God's Love Compels Us E-Book

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 238

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

With contributions from popular Bible teachers, including David Platt, John Piper, D. A. Carson, Andy Davis, Mack Stiles, Michael Oh, and Stephen Um, this collection of biblical expositions explores how God's love for us is meant to drive Christians out into the world on mission for him. Addressing "hot topics" that are actively discussed today—such as whether or not people without Christ are really lost and the Christian's responsibility to fight for social justice—this book sketches the biblical basis for missions based on the apostle Paul's words in 2 Corinthians, equipping Christian men and women to think carefully about their own role in taking the good news about Jesus to the world.

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Here Is Our God: God’s Revelation of Himself in Scripture, edited by Kathleen B. Nielson and D. A. Carson

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The Church: God’s New People, by Timothy Savage

Creation, by Andrew M. Davis

The Gospel and Scripture: How to Read the Bible, by Mike Bullmore

Gospel-Centered Ministry, by D. A. Carson and Timothy Keller

The Holy Spirit, by Kevin L. DeYoung

Justification, by Philip Graham Ryken

The Kingdom of God, by Stephen T. Um

The Plan, by Colin S. Smith

The Restoration of All Things, by Sam Storms

Sin and the Fall, by Reddit Andrews III

What Is the Gospel?, by Bryan Chapell

GOD’S LOVECOMPELS US

TAKING THE GOSPEL TO THE WORLD

D. A. CARSON AND KATHLEEN B. NIELSON, EDITORS

God’s Love Compels Us: Taking the Gospel to the World

Copyright © 2015 by The Gospel Coalition

Published by Crossway1300 Crescent StreetWheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law. Crossway® is a registered trademark in the United States of America.

Cover design: Dual Identity

First printing 2015

Printed in the United States of America

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked ASV are from theAmerican Standard Versionof the Bible.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from theKing James Versionof the Bible.

Scripture quotations marked NASB are fromThe New American Standard Bible®. Copyright © The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995. Used by permission.

All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the authors.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-4379-1 ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-4382-1 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-4380-7 Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-4381-4

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

     God’s love compels us : taking the gospel to the world / D. A. Carson and Kathleen B. Nielson, editors.

            1 online resource

     “The Gospel Coalition.”

     Includes bibliographical references and index.

     Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.

     ISBN 978-1-4335-4380-7 (pdf) – ISBN 978-1-4335-4381-4 (mobi) – ISBN 978-1-4335-4382-1 (epub) – ISBN 978-1-4335-4379-1 (tp)

     1. Missions—Congresses.  2. Bible. Corinthians, 2nd, IV, 1–V, XXI—Criticism, interpretation, etc.—Congresses. I. Carson, D. A., editor.

BV2020

266—dc23                               2015003321

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

Table of Contents

Cover

Newsletter Sign Up

Other Books by The Gospel Coalition

Title Page

Copyright

Contents

Preface

1 The Biblical Basis for Missions

2 Why the Great Commission Is Great

3 The Heart of God in the Call to Proclaim

4 Being Ambassadors for Christ

5 Are People without Christ Really Lost?

6 The Individual’s Suffering and the Salvation of the World

7 Jesus and Justice

Contributors

General Index

Scripture Index

About Gospel Coalition

Also Available from the Gospel Coalition

PREFACE

One of the most encouraging signs in recent years of God’s hand of blessing has been the surprising number of serious students who are coming forward for theological training. Students often come through seminaries in distinguishable waves, and many of us who have been teachers for a few decades gladly testify that the current wave is one of the most encouraging we have seen. Thousands of young men want to be church planters, and they are looking for teachers and mentors who will spend time with them. Others, both men and women, simply want to handle Scripture better, to learn how to do evangelism and Bible studies in the transcultural environments of our big cities, or to write with clarity, faithfulness, humility, and unction. Neither is this phenomenon happening in America alone: in various degrees, in many countries, serious students are coming to grips with the serious nature of the gospel, and wanting to serve.

