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The Ongoing Imperative for World Mission

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of Missions in this address from The Gospel Coalition Sermon Library


Granted the interests and character of our honoree, granted the focus of the papers during this weekend’s conference, and granted the title assigned to me, The Ongoing Imperative for World Mission, I should relieve your suspense at once and tell you right away that I’m for world mission.

Yet what shall I do with this title? To show something of the sweep of possible discussions the title might call forth, I shall begin by outlining some of the roads I might have traveled in this address, but chose to resist resolutely before pursuing another way. So the roads not traveled (I shall offer an apostolic number of such roads):

1. An array of Great Commission texts.

We might have begun with Matthew 28:16–20. Here we observe that the controlling verb is “to make disciples,” not “make decisions,” or, still less, “entertain the sheep.” The three supporting participles, all carrying some imperatival force, require us to: go, baptize, and teach the disciples everything Jesus has commanded.

The form of the Great Commission in Luke 24 is cast as fulfillment and prediction: fulfillment in that Jesus Christ’s passion and resurrection were predicted in Scripture and fulfilled in his death and resurrection and then prediction, for in consequence of Jesus’ death and resurrection, repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations beginning at Jerusalem.

The disciples, we are told, are witnesses of these things. Jesus further promises to “send what my Father has promised” (doubtless a reference to the Holy Spirit), so that these believers will be “clothed with power from on high.” Similar themes are developed in Acts 1, with the geographical extension of the ministry of the witnesses spelled out in greater detail: Jerusalem, all Judea, Samaria, and “to the ends of the earth.”

John’s form of the Great Commission, in John 20, is prefaced by Jesus’ appearance to the disciples in a closed and locked room and his greeting, “Peace be with you.” Doubtless this is meant to be more than a casual “Shalom.” It is meant to be evocative of a huge theological structure in the book itself, for John’s gospel has made clear already that the person who does not obey the Son stands under the abiding wrath of God (John 3:36), while in his death and resurrection, the Son fulfills his role as the ultimate sin-bearing Lamb of God (John 1).

The peace that Jesus promised his followers just a few days earlier, on the night he was betrayed (“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give as the world gives”) is anchored in his own death and resurrection. After that point, after his “Peace be with you,” Jesus then tells the ten disciples gathered in the room, “As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.”

Some have bled this dramatic parallelism in this commission for more than it’s worth, yet the power of this standard of sacrifice and service will never be matched by even the most heroic missionary. We are always never more than debtors. Once again, the commission is tied, in the text, to the gift of the Holy Spirit and the forgiveness of sins.

Of course, some of the Great Commission extends beyond these specific texts. For instance, we cannot forget the instructions of the Spirit to commission Paul and Barnabas for the first apostolic missionary journey. We can’t forget the apostle’s self-understanding: he’s an ambassador of the Great King, conveying the message, “Be reconciled to God.” But although such texts draw our attention, for our purposes they must remain a road not traveled.

2. The biblical theology of Great Commission texts.

Very often, Christians have studied the Great Commission texts in isolation from the books or corpora in which they are embedded, and thus unwittingly denuded them of some of their power. To take but one example: Before reading Matthew 28, we’re expected to read Matthew 1–27.

The very first verse of the book announces the ancestry of Jesus through David back to Abraham. Abraham figures elsewhere in Matthew’s gospel. In Matthew 3, John the Baptist tells us God is able to “raise up children for Abraham” out of these rocks. A little later, Jesus himself tells us “many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom.”

We are not far from anticipating the theology of the apostle Paul, who says that the real children of Abraham are those who share Abraham’s faith, not Abraham’s genes. The genealogy of Jesus in Matthew l draws attention, among other things, to the non-Hebrews in Messiah’s line. Not least of these is Ruth, a Moabitess who, according to the law, shouldn’t have been there.

The name of Jesus is carefully parsed for us. It is nothing other than the Greek form of Joshua, which means “Yahweh saves,” and so Jesus comes to save his people from their sins. Coming as it does in the opening of the book, this explanation provides a grid for the rest of this first gospel. You are to read the rest of Matthew’s gospel in the light of that title: “This is the gospel of the One who comes to save his people from their sins.”

