Mission, Christ-conformity and our triune God
Chapter 7
Conclusions
After a wide-ranging effort to understand the book of Jonah, we now want to explore how it applies to us, wherever we find ourselves in the twenty-first century. It was with a view toward this part of our task that the opening chapter laid out a number of biblical–theological themes to function like points on a map, guiding our understanding of what the book of Jonah recounts: mission as part of the relationship between Israel and the nations, conversion (including faith and repentance) and spirituality (revering God, imitating God etc.). Here I will expand those themes, and occasionally interrelate them, as I draw together the various elements of this challenging book in the context of God’s full and final self-revelation in Jesus Christ.
Christocentric interpretation and application
While Jonah is a narrative, the unity of the overarching redemptivehistorical metanarrative of which it is part guarantees that its significance is not limited to the latter days of Judah’s or Israel’s existence. (If that were the case, no historical narratives, unless eschatologically focused prophetic speeches were integrated into them, could speak to the ultimate focus of the Bible.) Different types of biblical literature are oriented toward their fulfilment in different ways, and narrative makes the reader look forward and backward along these biblicaltheological lines that run throughout Scripture. These lines reflect the continuity of God’s saving work across history but also find their development and consummation in Christ’s person and work.
For these reasons the conviction is strong among evangelicals (and rightly so) that all Scripture, when properly interpreted, speaks of Christ: ‘for us to expound biblical revelation from any passage, we must relate its explanation to the redeeming work of God present there’. In other words, as we explore the themes listed above, we will trace them to their multifaceted and diverse fulfilment in Christ’s person and work, paying special attention to how that fulfilment comes about through his first and second comings. The prominence given to one theme over another, moreover, helps us determine what is primary and what is secondary. That, in turn, helps us identify the most natural avenues, in the light of the whole Bible, for applying the text to ourselves.
Two things bear notice in this connection. First, it is possible to elevate to prominence a secondary or minor theme, even while connecting it to Christ, and so to distort the book’s message and application. For example, while our Lord’s comparison of his time in the grave with Jonah’s time in the fish entails a degree of similarity between the two (Matt. 12:40), it is wise to consider how that theme relates to the other elements in the book of Jonah, and how those themes are developed across the whole Bible, when trying to determine how the book speaks of Christ. As our exploration of the book has shown, while Jonah has much to say about sin, judgment and grace, it cannot all be tied to Jonah’s descent into and deliverance from the depths.
Secondly, because the meaning of Scripture is focused on Christ, its application too must come to us through him, since he is its fulfilment. We must therefore critically evaluate efforts to apply God’s Word to ourselves that circumvent our relation to Christ. Goldsworthy develops this point trenchantly on the basis of Christ’s role as the one mediator between God and humanity, and concludes that ‘the application of the meaning of any text must proceed theologically via the application it has to Christ’. In other words, even though application is ‘about me’ and is the proper and necessary use of Scripture (2 Tim. 3:16–17), biblical texts do not apply directly to me because they are not, in the first instance, about me considered by myself. Far from distancing us from Scripture’s message, however, this simply reminds us that application depends on ‘our relationship to Christ’ (Goldsworthy 2000: 114). The common pattern of indicative (fulfilment in Christ) and imperative (application to believers, who are ‘in Christ’) in the NT letters is an excellent example of this approach to Christ-centred application.
Sin and its consequences in Jonah
The book of Jonah makes clear that sin characterizes humanity. Jonah was sent to Nineveh because of its sin (1:2), and the book keeps in the foreground God’s negative moral evaluation of Nineveh until it is undone through her repentance. The sailors also clearly recognize God as a just judge and pray that he will not hold them guilty for playing a role in Jonah’s seemingly inevitable death. Lastly, Jonah himself is given the chance to reflect on God’s grace and correct his erroneous views and practices, and in the light of the accent that the book puts on Jonah’s Israelite identity (never mind its being written in Hebrew) the book was clearly intended to call to repentance an Israel whose sin had produced severe spiritual, moral and religious decline.
