Calling All Nations

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of evangelism in this address from The Gospel Coalition Sermon Library.

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I should warn you that, unlike this morning, this will not be an exposition of Scripture. This is going to be a topical thematic address on the ongoing imperative for world mission. That’s my subtitle to the topic that was given me: The Ongoing Imperative for World Mission. Yet what shall I do with this title? To show something of the sweep of possible discussions the title might call forth, I am going to do two things.

I shall begin by outlining some of the roads I might have traveled in this address, but chose, resolutely, to resist before pursuing another way. I shall offer an apostolic number of points. It’s not 18, though; it’s only 12. A man has to know his limitations. That point of wisdom comes from the great American theologian, Clint Eastwood.

1. An array of Great Commission texts

We might have begun with Matthew 28:16–20. Here we observe that the controlling verb is make disciples, not make decisions or entertain the sheep. The three supporting participles, all carrying some imperatival force from the context require us to go and baptize and teach the disciples everything Jesus has commanded, which sounds as if there might be some further proposition and imperatival content and not just the biblical storyline.

The form of the Great Commission in Luke 24, verses 46–49, is cast as fulfillment and prediction. Fulfillment in that Jesus’ passion and resurrection were predicted in Scripture. Then prediction further, for in consequence of Jesus’ death and resurrection, repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.

The disciples, we’re told, are witnesses of these things, and Jesus further promises them to send the Holy Spirit that the Father has promised. Similarly, themes are developed along the same lines in Acts 1 with a geographical extension of the ministry spelled out rather more clearly, “… first in Jerusalem, then in all Judea and Samaria, then to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:8)

John’s form of the Great Commission, John 20, is prefaced by Jesus’ appearance to the disciples in a closed and locked room where he enters and says, “Peace be with you.” Doubtless, this is meant to be more than a casual shalom, or modern Arabic salaam. It’s meant to be evocative of a huge theological structure, for John’s gospel has made it clear that the person who does not obey the gospel already stands under God’s wrath (John 3:36). While in his death and resurrection, the Son fulfills his role as the ultimate sin-bearing Lamb of God.

The peace that Jesus promises his followers (“Peace I leave with you; peace I give to you; I do not give as the world gives.”) is bound up with his cross so that when he comes to them and says, “Peace be with you,” you are meant to tie all of this together and understand that the ultimate shalom is more than a casual greeting but all that flows from his cross work.

Risen from the grave, Jesus tells the 10 disciples gathered in the room, “As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.” (John 20:21) Some have bled the dramatic parallelism in this commission for more than it can carry, yet the power of this standard of sacrifice, Jesus’ standard of sacrifice and service, will never be matched by even the most heroic ministry. Once again the commission is tied to the gift of the Holy Spirit and the forgiveness of sins.

Of course, the theme of the Great Commission extends beyond these specific texts, too. For instance, we cannot forget the instructions of the Spirit to commission Paul and Barnabas for the work of the first missionary journey. Nor can we forget the apostle’s self-understanding. He’s an ambassador of the great King conveying his message, “Be reconciled to God.” Although many texts clamor for attention, for our purposes this evening they must remain a road not traveled.

2. The biblical theology of Great Commission texts

Very often, Christians have studied the Great Commission texts in isolation from the books or the corpora in which they are embedded. They’re just preached as isolated texts. Thus, they unwittingly denude them of their power. For example, let’s begin with Matthew 28 again. But before you read Matthew 28, you are supposed to read Matthew 1, 2, 3, 4 … all the way to 27. The very first verse of Matthew 1 announces the ancestry of Jesus through David back to Abraham.

Abraham figures elsewhere in Matthew’s gospel. In Matthew 3, John the Baptist tells us God is able to “… raise up children for Abraham out of the stones themselves.” Apparently, in other words, genetics is not the key. A little later, Jesus himself tells us, “Many will come from the east and the west and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom.” (Matthew, chapter 8)

In other words, we’re not far from anticipating the theology of the apostle Paul who says that the real children of Abraham are those who share Abraham’s faith, not just who share his genes, Romans 4. So then, the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew 1 draws attention, among other things, to the non-Hebrews, including Ruth, a Moabitess who according to the law shouldn’t have been an Israelite at all. No Moabite was supposed to join in to Israel unless 10 generations had passed, and she is only four generations from King David.

Then the name of Jesus is carefully parsed for us in chapter 1, verse 21. Jesus, of course, is the Greek form of Joshua, which simply means Yahweh saves. Jesus comes to save his people from their sins, but now his people, in the context of such a genealogy in Abraham, suddenly means not just the Jews but all of the messianic people worldwide. That’s what he’s come to do.

This explanation provides a grid for the rest of the first book. This is the book that shows how Jesus comes to save his people from their sins … by his teaching, by the inauguration of his kingdom, by his death and resurrection, by this consummation, by his return. Small wonder, in the middle of it, there’s also a trainee mission (Matthew 10) to prepare his disciples for work of outreach and so forth.

Then the eschatological discourse, the Olivet Discourse, reminds us that this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come (Matthew 24:14). My point is that the Great Commission in chapter 28 is not some isolated text tacked onto the end of a book that really doesn’t have much to do with the theme apart from that. It runs right through the whole book; it pulsates through the whole thing. It brings to a climax one of the themes that drives the entire gospel.

Similar things could be said with various emphases of every book and corpus of the New Testament, anchoring our Great Commission texts in the very structure of the new covenant. And, of course, precisely because such themes have been marvelously probed in recent years, if you’re interested in them, read Andreas Kostenberger and Peter O’Brien (whose name you will know). Their book is Salvation to the Ends of the Earth. On the other hand, read Eckhard Schnabel, his book Early Christian Mission.… But I’ll let that theme go by, too.