Small wonder then that amongst many other contributing themes, there is a trainee mission in Matthew 10 to prepare the disciples for the work of outreach they will have to undertake, in both Jewish and Gentile contexts (which means, thus, cross-culturally), after Jesus’ resurrection and ascension.

Then, of course, the great Olivet Discourse in Matthew 24 announces “this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” Much more could be said, but you get the idea: the Great Commission is not simply something tacked on at the end of the book (after we’ve had the real stuff out of the way, then the job).

Rather, it brings to a climax one of the themes that drives through the entire first gospel. Similar things could be said, with various emphases, of every book and corpus in the New Testament, anchoring our Great Commission texts to the very structure of the new covenant. Of course, precisely because such themes have been marvelously probed in recent years (we are familiar with, for example, the work of Andreas Kˆstenberger and Peter O’Brien on the one hand and Eckhard Schnabel on the other), little needs to be said about them here.

3. The still larger biblical storyline.

Rather myopically, I’ve limited myself so far to New Testament. It’s not fair, of course, for the New Testament documents nestle within an entire canonical framework. The first responsibility of sentient creatures, not least of God’s image-bearers, is to recognize their creatureliness with all that creatureliness entails. That’s our first obligation.

Failure to do so is the beginning of idolatry and, therefore, of condemnation and death. The most spectacular evidence of God’s grace is his pursuit of rebels. Despite the amount of space devoted to God’s choice of Israel and to all of the history that flows from this choice, Paul is entirely right to point out that the history of Israel is itself nestled within the still larger history of humanity, creation, and fall.

That is why we need (according to Paul) not only, for example, a high priestly Christology but a New Adam Christology. That’s why we must recognize that the promise to Abraham (that through his seed, all the nations of the earth would be blessed) is not done away by the Mosaic covenant. It would be enriching, again, to tease these things out, but let me mention just one more Old Testament passage.

Isaiah 19:23 and following says, “In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria. The Assyrians will go to Egypt and the Egyptians to Assyria. The Egyptians and Assyrians will worship together. In that day Israel will be the third, along with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing on the earth. The Lord Almighty will bless them, saying, ‘Blessed be Egypt my people, Assyria my handiwork, and Israel my inheritance.’ ” But these massive biblical structures of thought and expectation I must reluctantly set aside.

4. Responses to objections: alternative exegeses.

Despite the apparently straightforward nature of the Great Commission texts, some have argued that the commission applied only to the apostles, or only to the first generation of believers, so it has no ongoing mandate today. Certainly the apostles enjoyed some unique functions. Nevertheless, if the Great Commission itself tells the apostles to teach their disciples to obey everything that Jesus commanded them, presumably the command inherent in the Great Commission should not be excluded.

In other words, Matthew’s version of the Great Commission does not read, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you, except, of course, for this commandment to make disciples. Keep their grubby hands off that one since it belongs only to you, my dear apostles. And surely I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

The ludicrousness of this reading, and the laughter that springs from it, handle the objection quite nicely. Moreover, Paul can instruct Timothy to find reliable men who will be able to teach others (2 Timothy 2). He certainly does not mean, “Teach others everything except the gospel, of course, since that job was only given to the apostles.”

The believers in Revelation 12 overcome the Devil himself by three means, and one of them is the word of their testimony. This does not mean, of course, that they share their testimonies a lot, but that they bear testimony. They bear witness to the gospel itself. But enough, there is little need in this crowd to explore that particular objection.

5. Responses to objections: the job’s already done.

This objection is grounded in a peculiar reading of a handful of texts. Jesus had predicted that the gospel would be preached to all nations. Paul, writing to the Colossians, happily asserts that the gospel “has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven” (Colossians 1:23).

Lest we succumb too quickly to pedantry, recognizing not only this text but two or three others like it, it is worth recalling that elsewhere, Paul also asserts, “It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ has not been known” (Romans 15), and as a result, he plans to go to Spain.

