See GOD’S MISSION AND GOD’S PEOPLE: Part 1 – God’s Perspective (Genesis 18:18-19)*
GUEST POST BY ERIC ZELLER
I believe Jesus’ strategy for mission is summarized in Matthew 5:16: “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.“
The ultimate goal is seeing people bring glory to the Father. And the strategy for seeing it accomplished can be summarized in four words: intentional holiness intentionally visible.
Intentional Holiness
In Matthew 5:14, Jesus tells his followers, “you are the light of the world.” In its OT background (especially Isaiah) the phrase “light of the world” refers to the glory of God (in the sense of God’s attributes, his nature, who he is) “shining,” as it were, in a dark and sinful world. So when Jesus says “you are the light of the world,” he is saying, in a sense, “you are the visible manifestation of God’s glory in the world.” You are those who will show the world who God is and what he is like.
That’s why in 5:16, Jesus says people will “bring glory to the Father” when they see your “good works.” The “good works” are key. What kind of “good works” does Jesus have in mind? Remember that Matthew 5-7 is Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount.” 5:16 is part of the introduction to that sermon. As it turns out, the rest of the sermon describes the kind of good works Jesus wants to see in his followers. He challenges his followers to move away from what is natural to their sinful hearts and towards his different way in at least thirteen key areas:
- From Loving Law to Loving Instruction (5:17-20).
- From anger to reconciliation (5:21-26).
- From lusting to fighting (5:27-30).
- From self-serving pragmatism to self-sacrificing commitment (5:31-37).
- From personal rights to joyful service (5:38-42).
- From reciprocal love to sacrificial love (5:43-48).
- From seeking praise to seeking God’s reward (6:1-6).
- From religious prayer to kingdom prayer (6:7-18).
- From earthly treasure to heavenly treasure (6:19-24).
- From anxiety to faith (6:25-34).
- From judging others to evaluating yourself (7:1-6).
- From self-reliance to asking your father (7:7-11).
- From using others to the golden rule (7:12).
Pursuing these transitions is “intentional holiness.” You are becoming like God; your life is more and more reflecting his character. But for all of your life to be effective in God’s mission, Jesus calls you not only to intentional holiness, but for that holiness to be:
Intentionally Visible
Jesus doesn’t tell you to be a light — he commands you to let the light that you already are “shine before others” (5:16). Your God-reflecting holiness must be visible to others. My previous post didn’t answer the question: “How does God use a people committed to his ethic to accomplish his mission?” But here is the answer. When God’s ethic is displayed before the world, others will see and come to understand God through that — how he can change a heart and bring mercy and grace and forgiveness into a life — and eventually come to know him and glorify him themselves. I think the key is the contrasts of Matthew 5-7. When people see you moving towards holiness and away what they have come to expect from themselves and everyone they know, and when you are displaying your holiness not in a self-righteous way but with the attitude of the beatitudes (poor in spirit, meek, etc.), they will over time realize that they don’t have a human category to put you in, that something is going on that they can’t explain, and that this something is something that they want for themselves.
Most Christians agree that it is important to have contrasts with the world, but they’ve come up with the wrong contrasts. This may be a geographic contrast: we live in a different area; a social contrast: we only hang out with other Christians; an economic contrast: we buy different products; a cultural contrast: we wear different clothes or listen to different music; or whatever else. But what these wrong contrasts have done is they have distanced us from the people God would have us to reach and removed the visibility Jesus calls us to have. We need to move away from the world (and our own nature) in the areas in which God specifically calls us to cross-cultural holiness, yet move toward the world in all other areas.
I think a typical American Christian conceives of life and mission something like this:
You have all of the various components of your life, and evangelism is at least on the radar screen. But it is thought of as something you do, in the sense of “I’m going to the mall for a couple hours this weekend to do some evangelism.” But this makes a distinction between “mission” and everything else you do, a distinction that Jesus does not make. You are not saved for the sake of twenty categories of good work, of which mission is one, but you are saved for the purpose of good works, for the purpose of mission. Picture it like this:
You might call this a “missional” model — you have the same person and same parts of life as the previous model, but in this model mission is not one of the dimensions but the goal of all of them.
