The Metanarrative Of God's Mission
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In the New Testament, Jesus fulfills God’s mission to be known—identifying Himself with the God of Israel, fulfilling the promise made to Abraham by opening up the way to blessing for Jews and Gentiles alike. The biblical story reveals that God wills to be known through Jesus, His Son (Jn 1:18, 17:1-3, 2Co 4:4-6).
Making Himself known is God’s purpose in creation and His purpose in redemption. “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky proclaims the work of His hands. Day after day they pour out speech; night after night they communicate knowledge” (Ps 19:1-2). God’s “invisible attributes, that is, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world, being understood through what He has made” (Rm 1:20). The whole Bible presents a God of missional activity, from His purposeful, goal-oriented act of Creation to the completion of His mission through the redemption of all Creation in the new heavens and new earth, and the creation of a new humanity in Christ, redeemed from every nation on earth though the blood of the cross.
We also find in the Bible that humanity has a mission (to rule and care for the earth); Old Testament Israel had a mission (to be the agent of God’s blessing to all nations); Jesus had a mission (to embody and fulfill the mission of Israel, bringing blessing to the nations through bearing our sin on the Cross and anticipating the new Creation in His Resurrection); and the church has a mission (to participate with God in the ingathering of the nations in fulfillment of Old Testament Scriptures).
The mission of God, then, governs the story of the Bible from the brokenness of the nations in Genesis 11 to the healing of the nations in Revelation 21-22. If the grand story of the Bible and our world is God making Himself known, then this is the motivation and purpose of the church’s mission. The church’s missional activities, to which they are called and sent on, flows directly from God’s mission. The church’s missional activities are acts of humble participation in God’s great work for His grand purpose.
God is on mission, and we, in that wonderful phrase of Paul’s, are “coworkers with God.”