The sweeping claim, in other words, that the gospel has already been preached to all nations and to every creature must be qualified by Paul’s own assessment that there are lots of places where Christ is not known. More importantly, the claim must be read in the light of the Bible’s handling of salvation-historical developments.

For two millennia, the focus of much of God’s redemptive work was among the Israelites. Now Paul is saying that in fulfillment of God’s ancient purposes, the gospel has gone to all the nations, to every creature. That is precisely the point Paul makes, among others, when he addresses the Athenian intelligentsia in Acts 17. Once again, we cannot pause to focus on this question.

6. Responses to objections: postmodern predilections.

I have no intention of taking cheap shots at postmodernism, partly because I’m still trying to figure out what it is. If it is tied to our finiteness and thus to the insistence that we cannot escape the narrowness of our vision (that is, of our perspectives), then it is hard to deny its cogency.

Surely it’s true to say that there are two kinds of perspectivalists: those who admit it and those who don’t. Of beings that can be said to know, only an omniscient God is free from perspectivalism. In that sense, we’re all postmodernists, whether we like it or not. Nevertheless, the harder voices of postmodernism raise two objections to the Great Commission.

The first is nicely articulated by Brian McLaren. In the light of the cultural move from modernism to postmodernism, he argues that we should stop thinking so antithetically and join hands with co-religionists such as Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists, refusing to proselytize each other’s members as we stand, shoulder-to-shoulder, against the far greater dangers of secularism.

Indeed, in his most recent book, The Secret Gospel of Jesus, he says that this “secret gospel” (stripped of events in Jesus’ life such as the cross), is entirely open to the central teachings of Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. I confess I am finding it difficult to decide whether McLaren more seriously misunderstands Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism … or Christ.

The second hard voice ties postmodernism to anti-colonialism, anti-cultural hegemony, and the like. It is either suspicious of all proselytization in principle (and evangelism, of course, is viewed as merely one species of proselytization) or against any proselytization undertaken by people from countries with a colonial heritage.

We are certainly on the cusp of massive transformations of perspective. We have expected the majority of world Christian leaders to be white and Western, to be (relative to most of the world) affluent and capable, but there are now far more believers in the Two-Thirds World than in the West. I have preached in churches of 30,000 people in Asia, while a big church in France draws 150. The West still produces more well-trained vocational theologians than any other part of the world, but this owes much to economic factors, and I suspect it will change in the years ahead.

It is only a matter of time until the leaders of the Two-Thirds World become better known around the world. Witness, for example, the courageous and influential stance of the Anglican Archbishop of Nigeria on the debate over homosexuality in the world Anglican Communion. Many churches in S„o Paulo, Brazil, have something to teach us about energetic racial integration.

When we in the West go somewhere as missionaries, even if we ourselves come from humble backgrounds, we are perceived as coming from the affluent world; our ministry is naturally read as a “reaching down.” When someone from a Two-Thirds World country becomes a missionary to a country of similar socioeconomic class, that missionary is naturally read as a peer. When that same missionary serves in a more affluent country, he or she is naturally read as “reaching up.”

As a result, expectations change, social dynamics change, and modes of influence change. Moreover, for better and for worse, Christian missionaries bring some of their own culture with them. In recent decades, there have been more efforts by our missionaries, than in the past, to disentangle the gospel from the export of American and other Western cultures, but the challenge is still considerable.

Now, however, with missionaries coming from many different countries, we are finding pockets of churches served by, say, Korean missionaries that have absorbed not only the gospel but also substantial dollops of Korean culture. It is all very fascinating, sometimes confusing, and invariably complicated. It’s a grand thing that Jesus is still building his church, often by means of his people and sometimes despite us. What is undeniable, however, is that massive changes lie just ahead.

None of these observations vitiate the mandate; it merely demands that we try a little harder to get it right. None of these developments, then, argues against the ongoing imperative for world evangelism. It merely suggest that in the future, we will be less inclined to think of missionaries going from “us” to “them” and more inclined to think of missionaries going from everywhere to everywhere. I think that’s really exciting.

