The Mission of God: A Manifesto of Hope for Society

by Joseph Boot

The Scriptures come to us in human language, but this language was in fact created by God to suit his revelatory purposes. The scriptures come to us by means of the writing of mere humans, but the mere humans were created by God to serve as vehicles for His revelation. The scriptures are transmitted to us in human history, but God predestines this history [and mainly his church in history] as the matrix within which His Word is preserved. The Scriptures address all sorts of topics, heavenly, earthly, historical, ethical, scientific, artistic, and on and on; and the God Who inspired the Word shaped every single aspect of the universe of which his word speaks. Therefore, we can never speak of any aspect of the Word of God as though it were contingent on the world, any more than we can speak of any aspect of the universe as though it were anything other than contingent on God.

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This involves first showing the challenger that their non-Christian account of reality leads only into the abyss, and then inviting them to look at the biblical view of reality, and by the work of the Holy Spirit, captivate their hearts with an epic that soars into eternity.

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the non-believing person is no longer seen as in the grip of idolatry and unbelief, standing under just condemnation and in need of Christ’s redemptive work

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“When people adopt pluralism, they must abandon every core doctrine of the Christian faith…

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It was home to four prestigious schools: the Academy of Plato, the Lyceum of Aristotle, the Garden of Epicurus and the Painted Porch of Zeno,

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he lays the presuppositional groundwork so that the resurrection can later be interpreted in its proper framework.

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Therefore, in both addresses we have first an affirmation of the universality of God’s call in the gospel. Second, we have the concept of Lordship attributed to the triune God. And third we have the proclamation of the resurrection as proof of a final judgment through Jesus Christ.

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The force and persuasive power of Peter’s discourse lay in his ability to proclaim Christ as God’s “anointed” (v.38), literally God’s messiah, foretold by the prophets

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This indicates that the church is a new citizenry with a public, not merely private calling.

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The church represents the exalted Christ to the secular order. As Bosch observes, such a view “could not but give rise to the idea of mission as ‘extending the reign of Christ.’” 3

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a nation under God’s law and gospel in which there would be a harmony between church and state, both submitted in their spheres to God.

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“The Enlightenment would shatter the theocratic ideal. Religion would be banished to the private sphere, leaving the public sphere to reason.”

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It follows then that some of those today who attack the Calvinistic and Puritan vision of the reign of Christ within Protestant Christianity, do so as intellectual heirs of the falsely labelled ‘Enlightenment,’ whose creed was faith in mankind – for them the public sphere is not subject to God’s revelation, but to reason, or natural law.

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Can he establish an institute – the church – which addresses the human world with divine authority...?

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The goal of the Christian life and faith then becomes simply advancing one’s personal spiritual growth. This response is often tied to an eschatology of escape and flight from the world as the ultimate hope of the church.

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First, culture is the public manifestation of the religious faith commitment of a people (be it Islamic, Christian, humanistic etc.…) so in fact there is no avoiding religious ‘civilization’ and ‘culture’ where any given worldview predominates. That is to say, there is no such thing as a neutral culture. ‘Multiculturalism’ is therefore just a contemporary term for polytheism (many gods).

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The religion of the public sphere is a humanistic and pagan statism to which all lesser religious associations must submit. The state has replaced the authority of God and his Word, redefining everything from life, sexuality, marriage and family, to education, justice and truth.

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You cannot escape the fact that, when you enact a legal system, you have an establishment of religion. Every legal system in the world is an establishment of religion.

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This illustrates that the political concept of an unqualified or absolute freedom of religion is internally incoherent and functionally impossible.

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the mission of the church is the extension of the reign of Christ by his glorious gospel and the rule of his kingdom law as Scripture would seem to indicate (Ps. 2; Ps. 110; 1 Cor. 15:25; Matt. 5:17–19; Matt. 6:10, 33; Rev. 1:5), then our task is a gracious, determined and faithful witness to Christ as the King of kings and Lord of lords. By word and deed, and with gentleness and respect we pull down false knowledge that sets itself up against God, taking every thought captive to Christ (1 Pt. 3:15–17; 2 Cor. 10:4–5). This is not accomplished by revolution (Rom. 12:19,21), but by regeneration, and multi-generational faithfulness to preach, teach, serve and obey in terms of the whole council of God.

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True love for the lost outside of Christ is not manifest by complicity in a lie or tacit acceptance of wrongdoing, but only in doing God’s will and declaring God’s truth

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Kingdom in the New Testament has a breadth and scope which is unsurpassed; it embraces heaven as well as earth, world history as well as the whole cosmos.19

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The church is to be a servant institution that equips, empowers and sends out every Christian in terms of God’s glorious kingdom purposes.

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The life of the church is not to be directed to developing an institution but to establishing God’s saving power in their lives and in the lives of others, and in bringing dominion into the lives of men and institutions. Church members are the people of God, and they must further God’s reign and government.

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The layman does not leave the church when he walks out of the building.”

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The influential English evangelical Anglican leader, John Stott, steadily came to recognize that the Great Commission had been inadequately interpreted by most evangelicals in the twentieth century. He wrote, “I now see more clearly that not only the consequences of the commission but the actual commission itself must be understood to include social as well as evangelistic responsibility, unless we are to be guilty of distorting the words of Jesus.” 34

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Yet, the biblical condemnation of idolatry in the prophets is focused most significantly upon those who claim to be the covenant people.

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The modern church is tempted to blame the humanists, pagans and Muslims, Marxists or other groups for the state of our culture and its idolatrous turn, but God calls his people to first take a long hard look at themselves in accounting for the decline of our social order.

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Love and jealousy are inseparably related and they are intimately involved in one another in the unchanging character of God, “For I the Lord do not change”

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If we want a God of love, then we have to deal with the living God. This means that our attempts to liberalize, civilize or domesticate the God of Scripture are nothing short of idolatry. C.S. Lewis, the great twentieth-century British apologist, points out that to deny jealousy and wrath to God is misleading and destructive: “All the liberalizing and civilizing analogies only lead us astray. Turn God’s wrath into mere enlightened disapproval and you also turn his love into mere humanitarianism. The consuming fire and the perfect beauty both vanish.”

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The two key forms of idolatry found amongst God’s people in the time of Jeremiah were (and remain in today’s church) syncretism and false prophecy in the name of the God of Scripture – and they usually come together.

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without law, and therefore without grace: without justice and therefore without mercy.

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You asked for a loving God: you have one.

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Christian preaching and teaching is compared in Scripture (amongst other things) to a watchdog (Is. 56:10). Watchdogs bark a warning, but false preaching is likened to a dumb dog that cannot bark, like a lap dog that is sleeping or lying down.

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Who did Abraham put his trust in? God and his promises, or what appeared to be the facts around him?

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Yet, it is harder to hope and believe that the mission God has given his church can be fulfilled. It is easier to dress up faithlessness as realism, disobedience as a higher spirituality, or to succumb to hopelessness.

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Notice the contrast. The consequences of idolatry amongst a people are seen to the third and fourth generation where hatred of God is present. But the covenantal faithfulness of God is to a thousand generations of those who love and obey him, despite our failures and backslidings.

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Yet in spite of all opposition, wherever a faithful kingdom people are found; wherever the church of Jesus Christ gathers as his embassy to serve as his ambassadors; wherever a willing and humble church will hear and obey, the rule and kingdom of God is present.

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