Living the Mission – The Good News
For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures... 1 Cor 15:3-4
There’s been plenty of press bemoaning the fact that not enough churches are engaged in the mission Christ gave us, and encouraging each of us Christians to focus on that mission. Most of the blame (if you can call it that) for the lack of mission focus seems to fall on the average church member. The attitude of some seems to be that you—yes, you!—aren’t much of a Christian since you obviously aren’t on a mission.
I tend to take a much more fundamental look at the issue of mission work. It seems to me that many Christians aren’t involved in the mission not because they’re complacent, but because either they don’t know how to be involved or are hesitant to be involved because of inexperience. If that’s true, then we need to go back to basics and be sure of what we’re asking our fellow Christians to do. So let’s start with some basic questions.
If our mission from Christ is to make disciples (Matt 28:19), wouldn’t a critical step in that disciple-making process be to make converts? Before anyone can go too far along the path of discipleship, they need to actually be a disciple, right? And to become a disciple, they must convert from whatever they are now to become a Christ-follower.
So the question then becomes: how do we make converts? Obviously, the real answer is that we don’t make converts. That is God’s prerogative (Rom 9:16, John 6:44). But we do have a role to play, and that is to spread the Good News about Jesus (Rom 10:14). Now we’re getting somewhere! Our initial step in making disciples is to make converts, and our role in making converts is to spread the Good News. Okay, everyone: just go and spread the Good News!
Uh-oh. Are we seriously expected to go and spread the Good News? What exactly does that mean? Should we stand on a soapbox downtown, yelling “Repent!” to anyone who walks by? That might work (although I’ve often wondered how many people are actually converted by that method). I hardly think that is the only—or best—way to spread the Good News.
Then what are we supposed to do? The first thing to do is understand exactly what the Good News is. Before we can proclaim it to anyone, we have to know what we’re talking about. Let’s take some time to review what exactly the Good News is.
The Good News actually begins with some bad news: God created a world that was wholly good, but because of man’s disobedience, the world fell into a state of struggle and death. For mankind, this death includes not only the physical end of life, but a spiritual death resulting in separation from God for all eternity. But now, the good news: God provided a way to gain forgiveness of our disobedience and to return to communion with Him. That way is Jesus, God in the flesh, who suffered and died by crucifixion, substituting His life for ours. He was resurrected and ascended to heaven, foreshadowing the resurrection and new life we can have in a new heaven and earth to come, and opening the door for us to enjoy His kingdom now. Our proper response to hearing this Good News? Recognize we have failed to live up to God’s standards, turn from our waywardness back to God, and trust in Jesus. There’s no penance, no sacrifice... nothing for us to actually do, since God has already done everything for us. We just receive this free gift. Of course, once we receive this new life, we will genuinely want to live it to its fullest: growing in Christ, honoring God, fellowshipping with other believers, etc.
Is there more to the Good News than this? Well, I outlined the basics, but of course there is much more to it. The entire Bible is really the story of the Good News of Jesus. There are nuances and depths of truth about the Good News that can—and does—take a lifetime to explore. Nevertheless, the basics are outlined above.
Okay, now that we’ve covered the Good News in a nutshell, what’s the next step? How do we spread this Good News? We’ll cover that in our next article.