Korea (to mention but one prominent mission-sending country) sends out a formidable number of missionaries (at the moment, the estimate is somewhere between 12,000 and 15,000). In addition, Korea sends tent-makers into other Asian countries that would otherwise be completely closed. Many African churches send missionaries cross-culturally to other tribes and to other African countries and, increasingly, to Western countries, primarily to serve those who have emigrated from African countries to the West.

Worldwide statistics are complicated and not always easy to come by, and one is not always sure how accurate they are, but in any case, this first development must not be in dispute. One must rejoice over it, even if some of the reasons for getting to this point (not least, the decline of the West) are a bit disappointing.

Jesus has told us he will build his church. He has not told us that such building will necessarily take place in our hometown or school district. It helps to get things into perspective if we take time to read up on worldwide developments in order to gain a worldwide appreciation for what God has been doing, is doing, and will do. But I can’t go down that rabbit warren much farther either.

7. Fundamental skepticism about God, Christ, and the Bible.

Here, it is not the mandate itself that is under question but the validity of all of Christianity’s claims. Perhaps it is anti-supernaturalists. But, obviously, to address whether or not the mandate continues when that is the charge is really to introduce an entire apologia for Christianity itself, and that’s not my task tonight.

8. Nuanced judgments as to what “world mission” includes.

Does it include fighting AIDS? Feeding the poor? Or does mission mean preaching the gospel? It is perennially important to work hard at the proper relation between ministry of the Word and other ministry of social concern.

Exclusive focus on the former is in danger of fostering a docetic view of the Christian life. Exclusive focus on the latter is in danger of abandoning the actual proclamation of the good news, which is, after all, what saves. Although there are some important principles to work out, the actual balance of time allotment must depend in large part on the local situation. When people are crying on a devastated beach after a tsunami, it is not the best time to distribute Bibles, absent fresh water, food, and shelter.

Yet an extensively Christian organization which, decade after decade after decade, distributes tons of blankets and food, founds orphanages, and combats HIV, without ever offering Bible studies or explaining what doing this in Jesus’ name means and what the gospel is about is indistinguishable from UNICEF or MÈdecins Sans FrontiËres and is no more Christian than they.

Around the world, organizations are wrestling with these, and related, issues. I am most impressed by Christian witness that is full of the Bible, full of Jesus, full of excellent teaching, full of sacrificial service, and full of ministering to the whole person and, where possible, the community itself in the conscience outworking of the transforming gospel. But what this looks like varies enormously around the world, for obvious reasons. I won’t go down that track either.

9. Strategies to fulfill the ongoing imperative for world mission.

In a remarkably penetrating paper (still unpublished as far as I know) Tim Keller, of Redeemer Presbyterian in New York City, reads Acts very carefully to learn some of the strategies of the early church as the first generation of believers sought to evangelize the Roman world. Now as I say, I haven’t seen this in print, but I’m going to give you the title and hope that it will be in print sometime because it’s a stellar piece of work: “Reaching the Twenty-First Century World for Christ.”

He works through, for example, the primacy of working from the cities out. He works through the centrality of the gospel itself, over against religion. It’s an important distinction to make, not least in the West. He works through the gospel’s interaction with culture and what culture means. Then he talks about the fullness of ministry in various guises and so on, working very carefully out of the text of Acts. I hope it gets into print in due course. I commend it very warmly.

10. Statistics.

With my background in chemistry and mathematics, I’m probably more impressed by numbers than I ought to be. I don’t want to go down that rabbit warren too far, but I can’t resist giving you a few. This is just from one particular source. Mongolia, once the most closed country in the world, with only four Christians in 1989 that we knew about, now has about 20,000 Christians worshipping in over 100 churches and 500 house churches.

Cambodia, in the late 70s, was estimated to have 2,000 Christians; now there are 150,000. Nepal’s first church began in 1959 with 29 believers; now there are over 500,000 in more than 5,000 congregations, with a church in every one of the 75 districts of that little country. I don’t need to say anything about China, do I? Or Korea? Asian Christians of all types have increased from 22 million in 1980 to over 300 million in 2000. Out of 1,739 unreached people groups, 1,100 are still in Asia.

