Word and World 4 (2017)

‘You Will Be My Witnesses’ is the theme of the latest issue of Word and World, published by IFES, exploring how ‘students – along with everyone who has heard that Jesus has defeated death – might be witnesses to Jesus Christ in our time’. The issue contains the below pieces, and is available as a pdf here.

Vinoth Ramachandra

Christian Witness in the University

Vinoth Ramachandra ‘encourages students and faculty to join in conversations that are already going on and take them in a different direction’.

Cathy Ross

Sharing the Joy of the Gospel

Cathy Ross writes about ‘joining in God’s mission and being with others, recognizing that coming to faith is a process’.

Benno van den Toren

Why Inter-Religious Dialogue Needs Apologetics

Benno van den Toren writes that ‘dialogue between religions requires exchanging reasons, even if reason is rarely the primary factor in bringing people to faith’.

Fernando Abilio Mosquera Brand

Creation, Mission and Christ’s witnesses

For Fernando Mosquera, ‘the whole creation bears witness to God, and human witness fits within the mission of God as king, who involves his servants in going about his business in society and politics’.

Further Reading

‘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’.

Speak Up

The Speak Up resource, produced jointly by the Evangelical Alliance and the Lawyers’ Christian Fellowship, ‘seeks to help Christians understand the broad freedoms that we currently have under the law to share our faith in different contexts’.

A short and long version of the resource are available to download here, via The Great Commission, a new project from the Evangelical Alliance.

The short 16-page booklet (available as a pdf here) ‘outlines the key aspects of the full report, setting out the freedoms we have in different parts of our lives, from talking about Jesus in our homes, to street evangelism, to sharing our faith at work or online’.

The full report is available as a pdf here.

The Whole of Life for Christ (5): Whole-Life Mission

I contributed yesterday’s ‘Word for the Week’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity. It’s the fifth in a series introducing themes explored more fully in the book, The Whole of Life for Christ: Enriching Everyday Discipleship, written with Mark Greene.

‘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

Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. He told them, ‘This is what is written: the Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.’

Luke 24:45-48

It’s all too easy to focus on the ‘command’ element of the commission passages in the gospels without noticing the promises which accompany them, promises which reflect God’s amazing plan for the world. That may explain why we often see witness as an add-on duty rather than as core to our identity as God’s people.

Mission doesn’t start with Christ’s commission to make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19). 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.

So it is that Jesus tells his disciples in Luke 24 that the Scriptures promise not only that the Messiah would suffer and die and rise again, but that repentance and forgiveness of sins would be preached in his name to all nations. The biblical story both points to Christ as the one who stands at the centre of it and nurtures the missional identity of the disciples as they take their place ‘as witnesses of these things’ in the forward movement of that story, God’s ongoing plan for the world.

This is the unfinished story Luke starts to tell in Acts, which begins with a restatement of the disciples as Jesus’ witnesses. Here again, Acts 1:8 – ‘you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth’ – is not a command so much as a declaration, a promise even. In line with Isaiah’s prophecy, they 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’.

For us too, being witnesses is less an assignment and more an identity – the overflow of the gift of grace to us and, amazingly, the means by which God reaches others. Seen this way, evangelism is not a ‘bolt on’ Christian activity, but is organically connected to the whole of life – a fusion of presence and proclamation, the message of our lips matching the message of our lives – the outflowing of who we are in Christ, equipped and sent by him as witnesses in his ongoing mission to the world.