This emphasis on sin is necessary to understand the prominence of mission, since biblical mission presupposes sin. A bit more precisely, mission presupposes not just sin, but the critical need sinful human beings have of God’s redemptive intervention lest they suffer the dire consequences of their rebellion against him:
To understand the Biblical presentation of mission one must understand the Biblical presentation of man’s original status and the hope to which he is being re-called. . .. It is this hopelessness of human life without God which makes imperative the incursion into this life from without. Nothing else would make the activities of God in Christ on the plane of human history understandable but the fact of man’s complete inability to extricate himself from the tangle of meaningless existence. (Roels 1962: 18, 20)
Jonah presents us with a sophisticated view of this drama of human sin, divine justice and the possibility of repentance and salvation. God’s omnipotence means that he can justly impose upon sinners the ultimate consequences of their disobedience, which reach beyond biological death, at any time he wishes. God is also free, as long as he wishes, to withhold his wrath, whether in the face of repentance or not (Acts 17:30). But the historical implementation of God’s justice will eventually put an end to the offer of repentance: ‘God has fixed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness’ (Acts 17:31).
The book of Jonah concludes on this precipice: Nineveh has repented in some way, yet her change is not whole-hearted and Jonah suspects that her end will come soon. Jonah too, for his part, stands exposed before the God with whom he has to do, and for whose character he holds so much animus – can such sins long go unpunished? And can the Israel of Jonah’s day, a nation whose espousal of Baalism was so enthusiastic, expect to escape judgment for much longer?
Judgment and salvation in the Day of the Lord
This tension, and the conviction that God is both gracious and just, prompts the reader of Jonah to consider the larger issue of how God’s justice is put into effect in redemptive history. In what follows, we will note especially how the exercise of God’s justice against sin advances his work of redemption at the same time. Judgment and salvation are not experienced simultaneously by the same group, as that would be paradoxical. But their interrelation is still very close, and we need to keep this connection in mind as we reflect on how God’s word and work relate to those whom he saves and those who fall under his judgment.
To begin in Eden, at the same time that God imposes the sentence of death upon Adam and Eve, he announces the gospel to them. At the same time that he judges the vast majority of sinners in the flood, God shows grace to Noah and his family, and spares and enables them to make a new beginning for the human race despite the fact that they are also sinful (Gen. 9). Once Israel has become a nation, she is the instrument of God’s judgment against sinners, while she experiences deliverance: this is especially clear when God delivers Israel by drowning the Egyptian pursuit in the Red Sea and when he destroys the Canaanites to make Israel’s settlement in Palestine possible. But this crisp distinction between Israel and the nations does not last long, as we have already noticed. Hardly has the conquest begun before Achan is punished with death by his fellow Israelites (Josh. 7); and once settled in the land, Israel is repeatedly punished by the nations around her in the generations following Joshua’s death, as the book of Judges makes painfully obvious. Even the accomplishments (external and empirical, we should note) of David and Solomon are quickly lost due to the sins of people and leaders alike. After Solomon, Israel begins a downward spiral, so that the uniform testimony of the prophets from the eighth century bc onward is that she has broken covenant with God and will come under the covenant’s curses.
In the early prophets (those speaking before the exiles of Israel to Assyria and Judah to Babylon), even though exile is a very prominent form of the threatened judgment, it is ultimately part of the larger complex of the Day of the Lord (note Amos’s use of fire, 2:4, 7, 10, 12, 14; devouring, 3:12; and death, 9:2–4, 8–10, to convey this day’s ultimate character). This is still clearer when the prophets who wrote after the exile continue to speak of future judgment that will come upon Israel (Mal. 2:2–3; 3:5; 3:13 – 4:6). No less interesting is the revelation that this future work of God will create a new Israel from the larger group of Israel and the nations. It will remove this new people’s guilt; enable them to obey; and bring them to the full enjoyment of the blessings contained in the covenants with Abraham, Israel and David (Zech. 2:10–12; 9:1–8; Joel 2).
