Week 44—Sunday Matthew 28:18-20
Matthew 28:18-20
THE MOTIVE AND INCENTIVE FOR MISSIONS?
But someone asks, “What is the incentive and motive of evangelism and missions?” Why should we do it? Why should millions of people and more millions of money be marshaled for the work of Christian missions throughout the world? Is it a species of religious imperialism—a kind of paternalism toward the “lesser breeds without the law”?
The reply of some would be the words of a famous man who asked that question: “Look to your marching orders. Did Jesus not say, ‘Go therefore and make disciples of all nations’? That settles it.” But while the command is weighty, it doesn’t settle it. For suppose this command were something read back into the account by the early Christians and did not originate with Jesus, as some would say. Then your whole enterprise resting on a single passage collapses. It is precarious to have it rest on a single passage. Besides, if it is a command only, then it is the Word become word.
The reply of others would be, “People need it. The incentive rests on the need of the world.” It is true that people need it. But if your incentive is the need of people—a humanitarian motive, then the motive will wear thin. Those who come to the mission lands through humanitarian motives usually exhaust their humanitarianism and go home. They peter out.
Neither command nor concern is a sufficient motive. Then what is the sufficient motive? The biographer of Lord Grey recorded that Grey once said: “The case against God is mountainous and watertight, unless we can believe in the Incarnation where God comes into this world to sacrifice Himself for it.” He is right. And the case against missions is the same unless you can believe in the Incarnation. If the Incarnation is a fact, then the case for missions is “mountainous and watertight.” Missions then become inevitable and compelling.
O blessed Father, we are on solid ground if you have come to our earth to redeem it at deep cost to yourself. In that case we have no alternative but to tell the goodness to everybody everywhere. We cannot but speak it. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: If he came, I must go!