Some of the men on the Council of The Gospel Coalition, and a few others, began to wonder if some of this grace-driven energy should be challenged with the needs beyond America’s borders. Even though world mission is no longer “from the West to the rest,” but more like “from everywhere to everywhere,” the worldwide needs are gigantic. Not only do thousands of unreached people groups remain, but there are far larger populations where knowledge of Scripture is desperately thin, where nominalism or syncretism reigns supreme, and where the gospel is poorly understood and widely disbelieved. So we decided that, ahead of the 2013 National Conference of the Coalition, we would sponsor a preconference on world mission, designed especially, though not exclusively, for students. That took place in April 2013. Before the year was out, the Cross Conference organized a further mission conference in Louisville—longer, more detailed, but with similar hopes and vision.

The chapters of this book are slightly edited print forms of the seven plenary addresses of the April 2013 mission conference. Four of them are devoted to exposition of 2 Corinthians 4–5. As usual, we encouraged a diversity of styles of exposition, provided that the Word of God was faithfully unpacked, so that people might better see the glory of God in the gospel. Also, because mission theology is today challenged by a handful of “hot topics,” we decided to devote three plenaries to address some of them: Andrew Davis spoke on “Are People without Christ Really Lost?”; Michael Oh addressed “The Individual's Suffering and the Salvation of the World”; and Stephen Um spoke on “Jesus and Justice.” Though they are topically arranged, all of these chapters are packed with thoughtful, substantial biblical reflection.

I am grateful beyond words to the plenary speakers for being willing to provide full manuscripts; to Kathleen Nielson for her careful administrative and editorial work; and to Crossway for continuing to make so much of the audio and video ministry of TGC available in print form.

Soli Deo gloria.

Don CarsonPresident, TGC

1

THE BIBLICAL BASIS FOR MISSIONS

Treasure in Jars of Clay

2 CORINTHIANS 4:1–12

D. A. Carson

What is the biblical basis for missions? And how shall we go about answering that question?

We might simply tease out the Bible’s entire storyline. We begin with creation: God makes everything good. Then comes the anarchic revolution against God that Christians call “the fall.” Yet, wonderfully, as early as Genesis 3:15, God himself promises that the seed of the woman will crush the Serpent’s head. In perfect justice, God could destroy the race at that point, but already he is promising redemption. And then, a few chapters later, when hatred and idolatry multiply, he could wipe out the entire race in the flood, but he spares eight human beings.

As evil and idolatry multiply yet again, God starts, as it were, a new humanity, calling Abraham as the patriarch of a new race. From Abraham’s seed, God avers, all the nations of the earth will be blessed. Yet Abraham, though he is called a friend of God and a man of faith, manages, more than once, to be a liar whose deceit puts his wife in jeopardy. His son appears to be a bit of a wimp. His grandson Jacob is a deceiver. Jacob’s sons, the twelve patriarchs—well, one sleeps with his father’s concubine and another messes around with his own daughter-in-law. Two of them butcher all the males of a small village, while ten of them try to decide whether to kill the eleventh or sell him into slavery. And these are the patriarchs! Even so, God spares them, preserving the promised line until, toward the end of the book of Genesis, there is a promise that from one of these patriarchs will eventually spring a redeeming king, the Lion of the tribe of Judah.

In the book of Exodus, God constitutes the Israelites a nation and gives them the law. This instruction commands certain behavior; it also institutes certain rites and rituals that anticipate what is yet to come. The sacrifices of the Day of Atonement, for example, offered up for the sins of the priest and of the people, repeated year after year, have the effect of reminding God’s people of their sins even as they serve as the means by which God forgives them.

Soon we arrive at the utter degeneration described in the book of Judges—endless cycles of depravity, sinking lower and lower until, by the end of the period covered in the book, the scene is so dark that you cannot tell the good guys from the bad guys. Even the good guys are frankly so embarrassing and barbaric that the chapters describing them are difficult to read in public. “O God, how we need a king, for everyone is doing what is right in his own eyes.”