The anticipation of the Day of the Lord in the OT, fulfilled in a very partial way in the exile, received the first of two major fulfilments in God’s judgment of sin in the cross of Christ. This is found across the pages of the NT: the presentation of the crucifixion in Mark 15:22–41 associates it with the Day of the Lord by connecting it with the destruction of the temple (15:27), darkness (15:33) and the Father’s abandonment of his righteous Son as he bore others’ sins in order to provide full atonement for them (15:34, 38–39). Peter in Acts 2:14–21 connects the outpouring of the Spirit with the ‘last days’ prophesied by Joel, and Paul in Romans 3 argues that the righteousness of God (to which the prophets and the Law bore witness) has ‘now’ been revealed and demonstrated in Christ, when God ‘set him forth’ as the expiation of sin for those who believe, Jew and Gentile alike.
The second, final, fulfilment of the Day of the Lord is still in the future from the NT’s perspective. It includes both the vindication of the justified (1 Cor. 3:10–15) and the judgment of the ungodly (1 Pet. 4:5–6) (O’Brien 2004a: 269–270).
Jonah, mission and the gospel
Much as the original urgency of Jonah’s message to Nineveh and of the book’s message to its Israelite audience was due to the imminence of the Day of the Lord, the mission to which the completed Bible calls its readers takes its urgency from the already–not-yet nature of that same complex of events, which has already begun to be realized in history. In addition to the objective structure that Christ’s first and second comings provide for the eschatology of the NT, Christians’ subjective experience is closely related to the already–not-yet nature of the last days. Thus we can examine both mission and spirituality in the light of the Day of the Lord, exploring how the one Day of the Lord, which admits of various and increasing fulfilments across redemptive history, dynamically links Jonah’s message in its original context with a Christian understanding of that ‘day’. In this section we will examine mission from this perspective, and then consider spirituality in the same way.
Eschatologically situated
First, the already–not-yet character of the Day of the Lord provides the framework or context for the missionary message that the risen Christ charged the early church to propagate. This means, in other words, that the first accomplishment of the Day of the Lord (Christ’s cross and resurrection) is the event at the heart of the gospel, which is to be preached until the Day of the Lord comes in its full and final fulfilment.
We see this, for example, in Paul’s address to the Athenians in Acts 17. Basing the Athenians’ accountability to God on their created nature, Paul warns them of the coming judgment and shows that the same justice that will be manifest then has already been revealed in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Addresses to Jewish audiences do likewise, as we see in Paul’s sermon in the Antioch synagogue (Acts 13:16–41).
Gospel-centred
Secondly, as Paul’s sermon in Acts 17 shows, Christ’s cross-work is at the centre of the gospel (there Paul mentions its capstone, the resurrection; cf. Rom. 4:25). The tension we saw in Jonah between God’s forgiveness and his justice, a tension that also characterizes the progressive fulfilment of the Day of the Lord, is thus resolved in Christ. This is the centre of the good news that constitutes the church’s message: God has punished his people’s sins not in them, but in another, and not only God’s justice and mercy but sinners and God are thereby reconciled (Ps. 85:10; Rom. 3:25–26). The partial character of the OT by itself, and the fraction of that revelation that Nineveh received, has been taken up into, and completed by, the full revelation of God in the completed canon of Scripture as it witnesses to Christ and his work.
Universally and centrifugally proclaimed
Thirdly, the plan that God accomplishes through the church’s gospel-centred mission extends to reach the whole world and thus integrates in the Jewish nucleus of the new people of God those from every racial and ethnic group (since the people of God are no longer defined in those terms). The pattern of judgment-and-salvation that the OT prophets announced, which included Israel and the nations alike, finds its fulfilment as the wall between Jew and Gentile collapses. This allows the OT’s call to individuals to spread the gospel to be made the corporate responsibility of the new people of God. In the same reality the promise to Abraham is fulfilled, as the blessing he was to receive comes to the whole world, especially in the giving of the Spirit to believers (Gal. 3:14).
