‘You Are My Witnesses’

Peter Leithart has a great post here on the recurring refrain in Isaiah, of the Lord to his people, ‘You are my witnesses’ (Isaiah 43:1, 12; 44:8).

I was preaching on Sunday from Luke 24:36-53, in which Jesus says to his disciples, ‘You are witnesses of these things’ (Luke 24:48), language which is then picked up in Acts 1:8, ‘you will be my witnesses...’ On both occasions, their witness extends beyond to Jerusalem to ‘all nations’ (Luke 24:47), ‘to the ends of the earth’ (Acts 1:8).

I didn’t make much of it on Sunday, but I think there is a clear echo of Isaiah in Jesus’ commission to the disciples:

‘You are my witnesses,’ declares the LORD,

‘and my servant whom I have chosen...

And now the LORD says...

‘It is too small a thing for you to be my servant

to restore the tribes of Jacob

and bring back those of Israel I have kept.

I will also make you a light for the Gentiles,

that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.’ (Isaiah 43:10 and 49:5-6)

Mission to ‘all nations’ doesn’t start with Christ’s various commissions at the end of the gospels. It has always been God’s mission to bless all nations. We see it in his original design for creation, in his promises to Abraham, and his calling of Israel – later reiterated through the servant figure in Isaiah who is chosen, made to be a light to the nations.

This is what we see at the end of Luke and the beginning of Acts. In line with the Lord’s promise through Isaiah, the first disciples – and all disciples since – are God’s ‘witnesses’, the servant community who will bring the message of salvation not just to Israel but to the ‘ends of the earth’.