I work in the IT industry and on occasion I have worked with companies who outsource some of their IT operations to non US based companies. Some of these are based in India and as part of the standard vernacular the phrase “please do the needful” is used. For those of you who work or are familiar with Indian based companies you may have heard this before and know what it means. For those of you who are not I pulled a quick line from Wikipedia to give you some context.
“Do the needful” is an expression which means “do that which is necessary”, with the respectful implication that the other party is trusted to understand what needs doing without being given detailed instruction. The phrase is common in Indian English. There has been recent interest in the phrase especially in the context of globalized technology.
As you can see the phrase means to “do that which is necessary” and as we continue through Holy Week and are on Maundy Thursday it hit me that God said to Jesus”please do the needful” and he did. Jesus did exactly what was necessary to save us, all of us from certain death and an eternity of punishment for what we did.
God asked Jesus to humble himself and become a human, not only human but born as a baby human and grew up in our world, putting himself in the same situations we all have been in…..learning to walk, learning to talk, listening to his mom and dad hearing no when he wanted to touch the hot stove…well maybe not that. As he became a teenager he went through the same things all teenagers do and as crazy as it sounds puberty was part of that and Jesus’ voice changed I am sure. What I am not sure of is if he had one of those Peter Brady situations where his voice cracked at the most in opportune time. Although it is funny to think of Jesus standing in the Synagogue reading from the Torah and a squeak comes out instead of a word.
Then as Jesus became an adult he had to learn how to do work, and he was a man who did carpentry, and block laying, and other manual labor.
It was only when he turned thirty did he leave much of the standard things behind and started to take on the mantel of Messiah. But throughout all of the time he was growing up Jesus he listened to God’s command to “please do the needful”. You see, if Jesus did not do these things he would not have been able to do that which was necessary which was to live a life as 100% man, commit no sin and head to the Cross and die for our sins.
Not only did Christ do the needful when he died, he did the needful when he rose again from the dead. That is the key, if he did not do that which was necessary in coming back to life then he is not God and we are all lost.
While you are finishing up this Holy Week try to also “do the needful” and really understand what Christ did and how he did exactly what was necessary for us.
Romans 5:8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
thesefivesolas 