3. The still larger biblical storyline.

Rather myopically, I have limited myself so far to New Testament texts. Yet the New Testament documents, of course, nestle within the entire canonical framework. The first responsibility of sentient creatures, not least of God’s image-bearers, is to recognize their creatureliness, with all that creatureliness entails.

We are not God. We are not self-existent. We are creatures made by God and for God. The most spectacular evidence of God’s grace is his pursuit of rebels when they fail to recognize their creatureliness and thus fall into idolatry, condemnation, and death. Despite the amount of space in the Old Testament devoted to Israel, the fact of the matter is, Paul is entirely right to point out that the history of Israel is itself nestled within the still-larger story of humanity’s creation and fall.

That’s why we not only need some anti-types that come from Israel, we need also a new creation theology and a new Adam Christology as much as we need an explanation of High Priestly categories. That’s why we must recognize that the promise to Abraham, that through his seed all the nations of the earth will be blessed, is not done away by the Mosaic covenant and the emphasis that follows on Israel.

It would be helpful to tease out the countless Old Testament anticipations of the cultural and racial open-endedness of the people of God in the last times. Texts such as Isaiah 19:23–25. “In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria. The Assyrians will go to Egypt and the Egyptians to Assyria. The Egyptians and Assyrians will worship together. In that day Israel will be the third, along with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing on the earth. The Lord Almighty will bless them, saying, ‘Blessed be Egypt my people, Assyria my handiwork, and Israel my inheritance.’ ”

These massive biblical structures of thought and expectation, again, I must reluctantly set aside, although I’ll briefly return to this particular passage in a few moments.

4. Responses to objections to Great Commission themes: alternative exegeses.

There are several of these alternative exegeses, alternative interpretations. Despite the apparently straightforward nature of the Great Commission text (How simple can you get? Go, baptize, make disciples, teach them), some have argued, for example, that the Great Commission applied only to the apostles or only to the first generation of believers so there is no ongoing mandate there for us today.

Certainly the apostles enjoyed some unique function; nevertheless, if the Great Commission itself tells the apostles to teach their disciples to obey everything that Jesus has commanded them, presumably the command inherent in the Great Commission should not be excluded.

In other words, Matthew’s version of the Great Commission does not read, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me; therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you … except for this commandment to make disciples. Keep their grubby hands off that one since it belongs only to you, my dear apostles. And, surely, I am with you always to the very end of the age.”

The ludicrousness of this reading merely has to be spelled out, and then the laughter will handle the rest. Moreover, Paul can instruct Timothy to find reliable men who will be able to teach others. He certainly does not mean, “Teach others everything except the gospel, of course, since that job was given to the apostles only.”

The believers in Revelation 12 overcome the Devil himself by three means, and one of them, as we’ll see in a moment, is by the word of their testimony. We’ll come back to that one. But enough, I don’t have time to pursue this particular objection any further.

5. Further responses to objections: the job’s already done

 This objection is grounded in a particular reading of a handful of texts. Jesus had predicted that the gospel would be preached to all nations. Then Paul, writing to the Colossians (Colossians 1:23) happily asserts that the gospel has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven. A further handful of texts express similar thoughts: Romans 10, 1 Timothy 3:16, and so forth.

Lest we succumb too quickly to pedantry, it is worth recalling that elsewhere, however, Paul asserts, “It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known.” (Romans 15) As a result, he plans to head to Spain. The sweeping claim that the gospel has already been preached in all nations and to every creature, then, must be qualified by Paul’s own assessment.

More importantly, the claim must be read in the light of the Bible’s handing of salvation historical developments. For two millennia, the focus of God’s people was the Israelites. It was one ethnic group. Now, Paul is saying, in fulfillment of God’s ancient purposes, the gospel has gone to all nations, to every creature. In principle, it has already been fulfilled. This is precisely the point that Paul makes, amongst others, when he addresses the Athenian intelligentsia, too, in Acts 17. Again, I won’t focus a lot of attention on that question.

6. Further responses to objections: postmodern predilections

I don’t have any intention of taking a lot of cheap shots at postmodernism, partly because I’m still trying to figure out what postmodernism is. That’s why I keep writing books on it; that’s the way I work things out. If it is tied to our finiteness, as some think, and thus to insistence that we cannot escape the narrowness of our own vision, then it’s hard to deny the cogency of postmodernism.

Surely it’s true to say that there are two kinds of perspectivalists: those who admit it and those who don’t. People who dismiss perspectivalism in all its forms as something anti-gospel miss the point. There is only one non-perspectivalist: God Almighty. To be truly perspectival, you have to be omniscient.

Only the one who is omniscient can look at things from absolutely every perspective and thus is not a perspectivalist. If you are finite, and I imagine that includes most of us, then of course you’re a perspectivalist, whether you admit it or whether you don’t. Of beings that can be said to know, only an omniscient being is free from perspectivalism.

Nevertheless, there are softer voices of postmodernism, like the ones who insist that there is a perspectivalism that we can’t ignore, and harder voices which insist that because of such perspectivalism we cannot speak of knowing the truth. Nevertheless, the harder voices of postmodernism object to the Great Commission on two grounds.

The first is nicely articulated by Brian McLaren. He argues that in the light of the cultural move from modernism to postmodernism we should stop thinking so antithetically and join hands with co-religionists such as Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists, refusing to proselytize each other’s members as we stand, shoulder-to-shoulder, against the far greater dangers of injustice, social evils, and secularism.”

