Word, Spirit, Gospel and Mission (Part 5)

In the last article of this series, I introduced the strange and novel idea of missionaries being evangelized by their converts. The Bible’s prototypical example appears in Acts chapter 10 in the encounter between Peter and the centurion Cornelius. That story, which is sometimes titled “The Conversion of Cornelius,” could also be called “The Conversion of Peter.”

Here I am using the terms “evangelized” and “conversion” in a broad sense. Peter was not receiving the gospel for the first time. He already was a genuine Christian in a personal relationship with Christ. But through his encounter with Cornelius, his character and faith were transformed again as he came to a new and deeper awareness of the gospel.

Before then, Peter had always assumed that belief in Christ should be accompanied by visible changes in lifestyle, changes that would turn people into devout, observant Jews like him. He had assumed that God’s mission was the same as bringing lost sheep into the church that he knew and loved, the merry band of Jewish disciples founded a decade earlier by Jesus himself. What Peter did not realize was that, as God was bringing sheep into the fold, he was also working powerfully to recreate the church. Peter’s previous knowledge of the gospel wasn’t wrong, but it was woefully incomplete.

In The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission, missiologist Lesslie Newbigin writes about the meeting between Peter and Cornelius (pp. 59-60):

It is not as though the church opened its gates to admit a new person into its company, and then closed them again, remaining unchanged except for the addition of a name to its roll of members. Mission is not just church extension. It is something more costly and more revolutionary. It is the action of the Holy Spirit, who in his sovereign freedom both convicts the world (John 16:8-11) and leads the church toward the fullness of the truth that it has not yet grasped (John 16:12-15). Mission is not essentially an action by which the church puts forth its own power and wisdom to conquer the world around it; it is, rather, an action of God, putting forth the power of his Spirit to bring the universal work of Christ for the salvation of the world nearer to its completion. At the end of the story, which runs from Acts 10:1 to 11:18, the church itself became a kind of society different from what it was before Peter and Cornelius met. It had been a society enclosed within the cultural world of Israel; it became something radically different, a society that spanned the enormous gulf between Jew and pagan and was open to embrace all the nations that had been outside the covenant by which Israel lived.

This distinction between God’s mission and church extension is not a small matter. It has enormous implications for how we see and talk about ourselves and how we act toward others in a pluralistic and multicultural world. Before talking about that, however, we ought to first ask whether this view of mission is biblically supported. Do missionaries and converts truly evangelize one another? Or does the gospel flow in one direction as believers go out and make disciples, then those disciples go out and make more disciples, and the process continues ad infinitum until every nation has been reached and Jesus returns in power and glory?

In Acts 1:8, Jesus says to his apostles: “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” This verse is a mini-outline of the whole book of Acts. The apostolic witness began in Jerusalem (chapter 2), then it spread to Judea and Samaria (chapter 8), and eventually it went out to other nations (chapter 13). We see a linear progression as Jesus’ disciples made more disciples. But if we don’t pay close attention to how it actually happened, we will miss a key point that Luke is making throughout the book.

Many evangelicals think of Acts 1:8 as “the world mission command.” Indeed, in Matthew 28:18-20 and Mark 16:15, the Great Commission is given as a command. But Acts 1:8 presents it as a promise. Jesus states as a fact that it is going to happen, not by the volition of the apostles, but by the sovereign will and power of the Holy Spirit. And as we read through the book, that’s exactly how it happens. The apostles do not adopt Acts 1:8 as their mission statement and then formulate a strategy to carry the gospel to the nations. Rather, the entire movement is orchestrated by the Holy Spirit. On the day of Pentecost, it is the rushing wind-song of the Spirit that causes a great crowd to gather and makes them ask, “What does this mean?” (Acts 2:1-12) The spread of the gospel to Judea and Samaria is precipitated not by an intentional decision by the apostles, but by persecution that broke out after the stoning of Stephen (Acts 8:1). And the commissioning of Paul and Barnabas as missionaries was a direct response to the command of the Holy Spirit (Acts 13:2).

