as businesses right now. Need for more teachers? There is a glut of teachers in this country. Need for more businessmen? Ninety-five percent of the businessmen in New York fail, the competition being so fierce. Need for more ministers? At this time there is one minister to every 600 or 700 people in this country, while a missionary in Asia finds himself responsible for a thousand times that number.

There is plenty of desperate need here in the United States. But let no one say, “There’s plenty of need for Christian work here in the United States,” and then stay at home and not do any of it. Hundreds of people have locked the door to foreign missions on the pretext that there was so much to do at home and have then deliberately sought their own ambitions.

Or some people say, “There is no immediate emergency; the thing has drifted for nearly 2,000 years, and it can drift for 2,000 years more.” No haste? I suppose such people have not “lost” anybody they love. Have they ever read Matthew 24:14? “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” The end of what? The end of tears. The end of sorrow. The end of death. The end of separation and parting. The beginning of that glad day when those who sleep in Christ will wake, and all the torn hearts of earth will be healed, and “the glory of the Lord will be revealed” (Isa. 40:5).

Don’t you want to see that day? Do you say you have no interest in its coming? Very well, then, you may just as easily turn your back on the needs of your own spiritual life. Only remember that when you do so, you count yourself out of the company of the true-hearted, large-souled disciples whose lives do not belong to themselves, but rather to him who loved the whole world and gave his own Son for its life.