Well, here it is.  The final installment of our discussion of missions.  In case you are just joining us, what I'm trying to do is answer the question, "Why should we Jesus-followers continue to engage in missions by fervent prayer, sacrificial giving, and personal going?"  I’ve given two answers to that question already, so now it’s on to the third:

 

Mission is, fundamentally, an attribute of God and, thus, true “Godliness” necessitates a missional life.

 

     Now, I have to admit, this is one of my favorite reasons to talk about because it is one of the hardest for me to understand.  Does that sound weird?  Well, it's just that I really like it when a theological concept just sort of puts me in my place.  Thoughts about the bigness of God just really excite and awe me.  So here's the deal--our participation in mission is related to the imitation of God.  Let me explain.

     In Ephesians 5:1, Paul calls on believers to be “imitators of God.” As you read the Bible, you will at times come across this idea.  A writer in speaking about how we, as Christians, should live will found commands upon the very nature and attributes of God.  For example, John tells us to love one another because God is love (1 Jn. 4:7-8).  Elsewhere, we are told by Peter to “be holy” because God is holy (1 Pet. 1:16).  There are other places like this too.

     Now, throughout the New Testament we see very clearly that God’s goal for us is to make us like Jesus.  For example:

 

·             2 Cor. 3:18 (God is transforming us into the image of the Lord Jesus from one degree of glory to another.)

·             1 Jn. 3:1-3 (This teaches that our ultimate hope is that we will become like Jesus and that even now that hope stimulates the transformation process.)

·             Lk. 6:40 (Jesus says that the goal and result of discipleship is to become like the Teacher—Him.)

 

     We know that as humans we have been created in the image of God, but sin has damaged that image.  God’s plan of salvation and sanctification is to restore the image and reflection of God’s glory in our lives.  This restoration is both the promise of salvation and the outworking of it.  We have the firm hope that we will one day be like Him.  And we have the charge to imitate Him right now.

     So this is the first of three parts of a basic argument for the third answer to the question, "Why mission?"  It is the truth—we should be imitators of God.  Now, keep that in mind as I talk about the second part which has to do with "attributeness."

     Because we, as Jesus-followers, desire to imitate God, we’ve learned to behold Him—to look at and watch God.  We study Him to see what He's like and what He does.  With John, we look and see that God is love.  Not just that God is loving, but that He is the very definition of love.  Love is not some abstract principle that exists apart from the person and nature of God.  Love is a concept that is originally derived from who God is.  John is so convinced of this that he goes as far as to say that anyone who really loves must be born of God and that no one who lacks love can really claim to have any knowledge of God, “For God is love.”

     Well, that is what it means for something to be an attribute of God.  An attribute of God is an attribute of God not because it is a concept or principle that God conforms to, but because it is originally, ultimately, and perfectly found only in God.  And like John, our meditations upon these attributes of God very often lead to applications in our personal lives.  I’ve been talking about 1 John 4:7-8, so let's just read it:

 

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

 

     For John, the desire to be like God, is a given.  But what I want to talk about is mission.  I said that mission is, fundamentally, an attribute of God and I intend to prove it very simply.  Let's look a few verses:

 

Jesus said to them, "If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. (Joh 8:42)

 

So, the Father sent the Son.

 

"But when the Helper comes, whom I (Jesus) will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me." (Joh 15:26)

 

So, the Father and the Son sent the Holy Spirit. And now, lastly, a series of verses from Luke:

 

And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness . . . . And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee, and a report about him went out through all the surrounding country. . . . On one of those days, as he was teaching, Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there, who had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was with him to heal.  (Luke 4:1, 14, 18, 5:17)

 

     This may be the weirdest part, but the Bible testifies to the fact that Jesus Christ, in His humanity, found the power and direction (in essence, the support) He needed to perform His mission on the earth from God the Father, through the Spirit. 

     Now these are some relatively new thoughts for me, but at this point I’m simply in awe as I consider the glorious doctrine of the Trinity which may well be the most missional doctrine of them all.  For in it, we see that mission is an attribute of the Triune God.  We see here, God sending, God being sent, and God the Sender supporting God the Sent.  And keep in mind that the word “sent” in the Bible is the Greek “apostollo” which is translated in Latin as “missio” from which we get our English word, “mission.” Some call this, the Missio Dei—the sending of God.

     Think about it.  Before any of us came along, before we ever commissioned anyone to go to any place, before anyone ever came to tell us about Jesus, before there was a knowledge of Christ in any human being, before there where human beings—there was a Triune God who was, by His very nature, missional.  And if tomorrow there were all of the sudden no more Christians and no more churches there would still be mission because there would still be God and mission comes from and is perfected in God.

     So the all three parts of my argument goes like this:  We should imitate God.  God is missional by nature.  Therefore, we should be engaged in mission.  Let's think for a moment about this third piece.