In the typical American model (Fig. A), evangelism happens if I get around to it, and since it is so awkward and intimidating, chances are I won’t. In a missional model, mission is happening one way or another, and your need is not necessarily to be trained in tactics but to deliberately reflect God’s nature in all that you do.
I’ve got news for you. The “missional” model is the reality whether you acknowledge it or not. The minute anybody heard that you were a “Christian,” you became a little illustration of what God is like for everyone you come into contact with. You know the song about “this little light of mine” that has the line “don’t let Satan ffffff it out?” That’s based on the assumption that while you should be out reaching people, you could be ffffffd out and live in a neutral position. But that’s false. Satan does not fffff out. What Satan does tempt you to do is to make your little light show something different than the holiness of God to the world. He tempts you to communicate by your behavior that God only cares about good people, that he doesn’t want to get himself dirty by being with them, that it is OK if you come to him but he’s not going to come to you, or that he is not powerful to transform a life. But the only way you can faithfully be God’s light in this world is if you model the same seeking of the non-seeker, serving of the ungrateful, and love for the unlovable that God demonstrates throughout scripture; in short, if you interact with the world the way God has interacted with you.
That’s Jesus’ strategy. In another place, he said “As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you” (John 20:21). We are to be intentionally holy — to become like God in our character — and to be intentionally visible – to show the world what God is like. In most cases, this is not a quick-results strategy. It is not something we can put on for a couple hours on the weekend. It only works as we grasp God’s mission as the purpose God has given to us, and taste the exhilaration that comes in pursuing that which we were born again to pursue.
Eric Zeller is a very close friend and a very like-minded brother in Christ. We roomed together in college, drove cross-country together, studied biblical languages together, went to seminary together, and discussed being missionaries together. I know his entire family, I know his missional heart, and I know his foreign destination if the Lord wills. I respect him greatly. Formally, “Eric is a graduate of The Master’s College (B.A. in Biblical Languages) and The Master’s Seminary (M.Div.). He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in Bible Exposition at Dallas Theological Seminary as he prepares for a ministry of training pastors and church leaders internationally. His wife and best friend is Heather and they have three children, Caroline, Emmett, and Randall. Eric has also worked in the technology industry as a software developer. You can find his ministry updates at www.ewz.com. Eric has served as Associate Pastor [at Grace Bible Church in Grapevine, Texas] since spring 2005.”
GUEST POST BY ERIC ZELLER
If there are any two truths I’ve been taught again and again, they are that (1) salvation is not of myself — it is a gift of God, and (2) the faith that saves is a faith that sanctifies — genuine conversion bears fruit. What hasn’t received the same emphasis in the churches and schools I’ve attended is a third concept, which I’ve come to see as the goal (and unifying factor) of the first two.
Think of the way God relates to humanity as a baseball game. When you get up to bat in baseball, what are you trying to do? Score runs! What is God’s purpose in relation to humanity? Scripture answers: “to bring glory to himself” (cf. Eph. 1). Think of God’s glory as home plate. That’s the ultimate goal. But just as in baseball you have to circle three other bases to get home, God has planned that he desires to be glorified in this world in a particular way, and that there will be specific steps on the way to that ultimate goal.
One passage where you can see this is Genesis 18:19. Right before God destroys Sodom and Gomorrah there is this little parentheses where God speaks of his covenant relationship with Abraham:
“For I have chosen him, that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing righteousness and justice, so that the LORD may bring to Abraham what he has promised him” (Gen. 18:19).
