Missiologically speaking, even without the commissions of Christ having been recorded, the priority of God’s mission would still be clearly communicated throughout both Testaments of Scripture. Not only does God’s mission permeate the grand narrative of the Bible—in creation, fall, redemption and restoration—but the Bible itself is a product of God’s mission.
Christopher Wright shares some helpful words about the Bible and God’s mission, in his introduction to his magnum opus, “The Mission of God”:
The whole Bible is itself a missional phenomenon. The writings that now comprise our Bible are themselves the product of and witness to the ultimate mission of God. The Bible renders to us the story of God’s mission through God’s people in their engagement with God’s world for the sake of the whole of God’s creation. The Bible is the drama of this God of purpose engaged in the mission of achieving that purpose universally, embracing past, present and future, Israel and the nations, “life, the universe and everything,” and with its centre, focus, climax, and completion in Jesus Christ. Mission is not just one of a list of things that the Bible happens to talk about, only a bit more urgently than some. Mission is, in that much-abused phrase, “what it’s all about.”2
When we focus solely on the paths of “sentness” and on the “nations” to whom we are sent, we miss out an important part of our mission; the ethical path—one that is much needed in our broken, divisive and polarized world—a path that is shaped by ethical character derived from the nature of God himself, and that which defines what it means to truly fulfill the promise God made to Abraham in being a blessing to the nations (Genesis 12; 18).
N.T. Wright states:
The mission of the church must therefore reflect, and be shaped by, the future hope as the New Testament presents it. I believe that is we take these three areas—justice, beauty and evangelism—in terms of anticipation of God’s eventual setting to rights of the world, we will find that they dovetail together and in fact that they are all part of the same message of hope and new life that comes with the good news of Jesus’ resurrection.3
A barrier to the future hope that N.T. Wright speaks of, in the restored reality of God’s redemptive grace, is the shadow side of our evangelical approach. In shaping our biblical theology around God’s mission in our era, we should not neglect the important aspects of social transformation in our evangelistic thrust, especially as they concern upholding the dignity of people groups that have been disadvantaged by missions work in past centuries.
Christopher Wright states that our “…ethics and God’s mission are integrally bound together…The community God seeks for the sake of his mission is to be a community shaped by his own ethical character, with specific attention to righteousness and justice in a world filled with oppression and injustice.”
He’s right. Let’s illuminate how shaping our ethical approach is an important bridge between our ecclesiology and missiology in shaping a biblical culture around evangelism.
In Part 2 of this series, I will explore what it truly look like to live out the implications of God’s distinct nature and character in a fragmented, fallen world.
2 Wright, C.J.H. (2006). “The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative.” (InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove), 22.
3 N.T. Wright, “Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the church” (New Harper Collins, 2008), 230.
4 Wright, C.J.H. (2010). The Mission of God’s People. (Zondervan, Grand Rapids), 83, 93, 94.
