A reader's guide to transforming mission

This "Great Commission" is so often quoted in mission circles that it tends to take on a life of its own. "The 'Great Commission' is easily degraded to a mere slogan, or used as a pretext for what we have in advance decided [that 'mission' should mean]…​. Matthew 28:18-20 has to be interpreted against the background of Matthew’s gospel as a whole" (57.5).

What then does the Great Commission mean if we see it in its proper perspective as the text that draws together "all the threads woven into the fabric of Matthew" (57.5)? We will not know unless we consider first the community of people for whom Matthew wrote and the burning concerns of the place and time for which the Great Commission was originally designed. ^[2]

Matthew’s purpose in writing was "to provide guidance to a community in crisis on how it should understand its calling and mission" (57.9). The community was probably a group of Jewish Christians who had moved out of Judea into a Gentile setting, possibly Syria. In the 70s or 80s AD (following the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem), this community was facing an identity crisis: "Who are we? Are we really 'Jewish'? What are we doing here outside our homeland? Do we have a mission to our fellow Jews? Do we have a mission to the Gentiles among whom we live now?"

In the midst of such questions, Matthew set out to write a gospel that is not merely a biography of Jesus with a missionary command conveniently tacked on at the end. Instead, from start to finish Matthew’s Gospel is an attempt to help a community of Jesus-followers discover their new identity as Jews-witha-mission or Jews-for-Gentiles. The discovery is rooted deeply in their Jewish heritage yet it enables them to engage the Gentile world not primarily as Jews but as messengers.

This new disciple-making identity is so paradoxical that Matthew appears almost self-contradictory when he describes it. At many points the story he tells seems very pro-Jewish (59.9):

At other points the story sounds very pro-Gentile, such as in the wide range of Gentiles held up almost as heroes because they hail Jesus properly:

At the end of the day, Matthew calls on his readers to engage in mission to both Jews and Gentiles. To make disciples."'of all nations" does not mean "of all Gentile nations." It means "of Jews and Gentiles alike" (64.5). From a Jewish perspective this implies a staggering redefinition of the identity of God’s chosen people. Jews and Gentiles are placed on a par with each other before God and before Matthew’s community. Something has happened in the light of which Jews and Gentiles look "alike"! What on earth could it be?

The arrival of the "kingdom" in Jesus has redefined everything. This earthshaking fact is the beginning of Jesus' preaching (4:17), the constant theme of his teaching (e.g., chap. 13), and the basis and heart of the Great Commission (28:18-20). The arriving kingdom is a new cosmic reference point, the basis for all personal and group identity ever since Jesus announced it. Whoever is oriented to this point is transformed into a disciple and a missionary.

The word "kingdom" does not occur in the Great Commission but the idea clearly does in two ways. First, the often-overlooked basis for the Commission kingdom is inaugurated, go and make disciples. …​" Second, "teaching them to obey…​" is in effect, "teaching them to live as loyal subjects in my kingdom."

On the surface this may sound like our mission is to impose on the world a new law in the name of a new Moses (65.5). If we claim to announce a new kingdom and not a new legalism, what exactly is the difference between our mission of "teaching them to obey" and the teaching of rules? This is absolutely crucial for understanding mission according to Matthew.

While it is true to say there is really only one mission described in the New Testament, it is also true that the one mission looks quite different when viewed from different angles. We have seen it from Matthew’s angle. Now we turn to Luke (both the Gospel and Acts) and then to Paul in order to appreciate other dimensions of the complex reality of mission.

As we turn to Luke, we shall adopt the same approach we did with Matthew, looking at his key mission texts in the context of his entire work rather than isolating them as mission slogans. Reducing our mission thinking to a slogan is areal danger. Evangelicals have tended to use Matthew’s Great Commission as their slogan and focus on individual conversions and church growth. On the other hand, ecumenicals generally and liberation theologians in particular have tended to use Luke 4:16-21 as their slogan (84.7) and focus on social transformation. Let us dig a little deeper into Luke’s writings and see for ourselves what he is really saying.

In Luke 4 (quoted above), Jesus reads to his hometown synagogue from Isaiah 61 and then stuns his hearers by announcing that Isaiah’s very down-to-earth messianic prophecy was fulfilled that day. Before they can recover from the first shock, he delivers a second one, implying that the messianic wonders would somehow come without God taking vengeance on the enemies of Israel as expected. ^[3] In fact, in this messianic kingdom God would bless outsiders, possibly even in preference to his own people Israel! (Luke 4:23-27). The crowd would not bear that reinterpretation of Isaiah’s prophecy, and they almost killed Jesus for daring to suggest it (Luke 4:29-30),

Luke does more than suggest this idea. The theme runs right through his two-volume work (the Gospel and the book of Acts). The good news is that God’s vengeance on the nations has been suspended while God goes on an all-out mission of gracious forgiveness, inviting outsiders to seats of honor at the messianic banquet table (108.5).

