A Distinction
I feel we regularly confuse these two areas—each essential areas. God’s mission is what the triune God is doing on the earth to avoid wasting sinners. That’s totally different than Christian witness: the best way we take part in what God is doing. If I outline, first, God’s mission, the triune God has a plan, and he has already been busy with fulfilling that plan and nonetheless is on the earth right now. We will truly return to the church father Augustine, who spoke about missio (the mission of God). He outlined it as God’s two missions, truly.
God the Father has a plan of redemption. He sends his Son. That’s the primary mission. God the Father sends God the Son to perform redemption. After which God the Father and Son ship the Spirit into the world to use that redemption. And that is God’s mission, and it’s what God is busy doing on the earth right now. Now, that’s God’s mission, and in comparison with Christian witness, it’s just a little totally different. Christian witness is how we take part in what God is doing.
You Will Be My Witnesses examines the witness of God’s individuals inside the story of God’s mission, attracts insights from the church’s witness since Pentecost, and displays on sensible points of latest Christian witness.
Christian witness is the church commissioned by Christ, despatched out, empowered by the Holy Spirit to discuss what God is doing. Witnessing is to talk of Christ and his gospel fact, salvation in Christ alone, to discuss God—the one true God—and his fact claims in Scripture, and to talk to sinners and to convey the gospel to them in varied methods. That’s a Christian witness: collaborating in God’s mission.
The time period “Christian witness” is an umbrella time period, and below this time period comes all totally different types of the witness of the church. It may be an evangelistic witness in a area people or at a jail or in another native context. It may be apologetics, whether or not or not it’s a rational protection of the religion or whether or not or not it’s cult evangelism. It may be worldwide partnerships, international partnerships, going to faraway locations and bringing the gospel via church planting or theological training.
Christian witness can be cultural engagement, biblical counseling, humanitarian ministries, or hospitality. There are numerous varieties that it takes, however all Christian witness is collaborating in what God is doing on the earth to avoid wasting sinners. And so it’s very useful to maintain these two separate. God’s mission that we take part in as Christians via the witness of Christ.
Brian A. DeVries is the writer of You Will Be My Witnesses: Theology for God’s Church Serving in God’s Mission.