Empowered by the Holy Spirit
God’s permanent indwelling of believers by his Spirit intersects the focus of the book of Jonah on God’s presence in the temple, from where deliverance comes. While there are numerous aspects to this new mode of divine presence among God’s people, here we will focus on its missiological aspect. In Jonah’s case, and throughout much of the OT, God’s presence was restricted to the temple at Jerusalem. Once the Babylonians had destroyed the temple, it was rebuilt by those who returned to Judah some fifty years later, but that Second Temple was never again filled with God’s presence the way the tabernacle and First Temple had been upon their completion (Exod. 40:34–35; 1 Kgs 8:10–11).
In Isaiah 65 – 66 we have an exceptionally thorough description of God’s plan that goes far beyond the theology of the Jerusalem temple, and indeed far beyond Jerusalem. There we are told that God will recreate Jerusalem as part of the new heaven and new earth (Isa. 65:17–19), and this involves especially a new mode of divine presence. God denies, at the outset of Isaiah 66, that he dwells definitively in the Jerusalem temple; rather, when God merges the heavenly and earthly, his presence among his people will be perfected, with intimacy and glory that surpass all prior arrangements.
The outpouring of the Spirit on the church, a close correlate of his presence within individual believers as the bond of their union with him, is the penultimate step in the eschatological consummation Isaiah foresees. In the light of the tension that characterized mission in the OT due to the localized nature of Israel’s religion, with its centre in the Jerusalem temple, the shift in divine presence is very important for missiology. No longer does a believer need to worship God at Jerusalem (John 4:24), for the temple is now being built worldwide as the dwelling of God ‘in whom he lives by his Spirit’ (Eph. 2:22) (O’Brien 1999a: 221).
To focus on the Ephesians passage for just a moment, after speaking of the reconciliation of the Gentiles with God through ‘the blood of Christ’ (Eph. 2:13), Paul very decisively concludes that this removes, in one stroke, the division between Jews and Gentiles. Paul’s Gentile audience is thus part of God’s household (Eph. 2:19) and is, in another metaphor, ‘growing into a holy temple in the Lord’ in contact with and dependent upon Christ the cornerstone. Here again believers’ two-faceted existence, in the tension of already–notyet, is evident: ‘Here in Ephesians 2 the temple is God’s heavenly abode, the place of his dwelling. Yet that temple is his people in whom he lives by his Spirit. Believers on earth… are linked with the heavenly realm in and through the Spirit of the risen Lord.’
Animated by union with Christ ?
Lastly, conversion and spirituality in the new covenant, flowing from faith in the gospel and the repentance that accompanies it, are enriched by union with the crucified and risen Saviour. This involves conversion as the beginning of spiritual life as well as the very essence of the Christian life after conversion, being the progressive identification with, and growing up into, Christ. Both regeneration and sanctification, in other words, are heavily indebted to specific aspects of Christ’s work and reflect its eschatological nature. The next section will look at this reality in more depth.
Jonah, conversion and spirituality, and the gospel
Jonah and the sailors model the two extremes of human responses to God’s self-revelation. While the theme of ‘responses to God’ might appear less redemptive-historically conditioned than some of the other themes we have noted so far, since a saving relationship with God always includes a ‘common denominator’ of knowledge and experience, the full revelation of God’s character in Jesus Christ and the way this knowledge is appropriated through union with Christ by the Spirit force us to reckon with the differences in conversion from OT to NT. This dynamic aspect of conversion and spirituality will appear as we move back and forth between what the book of Jonah describes and the clearer, fuller descriptions of those spiritual realities given by the NT.
The sailors ?