Before we examine Luke’s Gospel and his view of mission in more detail, we need to consider his audience. It appears he, a Gentile, was writing primarily to Gentile Christians in the decade of the 80s, that is, after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. Jesus had not returned in the lifetime of the apostles, as had been widely expected. Gentile Christians were facing questions such as, "Who are we really? How do we relate to the Jewish past? Is Christianity a new religion? And above all, how do we relate to the earthly Jesus, who is gradually and irrevocably receding into the past?" (85.9).

As a historian and a theologian, Luke answers these questions by helping the Christians of his day see their lives as one stage in the flow of God’s activity in the world — past, present, and future. They were in continuity with previous stages but they also had a present missionary identity because they could foresee the stage God was bringing into being. They were both the product of mission and the bearers of mission. They were like iron filings that under the influence of a magnet had become magnetic themselves. We can understand their magnetism and their mission by examining three of their key questions.

Every key aspect of Luke’s missiology has a leveling or boundary-transcending effect.

The leveling theme jumps out at the reader constantly in both the Gospel, where economic class is the main barrier to overcome, and Acts, where ethnicity is the hurdle. Let us look more closely at both.

The Gospel of Luke is preoccupied with "the poor," that is, "all who experience misery" (99.3). We have already seen this in Jesus' announcement in Luke 4:18, the "good news for the poor." Many other passages stress this theme of God’s love for the poor and his plan to turn the tables on the rich (1:53, 3:10—14, 6:20 and 24, 12:16-21, 16:19-31, 19:1-10; see 98.3—-99.4).

Unlike many who (mis)quote him, Luke does not conclude that a pro-poor gospel must be anti-rich. In fact, Luke has even been called the "evangelist of the rich" (101.8), not in the sense that he makes the way easy for them but that he deliberately addresses them as a redeemable group. He "wants the rich and respected to be reconciled to the message and way of life of Jesus and the disciples; he wants to motivate them to a conversion that is in keeping with the social message of Jesus" (101.9, quoting Schotroff and Stegemann). Zaccheus (Luke 19:1-10), Barnabas (Acts 4:36-37), Lydia (Acts 16:13-15), and others in Luke’s writings are model converts among the rich.

As the Gospel of Luke emphasizes the poor, the book of Acts emphasizes the Gentiles. Nothing can be clearer from Pentecost than the fact that God was on a mission to make his message known to people of all ethnic groups. Taking the initiative by his own grace, he would go so far as to miraculously enable his witnesses to speak the languages of those groups rather than require them to learn the language of his people. This transcending of the language barrier is the defining miracle and symbol marking the launch of the church on God’s mission, and it is the defining theme of the book of Acts.

The stories of Peter at the home of Cornelius (Acts 10:23—48) and the "Jerusalem Council" (Acts 15:1-21) are exactly on the same point. Did God intend for Gentiles to become part of his own people, and if so, would they need to come under the Law of Moses, which had been the defining boundary of the Jewish people? By now we should realize that in Luke’s view, the only purposes of boundaries and fences were to climb on or jump over. And since the Jew-Gentile distinction was the most important boundary (ethnic, cultural, and theological) to Jews of that day, when it was relativized by the Jerusalem Council all other boundaries lost their absolute quality too. The one remaining definitive absolute was the Messiah, the Jewish Messiah who was and is the hope of all the nations.

Since boundary maintenance is a main preoccupation of all human groups, the existence of a boundary-transcending group is an anomaly. It will catch people by surprise, attract attention and demand an explanation. What is going on here? How is this possible? The explanation can only be Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and forgiveness, that is, the gospel. In other words, just by being itself as the Messiah-centered, multiethnic, multi-class community, the church raises the question to which the good news of Jesus is the answer.

This is what lies behind the phrase "You will be my witnesses" (Acts 1:8). The Messiah unites people of all classes and races in a way that no other force can. Their unity is a testimony to his power and presence. If there is a church of this united kind, there must be a Messiah, a defining center more important than any social dividing line.

Paul, an apostle — sent not from men nor by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead —and all the brothers with me, To the churches in Galatia: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen. (Gal. 1:1-5)

As we considered the mission texts of Matthew and Luke in light of the entire flow of their writings, so we will consider Paul’s views. Mission so permeates Paul’s thinking that it is hard to identify any parts of his writing that could not rightly be called "mission texts." ^[4]

The reasons are clear, Paul was a missionary —a person specially called and sent — from day one of his Christian experience (127.2), when his encounter with Jesus the Messiah on the road to Damascus caused the most dramatic U-turn ever made by a traveler (Acts 9:1-19). All his letters now in our Bibles were written either to churches that were mission outposts he pioneered or to individuals connected with his mission in some way. All his theology is "missionary theology" (124.7).

