God's Measure of Success In Ministry

You yourselves are my witnesses that I said, ‘I am not the Christ,’ but, ‘I have been sent ahead of Him.’” (NASB) John 3:28

The Greek language is wonderful here because it tells us that John strongly emphasized the “not” and emphasized his “I” in the statement above. The literal Greek reads something like this, “I, I am NOT the Christ.” John emphatically tells them that he has a different calling from God. He knew what God had not called him to do. John understood that God wanted him to be the forerunner of the Messiah (Hebrew word for the Greek word Christ). John understood that God had not called him to be the Christ. It was not in God’s plan for John the Baptist to have greater numbers or more people in his ministry than Jesus. God called John to minister, and John was content to submit to God and to be faithful in his ministry. In fact, it was God’s plan for John to soon be imprisoned.

Now that is a humble man. What is humility? According to 1 and 2 Peter, humility is evidenced by submission to another, and John was a wonderful example of humility toward God. He did not care if Jesus had greater numbers. John 3:30 and 4:1 tell us that Jesus was drawing more people than John, and this would suggest that the number of people who were following John was dropping. Some of John’s followers most likely left John and started following Jesus. Ouch! It was in God’s plan for John’s numbers to drop. If we peek behind the words of verse 30, we find that John was decreasing in popularity. His numbers were dropping because John was pointing people to Jesus. It was God’s plan for his numbers to drop, but it does not mean that God’s blessing had been removed from John. Yet, Christians today will cancel Bible Studies, drop Sunday School classes, and change what they are doing in order to increase the numbers. The message is simple, God has not called us to have large churches or large “anything else.” He has simply called us to be faithful to Himself and to faithfully plant and water. The Apostle Paul said it well,