South America has more than 8,000 Ibero-American missionaries. In the Ukraine 10 years ago, there were 2,000 churches; now there are well over 12,000. There are only three countries in Europe where the gospel is advancing quickly: Ukraine, Moldova, and Romania. The rest of the continent is death warmed over, by far the darkest place on God’s green earth. And so on and so on. I’d better not bore you with statistics, yet they are part of our thinking things through, too, aren’t they?

11. Pragmatic tips: “how to” style instructions.

These are not always bad. Some of us in the New Testament department think they are, but they are not always bad. Many years ago, J. Herbert Kane, who taught Mission here for many years, wrote a book titled, Life and Work on the Mission Field. The work is terribly dated now, of course, but in its time, it was wonderfully helpful at the level of practical advice and insight all around the world.

Nowadays, of course, there are many more specialized books of this sort, but belonging to the same species. Once again, I forbear to scan them and summarize them, although there are many, many such books today.

12. The training needed to sustain and nurture world mission.

Once again, this is a huge topic, and what better place than Trinity to explore it? But there are such capable people here from the Mission department that that provides an additional reason for holding my tongue.

Having listed a dozen roads not traveled, I turn at last to where I want to spend the last few minutes of this address. I’ll call it “The Way of Fundamentals,” and I mention three.

1. The sheer desperate lostness of human beings.

I have been doing university missions now for more than 30 years. I’ll tell you, frankly, the hardest thing to get across to the new generation of biblical illiterates, and I mean illiterates.… They don’t know anything; they’re bone ignorant. The hardest thing to get across is not the Trinity. If I try to outline what Christians believe about the Trinity, they’ll sit there and nod and say, “Oh, very interesting, yes.” Whether they believe it or not, they don’t find anything objectionable about it.

The deity and humanity of Christ? “Well, that’s a bit strange, but quite interesting, yes.” The resurrection of Jesus from the dead? “Well, cool!” But if I get anywhere near sin, I have a fight. It’s by far the hardest thing to get across in a postmodern age, but unless we can get agreement on what the problem is, we certainly cannot get agreement on what the solution is. The two stand or fall together. One of the reasons why we begin to have watered-down views of the gospel is because we have watered-down views of what the problem is.

Paul, as usual, is so very helpful. He points out, for instance, that, long before the law is given, there is idolatry. That’s why death reigns, he points out, from Adam to Moses. From the very beginning, there is an Edenic singing of “I did it my way,” ‡ la Sinatra. We are all highly original sinners and thus de-God God and make ourselves god. All of the sins that we commit can be construed, in the first instance, not as the breaking of commandments, as transgression, but as the de-Godding of God, as idolatry.

Paul points this out himself when he begins with covetousness, which is idolatry. He says it’s wanting something more than you want God. If you really want God, then you will want what God wants for you, won’t you? Which kills covetousness. Listen to these verses, a catena of quotations from the apostle Paul before he gets to one of his major passages on the atonement and ask yourself, “If you read this in your church, will there be some people who are uncomfortable?” (Try reading this on a university campus!)

“ ‘There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.’ ‘Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit.’ ‘The poison of vipers is on their lips.’ ‘Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.’ ‘Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know.’ ‘There is no fear of God before their eyes.’ ”

Is that to be skirted or articulated? It’s not that Paul is denying the power of common grace. It’s not that he’s saying that there is no sense in which anybody does anything good or creative or lovely. We are made in the image of God. Nevertheless, in terms of our standing before God, unless you come to this, it’s pretty hard to make sense of what comes next: Paul’s articulation of what the cross achieves.

What do we do with the biblical descriptions of eternity? With Christ’s descriptions of hell itself? Of Hebrews’ utterance that we human beings are “destined to die once, and then after that, to face judgment”?

Go, bury death in limousines; dispel

Inevitable death in transient mirth,

Acquire toys and earthly wealth from birth;

Pursue position, luxuries, and tell

Your mortal colleagues of your virtues; sell

Your future for the present; measure worth

In prominence, and seek the highest berth;

Send flowers, and do not think of death and hell.