In Jewish apocalyptic there were clear-cut distinctions between light and darkness, good and evil, insiders and outsiders. If the standard of judgment on the Day of the Lord will be response to the crucified and risen Messiah rather than response to the Law of Moses, then the distinction between Jewish insiders and Gentile outsiders (which used to mean everything) means nothing at all any more.

Paul demands agreement about this, especially in Galatians. If people compromise on this point, they undo the meaning of their own baptism and compromise the core of the gospel itself (167.2). The same is true for differences of class and sex (Gal. 3:27). "In a very real sense mission, in Paul’s understanding, is saying to people from all backgrounds, "Welcome to the new community, in which all [whether former insiders or former outsiders] are members of one family and bound together by love' " (168.3).

Jewish apocalyptic maintained a black and white distinction between the current dismally corrupt, oppressive age and the glorious age that would begin with the Messiah’s arrival. Paul now sees that these ages overlap in the grace period between the two comings of the Messiah. Christians are those who recognize and welcome the Messiah today, thus putting one foot into the messianic age already. What will be true of the whole world in the messianic age is already partly true of Christians.

"The church is…​ the sign of the dawning of the new age in the midst of the old, and as such the vanguard of God’s new world. It is simultaneously acting as pledge of the sure hope of the world’s transformation at the time of God’s final triumph and straining itself in all its activities to prepare the world for its coming destiny" (169.8).

In Jewish apocalyptic, God’s people are under attack by evil forces of this world and therefore eagerly waiting to be rescued by the Messiah. The hostile world is a complete write-off from that perspective. But as Paul describes things, God’s people see that the grace period means there is real hope for the nations, even those who have oppressed God’s people until now. Instead of waiting for the nations to receive the blistering annihilation they so richly deserve, God’s people now have a mission to them, calling them to glorify God.

How will the church get the nations to listen? Mostly by being itself, that is, by being an exhibit of God’s new creation in Christ (168.7). As such, the church

wings the church is growing are its initiative toward the world and its response 'to the world’s persecution.

When taking the initiative, the church engages with the world in many ways, serving compassionately, treating people with the justice and peace that will be typical of life in the coming messianic age. God’s (eagle) people are " 'missionary by their very nature,' through their unity, mutual love, exemplary conduct, and radiant joy" (168.9).

The church recognizes clearly that these fine initiatives are out of step with the world’s "oppressive structures of the powers of sin and death. …​ As agitators for God’s coming reign; [God’s people] must erect, in the here and now and in the teeth of those structures, signs of God’s new world" (176.8). The world’s powers will certainly react and the church will certainly suffer but it will not respond to suffering as the Jews did. Instead, it will see suffering is "a mode of missionary involvement" in the world. God’s people on a mission are sharing in the suffering of Christ for the sake of the world’s redemption (177.6). The church is above all a sign of grace, and what clearer sign could there be than to accept suffering as Christ accepted it on the cross?

No apocalypticist had that outlook on either suffering or the world that inflicted it. They all wanted the Messiah to come, their own suffering to end, and the suffering of their persecutors to begin. Paul could no longer see the world in those terms.

The changes Paul describes are too radical and real to be brought about merely by a change of religious perspective or a new "law" brought by Jesus. They can only occur if some new spiritual power has become available, a power neither Jews nor Gentiles had ever had, a power no apocalypticist had dreamed possible for humans in the present age. According to Paul, this is exactly what has happened.

"For what the Jaw was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. …​ You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ" (Rom. 8:3, 9).

The Law of Moses had pointed the way, but we humans could never get there. We always strayed or stumbled. The Spirit now picks us up, dusts us off, and carries us to the destination. To be "in Christ" (Paul’s favorite phrase) is to have this powerful, transforming Spirit within as part of us.

To be under the control of the Spirit of Christ is to be under the control of Christ himself. This is what it means to enter the "kingdom" (or control) of the Messiah. "For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking

Tarcardina ta the Taw af Macacl hut af riahtannenace naare and jaw in the Holy,

In other words, by the Spirit at work in the church, God is creating a new community made up of a new kind of human being so the world can have a sneak preview of life in the age to come. "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!" (2 Cor. 5:17). "This evidence of the Spirit’s active presence guarantees for Paul that the messianic age had dawned" (144.2).

As the Messiah in his first coming to earth did not impose his rule on anyone, so Paul, his ambassador, does not badger anyone into putting faith in the Messiah. "Paul’s missionary message is not a negative one. …​ He does proclaim the wrath of God, but only as the dark foil of an eminently positive message — that God has already come to us in his Son and will come again in glory" (147.9). Paul reasons with people. He appeals. He pleads (2 Cor. 5:20). He graciously presents the message of grace.

