From the beginning of history, God has worked through agents to carry out His mission. Patrick Schreiner, Associate Professor of New Testament and Biblical Theology at Midwestern Seminary, writes, “[God] enacts His mission and furthers His mission specifically through His people.”
First, God created Adam and Eve as His image bearers on earth. God blessed them and commissioned them “to reflect, resemble, and represent his greatness and glory on a global scale.” Later, God chose Abraham, sent him from his own country, and promised to bless the nations through him (Gen. 12:1–3; 17:4–5; 22:18). The Old Testament records how God deputized and sent many other emissaries on His behalf, people like Moses, David, and Elijah. In fact, God sent the entire people of Israel to fulfill His plan.
Israel’s God-given mission was to be a kingdom of priests and a light to the nations (Ex. 19:6; Isa. 49:6). Their mission was to display the joy and peace of living in obedience to God, and in the process, to draw the nations to worship the true and living God. Jason DeRouchie, Research Professor of Old Testament and Biblical Theology at Midwestern Seminary, writes that Israel’s mission “to the nations was centripetal,” which involved “calling others to ‘come and see.’”
While Israel did not have a commission to “go” to the nations in the same way that the Church has the Great Commission, the most fervent lovers of God in the Old Testament repeatedly expressed their dissatisfaction with provincially limited praise and, therefore, longed for all nations to glorify God. For example, Psalm 67:3–4 says, “Let the peoples praise You, O God; Let all the peoples praise You. Let the nations be glad and sing for joy.” God affirms that He will fulfill their longing. In Psalm 46:10, God promises, “I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.” And yet, for generations, the people of Israel turned away from God and failed to fulfill their intended mission.
When the fullness of time came, God sent His Son and Spirit as the ultimate agents of mission. Andreas Köstenberger writes, “The Lord of the Scriptures is a missionary God who not only reached out and gathers the lost but also sends His servants, and particularly His beloved Son, to achieve His gracious saving purposes.” The incarnation, life, death, resurrection, ascension, and enthronement of Jesus and the arrival of the Spirit form the centerpiece of history and mark the climactic events in God’s mission.
The Son’s Mission
Where other agents failed to perfectly reflect, resemble, and represent God, Jesus succeeded. Jesus fulfilled His mission by perfectly glorifying His heavenly Father through His words and works (John 17:4–5). In the greatest display of love in history, Jesus voluntarily sacrificed His life on the cross, securing redemption for all who trust in Him. Then God raised Him up from the dead and exalted Him (Acts 2:32–33; Rom. 1:4).
After His resurrection and before His ascension, Jesus said to His disciples, “As the Father has sent Me, I also send you” (John 20:21). Jesus commissioned His disciples to be agents of His mission. He said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to follow all that I commanded you; and behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:18–20).
Yet Jesus instructed His disciples to wait for the Holy Spirit. He said, “I am sending the promise of My Father upon you; but you are to stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high” (Luke 24:49). Jesus said that when the Holy Spirit comes, “He will glorify Me” (John 16:14). Just as Jesus’s mission was to exalt the Father, the Holy Spirit’s mission is to exalt Jesus.
The Spirit’s Mission
Ten days after Christ’s ascension, God sent the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:1–4). Immediately, the Spirit went to work. He empowered the small band of believers in Jerusalem to testify to the death and resurrection of Jesus to people from all over the world (Acts 2:5–36).[7] As this band of believers quickly grew in number, they faced persecution. The believers started to spread out from Jerusalem as agents of mission, filled with the Spirit of mission, and began to “turn the world upside down” (Acts 17:6 KJV).
The Spirit first saves people, then gathers His people, and then sends His people. To this day, the Spirit is choosing a people for His own possession and empowering them to proclaim the excellencies of Christ (1 Pet. 2:9). Those whom the Spirit unites to the eternal Son through faith, the Father adopts as His children.[10] The three Persons of the Godhead are involved in salvation because it is a Trinitarian phenomenon. God fills His children with the Holy Spirit of Jesus, who empowers them to cry out, “Abba, Father” (Rom. 8:15). The Spirit unites the children of God to one another as brothers and sisters. The family of God, the Church, is a new community in the Spirit.
The Church’s Mission
The Baptist Faith and Message 2000 provides a definition for church. Section IV says, “A New Testament church of the Lord Jesus Christ is an autonomous local congregation of baptized believers, associated by covenant in the faith and fellowship of the gospel; observing the two ordinances of Christ, governed by His laws, exercising the gifts, rights, and privileges invested in them by His Word, and seeking to extend the gospel to the ends of the earth.” It is significant that this definition includes extending the gospel to the ends of the earth as one of the church’s primary duties.
Today, the Church is God’s agent of mission in the world. The Spirit leads the Church to continue His mission of exalting Christ.[14] According to the pattern in Acts 13:2–4, the Holy Spirit, in response to the prayers of the Church, sets apart and sends out missionaries. The Church prays for them, ordains them, and dispatches them. Missionaries remain connected to their sending church, but they serve as envoys where no church exists.
Missionaries are not merely concerned with evangelizing lost people, but also with bringing the gospel to and discipling unreached and unengaged people groups. The difference between “lost” and “unreached” is a matter of access to the gospel. Paul embodies the heart of a missionary when he says, “My aim is to preach the gospel where Christ has not been named” (Rom. 15:20). The core missionary task is to enter new contexts, preach the gospel, make disciples, establish churches, train leaders, and entrust the church to the local believers. In this way, God blesses the nations with the gospel through the Church.
This article originally appeared at For the Church.