Indeed, in one of his more recent books, McLaren says that what he calls “the secret message of Jesus,” (stripped of events in Jesus’ life, such as the cross) is potentially of great benefit to all the world’s religions. “This reappraisal of Jesus’ message may be the only project capable of saving a number of religions, including Christianity, from a number of threats, from being co-opted by consumerism or nationalism to the rise of violent fundamentalism in their own ranks.”

I confess I am finding it difficult to decide whether McLaren more seriously misunderstands and misrepresents Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, or Christianity. McLaren states “… it’s significant to note that all Muslims regard Jesus as a great prophet, that many Hindus are willing to consider Jesus as a legitimate manifestation of the divine, that many Buddhists see Jesus as one of humanity’s most enlightened people, and that Jesus himself was a Jew.” All true, and all profoundly manipulative and misleading.

A) Although “Muslims regard Jesus as a great prophet” (McLaren’s quote … that’s true), no Muslim sees him as the greatest prophet.

That is strictly reserved for Muhammad. Moreover, Muslims think that Trinitarianism is ridiculous at best and blasphemous at worst. They deny that Jesus rose from the dead, and most of them deny that Jesus was actually crucified.

B) McLaren says, “Hindus are willing to consider Jesus as a legitimate manifestation of the divine.”

True, but this willingness extends equally to seeing all religious leaders as manifestations of the divine. In fact, some strands of Hinduism see all human being as manifestations of the divine. There is nothing intrinsically unique about Jesus, nor is there any place for a unique incarnation or the like.

Moreover, the structure and assumptions of Hinduism mean that Hindu perception of where the human dilemma lies is radically different from that found in biblically faithful Christianity, so it is not surprising that the answer lies in cycles of improvement as one gains the karma to rise a little higher in a new cycle of reincarnation that is a little more favorable, not in a sin-bearing substitute. The structures are profoundly different.

C) Yes, “Many Buddhists see Jesus as one of humanity’s most enlightened people,” but the Jesus thus evaluated is a carefully winnowed Jesus far removed from the historical reality.

No religion is more offended by the uniqueness of Jesus’ claims, or by his insistence, not to say the insistence of his followers, that salvation is found in no other name than Jesus, than is Buddhism.

D) Of course “Jesus himself was a Jew.” Moreover, all of his earliest followers were Jews. Yet virtually all of the conflicts Jesus endured during the days of his flesh were with Jews.

At the end of the day, Jews and Christians have a fundamentally different reading of Tanakh. (That is, what we call the Old Testament.) As undiplomatic as it may be to say so in a culture of kosher pluralism, passages like Matthew 23, John 8, the letter to the Galatians, and many others will simply not go away.

I say with the most profound respect, if McLaren understands these things, then he is misrepresenting these religions. If he does not understand them, he is making pronouncements where his misunderstandings are troubling and he shouldn’t be writing in these domains. Either way, his argument is manipulative. Ironically, his argument is as offensive to deeply committed and knowledgeable Muslims as it would be to deeply committed and knowledgeable Christians.

The second hard voice of postmodernism ties postmodernism to anti-colonialism, anti-cultural-hegemony, and this sort of thing, and it’s either suspicious of all proselytization in principle (and evangelism is dismissed as proselytization) or it stands against any proselytization undertaken by people from countries with a colonial heritage.

Certainly we’re on the cusp of a massive transformation of perspective. We have expected, in the past, the majority of world Christian leaders to be white and Western, to be (relative to most of the world) affluent and technologically capable, but there are now far more believers in the Two-Thirds World than in the West.

I have preached in churches of 30,000 in Asia. A big church in France draws 150 people. The West still produces more well-trained theologians than any other part of the world, but this owes much to economic factors, and I suspect it will change in the years ahead. It’s only a matter of time until the leaders of Christians in the Two-Thirds World become better known around the world. It’s already happening.

Witness, for example, the courageous and influential stance of the Anglican Archbishop of Nigeria, Peter Akinola, whose name now is very well known. Many churches in S„o Paulo, Brazil, have something to teach us about energetic racial harmony and integration in churches. When we in the West go somewhere as missionaries, even if we ourselves come from relatively humble backgrounds, by our own lights; nevertheless, we are perceived to be coming from the affluent world, and our ministry is naturally read as, in some sense, “reaching down.”

When someone from a Two-Thirds World country becomes a missionary to a country of similar socio-economic level, that missionary is naturally read as a peer. When that same missionary serves in a more affluent country, he or she is naturally read as “reaching up.” As a result, expectations change, social dynamics change, modes of influence change.

Moreover, for better and for worse, Christian missionaries bring some of their culture with them. In recent decades, there have been many efforts by missionaries from the traditional mission-sending countries to disentangle the gospel from the export of American, Aussie, Kiwi, or other Western challenges and cultures, but still there is a challenge before us to be more careful in this regard, isn’t there?

Now, however, with missionaries coming from many different countries, we’re finding pockets of churches all over the world that are served by, say, Korean missionaries that have absorbed not only the gospel but also substantial dollops of Korean culture … the Korean Prayer Mountain Movement style of praying, for example. It’s all very fascinating, sometimes confusing, invariably complicated.

It’s a grand thing that Jesus is building his church, often by means of his people, sometimes despite us. What is undeniable, however, is that massive changes lie just ahead. None of these developments argues against the ongoing imperative for world evangelism. They merely suggest that in the future, we will be less inclined to think of missionaries going from “us” to “them,” and more inclined to think of missionaries going from everywhere to everywhere.

Korea, to mention but one prominent mission-sending country, sends out a formidable number of missionaries, at the moment, the best estimates are somewhere between 12,000 and 15,000. In addition, Korea sends “tent-makers” into other Asian countries that would otherwise be completely closed. Many African churches send missionaries cross-culturally to other tribes within the African continent and, increasingly, to Western countries, primarily to serve those who have emigrated already from African countries to the West.