This is Paul’s grace-filled message: "the proclamation of a new state of affairs that God has initiated in Christ, one that concerns the nations and all of creation and that climaxes in the celebration of God’s final glory" (148.3). But the new state of affairs does not come about automatically. "People have to 'transfer' from the old reality to the new by an act of belief and commitment" (149.1), that is, by the act of confessing that Jesus is Lord of all. "The taproot of Paul’s cosmic understanding of mission is a personal belief in Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, as Savior of the world" (178.5).

Those who trust Jesus as Messiah are "justified through faith" (Rom. 5:1), that is, already set right before God and adopted into the community that through the Spirit is gearing up for the messianic age. Their debt is canceled because they have renounced the human decision to crucify Jesus, which was what plunged the human race far deeper into debt than we had ever been.

To use a different image, it is as if these justified people have inhaled or absorbed the grace that God has injected into the world’s atmosphere through the

Paul is passionate but never belligerent about explaining this "inhale-thegrace" message. Jesus Christ makes so much sense to him that he believes many others who hear the good news will put their faith in Christ, as they have graciously been destined to do. All they need is a clear picture of God’s gracious plan, long kept secret but now revealed in Christ for the duration of the grace period.

Paul’s mission is greatly affected by one decisive difference between ordinary grace periods and this God-given one — we, the debtors, have not been told how long the grace period will last. Though Paul does not go into much detail about what bad things will happen at the end of the grace period (148.7), he knows that when the grace period ends, grace ends. The mission is therefore urgent. Like soccer players in a game where regulation time has expired, we do not know exactly how much "injury time" the referee is adding on. Only the referee knows. When he blows his whistle, that’s it. No more goals can be scored.

This sense of urgency in mission is another sharp contrast between Paul’s writings and ordinary apocalyptic. Rather than looking forward (perhaps even with a sense of satisfaction) to the final whistle on the day when the Messiah will execute justice on the wicked, Paul wants to do all he can to reduce the number of wicked who will be punished on that day.

Urgency calls for strategy, not frantic spurts of mission. Paul is strategic both at the theoretical and practical levels of mission.

On the theoretical level, God’s grace period is divided into two phases. In the first phase the good news of the Messiah whom the Jews rejected will be spread to the nations and they will welcome him as the Lord of all the earth. In the second phase the Jews, seeing the Gentiles flock to the Messiah, will become jealous of the way God is blessing the Gentiles. Then they themselves will turn to Jesus, the Messiah they rejected before the grace period started. Together Jews and Gentiles will enter a renewed world and cosmos under the Messiah’s reign.

This wildly creative plan of God is explained in the heart of Romans (chapters 9-11), which is the letter regarded as the heart of all Paul’s teaching. By no stretch of the imagination does Paul’s missionary strategy abandon the Jews. In fact, "It is Paul’s fundamental conviction that the destiny of all humankind will be decided by what happens to Israel" (159.7). Paul is concentrating on Gentile evangelization but still has the Jews in mind. He believes that success of the gospel among the Gentiles (phase 1) will create the conditions that will almost automatically bring on phase 2, Jewish conversion.

Ephesus], each of which stands for a whole region…​.In each of these he lays the foundations for a Christian community, clearly in the hope that, from these strategic centers, the gospel will be carried into the surrounding countryside and towns" before it is too late (130.2).

Paul is dead sure of three things: the Messiah was here, the Messiah will be back, and in the meantime he is here among us by his Spirit. None of these depend on human design, human activity, or human timing. God has set things in motion and God is the timekeeper.

One thing God set in motion was Paul’s mission. As we noted in the quote at the beginning of this chapter, Paul was an apostle, "sent not from men nor by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father" (Gal. 1:1). There is no stopping such a person. He and his colleagues are "afflicted — not crushed; perplexed — not despairing; persecuted — not forsaken; struck down — not destroyed" (177.6, see 2 Cor. 4:8f).

"Lesslie Newbigin suggests that nowhere in the New Testament is the essential character of the church’s mission set out more clearly than in the passage [referred to] above (2 Cor. 4:7-10). 'It ought to be seen," he says, 'as the classic definition of mission' " (145.4). Mission at its heart involves the conflict between the message of the messianic future and the forces of the anti-messianic present, the same "present" that put Jesus on the cross when the grace period began.

The world with all its might keeps trying to extinguish the witness of the messianic age, but those very efforts only enlarge and deepen the witness by showing the incredible resilience of the messengers. The world has not extinguished the witness but rather exhausted its own resources in the attempt. Now the only thing that can happen — must happen, will happen —is the collapse of the world and the triumph of God.