Three Tribes of Believers

Consider some exaggerated extremes of description:

Some believers have been convinced that Jesus is coming to pick them up this afternoon and relieve them of their fear and lack of preparation and take them on an eternal vacation. They are hiding from the ever-increasing darkness and evil and listening through the locked front door for the horn of the gospel bus.

Another group of believers is well-studied and vocal, and they are making much noise about right and wrong. Part of their proclamation includes the news that their enemies have broken every commandment of God and deserve to burn in hell for 3 eternities. They hope the filthy unbelievers will come groveling and get saved.

Both of those groups include what some people call clergy and laity. Another bunch, instead of dividing believers into those two categories is more likely to separate them as sheep and goats: sheep being the believers who have taken up the quest of discovering what their King has called them to be and to value and to do. Their concern is that they would be transformed into His likeness, and then be His servants in His Kingdom.

This sheep-like group takes as a high calling to be part of the tribe of the Lamb of God, hoping that their alignment with His identity will also align them with His ministry of taking away the sin of the world. They paid attention when they heard the parables of the minas and the talents and the judgments, so they are at work in the places He has set them, manifesting His nature, His culture, His business and His government.

They will continue, as they have in every place they have found their way, to turn the world upside down, and bring glory and blessing to their much-loved Majesty, Jesus. They will have an inheritance. They will bring the Landowner the harvest.