     This Missionary God—this God who sends God, this God who is sent by God, and this God who supports God in mission—sends us.  Take all that stuff I just said about the Trinity and attributeness and the imitation of God and pour it into this huge saying of Jesus:

 

"As the Father sent me, even so, I am sending you."  (John 20:21)

 

     It makes sense.  We are, after all, His children.  We should resemble Him.  We should have His eyes and smile.  His laugh.  His walk.  His passions.  His heart.  We should even take up the family business.  I remember growing up with my dad running a gas station in Shawnee, Oklahoma.  Some of my best days and fondest memories were of going to work with my dad.  Pumping gas, washing windows, running the cash register, helping him fix flat tires and change oil.  There was always something quite special about just being with dad and doing what he did.  That, my friends, is exactly what mission is – an invitation by our Father to go to work with Him.  Today, tomorrow, and every subsequent day until Jesus returns are all “take-you-kid-to-work day,” and our Father is eager to show you what He does all day.

 

See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.  (1 John 3:1)

 

Peace.

 

 

 

My Friend:  This is my understanding: The Law of Moses is summed up into two: love the Lord your God and love your neighbor. So basically the 10 commandments are kinda being summed up here. So we are to follow this as our guidelines in life.

Cody:     And I think this is true.  Jesus Christ summed up the law in this way and Paul followed Him (Rom. 13:9, Gal. 5:14).  Of course, we must be clear about what is meant by “guidelines.”  It is not through the 10 commandments or even the “greatest commandments” that salvation (from beginning to end) can be obtained.  That is, we do not earn salvation as a repayment for our love of God.  On the contrary, we only can love God as a result of his initial love towards us.  As John writes, “We love because he first loved us” (1 Jn. 4:19).  Our love, faith, and all subsequent God-pleasing virtue is produced in our lives due to the free and gracious work of God in our hearts to conform us to the image of Christ.  They are called the “fruit of the Spirit” as opposed to the “works of the flesh” in Galatians 5.  An apple tree doesn’t have to work to produce apples, it just will, providing it is tended properly and is, in fact, an apple tree.  God has planted us.  We are his workmanship (Isa. 61:3, Eph. 2:10).  It is God who works in us to will and to work according to his good purpose (Phil. 2:13).

     To be sure, good works follow regeneration necessarily.  That is, there is no such thing as a Spirit-indwelt person who has not been re-wired to please God and seek His glory.  Such is the meaning of the sometimes confusing “faith without works” verses in James’ epistle.  Works are a wonderful thing in this regard as they bear witness to our hearts that we are truly in Christ—they testify to the genuineness of our faith.  However, we must never forget that these works are the product of the free grace of God, the result of His saving work in us.  They do not merit God’s favor in any way.  We are free from the Law in that our just condemnation (because we are law breakers) has been fully satisfied in the atoning death of Christ our Lord.

     Of course, the law is still written.  It remains the inspired word of God that has come down to us.  So what are we to do with it?  Are we simply New Testament people who consult the Old only for Bible trivia purposes and vacation Bible school stories?  I don’t think so.  The promise of the New Covenant is that God’s law would no longer be the written letter on paper or stone but it would be written on our hearts (Jer. 31:33).  As people born of the Spirit it is our nature to want to please God.  However, we cannot simply create a written code of regulations for everyone to follow.  This, of course, has been attempted by many Christians throughout the years.  But this is not the way of the Spirit.  If we want to please God, it is no longer a matter of turning to chapter and verse as much as it is about cultivating a genuine communion with our Father.  Paul said we must “try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord” (Eph. 5:10).  In this, the word of God written will be our true friend.  We will soak ourselves in the Scripture from Genesis to Revelation – meditating, praying, exegeting, believing, joyfully obeying – trying to discern.  Then, the 10 commandments and the Beatitudes and even the regulations about mildew cleansing will become as manna from heaven for us.  “Man does not live by bread alone, but by this,” we will say.  We’ll read about the mildew, Sabbaths, feasts, and more and ask, “Father, what does this tell me about your character?  What does this say about what pleases your heart? ” And then, we probably will remember to go spray our shower with Tilex.

 

     The last two points of the doctrine of creation are as follows:

 

3.  God directly created human beings in his own image and thus radically different from the rest of creation (cf. Gen. 1:26-27, 5:1, 9:6; Rom. 8:29; 1 Cor. 11:7, 15:49; Eph. 4:24; Jam. 3:9).

 

4. God created Adam and Eve as the first humans.  They are the real ancestors of the entire human race (Gen. 2:7-8, 21-25, 3:20; Rom. 5:12-21).

 

     It is here, I think, that Biblical theology comes most in conflict with macro-evolutionary ideas.  There is such a concept as “Theistic Evolution” which essentially claims that there is no necessary contradiction between Biblical theology and Darwinian-type evolution.  And, I suppose that if Darwinism is communicated in a way that doesn’t assume atheism or deism (that is, that it doesn’t contradict either of the first two points of the doctrine of Creation), then, up to that point, theistic evolutionists are correct.  One may hold to the principles of macroevolution and still believe that God not only started the process of creation but has remained involved in it throughout history.  However, points 3 and 4 are just much more difficult to reconcile with a Darwinian worldview.