Worldwide statistics are complicated and not always easy to come by, and one is not always sure how accurate they are. In any case, this development is not in dispute, and one must rejoice over it, even if some of the reasons for getting to this point (that is, the decline of the percentage of missionaries from the Western world) are really disappointing, reflecting a great deal more of the decline of Western commitment to missions.

Jesus has told us he will build his church. He has not told us that such building will necessarily take place in our backyard. It helps to get things into perspective if we take time to read up on worldwide developments in order to gain a worldwide appreciation for what God is doing.

Two or three decades ago (those of you who trained in ministry back then will know what I’m talking about) missiologists and other Christian leaders were endlessly debating the precise nature and limits of contextualization, which was understood to go beyond the well-known indigenous principle that was worked out about a century earlier.

The indigenous principle demanded that churches in any area become self-governing, self-supporting, and self-propagating. But now contextualized churches added that their theology had to be shaped, in measure, by the local cultural context. Nowadays, however, debates over contextualization, quite frankly, sound old-fashioned. People don’t write a lot of essays on contextualization anymore.

In an era of global instantaneous digital communication, pressures are rising to think through what globalization might mean. All the rules are changing all over again, for good and ill. In any case, I don’t have time to run down these rabbit warrens, as interesting as they are, but I can’t see how any of them undermines the urgency of the Great Commission.

7. Fundamental skepticism about God, Christ, and the Bible

 In many theological seminaries and universities, not to say the broader culture, prominent thinkers dismiss what the Bible says about itself, about God, about Christ, about human beings, about sin, and thus, ultimately, about the gospel. Transparently, where the gospel is disbelieved, no one will feel the weight of the mandate to proclaim it.

Because many of these skeptical voices are influential throughout our own culture, some of this cultural influence and its strong distaste for anything that smacks of evangelism (“That’s telling other people they’re wrong”) or world mission sloshes over into the church itself. That means that there are Christians who really are genuinely Christians, sufficiently influenced by the world, who now find the notions of evangelism a bit uncomfortable and world mission just a bit degrading. This makes no sense, of course, but it’s what happens.

The skepticism of some parts of our world about the truth of the gospel becomes, among believers, not exactly skepticism but a kind of waning confidence. Clearly this is not the place to confront these skeptical voices head-on, but I can’t resist one small observation. From the perspective of Christians whose confidence in the gospel is unwavering, the siren voices of unbelief, far from chilling their fervor to evangelism actually constitute a fresh call to evangelism.

After all, these siren voices of unbelief also need conversion, repentance, faith. Not a little of twentieth-century Western Christian thought has been directed toward meeting exactly that need, whether in biblical studies, people like F.F. Bruce, who then reared up another whole generation of people under him. After all, Peter O’Brien, here, studied under F.F. Bruce. Another generation of biblical writers, thinkers, and scholars who teach our people.

Or apologists like E.J. Carnell and Francis Schaeffer whose works still continue to influence us, and so forth. The improving quality of Christian books during the past three-quarters of a century, despite the sad sluice of rubbish, is still cause for a great deal of quiet thanks to God. Again, this aspect of the ongoing mandate of world evangelism I will also set aside.

8. Nuanced judgments as to what “world mission” includes

It is perennially important to work hard at the proper relationship between the ministry of the Word and other ministries, including social concern. Exclusive focus on the former, that is ministry of the Word and proclamation, is in danger, occasionally, of fostering a docetic view of Christian life.

Exclusive focus on the latter … that is, on social concern … is in danger of abandoning the actual proclamation of the good news that is the power of it all. Although there are some important principles to work out, the actual balance of time allotment must depend in part on the local situation.

When people are crying on a devastated beach after a tsunami, it is not the best time to distribute Bibles, absent fresh water, food, and shelter. Yet an ostensibly Christian organization which, decade after decade, distributes tons of blankets and food, founds orphanages, combats HIV, without ever offering Bible studies or explaining what doing this in Jesus’ name actually means, and what the gospel is about and how important it is for both time and eternity, is indistinguishable from UNICEF or MÈdecins Sans FrontiËres.

Always there should be two overlapping circles to the discussion. First, what the Bible actually says about these matters, so far as we can discern what’s right and, second, how it applies in any particular context. As a rule, we’re most impressed by Christians, especially their witness that is full of the Bible, full of Jesus, full of the gospel, full of excellent teaching, full of sacrificial service, full of ministering to the whole person, and, where possible, even influencing the community itself.

I tried to work out some of these things in another book called A Christ and Culture Revisited, if you are interested in teasing them out for yourself. Again, I’m going to set some of these things aside.

9. Strategies to fulfill the ongoing imperative for world mission

In a remarkably penetrating paper, my dear friend Tim Keller (as far as I know he has not published it) reads Acts very carefully to learn some of the strategies of the early church as the first generation of believers sought to evangelize the Roman world.

Apart from observing the much-noted fact that the apostle Paul planted churches in urban centers … everybody notes that … then the gospel goes out from the urban centers to the surrounding areas … everybody notes that … he also draws attention to the centrality of the gospel, rightly conceived; to the transformation of human life under the gospel (for example, freeing the slave girl in Acts 16); to the power of communal life and the integrity of corporate worship; to the way Christians gather together for instruction in the Word, and then through them they were observed to be full of joy and a different community.

These and other themes in Acts contribute to the drama of the Church’s rapid expansion. All of them are well worth exploring, and I hope Keller’s paper will achieve wide circulation when it’s released. Again, I won’t take that road here.