Eventually, God raises up David, described as “a man after his own heart” (1 Sam. 13:14). This man after God’s heart manages to commit adultery and murder. One wonders what he would have done if he hadn’t been a man after God’s heart. That dynasty rules over the twelve tribes for only two generations; then the nation splits. Two centuries later, wallowing in corruption, idolatry, depravity, endless malice, and greed, the ten northern tribes go into captivity. A century and a half after that, the southern tribes, passionately enjoying similar sins, experience the samejudgment.

In this short chapter, I cannot flesh out Israel’s further experiences, not to mention the diverse ways in which God speaks to them, displaying amazing patience. But we would be remiss to forget the words of some of the prophets. One of them foresees a coming servant who will be wounded for our transgressions (Isaiah 53). That same prophet also foresees a day when God will say, “In that day Israel will be the third, along with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing on the earth” (19:24),1anticipating a time when the locus of the people of God will not be one nation or one tribe: “The LORDAlmighty will bless them saying, ‘Blessed be Egypt my people,Assyriamy handiwork, and Israel my inheritance ’” (v. 25).

In the fullness of time, we come to the Lord Jesus, his ministry, his death and resurrection, and the Great Commission. Empowering his people to do what he commands, Christ bestows the Holy Spirit. The closing chapters of the Bible display a consummating vision of men and women, drawn from every tongue, tribe, people, and nation, one redeemed community, the blood-bought from around the world, gathered around the throne of God in resurrection splendor.

In other words, we could assert that the biblical basis for missions is nothing other than the storyline of the entire Bible: God graciously goes after sinners and wins over a vast number of them.

Alternatively, we might simply focus on Jesus himself. We could consider, for example, his various titles and functions. He is the King, and as the King, he declares: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples” (Matt. 28:18–19). Or we might reflect on the fact that Jesus is the Good Shepherd who gives his life for his sheep. Again, Jesus is the High Priest who offers himself as the perfect sacrifice. He is the Word of God—God’s ultimate self-expression, declared to the entire world. Or we might meditate on the obedience of Christ. In Gethsemane, his prayer is not, “Oh, I really do want to go through with this because I really love those sinners so much”; rather, he prays, “Not my will, but yours be done” (Luke 22:42). The driving power behind Jesus’s determination to go to the cross is, first of all, his obedience to his Father. This is the heavenly Father’s plan, and the world must know, Jesus says in John 14, that he always does what pleases his Father. Again, we might consider great events in Jesus’s mission and their bearing on the biblical basis of missions: the cross, the resurrection, his session at the Father’s right hand, or the second coming, when every knee shall bow to him. There are so many legitimate ways to establish the biblical basis of missions.

Yet another way of getting at the biblical basis for missions is to focus on a specific passage. There are many texts to which we could turn, but I will fasten our attention on 2 Corinthians 4:1–12:

Therefore, since through God’s mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart. Rather, we have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.

How does this passage contribute to our grasp of the biblical basis for missions? Verse 1 opens by talking about this ministry we have: “Since through God’s mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart.” This ministry, according to verse 2, is bound up with setting forth the truth plainly. According to verse 4, we are placarding the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. When we discharge this ministry, we are nothing more than clay pots (according to v. 7 and following). And yet, all this achieves eternal glory (v. 17) as we fix our eyes on what is unseen (now, there’s a paradox!)—unseen but eternal. These verses do not so muchdefineworld mission asdescribeit. Sometimes the most powerful and moving basis for world mission lies in the Bible’s depiction of what it looks like.

It will be helpful, I think, to unpack three parts of this de­scription.

