Salvation does not imply mission. And frustratingly, everyone thinks it
does. So much missional theology in, say,
the last 25 or 50 years, has so emphasized the comprehensiveness of God’s salvation, and from that claimed that
mission should be comprehensive. But it
doesn’t follow.
Yes! We must say it—we must proclaim it: God wants every
aspect of created existence to experience his transforming and healing
restoration. God wants to heal—to recreate—the relationships between people, to
dissolve animosity and hatred, arbitrary exclusions, such as racism, for
example. God wants to care for the poor
and provide for them, to lift them out of poverty to provision and dignity. God wants to transform politics, so that it
reflects the political relationship between Jesus and the church, so that leaders
with power serve in humble, self-denying love and truth. God wants to transform
creation and our relationship with it, so it no longer groans, so we no longer
abuse it, and so we no longer suffer from it. God wants to transform
individuals’ human hearts, so they are not driven by pride, crushed under
anxieties and wounds, or sullied by hatred, bitterness, or selfishness; he
wants to make them fully healed, fully alive with love, ready to love and serve
and delight in doing so.
Isn’t all that what we think of when we think of
“salvation”? And yet, something is seriously missing from that list,
namely, our relationship with God himself.
God’s interest is not just in the existence of a thoroughly,
overflowingly good created order, bringing it back (or even forward) to the way
he would delight for it to be. God wants
to transform people’s (both individually and “as a whole”) relationship with
himself. For people to totally love, delight, and glory in God’s
goodness greatness and grace; for them to find satisfaction in him and not
stuff; for them to want him most; for people to use all they have to worship
and honor him; for people not to sin by
living lives of distraction and diversion, but to be totally centered in
Christ, living from his love and grace.
God wants to transform our understanding of him, so that we understand
him rightly, so we can praise and love
him rightly, and realize his own love for us rightly. Yes, salvation is comprehensive, capturing
not only every relationship within the
created order, but also the relationship of the created order to himself.
To speak of “the comprehensiveness of salvation” is really
to speak about the character of the vision which God has for the world, the
character of the telos God has for it. God has not left the world to its current
condition of brokenness and suffering—comprehensive brokenness and
suffering. Instead, God has committed to
heal it in every aspect. There is a world God has in mind for this
world, a future state to which he has committed to bring it, and “comprehensive
salvation” refers to the character of that future state: it is healed comprehensively, in every dimension and
depth.
Here is what I hate: you cannot go from this fact that the
salvation which God desires for the world is a comprehensive one, to the fact
that the church’s mission should be comprehensive. The comprehensiveness of mission absolutely does not follow from the
comprehensiveness of salvation, at least not inferentially. Let S stand for the statement “God’s will is
for every aspect of the created order to experience his salvation.” Let M stand for the statement “God’s will is
for the church to work toward every aspect of the created order experiencing
God’s salvation.” P does not imply M. P might
be the reason M is true, if M is true; but it does not imply M.[1]
I cannot stress strongly enough that the
question for mission is not “where
does God want to bring the world?” but “what specific part does God want the
church to play in his work of bring the world to the end he desires for it?” It’s
not, What does God want generally? Its,
What does God want of us specifically. He may want a comprehensive mission; but he
may not. In his wisdom he might have a strategy, a plan for how he wants to
bring about the comprehensive salvation of the world, and it might not include
the church getting started on all of it now (or at least it might not include
the church focusing equally on all of it now.) God might well have a task he wishes the
church to focus on now, because that is the role he wants them to play now in
his larger drama. God might well wish
for the church not to undertake to
“mediate salvation” to certain aspects of the world and its existence. Maybe he does, but a case has to be made for
it—and all evidence for S is not relevant to making that case,
the case for M. The fact of the comprehensiveness
of salvation must not stop the
question of the limits and priorities, of the specific character
of the mission God has for the church specifically. The question for the church’s missiology must
only be what God wants it to be doing at this time, what role he wants for it
to play at this time, given what he wants to do at this time. The missio
Dei and the missio ecclesia are
not necessarily the same, and they must not be assumed to be so.[2]
[1] Example/analogy: The
reason I might want my mechanic to repair my car is because I want my car
fixed; but the fact that I want it fixed does not necessarily imply that I want
my mechanic to do it! (maybe it’s too expensive right now, etc).
[2] And the missio Dei is not
imply that God is always working at realizing all of the future he is bringing to the world; he might be focused
on achieving different aspects of the goal at different times.