The church portrayed in the book of Acts is not an army of well trained soldiers executing a military-style campaign to conquer unbelieving nations with the gospel. Nor is it a board of corporate executives launching an advertising blitz to market the gospel to consumers. The church in Acts never fully takes hold of the mission, nor does it ever really grasp the mission, because the mission is not theirs. Moment by moment, the apostles respond in obedience as the Holy Spirit leads. But they are never qualified to direct the mission because they do not understand everything it entails. What they fail to realize that the mission is not just about discipling the nations; it is also about transforming them. As the Spirit is bringing new sheep into the fold, he is also prying open the minds and hearts of church leaders and members to welcome newcomers unconditionally as Jesus welcomed them. This process of assimilation is painful and awkward. It tests the limits of their faith and dependence on God. But through these birthpains, the Spirit brings forth an amazing new community the likes of which the world had never before seen. It is a community of genuine unity-in-diversity. A place where Jew and Gentile, male and female, slave and free, truly connect with one another and become one in Christ Jesus (Gal 3:28). A place of genuine, radical freedom, where ethical standards, laws and commands are replaced by love (Gal 5:14).

The mission is never the property of the church; it is always missio Dei, God’s mission. Newbigin writes (p. 61):

At this point the church has to keep silence. It is not in control of the mission. Another is in control, and his fresh works will repeatedly surprise the church, compelling it to stop talking and to listen. Because the Spirit himself is sovereign over the mission, the church can only be the attentive servant. In sober truth the Spirit is himself the witness who goes before the church in its missionary journey. The church’s witness is secondary and derivative. The church is witness insofar as it follows obediently where the Spirit leads.

That is exactly what happens in Acts chapter 10. Peter didn’t approach the home of Cornelius with the intention of giving him the gospel. The Spirit carried a hesitant Peter there to show him what he had already been doing, something which Peter never imagined. Peter’s job was to obediently share what he knew, to observe what the Spirit did, and to welcome the new Gentile believers as they were.

The distinction between church expansion and God’s mission is not a small matter. It is fundamental to grasping the nature of the gospel. The distinction is especially important as we reach out to the next generation. Young people have been taught to frame history, politics and religion in terms of power struggles between groups. They believe that racism, bigotry, and war result whenever one group believes it is superior to other groups. So if you approach a young person and talk about your faith, she does not see you as an individual person talking to her. She sees you as a member of one group – say, a religious conservative Christian – trying to bring her into your group in order to expand your group’s membership rolls to increase its prestige and power. That is why so many have grown skeptical and weary of all evangelists and of all “organized religion.”

And who can blame them? Throughout the centuries, Christians of many stripes have tried to carry the gospel throughout the world. And so often, those efforts were confounded with military campaigns, colonialism, economic opportunism and cultural imperialism. They were tainted by the desire to build up one church, organization or denomination at the expense of other groups while violating the dignity of individual persons (e.g., through conversion and baptism by force). When today’s young people hear us equate God’s mission with the expansion of our own church, they react against it strongly and viscerally. When they hear us speak of God’s mission in paramilitary terms as conquering the nations and religions of the world (e.g., Muslims) they will have none of it. When they hear us speak of evangelism and discipleship in terms of saving those who are poor, ignorant, blind and disobedient by transforming them into Christians who so conveniently happen to resemble ourselves, they will have none of it. They instinctively feel that it is not the gospel. And they are correct; it is not the gospel.

The gospel does not elevate Jew over Gentile or Gentile over Jew. It does not elevate a denomination that is better, purer or more faithful over another denomination that is liberal, worldly or compromised. It does not elevate a Christian over a Muslim, Hindu or atheist. The gospel brings everyone to the foot of the cross where the ground is absolutely level, where salvation comes to all by the grace of God alone.

What today’s postmoderns instinctively know is something that the church has too often forgotten: that God’s mission is not equivalent to church expansion. Yes, the mission does involve welcoming new sheep into the fold. But it is also about continually reforming and recreating the church into something new and more beautiful, a preview of God’s rule and of the glorious world to come. None of us knows exactly how that ought to look. If we try to invent that new community by ourselves, we build something that too closely resembles us, the creatures that we are right now rather than the creatures that Christ wants us to be. That is why we can never fully set the course of our own mission. Yes, we must remember what God has done and faithfully build upon the foundations laid in the past. But we must also be willing to put aside our current ideas and follow the Spirit wherever he leads, because the mission always belongs to him.