Who We Are: Missionaries
At New City, we talk a lot about what we call our gospel identities. Who you are as believers in Jesus. We believe that because of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, we are a family of missionary servants, disciples making disciples. And we believe that who we are shapes how we live.
Just like your identity as a member of your family was given to you, you didn’t do anything to become a member of your family, our identity in God’s family is received as a gift. The book of Ephesians is a masterclass on our identity as followers of Christ. Chapter 2 says this,
4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:4-10)
Notice all of those verbs - God is the actor, we are the recipient. The identity we receive when we come to faith in Christ is received by faith and is based entirely on who Jesus is.
If you put your faith in Jesus, you are in Christ. You are defined by His life, death, and resurrection.
If our new identity is defined by who Christ is, then how do we understand what it means to be a missionary? To answer, “What does it mean to be a missionary,” we need to answer, “What is God doing in the world?”
One way to summarize the Bible’s big story is through four parts that we talk about often: Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Restoration. These aren’t sections in your Bible, but they are a way of zooming out and talking about the whole story that emphasizes the high point of the story, which is the good news about Jesus. These four parts summarize the story God is telling in all of Scripture from beginning to end, and we can trace God’s mission through these four parts.
Part 1: Creation
The gospel story begins with God (Genesis 1:1). He has no beginning, no origin story, He is outside of time.
This eternal God existed before time in total perfection. Perfect in holiness, joy and love, radiant in glory and goodness. He has no flaws, He has no hang-ups, He is fully and completely good.
Another mind-boggling truth that the Bible tells us is foundational to the whole story is that God is a trinity - three persons in one God. God’s eternal nature is a perfect relationship of Father, Son, and Spirit. He is a community of perfect love and He created our incredible, indescribable, intricate universe out of this overflowing, abundant, joyful love.
At the climax of the creation story, God creates humans in His image (Genesis 1:26-31). We are like Him, and we have work to do that is in some way like his. We rule, subdue, fill, create, design, and work to expand the goodness of God’s creation. We uniquely represent him to the rest of the world. In all of the things God had created thus far, nothing else gets this description. Humanity is uniquely in His image - created to reflect what He is like - and what He is like is glorious.
Here is God’s mission in the creation ideal: God’s image-bearers, reflecting His glory, living in such a way that shows all of creation who He is. Then they make more image-bearers - they’re fruitful and multiplying - and God’s glory is spreading all over the earth.
There is no sin, no separation from Him, no need to reconcile people to Him, but people are spreading His glory throughout the earth. That’s God’s mission.
Part 2: Fall
But everything changes in chapter 3. The story takes a sharp turn when a crafty serpent comes to the woman and asks “did God actually say?” And Eve makes a choice. She wants to know good and evil on her own, without relying on God to define it (Genesis 3:1-6).
God gave them everything they needed and gave them one instruction - to trust His word and obey it. And instead, they decided that they would rather make the rules.
This was the first sin - and the heart of every sin afterward - rebellion against God’s good purpose and authority.
Since Adam, every person has been born with a nature like his: fallen, sinful, spiritually dead. We are naturally opposed to God - we rebel against His authority and want to be gods of our own lives.
This is the turning point in God’s mission. Before the fall, His good design was that His children would live in perfect relationship with Him and with one another, and they would spread His image over the whole earth. They would lead the charge in creating a world full of people that love Him, look like Him, and enjoy Him forever.
Now, God’s good design has been spoiled. He is perfectly holy and good and just and can’t allow sin and evil to go unpunished. He can’t gloss over their rebellion as if it didn’t happen. Someone has to pay the penalty.
And so Adam and Eve are separated from God’s presence, but not forever. In Genesis 3:15, just moments after their failure, God promises to rescue them from the path they have chosen. He promises that there will be a human who will crush the head of the serpent and put an end to the reign of sin in the world.
God does not abandon Adam and Eve and just give up on humans all together. He is committed to His mission of making Himself known to and through people. So He will rescue them from their failure. While they experience separation and death now, God Himself will pay the penalty they have earned.
Part 3: Redemption
We see the promise begin to unfold in Genesis chapter 12 when God chooses a family through whom He will save the whole world (Genesis 12:1-3).
God restates the blessing He gave to Adam and Eve to this new family, Abraham’s family who will become the nation of Israel. He is reaffirming that His mission is to spread His glory throughout the whole earth through human partners. His mission, while affected by the fall, remains the same: He will share His life-giving love and glory with His creation, and He will do that through His image-bearers.
