Through all the ages, the God of the Bible has been and is a missionary God!
Because God created all things and all people, the message of the Bible includes every human being. From the beginning, Scripture presents the search of God, not only for Abraham or Israel, but for people from every nation to be brought into relationship with Him. The God of the Bible is the God Who Relates.
The earliest conversation we have on record is among the Persons of the Trinity. Having spoken into existence light, space, and energy; the heavens and the earth; the fish, the fowl and all the animals, God began to converse! Before there was another created person on record, God was a God of Relationship.
Love motivated God to create in order to share the blessings of His Goodness. God did not create persons to fill some vacuum in Himself. He was not lonely! He created persons so that He could bless them.
Genesis 2 introduces us to the man, Adam. Then Eve was provided to expand the relationships. God commanded the primal couple to “multiply and replenish the earth.” The image of God is never more clearly reflected than when people live in loving relationships! Every human is created in the image of God—deserving of love and respect. God made each person capable of enjoying a loving relationship with Himself — not just an objective theological “salvation,” not just a fire escape, but a real relationship.
Very early in human history, we learn that there is another dimension to relationship — Release. Not only is He the God Who Relates, but He is also the God who Releases. Relationship that allows no release is imprisonment! God created Man with freedom — the ability to choose. One tree or the other! Life or Death! Freedom is possible! A terrible Rebellion is possible! All that the Man can achieve in goodness and greatness, he can equal in evil and terror! Where Freedom is possible, a monstrous Fall is possible, even Damnation! But in Divine wisdom and love, God decided to grant His creatures freedom. The only way to enjoy the beauty of Relationship with Man was to risk the dangers of Release.
When the man and the woman chose to disobey His command, amazingly the Almighty stooped to woo the wayward, but He did not coerce them to return. God decided it is better to have a man in hell than a robot in heaven. He refused to violate the freedom He had granted, but He promised to send a Redeemer (Gen.3:15).
The God Who Relates is the God Who Releases, but He is also the God who Reveals. From the beginning, the Creator communicated with the Man. He revealed the nature of the world in which Man lived. He explained the responsibilities and the potentialities of the Garden. Then He revealed the moral nature of life to Adam. He identified the boundaries of choice. Two trees. Two results. He explained things to Adam that the Man had never experienced, but the information was to enrich the relationship between God and Man.
This pattern continues through all history. The Creator reveals in order that He may Relate more closely. God reveals through Nature, through Conscience, through the Incarnation of His Son, and through His Inspired Word. Why does He reveal? That all the world may know Him (John 14:31; 17:23).
He reveals the moral parameters. He sets before us, “life and good, and death and evil” (Deuteronomy 30:15). He reveals the rightness and wrongness of actions and attitudes (Exodus 20:3-17), sometimes through our Conscience, other times through the remonstrance of those whom we have wronged. He reveals through anointed prophets what kind of God He is and how we are to live in relationship with Him and with others around us.
God reveals generally through the world around us. Everywhere He has left His creative imprint upon our world, the evidences of intelligent design. He reveals specifically through the Bible, culminating in the Incarnation, Death and Resurrection of His Son. Emphatically Jesus declared that those who know the revealed truth are entrusted with the responsibility to tell others.
The God Who Reveals is also the God who Reaches. God demonstrated His Initial Reach in Creation, but after the Fall He reaches even farther to those who have fallen, who have “turned every one to his own way.” He woos, invites to return, even pursues. II Petet 3:9 assures us that God is “not willing that any should perish.” Yet He never overrides a human will.
Watch as the first two sons begin to grow. Their characters begin to manifest themselves and Cain chooses to reject God’s instructions.
Will God stop him? No.
Will God pursue cantankerous Cain? Yes!
God pursues Cain, remonstrates with him, shows him how to return to acceptance, and tenderly warns him of the danger. Through all of history, God yearns to bring back the wanderer, the rebel, the stubborn. He even yearns to bring to Himself those who have never heard of Him. Only the dim glimmer of Conscience alerts them that there is Someone above, that there is a right and a wrong, that there is more to life than flesh and bones.