Appalling folly, attitude perverse—

Before the one great certainty, to play

The ostrich and ignore hard facts, or worse,

Transform the corpse by euphemism’s play.

Still more: as surely as a mortal dies.

His certain death portends the great assize.

Read Revelation 14. Allow for all of the metaphorical power of the descriptions of judgment; it is still appalling. The fact remains that, as much as we are rendered uncomfortable by it, the Bible itself speaks of “the lake of fire which is the second death.” As for those who say, “Well, I want to go to hell myself, as all my friends are there”:

There are no friends in hell: the residents

With zeal display self-love’s destructive art

In narcissistic rage. The better part,

The milk of human kindness, no defense

Against a graceless world, robbed of pretense,

Decays and burns away. To have a heart

Whose every beat demands that God depart—

This is both final curse and gross offense.

Say not that metaphor’s inadequate,

A fearful mask that hides a lake less grim:

Relentless, pain-streaked language seeks to cut

A swath to bleak despair, devoid of him.

This second death’s a wretched, endless thing,

Eternal winter with no hope of spring.

The sheer, desperate lostness of human beings.

2. The sheer glory of God.

We need to recapture how often the glory of God is bound up with the gospel and its results. One of the lovely “servant passages” in the Old Testament depicts God saying it is too small a thing for him to ransom only Israel. God is glorified in the sheer sweep of his salvific power: men and women from every tongue and tribe and people and nation, gathered around the throne.

There are so many powerful passages, aren’t there? Do you recall how John 1:14–18 (the end of the Johannine prologue, as it’s called) picks up half a dozen themes from Exodus 32–34? In that Old Testament passage, God is angry with the Israelites because while he’s been giving the Law to Moses, they have been having an orgy of idolatry down below.

The tablets are smashed. Aaron himself is condemned. Moses is isolated, and in an agony of uncertainty, he intercedes for the people. He goes to meet God in what he calls a Tent of Meeting (this was before the tabernacle was built, of course … outside of the camp), and he begs that God would show him his glory. He understands well that, amidst such desperate uncertainty and threat of judgment, how can he himself be stable unless he sees who God is?

God replies, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy. No one can see my face and live.” Then Moses is hidden in a cleft of the rock. God goes by, shielding Moses from his presence, and intoning, “The Lord, the Lord, full of grace and truth.” The phrase here is checed ‘emeth, equally renderable as “full of love and faithfulness.” Then Moses is permitted to peek out and glimpse the fading plume of the afterglow of the glory of God.

In six different ways, those verses at the end of John’s prologue pick up that passage. You can’t miss it once you start seeing it. “We have seen Jesus.” “The Word became flesh and lived for a while among us, full of grace and truth.” And this glory theme … “We have seen his glory” … is then unpacked throughout all of John’s gospel. At the end of the first miracle, the miracle of Cana in Galilee, we are told that the disciples saw Jesus’ glory.

The phrase is repeated for other miracles, but by the time you get to chapter 12, it changes. By the time you get to chapter 12, God’s glory is measured, finally, in the cross. “Show me your glory.” “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you.” Jesus returns to the glory that he had with the Father before the world began by being glorified in a bloody, obscene cross. And there lies the gospel.

Or consider Revelation 4–5. In chapter 4, God is glorified because he is the One who has made us. In chapter 5, the One who comes from the throne (the Lamb who is also the Lion) sheds his life. He is the One who brings in people, who undoes the seals that bring all of God’s purposes for judgment and blessing to pass. As he does so, men and women are gathered from every tongue and tribe and people and nation (not a hint of racism there). They gather around him who sits on the throne and the Lamb and they sing praises. They bring glory to God out of the fruit of mission.

Indeed, the final picture is wonderful, isn’t it? The final vision of God in Revelation 21. There are so many mixed metaphors: on the one hand, a new heaven and a new earth, yet at the same time it’s a new city. This does not mean that the city is parked in the new heaven and the new earth. You’re not supposed to mix your metaphors. They’re two different metaphors.