10. Statistics

Because I did study mathematics at university, I am probably more impressed by numbers than I should be, and then because TEDS (Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) stands at the hub of a worldwide network of Christian leaders, it’s pretty easy to tap into a great deal of interesting data. Christians interested in the worldwide church eagerly note that in the late 1970s, Cambodia could boast of only 2,000 Christians. Today the number is about 150,000.

As recently as 1989, there were only four known Christians in Mongolia. Today, there are over 20,000, meeting in over 100 churches and 500 house churches. The first church in Nepal began in 1959 with 29 members. Today there are more than half a million believers meeting in 5,000 congregations.

The number of Christians, broadly defined, in Asia as a whole has grown from 22 million in 1990 to over 300 million today, of whom about 140 million are evangelicals. In South America, there are more than 8,000 Spanish-speaking missionaries to other parts of that continent. The megalopolises of the world are becoming more and more cosmopolitan.

London, for instance, boasts 440 spoken languages. Fifty-one percent of the churchgoers in that city are non-English-speaking. Europe is by far the darkest continent, as measured by the percentage of the population without evangelical faith (certainly under 3 percent). By contrast, the percentage in Latin America is about 14.5 percent.

Vienna has more registered prostitutes than evangelicals. Belgium has more Muslims than Protestants. France has more Muslims worshipping on a weekend than Catholics. Other statistics are equally interesting and disturbing. Brazil alone has 12 million children living on the streets.

It’s estimated that more than eight million children in Latin America are victims of pornography and sex trafficking. These and many other statistics tell their own stories. Transparently, they have a bearing on how we think about missions. They do, for good and ill. But once again, I will leave that aside.

11. Pragmatic tips and how-to style instructions

They’re not always bad. I am suspicious of some of them, but from people who are highly experienced and have some things to share, they can be really wonderful. About 35 years ago, J. Herbert Kane, a Canadian, who was what they called in those days an old China hand, had long been in CIM as it was then (China Inland Mission) before it became OMF, one of the last to be kicked out under Mao.

Kane wrote a book titled Life and Work on the Mission Field. It was really a very pragmatic how-to from somebody who’d spent decades of his life in a foreign culture. The book is rather dated now, of course, but in its time it was wonderfully helpful at the level of practical advice and insight. Many books of a specialized nature, but belonging to the same species, have been published since then. It would certainly be worthwhile doing a canvass of them, to make sure that we know what’s available out there. But again, I forbear.

12. The training needed to sustain and nurture world mission

Once again, this is a huge topic, and what better place than in schools like Moore, SNBC, my own Trinity, and other schools? Our doctoral programs in education and intercultural studies are constantly exploring such matters, and others are far more capable in such matters than I am. But I will avoid all of that.

Having listed a dozen roads not traveled, at least not traveled far, I turn at last to where I want to spend the remaining few minutes: the way of fundamentals. This, in my view, is how we ought to think about the ongoing imperative of world mission. I mention three fundamentals.

1) The sheer desperate lostness of human beings

We dare not overlook how implacably opposed Australian, Canadian, American culture is to viewing human beings in this way. I still manage to engage in university missions from time to time. By and large, university students display an awesome ignorance of matters biblical and theological. The overwhelming majority don’t know the Bible has two Testaments. They’ve certainly never heard of Abraham. If they have heard of Moses, he’s confused with Charlton Heston.

They think they’re doing well if they can remember three of the Ten Commandments. If, then, I try to explain some biblical basics, let’s say outline the doctrine of the Trinity, talk about the incarnation, or insist that Jesus rose from the dead, they’ll look at me and they’ll say, “Oh, that’s very interesting. Is that what Christians believe? I didn’t know that.” They’re not shocked by it or scandalized by it. They don’t necessarily believe it, but it’s not a hopeless thing for them. No, no, no.

The one topic guaranteed to ignite their ire is sin with its entailed lostness. That gets them angry every time. Even for many Christians, the catena of biblical quotations collected by the apostle Paul in Romans 3 sounds over the top. Do you believe this? “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.

Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit. The poison of vipers is on their lips. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know. There is no fear of God before their eyes.” Do such texts make you uncomfortable? Imagine how they make the average neighboring pagan uncomfortable! They say it’s intolerably unrealistic.

What we must perceive is the unfolding of the Bible’s entire plot line is bound up with human sin, and God’s utterly righteous wrath against it. Paul argues at length that human beings did not have to await the arrival of the Mosaic legislation before becoming guilty. The proof of our guilt from the fall is our death. “Death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses.” Our guilt is tied to fundamental idolatry even before there’s law that we transgress.

The deep significance of Genesis 3 is not the outcome of choosing one fruit over another, as if God doesn’t like apples but really has a preference for pineapples, or the like. Rather, the outcome stems from defying God, of de-Godding God. The temptation put to Eve was this: “God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be open, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

That expression, to know good and evil, pretty commonly in the Old Testament means more than simply to discern the difference between good and evil but something like to establish the difference between good and evil. The point is this was exclusively God’s role. When God made things, he made something, and he said it was good. Then he made something else, and he said it was good. When he had made everything, he said it was very good. It was his prerogative to establish what was good!

Now human beings, in their effort to become godlike, actually to displace God, want to take upon themselves the right to establish what is good and evil. Thus, if God forbids the fruit of a certain tree, it can only be because the prohibition is good. To defy it is not mere transgression … though it is transgression … it’s to make human beings the ultimate arbiters of good and evil, as God himself recognizes: “They have now become like us knowing good and evil.”