All through the Bible God reaches for people — sometimes through blessing, sometimes through severity (Romans 2:4; 11:22). Paul testifies that throughout history God “left not himself without witness, in that he did good, and gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness” (Acts 14:17). To this day, seven truths known before Abraham’s time are still included in primitive religions worldwide: 1) God’s existence, 2) Creation, 3) Fall, need for 4) Sacrifices, 5) Great Flood, sudden appearance of many 6) languages and the consequent dispersion, and Man’s need for further 7) Revelation (D Richardson, Eternity in Their Hearts).
God has ordained that all the peoples of the earth shall know the truth about Him, but He also declares that saving grace is only available through the revelation of His Son (Acts 4:12).
God Reaches through Revelation — revealing Himself, the true nature of life, the options available to us, and the destiny of our souls. He Reaches through the Incarnation of His Son. He sent Jesus to identify with us, to feel our pain, and to speak our language in a more intimate way than had ever been possible. He Reaches through His Holy Spirit — enlightening, rebuking, drawing, encouraging, and building us up. He Reaches through the Great Commission (by proxy) — urging His people to join the great project of giving everyone “a chance to choose.”
From the lowly Galileans with a crucified Messiah, the Christian movement expanded until it encompassed every level of people, in three continents. The Book of Acts begins with a Jewish church, widens to include Samaritans, and then spreads to Gentiles and people of many languages. In I Timothy 4:10 Paul writes, “We trust in the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe.” Too often the church has narrowed the prospects, but God wants to reach all people!
The Good News gets even better. The God who reaches is also the God who Reconciles. He does not leave us estranged. “But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us” (Ephesians 2:13-14).
God brings us back from the estrangement that Adam’s Fall introduced. God Reconciles us to Himself through His Son. He also Reconciles us to each other, and He Reconciles us with our inner selves. Then He sends us to invite others to be Reconciled. We are to go into the highways and hedges urging people to come (Luke 14:13). No one is to be left out!
The same day that Jesus was resurrected, He appeared suddenly in the room where the disciples were shivering, shuddering, and shutting themselves away from people. He showed them His scars, the proofs of His Death and Resurrection, then urged them, “as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.” At least four times before He ascended, He urged them with His Great Commission (John 20:19-23; Mathew 28:16-20; Mark 16:14-18; Luke 24:44-49). These were four separate occasions and four distinct emphases. As He prepared to return to His Father, the great matter that was on His mind was the spread of His message to all people so that all could be reconciled to God.
“Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God” (II Corinthians 5:20). Christians are Agents of Reconciliation. The Epistles of the New Testament are missionary documents, instructing missionary churches how to live and how to reach others. Romans, often thought to be primarily doctrinal, throbs with missionary zeal and surges with strategy.
"For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?" (Romans 10:13)
Jesus’ whole life and all His teaching were devoted to extending the invitation to the unloved and the unlikely. He went after sinners. He healed Samaritans and outsiders. He predicted, “And they shall come from the east, and from the west, and from the north, and from the south, and shall sit down in the kingdom of God” (Luke 13:9). He envisioned a worldwide kingdom with grand diversity.
But will He succeed? Will the Messiah “see of the travail of his soul, and … be satisfied”? (Isaiah 53:11) In the book of Revelation, God gives us a preview of the Final Wrap-Up. Excitedly, John recorded, “After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands.” They were singing a new song, “Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation” (Revelation 7:9; 5:9).
Heaven will be the Ultimate in Reconciliation. “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God” (Revelation 21:3). God is preparing for Himself a diverse family of all colors, cultures, languages, and levels.
No wonder Kenneth Mulholland summarized,
The God of the Old Testament is a Missionary God
The Christ of the Gospels is a Missionary Christ
The Holy Spirit of the Book of Acts is a Missionary Spirit
The Church of the Epistles is a Missionary Church
The Consummation of Revelation is a Missionary Consummation
(K Mulholland, Columbia International University, Introduction to Missions)
God is a Missionary God.
The Bible is a Missionary Book.
Christ is a Missionary Christ.
And God’s People, the Church, must be a Missionary People!