The city is built like no city I’ve ever seen. It’s built like a perfect cube. A perfect cube for a city? There is only one cube from the Old Testament. Everything in the book of Revelation attaches to the Old Testament somewhere, and there is only one cube in the Old Testament. It’s the Most Holy Place, where, under the old covenant law only the high priest could enter, only once a year, only on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, and only with blood of bull and goat.

But now all of God’s people are in the Most Holy Place forever, always and continuously with God. That’s why the seer says, “I saw no temple in that city, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. There was no night in that city, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its light.”

Don’t you see? It is the climax of all of God’s sweeping purposes, bound up with the glory of God. We evangelize to bring glory to God so that others can see this glory of God, and so that God himself is glorified in the last day by the fruitfulness of all of his own work. The suffering servant himself shall see the travail of his soul and be satisfied.

I saw no temple in the city: there

The Lord Almighty and the Lamb, his Son,

Together constitute the temple: Sun

And moon had disappeared in deep despair,

Forever obsolete beside the glare

Of Deity’s unshaded glory. None

Remembers night; for night and darkness shun

Such light, consigned to self-love’s filthy lair.

The nations bring their splendor, as the sole

Response appropriate to holiness

Transfixing. Nothing, no one in the whole

Fair city harbors shame or wickedness.

The city’s sons with vibrant joys abound;

For in the book of life their names are found.

The sheer glory of God.

3. The sheer power of the gospel of Christ crucified.

When we start looking at the “power” words in the New Testament, it is stunning how many of them are tied to the cross. You’re meant to see the irony. It’s why the Christians in the first three decades of the church constantly spoke of Jesus reigning from the cross. I bet they smiled every time they said it!

Our cross today is so domesticated. We dangle it from our ears and wear in on our lapels. Bishops put it around their necks. We put in on our buildings. It’s domesticated. Nobody finds it obscene. In the first century, this would have been as obnoxious as displaying, on your lapel, a fresco of the mass graves of Auschwitz. Crucifixion had roughly the same associations of detestation and odium as Auschwitz does for us. We have a domesticated cross.

Paul dares to speak of the power of the gospel of the crucified Christ. The good news of the gospel is the power of the gospel to transform by this damned cross, where “he bore our sins in his own body on the tree, that we might be made the righteousness of God.” It shapes how we are to live and think and move, how we view leadership, and what we value. Therein is our power.

Paul understands that, does he not? He comes to the end of one of his agonizing sections in 2 Corinthians 12 and understands he will glory in weakness so that Christ’s power may be made perfect in him. Thus, we become debtors to all, for “we are all by nature children of wrath,” Ephesians reminds us. Hence, our proclamation of the good news is partly attestation that we are desperately weak, guilty people ourselves, apart from God’s grace, and we share this good news with others, perfectly certain that this is the power of God to salvation to all who believe.

Thus, we see ourselves like Christian in Pilgrim’s Progress: somewhere between the City of Destruction (which by God’s grace we have abandoned) and the Celestial City (toward which we press), urging people all around us to join our pilgrimage, not because we are better but because we are poor beggars telling others where there is bread.

We have tasted so much, but there is so much more to come. The sheer God-centeredness of this vision captures us. Paul connects his own missionary work with worship itself in Romans 15. There you have it all together, don’t you? The lostness of human beings, the glory of God, and this deep grasp of the power of the gospel to transform, culminating in worship that is defined by evangelism.

O let us see your glorious face, perceive

Shekinah brilliance shining in the gloom

Behind the veil, transcend the sacred room

And pierce the Paradise of bliss. We leave

Our worship hungry yet: can we achieve

The beatific sight? Dare we presume

To beg for more, outpace the trailing plume

Of glory, and pure rays of light receive?

It’s not that we feel cheated by the grace

You freely give: each glimpse of your divine

Perfection crushes us—yet gives a taste

For holiness transcendent, pure, refined.

Our worship’s still a poor discordant thing;

But one day we shall see, and we shall sing.

The sheer power of the gospel of God. Amen.