1. Gospel Ministry Demands Unqualified Integrity (vv. 1–3)

In our English Bible, this passage begins with the wordtherefore. When I was a little whippersnapper, my father, who was trying to teach me elementary interpretation principles, said, “Don, whenever you see awhereforeortherefore, see what it’s there for.” In this case,thereforeconnects the previous chapter with what is found in our verses. Second Corinthians 3 establishes the fact that apostolic ministry, the ministry of Paul in particular, is blessed with many privileged advantages over the ministry of Moses at the time of the giving of the law. To put it another way, the ministry of the new covenant sealed in Jesus’s blood is superior to the ministry of the old covenant. So we read in chapter 3:

Such confidence we have through Christ before God. Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God. He has made uscompetentas ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. (vv. 4–6)

Again, note some of the contrasts between the two covenants as they’re teased out later in chapter 3:

Now if the ministry that brought death [that is, ministry under the law], which was engraved in letters on stone [referring to the Ten Commandments], came with glory, so that the Israelites could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of its glory, transitory though it was, will not the ministry of the Spirit be even more glorious? If the ministry that brought condemnation was glorious, how much more glorious is the ministry that brings righteousness! (vv. 7–9)

Again:

And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. (v. 18)

Then comes chapter 4:

Therefore, since through God’s mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart. (v. 1)

In other words, Paul understands full well that Christian ministry, despite its deep privileges, coughs up many reasons for losing heart, many reasons for deep discouragement. But since it is through God’s mercy that we have this ministry, and since, as 2 Corinthians 3 has shown, this ministry belongs to the surpassingly wonderful new covenant,therefore,we do not lose heart.

Before we go any further, we should ask two questions.

First, do these references to “this ministry” or “our ministry” refer only to apostolic ministry? If so, we should be cautious about applying them to us and to the work of world mission today. But although 2 Corinthians 3 focuses on Paul and apostolic ministry, at the end of chapter 3 and right through chapters 4 and 5, Paul elides the discussion into the ministry of all believers. You can see this, for example, at the end of chapter 3: “Andwe all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit” (v. 18). Again, in chapter 5: “So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ” (vv. 9–10a).

So although Paul begins with his own ministry (and, doubtless, that is in some ways a model for all of us in any case), he specifically elides the discussion into so broad a set of parameters that he includes Christians like you and me.

The second question: What is the nature of the discouragement that Paul faces? Why is he tempted to lose heart, granted all of these incredible privileges belonging to the new covenant? It is pretty obvious that many people are offended by the straight talk of Scripture. That is surely what hides behind verse 2:

We have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God.

Why would anyone use deception? Why would you use slightly shady language or ambiguous categories? The reason is that all of us know full well that some of what the Bible says isn’t going to be too popular. So it becomes a perennial temptation to use softer language, to avoid the Bible’s sharp edges and unyielding but often unpopular truths.

In every culture, many people absorb and then reflect their surrounding values and priorities without much critical thought. For example, you could have deep discussions with devout Muslims in the context of Islamic culture, and they may understand what you are saying at the level of your sentences and paragraphs, but fail to grasp what the gospel is about. They don’t see it. Theyunderstandit at some level, but they do not see it. Or you could have deep discussions with hedonists who simply cannot really see the transcendent value of the gospel: they are blind to it. The god of this world has blinded them (4:4). Also, some common values in Western culture are painfully antagonistic to the gospel. For example, some popular forms of tolerance are remarkably intolerant: if you proclaim an exclusive Jesus today, you are readily dismissed as a bigot.

So what are your options? Well, of course, we might adopt “shameful ways” that “distort the word of God” (4:2). After all, everyone has his or her own point of view. Maybe Jesus is not the only way; maybe there are other ways of getting to God after all. Maybe Peter was sincere but sadly mistaken when he said that “there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). Maybe Jesus was exaggerating a bit when he said: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). After all, those sound like narrow-minded, bigoted, intolerant statements, don’t they? But as a result of these distortions, the god of this age, of this particular culture, blinds the eyes of countless people. Again, it is very difficult for many younger people in this culture to think of themselves as guilty. We are much more prone to think of ourselves as victims. But how do we come to grips with a Savior who dies for our sin if, at the end of the day, we don’t think of ourselves as sinners? Maybe what we really need is a Savior to take us out of the muck of our misfortune. Certainly today there is a pretty hard-nosed skepticism about the existence of hell. But the person who talks most about hell in the Bible is Jesus himself. It is pretty hard to say nothing about hell and be faithful to Jesus.

