I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. ~ John 12:24

Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. ~ John 6:53

Once there were two men who longed for real tomatoes with good flavor unlike the bland, waxy variety found in the chain supermarkets. So they both decided to start their own home gardens.

The first gardener bought the best seeds in the best seed catalog and picked out a nice patch of dirt behind his house with good sunlight. Since tomatoes are the gateway drug of home gardening, he couldn’t help but purchase a few pepper plants and eggplants too. He dug in the hard soil (there was a lot of clay in their area) and planted and watered his seeds, careful to space them apart properly, and reflecting on how – in a sense – the seed had to die before new life could spring from it.

Every day he was diligent to water and weed his garden and, sure enough, in about a week little sprouts poked through the surface. But neither the tomatoes nor the others plants grew as big as those in the catalog pictures, and although his tomatoes tasted far better than the waxy supermarket variety, they looked a bit scrawny and didn’t produce very much.

The second home-gardener bought the best seeds he could find in the best seed catalog and picked out a nice patch of dirt behind his house with good sunlight. Since tomatoes are the gateway drug of home gardening, he couldn’t help but purchase a few pepper plants and eggplants too.

Because there was a lot of clay in their area he rented a roto-tiller and spent a day plowing up the hard dirt for his garden bed. The tiller violently ripped into the hard soil about a foot deep, churning everything over and deeply cultivating the topsoil and clay into a soft new mixture. Then he went to the local compost facility where grass clippings, pulled weeds, and other yard waste from all over the city was allowed to rot and decay into smelly black piles of rich organic matter. He filled his truck bed to the brim with this living-dead dirt and shoveled it onto his freshly-tilled planter beds. To this he added earthworm castings (worm poop!). He then folded the compost deep into the soil turning it over and over again one shovel-full at a time.

Then he added organic fertilizer, made from decomposed bone, kelp, and fish meal. He sprinkled the ashy white powder all over the planter beds and raked it into the dirt, shaping the beds into gently sloping mounds, which were now smelly, soft, and a deep dark brown color. Into this graveyard of decomposed animal and vegetable waste he planted and watered his seeds, and reflected on how they would have to break open and “die” in order for life to spring from them. And he thought, too, of how the young plants would be – in a sense – eating the flesh and drinking the blood of all the animals and plants that were sacrificed and given on their behalf, and he marveled at how much death was required to produce rich, full life.

That summer his tomatoes outgrew their cages, and the pepper plants were so full they crowded each other in the beds. He picked so many big, beautiful tomatoes and peppers that he had to share them with his friends and neighbors since it was more then he could possible eat all by himself. And his tomatoes were tasty.

The kind of “gift-community” we discussed in Part 4 would be remarkable in a world of greed, isolation, aggression, and loneliness. It would be conspicuously Godly or “Holy.” In fact, that’s the point. Ultimately, we are becoming eikons of God designed to both imitate Him and become a dwelling in which He lives by His Spirit (Eph 3:22). But what does it mean, practically speaking, to be God’s eikons? What does that look like?

Again, Jesus gives us the answer.

The realization that Jesus “baptism” was actually an explicit instruction about how to make disciples should lead us to an inevitable conclusion: Human transformation cannot occur in isolation. We must be immersed in a life permeated with God’s work, and because God most often does his work through and among people, the only way to be “baptized” in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is to live in and among a community of other Jesus-followers.

We first see this truth most strikingly in Jesus’ own ministry, where students were folded into the life of a larger community that was actively seeking transformation of themselves and the world around them. Paul also exhorts us to radically commit ourselves to the “body” of Christ (Rom 12; 1 Cor 1; Eph 4), his vivid metaphor for the community of believers.

Not only did Jesus tell us to make disciples, but he told us how to make disciples. In the Great Commission (Matt 28:18-20), Jesus lays out a method of spiritual formation that is from the inside-out:

• “Make disciples” - Enlist people as students of Jesus, engaging their mind and their will (or their “hearts”) in the intentional experience of learning from him.
• “Baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit” - This doesn’t just refer to dunking people underwater. It literally means to immerse (”baptize”) them into the presence and reality of the triune God. Put another way, we must immerse people in the kind of life that is full of the work of the living God. That is exactly what Christ did with his disciples.
• “Teach them to obey everything I have commanded” - Specifically, teach them the faithful outward acts of a genuine inward faith, like those found in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5-7). This means to praise them when they succeed, correct them when they’re wrong, and encourage them when they’re tired.

Jesus is the narrow gate through which we enter God’s Kingdom and are enabled to become His eikons again.

No other person in human history has comprehensively demonstrated the ability to partner with God to conquer sickness, personal immorality, systemic evil, political exploitation, religious manipulation, and even death. Jesus is the master of human spirituality. All other teachers fall short.

Something is very wrong with the world. Oppression, violence, exploitation, injustice, sickness, and even death can all be attributed to mankind’s broken relationship with God – the source of all that is good. The bible calls this brokenness “sin,” and it is the result of our willful rejection of God’s good rule in our lives.

The gospel, or “the good news,” is that God’s rulership has returned to earth through Jesus Christ and the door is now open for anyone to enter His kingdom and enjoy the goodness of God. As Jesus himself said repeatedly, “Repent, for the Kingom of heaven is at hand” (Mk 1:14). Jesus’ clear invitation is to simply change our minds (that’s what “repent,” or metanoia means) about the way we live and join him in a brand new life where God and his goodness is available to anyone who seeks.