This is the beginning of all idolatry. The first responsibility, I repeat, of sentient moral creatures is to recognize their creatureliness. It is not enough to recognize, in some abstract fashion, that God is the Creator. Rather, we must recognize that, if he is the Creator, we are his creatures, made by him and for him, obligated to him, not only by our origin but by our ongoing existence. Our life depends on him. The only alternative is the most appalling idolatry.

Thus the rebellion of Genesis 3 touches off the drama that unfolds throughout the rest of the Bible. Our fundamental alienation is alienation from God. The most heinous thing about sin is that we have offended God. That’s why David, after the affair with Bathsheba, confesses to God, in Psalm 51: “Against you only have I sinned and done this evil in your sight.”

As I have often said, at one level, that’s a lot of balderdash. He certainly sinned against Bathsheba; he seduced her. He sinned against Uriah the Hittite; he had him bumped off. He sinned against the military high command; he corrupted it. He sinned against his family; he betrayed them. He sinned against the nation; he was not acting rightly as their king. He sinned against the baby in Bathsheba’s womb; it died. It’s hard to think of anybody that he hadn’t sinned against, and yet he says, “Against you only have I sinned and done this evil in your sight.”

At a deeper level, of course, that’s exactly right. What makes sin sin? What makes it heinous? What makes it grotesquely offensive? First and foremost sin is against God. If you cheat on your income tax, the party most offended is God. If you puff yourself up with pride, slander a neighbor, or become profane, the person most offended is God. If you cheat on your spouse, the person most offended is not your spouse, it’s God.

What is it in Scripture that is repeatedly said to be most offensive to God, to anger God? It’s not rape, murder, lying, or theft, even though some passages, of course, do deal with massive issues of social injustice, as in early chapters of Isaiah, Amos, and elsewhere. No, the thing that is characteristically portrayed as bringing down the wrath of God is idolatry. The human being adopts a stance that prompts God to send the devastation of the flood, or send his covenant people into exile. This is determined by idolatry

Doesn’t Paul say the same thing? In his letter to the Romans, he devotes two and a half chapters to demonstrating how all humankind, Jews and Gentiles alike, are wrapped up in sin. His exposition ends with the catena of Old Testament quotations that I quoted just a few minutes ago. It begins with the words, “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all godlessness and wickedness of human beings who suppress the truth by their wickedness.”

One of the most striking elements of the wrath of God in the Bible is the intensely personal nature of it. God’s wrath is not characteristically presented as the impersonal outworking of life. You do bad stuff, and bad stuff happens to you, sort of like karma. Rather, God’s anger is personal and real, because God himself is the one who has been offended. Our sin attempts to de-God God, to substitute ourselves for God.

The efforts of some recent writers to recast the massive biblical evidence in this regard, perhaps most notoriously Steve Chalke, reflect at best an abysmal inattentiveness to what Scripture actually says. The wrath of God is mentioned something like 600 times. The tragedy, of course, is that if we cannot see clearly the nature of the problem, we will not see clearly the nature of the solution. Thus it’s the gospel itself that gets denuded.

If we turn away embarrassed from what the Bible teaches about God’s wrath and about our guilt, we’ll never glimpse the glory of what the Bible says about God’s love, supremely manifested in Christ Jesus, especially in his cross and resurrection. We substituted ourselves for God, and God in his love substitutes himself for us and takes our sin.

We will stumble back to the distortions of 1920s liberalism, so memorably mocked by Richard Niebuhr in his 1937 book The Kingdom of God in America. He writes, “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”

The consequences of our rebellion against God are simply beyond calculation. They include not only death, what Paul calls “the last enemy,” but the degradation of the entire cosmos. All things are alienated from him. God gives us over.

There is more. Jesus Christ demands that we think in terms of heaven and hell. Sheep and goats do not end up in the same destination. If the judgments of the Old Testament seem horrific, with war and genocide, they are considerably less than the barrage of pictures that Jesus himself deploys to describe hell. No thoughtful reader of the Bible can ever forget that people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment.

By and large, our culture does not recognize the abject seriousness of the human condition. That’s the truth. The mounting guilt of human rebellion, the sheer, desperate lostness that characterizes unforgiven human beings.… Even death itself has to be sanitized. We whisk the bodies out and embalm them. Then we remark, with an open casket, “He looks so wonderful, doesn’t he?” Never, ever speak of judgment to come.

Go, bury death in limousines; dispel

Inevitable death in transient mirth,

Acquire toys and earthly wealth from birth;

Pursue position, luxuries, and tell

Your mortal colleagues of your virtues; sell

Your future for the present; measure worth

In prominence, and seek the highest berth;

Send flowers, and do not think of death and hell.

Appalling folly, attitude perverse—

Before the one great certainty, to play

The ostrich and ignore hard facts, or worse

Transform the corpse by euphemism’s play.

Still more: as surely as a mortal dies,

His certain death portends the great assize.

“It is appointed unto man once to die, and after that the judgment.” And what shall we do with bold, terrifying biblical language like the following? “But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.”

There are no friends in hell: the residents

With zeal display self-love’s destructive art

In narcissistic rage. The better part,

The milk of human kindness, no defense

Against a graceless world, robbed of pretense,

Decays and burns away. To have a heart

Whose every beat demands that God depart—

This is both final curse and gross offense.

Say not that metaphor’s inadequate,

A fearful mask that hides a lake less grim:

Relentless, pain-streaked language seeks to cut

A swath to bleak despair, devoid of him.

This second death’s a wretched, endless thing,

Eternal winter with no hope of spring.

The first fundamental in the ongoing mandate for Christian mission is the sheer, desperate lostness of human beings.