So right away, here’s First Base: God’s Choice. God says “I have chosen him.” God had established a special relationship with this man and made a covenant with him. Sure, as church-age believers we are in a different time and situation than Abraham, but we have this in common: God’s choice. Any discussion of mission, or salvation, or glorifying God, needs to start with the initiative of God. However, though God’s choice is of immense importance, it is just first base. It is supposed to lead to something, which is:
Second Base: God’s Ethic. In the verse, Abraham is chosen “that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing righteousness and justice.” This “walking in the way of the LORD” is a favorite metaphor of the OT for talking about the conduct God requires of his people. There is a contrast implied. Walking in God’s way is different than walking in the way of some other god, or walking in your own way, or, in this passage, walking in the way of Sodom. It is a general statement that invites you to explore the rest of scripture to see more specifically what walking in God’s way means. So obeying God and walking in his way is second base. But God doesn’t stop there, either. What’s next?
Third Base: God’s Mission. The ethical portion of Genesis 18:19 has a purpose of its own: “so that the LORD may bring to Abraham what he has promised him.” What has God promised to Abraham? In the previous verse (18:18), God restates his promise that “all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in (Abraham).” In Galatians 3:8, Paul explains this promise as scripture “foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith” and “preach(ing) the gospel beforehand to Abraham.” The promise to “bless all nations,” then, is the promise of the gospel — that God will one day send his Son to die on the cross as a substitute for sinners, and that salvation will come to people from every tribe and tongue and nation (cf. Rev. 7:9-10). This is “the mission of God” as we see in the Bible.
The purpose of getting to first base is to go to second, the purpose of getting to second is to go to third, and the purpose of getting to third is to come home. These two purpose clauses of Genesis 18:19 teach in such clear and concise language what you can see throughout scripture: God chooses people to make them like himself to use them in his mission. If you want to glorify God, none of the three components are optional.
If you’re the sort that loves to study theology — remember that election is not just soteriological, but missional. It is not an end in itself but a means to the greater end of bringing blessing to the nations. If you’re the sort that is excited about sanctification — about the “put off/put on” parts of the Bible — remember not to substitute your purposes for God’s. He has put you on second base for the purpose of getting to third. If you’re one of these guys that is all about being “missional” — don’t forget that if we’re going to talk about God’s mission we also have to talk about God’s ethic and God’s choice. It may be that your theology of mission needs to put more emphasis on those elements that God thinks are so important in his theology of mission. If you’re from the same theological tradition I am — don’t just see the sovereignty of God and obedience to God as important in their own right, but see them as the foundation for God’s mission.
Next time: how this relates to Jesus’ Strategy for Mission.
* This post is based on Christopher Wright, The Mission of God, 357-369.
This Week and Beyond
October 18, 2008
It’s been an intense month of growth and a full week of ministry. Last Sunday I taught Proverbs 8:12-21 in our adult Sunday School class. On Monday I preached in chapel on Romans 8:32. On Tuesday and Thursday I substituted in the “Problems and Procedures” counseling class teaching on how to counsel believers wrestling with same-sex attraction. Before came lots of thought and wrestling, and between came lots of discipleship, discussion, and decisions. This is a rich and full ministry.
The Lord always devastates me through preparation and study, which makes preaching simultaneously the most miserable and wonder-filled ministry that I do. I have often told Cindi that for me, the preparation process is so gut-wrenching and soul-agonizing that I often get to the point of feeling petrified that this is what I’m convinced I must do for the rest of my life. And I’m choosing my words carefully here. The issue is not nervousness about public speaking. It’s the mental, emotional, spiritual labor that exhausts and intimidates me; it’s the inescapable conviction of wickedness and hypocrisy that haunts and condemns me as I fill myself with ideas and words and realities that I must stand up and proclaim to others; and it’s the weight of glory that I feel utterly incapable of communicating, the beauty of truth that no eloquence can paint, and the staggering realities that no fallen affections can match. So it was very hard, and God was equally gracious.
Today (Saturday) we went to Disneyland with some free tickets that were given to us so we could spend time with the large group of TMC students who were going for our annual Disney Day. Judah was so excited last night that he stayed up jabbering until Cindi went into his room to ask him why he was still awake – ”Go-to-Disneyland-please…” Disneyland was fine, but what made my day was spending precious time with my family and seeing the expressions of anticipation and joy on Judah’s face throughout the day.