It is good to remind ourselves at the outset of what is consistent across the biblical canon in terms of spiritual experience, especially the idea of a relationship with God built on knowledge of him as the unique Saviour from sin and death and the expression of that relationship in holistic submission of oneself to his authority. This was the happy experience of the sailors, who recognized God’s righteousness and sovereignty as well as his willingness to pardon (Jon. 1) as they came to revere him and went on to express their long-term commitment to him through the clearest means available: vows and sacrifices. This pattern is faintly echoed in the experience of the Ninevites, who at least took seriously God’s threatened judgment, repented and recognized his sovereign prerogative in responding graciously to their changed behaviour.
Jonah
Jonah plays an important role in giving the book its theological ‘bite’ by serving as the sharpest possible foil for those in a genuine relationship with the God of Israel. At the same time, he has a theologically keen mind, as our examination of his remarks at various points has shown. Further, in his own rescue from death by drowning he clearly perceives Yahweh’s unlimited power and uniqueness, his grace to Jonah himself, and the connection between salvation and Yahweh’s self-revelation in the temple.
Despite all this knowledge of Yahweh, however (note in passing its profusion compared to that of the sailors and Ninevites), Jonah’s response to it is the very opposite of faith and repentance. As we saw in the , Jonah effectively views himself as God, turning the true God into an element in a larger equation that Jonah himself wants to control. His eventual compliance with the divine command to bring the threat of judgment to Nineveh, all his knowledge of God and all his responses to providence in matters as small as exposure to sun and heat paint a sobering picture of spiritual privileges not merely squandered, but turned to the most perverse ends.
The reader and Christ
But the point of the book of Jonah is not to foster disapproval of Jonah. Jonah’s example shows that those who have a close external connection to God (Jonah was born among God’s chosen people and served as a prophet among them), know the Scriptures well and believe firmly that God exists can still persevere in calm, reasoned rebellion against that same God. They can, moreover, even persist in such rebellion despite God’s disciplinary actions. Jonah exhibits a puzzling mix of arrogance and apathy, of self-awareness and blindness that should make us very wary of the human heart’s penchant for self-glorification, regardless of how closely we are involved with God’s people.
This implicit call to self-examination, like all such calls, should be followed by and subordinated to a fresh look at Jesus Christ. We who stand on this side of the cross have immensely greater privileges in the light of the gigantic steps forward in God’s accomplishment of salvation, and it should be our great joy to ‘know him’ in increasing depth (Phil. 3:9–10). As an example, Christians, unlike those whom God converted before Christ’s coming, are in their present experience united to him in his death and resurrection by the Holy Spirit. This has profound implications for Christian self-identity and the whole of the Christian life, something touched on earlier in this chapter and explored further now.
Union with Christ in his death and resurrection
Christian theologians understandably find it challenging to explain how, in our union with Christ, our participation in his death relates to our participation in his life. This is particularly difficult due to statements that sometimes seem to assume the old man is ‘dead’ (Rom. 6:6 etc.), while others speak of our duty to ‘put to death’ remnants of the old man (Eph. 4:22). In the same way we find statements to the effect that we are risen with Christ (even seated with him in the heavenlies, Eph. 2:6) while we are still possessed of an ‘earthly’ body and an inner man who is not yet the exclusive constituent of our identity.
At bottom, these complexities reflect the eschatological overlap of the new age, inaugurated in and by Christ, with the old age in which sin was dominant and in which the ‘world’ still lives. Believers are united to the eschatological Christ but still live in the here and now. This dynamic pushes and pulls us forward in our pursuit of Christlikeness, and both dying and living have a role to play, as Calvin explains:
We divide the substance of our salvation between Christ’s death and resurrection as follows: through his death, sin was wiped out and death extinguished; through that – thanks to his resurrection – his death manifested its power and efficacy in us. . .. Further, as. . . the mortification of our flesh depends upon participation in his cross, so we must understand that we obtain a corresponding benefit from his resurrection. . .. By these words [Col. 3:1–2] we are not only invited through the example of the risen Christ to strive after newness of life; but we are taught that we are reborn into righteousness through his power. (Calvin 1960: 2.16.13)
This fundamental, subjective aspect of the Spirit’s work in individual believers is complemented by his animation of the church for mission, which we will further pursue under the rubric of Christconformity.
