Many moons ago, I started going through John 10:10, Christ's self-given mission statement, "I came that they may have life and have it abundantly." Unfortunately, because I was still in school at that point and thus even more distractable than I am now, it got left by the wayside before I'd gotten very far (the old posts are here and here). I'm going to try taking it up again.
So, having discussed the subject of the sentence, the rooted and authoritative "I", we are presented immediately with the associated verb, "came". Although, of course, finding a verb here is quite natural, the particular word is rather interesting. "Came" is a word based on change, both in place and, because of that, in time. In other words, it it says that something that was there is now here.
This is rather natural for human beings, since our actions routinely require movement in time and space. However, God is not a human being. In fact, we know from the Bible that God is eternal and omnipresent – in other words, He is at every time and every place in the universe at the same time. Thus, it isn't strictly possible for Him to "come" at all, since He's already here.
However, being present by definition wasn't enough, and so He became a man. The movement wasn't one of moving from point A to point B, but instead was from a position of inaccessibility to one of absolute accessibility. As John wrote, "No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father's side [i.e., Jesus], He has made Him known." (John 1:8) Prior to the Incarnation, we had very little information on what God was like. The Old Testament records a few conversations with God, and some of His actions, but the level He generally acted on left mankind with a very incomplete portrait of Him. When Christ came, God was suddenly accessible, both because He was visible, and because He had to act within the constraints we understand, things like time and space. Although the difference is generally greatly overstated, it's almost understandable how some people see the OT God as a God of power and wrath and the NT God as one of love; wrath and power can be seen from miles away, but love must be demonstrated to someone close-by.
Because of this, it is no coincidence that in both the commissions of Matthew 28 and Acts 1, Christ made a very clear requirement of going to preach the gospel. What Christ started is what we are to continue as His church, and so, since He came visibly and purposefully into the world to give it an example and ultimately to transform it, He calls us to do the same. The gospel could never be effectively spread by a few men who stayed hidden in a room in Jerusalem; nor can it be spread by people today sitting in their homes and church buildings. The church down the street may be "present", but the work can only begin when the people in it actually go into the world, not just to visit and then hide again, but to live with and in front of that same world.
So, if you want to participate with Christ in His mission, you will have to go into the mission field to do it. Luckily the mission field is right outside your front door. The task calls for patience, humility (see Philippians 2:4-8), creativity, and longsuffering (John 15:18) – in short, it requires us to seek after extreme Christ-likeness, so that others can see, understand, and come to follow Him (1 Corinthians 11:1). And, for that, we must have the Spirit (see Acts 1:4-5, Romans 8:1-17). Thankfully, Christ has promised all that we need, and more!