I have very little idea of how this blog will go in the near future. I think it’s absolutely silly how many blogs exist, which makes it absolutely necessary that I know why this one exists. I think I do, but with my schedule and responsibilities being what they are right now (without even starting on some significant academic writing and exams), I don’t know how it’s going to happen. I value meditating and writing and maybe some of you value reading, but I just can’t predict any particular level of frequency, length, or depth.
I did want to announce, though, that I plan on doing more interviews and guest posts. I know a lot of people who have a lot of knowledge, wisdom, expertise, and experience, and I’d like to interview some of those people because (1) I want to learn from them and (2) maybe you’ll want to learn from them. I also have friends that I think have some good things to say and the character to back it up, and I plan on inviting some of them to write some posts here.
First up this next week will be my good friend Eric Zeller with two posts on Christian mission. I’ll introduce Eric at the beginning of his posts. He knows what he’s talking about.
Satan and Jesus in God’s Courtroom
October 3, 2008
Satan is the great accuser of the saints. Jesus is the great defender of the saints. They are in heaven waging a relentless courtroom battle for our souls.
On one side stands Satan as “the accuser of our brothers… who accuses them day and night before our God” (Revelation 12:10). On the other side stands Jesus as “our great high priest who has passed through the heavens” (Hebrews 4:14), “who indeed is interceding for us” (Romans 8:34). Both are passionately arguing their case before God the judge.
Satan is unrolling his endless scroll of charges against us. Maybe he’s talking about you right now. Maybe he’s talking about me. He’s reminding God of our past sins. He’s highlighting our present sins. He’s questioning our motives. He’s suggesting and speculating and slandering and accusing. He’s saying smooth, believable things like, “Does Job fear God for no reason? Have you not put a hedge around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face” (Job 1:9-11).
We cannot defend ourselves. Mainly because Satan is right — we have broken God’s law excessively and we deserve severe punishment. And because even though there are some areas where Satan’s accusations are false (like he falsely accused Job of having selfish motives), we aren’t there to defend ourselves. Not that it would matter if we were present to give personal testimony. For every defense we might give for ourselves, our mere presence would bring 10,000 more valid accusations.
But Jesus Christ is there. He stands before His Father as the glorified God-man. He has a lifetime of perfect, confirmed, documented, human righteousness to his name. He has scars on his hands, his feet, his head, his back, and his side. As Satan rails against us and demands that God exercise justice and judgment, our defender holds out His hands before His Father. “Father, you know that it is finished. These sins have been punished. Once and for all. Let them go. They are paid for.”
God the judge looks at Satan. He looks at His Son. He knows that this courtroom battle will continue until Satan is bound and finally cast into hell. But He knows what His answer will always be. He loves His Son. He loves His Son’s righteousness. He loves His Son’s sacrifice. And He loves His new children who have been made righteous through the death of His Son. So He hears the pleas of intercession, while Satan’s shouts of accusation and demands for justice and cries of unfairness go unacknowledged once more. It’s not that Satan’s calls for justice carry no weight with God. It’s that God has already fulfilled His justice by crushing His own Son under its eternal weight.
Satan will try again. He will try constantly. He will question God’s justice and undermine the Son’s sacrifice and and condemn our brothers and sisters around the world, but Jesus Christ our Mediator will speak more powerfully and persuasively. He will intercede for us by pointing to His own devastating sacrifice and pleading for God’s blessing on us. And God will listen to His Son.
“Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died — more than that, who was raised — who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us” (Romans 8:33-34). Why is no one able to condemn us? Because Jesus died? Yes, but more. Because Jesus was raised? Yes, but more. Because Jesus ascended to the Father and sat down at His right hand? Yes, but more. Because of all these things, yes, but finally and decisively because Jesus is currently interceding for us.
This is really happening in heaven. Satan is really accusing us. And Jesus is really interceding for us.