Jonah, imitation of God, and the gospel
We saw in our study of Jonah 4 that God’s character was the author’s primary means of exposing the shortcomings of Jonah’s theology and practice. As we draw near the end of this chapter, we will explore the connection between that gracious divine character and the mission God undertook in sending Jonah to Nineveh, then trace that line forward to the incarnation.
Imitation of God in the book of Jonah
The divine character Israel is often commanded to imitate (e.g. Lev. 19:2; Deut. 8:6) clearly drives Yahweh’s sending of his prophet to Nineveh and his response to the city’s repentance. This suggests that within the context of the OT, the book of Jonah sounded an early note of change regarding Israel’s missionary attitudes and practices. While not expressly commanding national Israel to go among the nations and witness to God’s name, and while showing that Gentile response to God’s word may fall short of a holistic ‘fear of the Lord’ (as was often the case in Israel), it certainly encourages Israelites to include such activity under the concept of imitatio Dei (imitation of God). It is worth noting that Jonah’s own experience of grace, not least in the gift of a gourd to shade him, also draws attention to the necessary link between grace experienced and the imitation of the God who is gracious.
The ethical goal of reflecting God’s character can be best understood if we start with humanity’s creation in the image of God (Wenham 2000: 105). As his image-bearers, we are to be holy as he is holy (Lev. 11:45; 1 Pet. 1:16), compassionate as he is compassionate (Exod. 22:27) and are generally to mirror his character in the various situations of life. Notably, God’s self-description in Exodus 34: 6–7, which he used to chide Jonah, even appears as part of the pattern for human behaviour in Psalm 112:4 with the reference to being ‘gracious and compassionate’. And this is not an isolated element there: Psalms 111 and 112 work as a pair, with nearly every divine attribute ascribed to God in Psalm 111 being reflected in the God-fearer of Psalm 112.
A variety of elements show that the ethical aspect of the imitatio Dei is central to the book of Jonah’s message. First, Jonah is portrayed as a character whom his readers would never wish to imitate – nearly his every move is satirized and shown to be a failing. This, of course, despite the fact that he is a prophet. Thus while the book is not prophecy in literary terms, its use of the ethical goal of the imitation of God to apply its message to Israel is in harmony with the general prophetic manner of encouraging holiness in Israel, but includes an ironic note in the light of Jonah’s failings: ‘The prophets saw it as the duty of the people to embody in their daily lives the very character of the God whom they worshipped.’
Conversely, Yahweh demonstrates patience and tolerance toward Jonah, and the sailors do all they can to preserve Jonah’s life. In this way both Yahweh and the sailors are sharply contrasted with Jonah, directing the reader away from affinity with Jonah toward appreciation and emulation of the sailors and, especially, of Yahweh. This fits admirably with the general pattern that sees biblical narrative and imitation of God as a pair, and reflects the importance that Jonah 4 in particular gives to the description of God’s character:
The character and actions of God were not presented as morally neutral observations; rather, they were designed to inculcate a sense of duty and moral responsibility in the people and to provide them with a model of the type of behaviour that should be mirrored in their own lives. (E. Davies 1999: 109)
Imitation of God as imitation of Christ in the New Testament
These points demonstrate that imitation of God’s character was fundamental to the OT ethic in general, and the book of Jonah makes use of the concept to encourage change in the reader, particularly in bringing Yahweh’s word to Gentiles and showing them compassion. As we turn to glance at the rest of the canon, we find solid trinitarian grounds for affirming that imitation of Christ in the NT is a natural development of imitatio Dei in the OT. Note, for example, the transition from imitating God in Ephesians 5:1 (with reference in part to God’s forgiveness of us in 4:32) to the call to imitate Christ in 5:2. Furthermore, though we are exploring ethics in two different redemptive-historical settings (Jonah and the NT), the basis of this ethic (and all others) in God himself leads us to expect to see amplification, clarification or enriching of the OT’s teaching on this point rather than outright discontinuity. What we saw in Jonah, rooted in imitation of God as those originally created in his image, thus comes to fullest expression in conformity to the image of Christ, who is the second and last Adam. Upon Christ’s return, perfected saints will enjoy the full expression of their humanity as a fruit of Christ’s atoning death and perfect life as the incarnate Son of God.
