Most of us are familiar with the famous saying of the Three Musketeers, “all for one and one for all.” These great heroes had an important concept in this phrase, meaning simply that each individual in the group should act for the greater good of the many, and that the group itself should act for the greater good of every individual.
What many do not know is that this famous musketeer battle cry did not originate with Alexandre Dumas. The statement “Unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno” is actually an old Latin phrase and comes from a theological thought process. This being that God is one (coming from Deuteronomy 6:4), and he as God of everyone acts for everyone (Jeremiah 32:27). Believe it or not, this statement is also the unofficial motto of Switzerland.
Interestingly enough it was used by Shakespeare 250 years prior to being used by Alexandre Dumas. The statement itself carries an important message, and one that we often miss when studying the Bible. This struck me recently when reading over John and delving into a study about how different John is from the rest of the gospels in the New Testament of the Bible.
The majority of the Gospels focus on Christ’s life, his authority, and his actions. John, however, focused his Gospel, written much later than Matthew, Mark, and Luke, on who Jesus was, as a person, and on some unique points in his ministry. As it turns out, this was the eye opening part of what I read in this study.
Preceding Thoughts
There is a story in 1 Kings 19, where the prophet Elijah is seeking the voice of the Lord. He finds ultimately that the voice of the Lord is not in a mighty wind, or an earthquake, or even a raging fire, but in this still small voice. It is an interesting predecessor to the ministry of Christ, in the interesting fashion he always does there is a connection made here, between the Prophet, and Christ’s earthly ministry to come via Malachi 4:5.
Scholars generally agree, and many people during Christ’s earthly ministry pointed out this prophecy was fulfilled by John the Baptist (not to be confused of course with the author of the Book of John). The interesting link here is between John the Baptist with the Prophet Elijah. What we are leading up to is a discussion about a Christ who cared so much for everyone that he would go onto to be sacrificed for all of our sins, to become the ultimately pure lamb, yet, would repeatedly show his deep care for individuals, and demonstrate the use of that same still small voice of God.
We can dig into this quickly with the biggest example first. Ostensibly, one of the most popular, or at least most well known verses is John 3:16 – “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (NIV) What is interesting to me, and was a little bit of a breakthrough moment for me, was the context of how this verse is delivered. First, it is important to note (and if you own a red letter bible you may already have noticed this) that these are not the words of Jesus, but the words of John, the author of the Gospel. They are however a simple paraphrase of the message Jesus was delivering.
What is interesting here, is that unlike other scenarios (think the Sermon on the Mount) Jesus is alone with one person, Nicodemus, in the middle of the night on a rooftop away from others. The most profound thought, summing up all of Christianity, and Christ is alone with one person, not making a splash, but making a difference in one person’s life.
What I want you to see, is that even when Christ was not alone this pattern repeated itself many times throughout his ministry. How about Zacchaeus for example, or Christ’s visit to Capernaum? Here we see Christ demonstrate over and over again his ability to reach out and touch individuals, and not the masses.
- The man lowered through the roof of the synagogue
- The sinful woman anointing his feet
- Raising the widow’s dead son
Just those three great examples are found in one chapter of the book of Luke (Luke 7). The point here is to say not that other Gospel authors missed this important example Christ left for us, but that is just was not the focus of their writing. John had 30 more years of opportunity to digest what Christ’s time on earth was about and what he learned from it, and he truly wanted people to know Christ.
The takeaway is simple, and is embodied by “Unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno.” What Christ, what God as far back as Elijah wanted from us is a focused passion of leading an individual to God’s Kingdom. By nature, I am a data guy. Statistics are important to me. Numbers are important to me. I lament all the time about the massive dwindling numbers of churches across the world, and it struck me in this study what I, and many other Christian’s are doing wrong.
Today, before I wrote the article it was said best to me by someone at Church that I know of quite well, but do not know at all. She said “we have become a church of goodbye, have a nice day, I hope I don’t see you until next week.” It hit me hard and deep. We do not know each other anymore. We are a body, but are cells are strangers, we spend our lives living in fear of offending people, disagreeing with people, and being taught constantly by social media that two things will end a friendship fast – politics and religion.
Our reward for this path of safety is simple, we get to watch our church slowly fade into oblivion. We get to watch the morals of our every society slowly crumble as their foundation is lost. As she said this thing to me, she challenged me. “Call me,” she said. “I have been gone for three months, and people noticed, they said hello and glad to see you today.” For that I was happy. I had said as much. “No one called me or gave me a note, or visited me while I was gone.” That had stung. It had never occurred to me to call her, to drop her a note, to check up on here. She is an important fixture in our church, I daresay one of the important women elders, and a leader who has taken an amazing amount of responsibility in mission work over the years, and the idea that no one reached out to her while she was “down” was a pitiful thought about our state indeed.
It carries over to our lives as Christians as well. I attend a twice per week Men’s prayer group (that is honestly more of fellowship time amongst brother’s, but you will not find me complaining). At a number of these prayer meetings people have walked by, bowed their heads while we are praying, or watched us as we talked, and it occurred to me as I was talking to this woman from my church that I never bothered to reach out and connect with any of them.
I stayed true to my numbers game and lost out on the biggest example that Christ gave me. Connect with one person. Be the Holy Spirit’s hands and feet for one person. Touch someone in the heart and mind. Do it today, do it every day. Stop thinking about big numbers, big churches, big draws of people. Be Christ to one person. Use your still small voice to connect, care, and help someone. That is the real lesson John wanted us to see – be part of the one Kingdom of God, but all of us should be every one of us, the individual, the forgotten, the broken. Think about this – your hand might be the only hand that ever reaches out to someone.