Dave Brisbin 6.8.25
A man asks me about Jesus’ saying that if we believe in him and his works, we’ll do the same and greater works than he. He’s troubled by the verse because he’s not doing the works that Jesus did, let alone greater ones, so does that mean he doesn’t really believe? I ask him what works of Jesus he’s looking to do. Well, it has to be the healings and miracles, right? And therein lies the rub.

The church hasn’t known what to do with this verse for the same reason, usually limiting it to Jesus’ immediate inner circle who performed healings and miracles in the gospels. But if Jesus’ message doesn’t apply to us, why read it? Or maybe we’re just misunderstanding which works Jesus means. Nothing focuses the mind like a deadline, so you can bet the last words a person believes they’ll say to you will be the most crucial they have to offer. Jesus’ last words to his friends were to love each other as he had loved them, that people would know they were his followers by their love. Not theology, ritual, or miracles.

He defined love as love of the enemy—those not of our own tribe, the realization of identity with his Father and everyone encountered, whether family and friends or strangers and outcasts. The works of Jesus were his breaking all ethnic, social, and legal boundaries necessary to establish connection. Healing only happened after connection and may be understood spiritually as the connection itself, the liberation of perfect love.

Pentecost, a symbolic fifty days after Easter, is the moment Jesus’ followers experienced their own spiritual liberation. Their loss at Calvary was the beginning of a wilderness journey that had to be taken without Jesus. As long as they were with him, they continued to think tribally, physically, literally, missing Jesus’ real works. He said it was to their advantage that he go, so they could identify with God’s spirit—always there, but invisible to tribal eyes. 

When they speak that day, and everyone hears them in their own language, what better way to understand their graduation from tribe, from the confines of ethnic identity to God-in-all identity, the real work of Jesus.

Graduating Tribe

Audio podcasts delivered at theeffect church in San Clemente, CA. theeffect is a community of imperfect people working together to find the emotional recovery and spiritual transformation that is theeffect of God’s love by unlearning limiting perceptions, beliefs, and compulsions, and engaging a first century Jesus in a non-religious and transforming way. See more at theeffect.org.

True North with Dave Brisbin is a podcast about the things that can bring you back to center, whether God, spirituality, community or family or all of them. Never esoteric or abstract for its own sake; always practical and full of common sense, we’re interested in exploring the effect of what we believe on our lives and questioning what we believe in light of the deep connection we’re meant to live. Dave Brisbin is an author, speaker, coach, and songwriter. He is the teaching pastor of theeffect, a faith community and recovery ministry in San Clemente, CA and executive director of Encompass Recovery, an addiction treatment center in San Juan Capistrano. For more on finding deeper spiritual expression free from limiting beliefs and behavior, go to davebrisbin.com.

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