The amount of attention the gospel narratives give to Christ’s earthly life, to mention only one point at the outset, strongly suggests that even as Jesus reveals to us the Father, we imitate the Triune God by following in our Master’s footsteps. Thus White argues that ‘the imitation of Christ remains the heart of the Christian ethic’. This, unfortunately, is not as easy to define as it is to affirm. In order to draw this study to a close on the same note as the book of Jonah, here we will focus on God’s trinitarian mission as modelling a variety of virtues, perceptions and intentions, in so far as the imitation of God allows character ethics to function as an inductive way of describing God’s glorious character.
Mission, Christ-conformity and our triune God
We have already explored the significance of God’s character as described in Exodus 34 for Jonah 4 in several ways. In an earlier chapter we noted especially the connection of God’s covenantal mercy with Gentiles, and just above we noted the urgency that the Day of the Lord lends to the book’s call to imitate God’s character and actions as they are on display there. When we turn to the NT, we continue to see God’s initiative in reconciling sinners with himself, but the clear trinitarian outlook of the NT adds rich insight into both Christ’s and the Spirit’s roles in that grand work. In this last section we will draw together the themes of imitating God and mission to highlight their inseparability.
The books of Luke and Acts share not only the same author but a very consistent focus on the relation between Christ’s work while on earth and his continuation of it through his church. They therefore provide a very comprehensive overview of the mission theme and simultaneously tie it directly to God’s work in Christ, so it is natural for us to look closely at that corpus in the light of our chosen themes.
Beginning early in Luke, P. T. O’Brien notes that Jesus’ own mission to Israel involved his being sent by the Father (Luke 4:18–19; cf. Isa. 58:6; 61:1–2) on a mission that consisted of preaching, proclaiming (mentioned twice) and releasing. As part of his own mission, Jesus next sends first the twelve (Luke 9:1–2), then the seventy-two (Luke 10:1) on missions to their Jewish countrymen. Once his earthly work is complete, Jesus commissions his disciples to broaden the scope of their mission radically to include ‘all the nations’ (Luke 24:47). At Pentecost, having received the promised Spirit from the Father (Luke 24:49; Acts 2:33), Christ pours him out upon the assembly, and he is the one who empowers mission throughout the rest of Acts, so that ‘the mission of the exalted Jesus is being accomplished through this apostolic witness in the power of the Spirit’ (O’Brien 1999b: 213).
A bit more should be said about the Spirit’s relation to mission in Luke. As J. B. Green notes:
In the Third Gospel, the Holy Spirit is actively engaged in two primary and closely related ways that extend the purpose of God. First, it is through the Spirit that God’s purpose is announced and celebrated, above all in the birth narratives of Luke 1 – 2. Secondly, the Spirit enables the service and fulfilment of God’s plan. (J. B. Green 1995: 41)
This second point is especially relevant for our purposes here in the light of the way that Acts goes on to develop it.
