05/23/2026
CHRIST’S MINISTRY AND THE FATHER
Christ’s ministry ... [is] humble; it is always in relationship to the One who sent him, that is, the Father. When Jesus Christ acts, it is God the Father who acts, and who is revealed in that act. “I can do nothing on my own authority; ... I seek not my own will, but the will of him who sent me” (Jn 5:30) are the words of Christ himself. These follow the declaration that “as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself” (Jn 5:26). He therefore is the Son of this Father, and his ministry is reflected as one of humility before the Father: “the Father is greater than I” (Jn 14:28); he has not come of himself, but the Father has sent him (Jn 8:42). And even if it seems that he “honors” himself, that is “nothing” in light of this humility before the Father:
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Because this oneness between Christ and the Father is present, St John's gospel tells us that he speaks what he has heard from the Father (8:26). What the Father has commanded him, he does (14:31). He does what “pleases” the Father (8:29). He declares the “name” of the Father in which he speaks (17:26). All this means that Christ's ministry is the Father's ministry, the Father working through Christ (114:10). Finally, however, we receive the ultimate word regarding this: “I and the Father are one” (Jn 10:30). Thus, in terms of ministry, “He who believes in me, believes not in me, but in him who sent me” (Jn 12:44). It is this which Christ makes clear to Philip, who not yet understanding these words, seeks to “see” the Father:
If it is true, then, that Christ and the Father are one, we can even say, in this sense, that the ministry of Christ begins from before his appearance in Galilee, i.e. even before the Incarnation. “Before Abraham was, I am” (Jn 8:57). There was no such “conversion” of Christ (an ancient heresy) in which his ministry begins, even if the fullness of his ministry on earth is revealed in the Incarnation. He is “from the foundation of the world” with the Father, i.e. before his fleshly appearance.
We find a clue to this when Jesus is but the twelve-year-old boy who is found “sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions” (Lk 2:46). We find there that he must already “be about his Father's business” (Lk 2:49, KJV); this is what his parents could not understand (Lk 2:50). This eternal ministry is also known by St John the Forerunner in the Jordan; the Baptist recognized Christ before the baptism (Mt 3:14) for which reason he did not deem himself worthy to baptize him.
Thus Christ's ministry, since it is one with his life (which is eternal), is before the world and exists beyond the world. Being one with the Father, his ministry is eternal, and those who minister in this temporal world, also participate in his eternal ministry.
– Fr. Joseph Allen, "The Ministry of the Church: The Image of Pastoral Care" (St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1986).
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