In other words, sometimes, quite frankly, the truth itself is what is offensive. Jesus knew that in his own day, of course. Do you remember the remarkable passage in John 8:45? He says to some interlocutors, “Because I tell the truth, you do not believe me!” It would be bad enough if that sentence began with a concessive instead of a causal: “AlthoughI tell the truth, you do not believe me.” That would be tragic. But the word by which Jesus introduces his charge is a causal: “BecauseI tell the truth, you do not believe me.”

So again, what are your options? Tell untruths in order to get people to believe? What then will people believe? Untruths.

It can be very discouraging to articulate the truth, to preach the truth, only to discover that many people, far from simply listening and then rejecting the truth, write you off as a narrow-minded bigot. That is truly disheartening. It is worth remembering that in the first three centuries of the Christian church, until the time of Constantine, the most common pagan criticism against Christianity was that it was too narrow, too exclusive. Soundfamiliar?

Some of us have responded to the call to cross-cultural ministry, and we may have been tempted to think of ourselves as fledgling heroes of the faith. We may have read our share of missionary biographies and imagined how we, too, might be used of God to preach the gospel with great power and fruitfulness, instrumental in seeing hundreds converted, maybe thousands. Then, when we actually get there, we discover how difficult and even dangerous some places can be. We like to hear the stories of preachers and missionaries who were privileged to see enormous fruitfulness, but then, there’s always a Samuel Zwemer, who preached forty years in the Muslim world and saw eight converts—and five of them were killed. It’s enough to make a person lose heart.

Even Paul is tempted to lose heart, but, he says, “since through God’s mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart.” Rather:

We have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. (2 Cor.4:2–3)

Elsewhere, Paul faces other temptations. He writes in 2:17:

Unlike so many, we do not peddle the word of God for profit. On the contrary, in Christ we speak before God with sincerity, as those sent from God.

It is possible to shape your message to increase the income. Paul faced this temptation and rejected it.

A very different temptation emerges in 11:20–21:

In fact, you even put up with anyone who enslaves you or exploits you or takes advantage of you or puts on airs or slaps you in the face. To my shame I admit that we were too weak for that!

In other words, some people look for Christian preachers and missionaries who are bullies. They somehow feel secure if a strong man is telling them where to step off. But how does that breed character, the humility of Christ, godliness, and maturity that trains up leaders? “I admit that I was too weak for that,” the apostle Paul says, his pen dripping in sarcasm.

No, no. He has resolved not to use deception, not to distort the Word of God, and not to peddle the Word for money. He is not going to try to win popularity or increase his income by slanting the truth. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly, he says, we Christians “commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God” (4:2). What is required is courage, backbone, resolve. Our priority is submission to the Word of God. So if you want to know what biblical mission looks like, hear this: gospel ministry demands unqualified integrity.

2. The Gospel Itself Displays the Glory of Christ (vv. 4–6)

Our task is to herald the gospel even if some cannot see its light. Paul says:

The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. (4:4)

Quite some years ago, I knew a young woman at the University of Cambridge, a graduate student to whom I had given a copy of the bookBasic Christianityby John Stott. She read it carefully enough that she looked up a lot of the biblical references that littered its pages. When I asked her some weeks later what she made of it, she said, “I’ve decided that Christianity is for good people like you and Carol [her Christian roommate], but it’s not for me.”

How on earth does an intelligent graduate student at Cambridge manage to read an author like Stott, who writes with great clarity and limpid prose, and think that the gospel is all about being “good people”? When I heard her words, this passage came to mind: “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ.” They cannot see it.