2) The sheer glory of God

We need to recapture how often the glory of God is bound up with God’s love for his otherwise damned image-bearers. The same Bible that underscores God’s holy wrath repeatedly insists that God is slow to anger, plenteous in mercy. He entreats rebels to return to him. He continues to provide sun and rain to the just and the unjust.

The tension is palpable in passage after passage, perhaps nowhere more so than in the great chapters Exodus 32–34. “You are a stiff-necked people. If I were to go with you even for a moment, I might destroy you.” And on the other hand. “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.”

Do you see? Remarkable tension. “I dare not even go with you; I’d destroy you.” And on the other hand, he’s the great, merciful, and compassionate God. Hosea the prophet dares apply to God the image of a betrayed husband. God is the almighty cuckold, the betrayed husband, still wooing the cheap hussy that is his bride.

All of this dramatic insistence on the love and mercy of God is nestled within a still larger theme. God acts in love and holiness to display his glory, to bring glory to himself. The glory of God is woven into the fabric of the Bible’s entire storyline. I wish I had time to expound this for a couple of hours. Let me just draw your attention to a couple of strands.

Begin with Isaiah. In connection with one of the so-called servant songs, the servant cries in Isaiah 49: “And now the Lord says—he who formed me in the womb to be his servant to bring Jacob back to him and gather Israel to himself, for I am honored in the eyes of the Lord and my God has been my strength—he says: ‘It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth.’ ”

In other words, God is determined to bring maximum glory to his servant. It’s too small a think to just save the Jews. He wants to bring maximum glory to his servant, and he determines that he will achieve this by extending his salvation to the ends of the earth, beyond Israel. Small wonder then that Isaiah elsewhere declares, as we have seen, that on the ultimate day of the Lord “There will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria. The Assyrians will go to Egypt.” That is part of what achieves the glory of God in the servant who brings about this great salvation.

The New Testament Scriptures articulate the same reality in slightly different ways, but with no less stress on the glory of God. Thus the form of the Great Commission in Acts 1:8 impels the believers to be witnesses to the ends of the earth. Ephesians 2:13 insists, “By the blood of Christ” Jews and Gentiles have been reconciled and have been constituted one new humanity.

God’s purpose, we’re told was to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. Jews and Gentiles alike are members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. Do you see how it’s all coming together?

Already in the preceding chapters we’re told that God has brought all of this about through his loving predestination to the praise of his glorious grace (Ephesians 1:6), which he has freely given us in Christ, in the One he loves. Everything that flows from Christ, including God’s intention to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ. The promulgation of the Word of Truth, the gospel of your salvation, with the gift of the Holy Spirit as the seal. All of this in chapter 1 is tied to the praise of his glorious grace.

Earlier, I mentioned Exodus 32–34 with its tension-filled amalgam of righteous wrath and tender mercy. These chapters depict the dreadful debauchery of the golden calf episode. Do you recall? Moses is receiving the Law on the mountain while the people have returned to idolatry on the plains below. When Moses returns, he smashes the tablets of the Law. Horrific judgment ensues. Moses feels desperately abandoned, for even his brother Aaron has been implicated in the moral disaster.

As Moses seeks the face of God in the tense and theologically rich prayers that follow, he cries at one point, “Now show me your glory.” He knows full well that the only thing sufficient to stabilize him in this wretched apostasy is a renewed and deepened vision of God, of the glory of God. That’s what you need to hang on to when you are in difficulties in the ministry. You must see that!

God replies, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. But, you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.”

What follows next, of course, you know. It’s the stuff of drama. Moses is hidden in a cleft in the rock. The Lord passes by. Moses is then permitted to peek out and witness something of the trailing edge of the afterglow of the glory of God. But while the Lord is actually passing by, while Moses is still hidden in the rocks and unable to peek out, the Lord himself intones, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness …” Words that equally can be translated abounding in grace and truth.

Christians have long recognized that this account in Exodus 32–34 is picked up and developed in the last five verses of John’s prologue. There are many points of contact between the two passages. In Exodus, Moses has been up on the mountain to receive the Law, including the detailed prescriptions regarding the building of the tabernacle.

Now we’re told of Jesus, that he came and tabernacled among us. “The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us.” The supreme meeting place between God and his community of redeemed sinners. In Exodus, God intones that he abounds in love and faithfulness, in grace and truth. John tells us that Jesus, the Word made flesh, is full of grace and truth. John points out that the Law was given by Moses, the very theme of Exodus 32–34.

The most important thing is this glory theme. “Now show me your glory,” Moses says. And God promises to display his goodness. In John’s prologue, John writes, regarding Christ, the Word made flesh, “We have seen his glory.” “We have seen his glory.” Where? Where have the disciples seen his glory?

After the first sign, the turning of the water into wine in Cana of Galilee, John the Evangelist declares that Jesus “thus revealed his glory, and his disciples put their faith in him.” There was glory in the miraculous sign. This theme develops pretty much in the book to chapter 12, and then everything changes. We discover that Jesus will be glorified by being lifted up on the cross in hideous death.

“Show me your glory!”

“I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you.”

And nowhere is there a more moving demonstration of the glory of God, in the goodness of God, than in the cross, for here in this God-glorifying death, Jesus will draw all people to himself. The glory of God in Christ Jesus is the foundation of Christian mission by which he draws all people to himself. Do you see? It’s everywhere.

Those of you who were here last night will recall the great vision of Revelation 4 and 5 where, once again, the glory of God is central. Thus the sheer glory of God is tightly bound not only to God as Creator, but even more spectacularly to God’s redemptive purposes, his missiological purposes, effected by his Son, the vision’s lion who is also a lamb.