     First, to be faithful to Scripture, one must believe that a radical distinction exists between humans and other forms of biological life.  There is the imago dei (the image of God) concept to contend with in the Bible.  I find it difficult to conceive of a view of humanity that preserves both the belief that humans alone are made in the image of God and that they the biological descendants of other species of primates.  Things get trickier when we move fully into point 4.  According to Scripture, Adam and Eve were made directly by God in his image.  It was an event – this creation, this bestowing of life, this depositing of the imago dei.  If you are an adherent to theistic evolutionary views, I would really like to hear your theologizing on this issue.  If humans are the product of a slow and gradual process of transmutation, when does the image of God come into play?  At what point is a human being a bearer of imago dei and thereby radically distinct from all creation?  I suppose a theistic version of punctuated equilibrium could lend a hand – which could also help us to get two real ancestors of the human race (i.e. Adam and Eve).  But I think that is really stretching credulity.

      A final word here on the importance of point 4.  You may be wondering why is it necessary to affirm that Adam and Eve really were the first humans – our real ancestors.  I know that there are some that read the first several chapters of Genesis metaphorically.  Others try to read it as a science text book.  I don’t think either approach is exegetically honest.  For example, it seems to me that reading chapter one as being about a sequence of 6 literal 24-hour periods is forcing a modern, Western, monochronic view of time upon the ancient, Middle-Eastern, and polychronic audience to which Moses was writing.  Not to mention God’s limitless ability to make what is a “day” to him seem like billions of years to everyone else (2 Pet. 3:8).  But on the other hand, metephorizing the entire contents of the early chapters of Genesis not only reduces the contents to fairytales in the worst way but also ignores the tenor with which the chapters were written.  The person who reads Genesis 1-11 can’t help but confess that the contents were meant to be believed – they were written as history.  There are ages and genealogies, measurements and boring details.  One might take the position that Genesis 1-11 isn’t true, but that it was written to be believed as actual fact seems self-evident.  Moreover, it seems clear that the New Testament authors, and Jesus himself, believed these early chapters to be genuine historical records (e.g. Mt. 23:35, 24:37, Mk. 10:6, Lk. 3:38, Rom. 5:14, 1 Cor. 15:22, 1 Tim. 2:13-14, Heb. 11:7, 1 Pet. 3:20, 1 Jn. 3:12, Jude 14).

     Of course, the biggest problem with denying our literal descent from Adam and Eve is that doing so wreaks havoc to the essential doctrine of original sin.  The doctrine teaches that Adam and Eve were made sinless, bearing the untainted image of God.  They then sinned by rebelling against God’s command, thus corrupting the nature within them.  Original sin* refers to the fact that since we are all descended from Adam, we have all inherited a sinful nature.  We are, like David, sinful from birth and conceived in iniquity (Ps. 51:5).  We are not sinners because we sin.  Rather, we sin because we are sinners by nature.  Sin and death, and with it our just condemnation, have spread to all humanity (Rom. 5:12-21).  The doctrine of original sin highlights our inherent and emphatic need of a savior.  We cannot please God, seek Him, or become justified in God’s sight apart from the free and sovereign work of His grace in our lives – without the Lord Jesus Christ (Rom. 3:9-20, Eph. 2:1-10).

     So, how can theistic evolutionists reconcile macroevolution with the doctrine of original sin?  If there wasn’t a literal Fall, if there is no literal descent from Adam, where does our sinful nature come from?  I think this is a huge problem for the concept of theistic evolution, and I cannot conceive of a way around it.  One thing is certain, that from birth human beings have an innate proclivity to sin is far more observable than the transmutation of species.   And, at the end of the day, I reject macroevolutionary principles because I don’t find the weight of evidence in favor of Darwinism so compelling as to warrant the kind of theological gymnastics that would be required for reconciling those principles with what I already know to be true – God’s infallible word.

     So that’s where I end my review of the four principles of the Biblical doctrine of creation.  This is where the apologetic battle must be fought for Christ’s sake.  Active creative theism, the imminence and transcendence of God, the imago dei, and the doctrine of original sin are pillars and essentials of the faith one for all delivered to the saints.  And it is the responsibility of every follower of Jesus to earnestly contend for and proclaim these transforming and life-giving truths (1 Pet. 3:15, Jude  3). 

     In a few weeks, we’ll examine the concept of the image of God and attempt to answer the question, “What does it mean that we are made in God’s image?”  But now for something completely different . . . .

 

[*For more on the doctrine of original sin, read “What is the Biblical Evidence for Original Sin” a brief article by John Piper.]