From the outset of Luke’s account, Jesus bears a very intimate relation to the Holy Spirit, beginning with his miraculous conception. As preparation for his public ministry the Father sends the Spirit permanently upon him as part of his equipping for his mission (Luke 3:21–22). A few verses later Luke tells us that Jesus was ‘filled’ with the Holy Spirit and so was victorious in the face of extreme temptation (Luke 4:1–15). Jesus then begins his ministry ‘in the power of the Spirit’ (Luke 4:14, a second reference to the Spirit that makes it a frame for his entry into ministry in 4: 1–15), and himself affirms that the Spirit was upon him for the very purpose of preaching the gospel (Luke 4:18–19). Ferguson’s remarks on the importance of the material in Luke for what follows in Acts is helpful:
the baptism of Jesus and his reception of the messianic Spirit without measure (John 3:34) constitute the essential prelude to his baptizing the church with the Spirit on the Day of Pentecost when the disciples, in their turn, would receive power (Acts 1:8). For the New Testament, these events, separated in time, are interwoven theologically. A similar interconnection exists between Jesus’ reception of the messianic Spirit and his temptations. . .. In the power of the Spirit, Jesus advanced as the divine warrior, the God of battles who fights on behalf of his people and for their salvation (cf. Ex. 15:3; Ps. 98:1). (S. Ferguson 1996: 48–49)
Once his earthly ministry is complete, Jesus maintains that a close connection exists between himself and the Spirit, since the Spirit will in some way replace him upon his ascension. The accent in Luke again falls on the Spirit as the one who equips and enables the disciples to be ‘witnesses’ to ‘all nations’ (Luke 24:46–49), and Acts opens by describing the fulfilment of this promise. We should not miss the fact that this outpouring of the Spirit is a prominent aspect of the Day of the Lord, as Peter’s exposition of Joel 2:28–32 shows.
As Jesus was completely devoted to his Father’s mission, and called others to serve in it, so the Spirit produced in his apostles and followers the same orientation, something we see clearly in the history that Acts records. One example that expresses this in a surprising way sees Paul and Barnabas explain their call to turn to the Gentiles in the light of God’s commission to his Servant in Isaiah (Isa. 49:6; cf. Luke 2:29–32):
Paul and Barnabas spoke out boldly and said, ‘It was necessary that the word of God should be spoken to you first. Since you thrust it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold, we are turning to the Gentiles. For so the Lord has commanded us, saying, “I have set you to be a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the uttermost parts of the earth.”’ (Acts 13:46–47)
In continuity with Jesus’ mission, and endowed with the same Spirit, these and the other apostles are characterized by the Spirit in their mission to the Gentiles as they were in their mission to the Jews from Pentecost onward, in fulfilment of the prophecy uttered by John the Baptist in Luke 3:16.
While the symmetry between Jesus’ mission and that of the church is clear from these points, it may be helpful to bring out some of its characteristics by referring to character ethics, which focuses on perceptions, intentions and virtues. The decision of Paul and Barnabas just noted, for example, was an intention that grew out of a profound perception of who Jesus was and who they were as his appointed witnesses. This understanding that Christ’s fulfilment of God’s mission was a model for their own calling was surely aided by virtues modelled on Jesus’ own concern for the lost, and proactivity in calling Levi and meeting Zacchaeus. This same love for the lost is reflected in Paul’s commitment to preach the gospel faithfully in order to discharge himself of any guilt (Acts 20:26), and his passionate plea for the Corinthians to be reconciled to God (2 Cor. 5:1). Brief though these examples are, they get at the heart of the Christian ethic, and embody the law’s summary to love God above all and one’s neighbour as oneself. Fernando’s summary of Christ-conformity in mission gives much food for further thought: ‘When we think of Jesus as the missionary model. . . the main themes that should come to mind, on the one hand, are meekness, humility, servanthood, and forgiving others, and on the other hand, suffering and deprivation’ (Fernando 2000d: 210–211).
The road to Christ-conformity is long, difficult and often painful. This is true in the sphere of mission no less than in areas like Christian fellowship, one’s prayer life or the marriage relationship. No reader of this book, having been reminded of Christ’s commitment to his Father’s mission and of the predicament of the lost, should fail to ask God humbly for forgiveness of his or her lack of passion for God’s glory in Christ and for a lack of love for his or her neighbour. At the same time, God has ‘given us everything for life and godliness’ (2 Pet. 1:2), and the Spirit of Christ is especially the Spirit of mission. In and by that Spirit, may we with new vigour and commitment to the gospel and the glory of God ‘obey Christ’s commission to proclaim it to all mankind and make disciples of every nation’.