God keeps His covenant relationship with Israel, continually setting the stage for the Savior who was to come. Finally, in the fullness of time, God sent the one He promised would come. (Hebrews 1:1-3).
Jesus is the climax of the story of God’s mission.
A world gone crazy, people with hearts full of rebellion and sin, creation broken and hurting under the effects of the fall. How will God restore His good rule over His good world?
Jesus was God Himself, who took on flesh. He was fully God and fully man. He lived a perfect life, choosing righteously when offered the lie of the serpent, rejecting sin and self-rule at every turn. He fulfilled the law, obeyed the Father, loved His neighbor, and accomplished the spotless record we could not.
Then he died. He willingly went to the cross, paying the penalty for sin He did not commit. Fully God and fully human, His sacrifice paid for all of the rebellion and wickedness humanity had wreaked from Adam and Eve on. It is finished. God’s wrath toward sin expended.
And he gloriously rose. Death could not hold him. His perfect sacrifice was accepted, He destroyed the power of death, and He began the restoration of creation God is bringing about.
The mission of God: God’s image-bearers, reflecting His glory, living in such a way that shows all of creation who He is. Fruitful and multiplying - and God’s glory is spreading all over the earth. This is what Jesus did!
Jesus is the climax of the story of God’s mission in the world. How will God bring blessing to the nations? Jesus. How will God spread His glory over the earth? Jesus. How will God bring back the people who are broken by their sin and rebellion? Jesus.
God’s mission from the beginning has been to rule over His good world through His image-bearers, spreading His glory over the face of the earth. How does He do that when His image-bearers keep choosing to glorify themselves instead? He becomes human, does the work for them, and then gives them His own Spirit to continue to bring His kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.
God was so committed to His mission that He would become human, suffer, die, and be raised so that all the peoples of the earth would know His life-giving love and goodness. He brings us back to himself.
But we have one more part of the story to cover before we finish.
Part 4: Restoration
The goal of creation - that God’s glory would spread all over the earth through His image-bearers will come to completion in the new heavens and the new earth. He will dwell with us, and we will be His people! It is God’s mission. He will accomplish it.
There is a future element to this part of the story. One day, we will be back to the perfection of the garden, walking with God, unhindered by sin. But there is also a present part of this. We don’t have to wait to see the beginning of this new creation. Jesus began the new creation in His resurrection.
When Jesus gives us new life, He gives us His very own Spirit. He brings us from death to life and we are new (2 Corinthians 5:17).
God is restoring His world - including us - from the brokenness of sin right now. We are new creatures, with new natures, new desires, new capacities for holiness and faithfulness because of the Spirit in us. We are no longer slaves to sin, but slaves to righteousness (Romans 6:11).
The very Spirit who hovered over the chaotic waters of creation, the One who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in us. Breathing life into death, light into darkness.
New creation is breaking in all over the place as the Spirit gives life and His people walk with love, joy, peace, and in communion with Him. One day, we will see this fully and finally realized, when there will be no more pain, no more sorrow, no more separation for those who put their faith in Christ.
The mission of God will reach its completion when Jesus returns and finishes this story - all of God’s people reunited in perfect relationship with their Creator. No more sin, no more separation, no more death or pain.
So if this is the true story of the world, what does it mean for you and me? A few quick applications:
This is God’s mission.
From the beginning, God has desired to be in relationship with a people who will share in and spread His glory and love throughout all of Creation. He will accomplish this.
This means we have nothing to fear. God is at work in the world, in our friends, in our family. He has not left us alone to do something amazing, He is already doing the amazing thing.
God’s mission has always existed through His chosen people.
While God is the one accomplishing this, He has decided to do so through set apart people. First Adam and Eve, then Israel, then the Church. His desire is to partner with us.
What an incredible joy. Life as a missionary is not burdensome, because we walk remembering what God has done for us. God is accomplishing His mission, and we get to be a part of it.
Because of Jesus, we have new identities, not new jobs.
We are new people, not old people with new tasks. Being a missionary means living in the reality of who you are recreated to be in Christ, not doing missional things in order to earn something from Christ.
We have a beautiful calling - to participate in the incredible work of redemption God has been doing in the world since the beginning. He is bringing His people back to Himself through us! Praise the Lord for our identity as missionaries!