Paul writes, “All of this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people [that’s mission] may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God.” The sheer God-centeredness of the Bible reaches its climax in the closing vision of Revelation 21 and 22. The New Jerusalem, obviously symbol-laden, is huge, a big cube. It’s as high as it is long as it is wide.

There is only one cube in the Old Testament. It’s the Most Holy Place. This is a way of saying that all of God’s people are, forever, in the Most Holy Place. They don’t need to be protected by a veil. There is no mediating priest. We’re right in the presence of God. So we are told, “I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.” We already enjoy the glory of God; all of God’s people do.

I saw no temple in the city: there

The Lord Almighty and the Lamb, his Son,

Together constitute the temple. Sun

And moon had disappeared in deep despair,

Forever obsolete beside the glare

Of Deity’s unshaded glory. None

Remembers night; for night and darkness shun

Such light, consigned to self-love’s filthy lair.

The nations bring their splendor, as the sole

Response appropriate to holiness

Transfixing. Nothing, no one in the whole

Fair city harbors shame or wickedness.

The city’s sons with vibrant joys abound;

For in the book of life their names are found.

The second fundamental in the ongoing mandate for Christian mission is the passionate pursuit of the sheer glory of God.

3) The sheer power of the gospel of Christ crucified

We tend to overlook how often the gospel of Christ is described as power. Paul declares he is not ashamed of the gospel, “For it is the power of God to salvation for those who believe.” Writing to the Corinthians, Paul insists, “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

He takes painstaking care not to corrupt the gospel with cheap tricks like manipulative rhetoric, what he dismissively sets aside as “words of human wisdom,” lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. This “incomparably great power” that is working in those who believe is tied to the exercise of God’s mighty strength when he raised Jesus from the dead.

There is superb irony in this. There’s meant to be superb irony in it. Jesus dies on the cross in hideous weakness. The leader of Christians dies as a damned malefactor. Talking about him now as the King of Power seems strange. Jesus reigning from a cross? But Christians continued to talk this way with gleeful irony. He is reigning yet. He is risen, and he is coming again when his power will no longer be contested.

So central was the cross in Paul’s estimation that he could write, “For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power.”

This stance, of course, is not exclusively Paul’s. It’s everywhere in the Bible. It’s tied to the fact that Christ’s cross itself, this hideous shame and weakness is the center of power. Martin Hengel and others have shown that in the first century, the four canonical books we call gospels (the gospel of Matthew, the gospel of Mark, the gospel of Luke, and the gospel of John) were never called that in the first century. Nobody referred to Matthew as “the gospel of Matthew” or Mark as “the gospel of Mark.” Nobody.

Rather, it was “the gospel according to Matthew” or “the gospel according to Mark.” Because, you see, there was only one gospel … the gospel of Jesus Christ according to Matthew, according to Mark, according to Luke, and according to John. It was the one gospel of Jesus Christ, and all four of the gospels move, in every case, toward the cross and the resurrection. “This is the gospel.”

For someone to write a book called The Secret Message of Jesus and focus only on the teaching and leave off the cross is profoundly mistaken right from the very beginning. In the second and third centuries, you read false (pseudonymous) gospels: the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Judas, the Gospel of this, and the Gospel of that. In every case, the cross is left out. There is not one of them that is a gospel in a New Testament sense, because it is not the gospel of Jesus Christ according to whomever.

The Gospel of Thomas, so called, written in the second century, is actually a collection of 114 sayings. There’s no narrative to it at all, certainly no cross, just a couple little snippets of narrative. Yet we’re constantly being told that this really does preserve the real, real essence of Christianity. No, no, no.

Apocalyptic imagery comes to our aid once more. In Revelation 12, the ancient serpent, Satan himself, makes war on the offspring of the woman … you and me, the people of God. He is filled with fury, we’re told, because he knows he is doomed and his time is short. So how will Christians overcome him?

First, they overcome him on the ground of the blood of the Lamb. You’re back to the cross. This does not mean that they refer to the blood in a magical sort of way. It means that they trust Christ’s death on their behalf.

Second, we are told they overcome him by the word of their testimony. This doesn’t mean they give their testimonies a lot. Rather, it means they bear testimony to Jesus and to what he has done. So there it is again. The ongoing mandate for Christian mission, this bearing of public testimony to the triumph of Christ on the cross, is irreducibly tied to the conquest of Satan.

Christians know, above all people, that by nature we were all objects of God’s wrath but we’ve been reconciled to God by Christ Jesus, and we urge others to be reconciled to him so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

I hope many of you have read Pilgrim’s Progress. We see ourselves like Christian in Pilgrim’s Progress, somewhere between the City of Destruction, which by God’s grace we have abandoned, and the Celestial City, toward which we press, urging people all around us to join us on our pilgrimage. We have tasted so much, and there’s so much more to come.

The power of God on the cross of Christ was begun in transforming work, and now we long for the consummation of all things. At that point, we will experience corporate worship as we ought to experience it, and God will be all in all. Until then, precisely because we have tasted something of the power of the cross, we implore men and women from every tribe and language and people and nation. We say, “Jesus is Lord. Be reconciled to God.”

O let us see your glorious face, perceive

Shekinah brilliance shining in the gloom

Behind the veil, transcend the sacred room

And pierce the Paradise of bliss. We leave

Our worship hungry yet: can we achieve

The beatific sight? Dare we presume

To beg for more, outpace the trailing plume

Of glory, and pure rays of light receive?

It’s not that we feel cheated by the grace

You freely give: each glimpse of your divine

Perfection crushes us—yet gives a taste

For holiness transcendent, pure, refined.

Our worship’s still a poor discordant thing;

But one day we shall see, and we shall sing.

Amen.