Pauline Motives for the Christian Mission

Pauline Motives for the Christian Mission

by Donald G. Miller

72Why missions? This question is on the lips of most secular people concerning the work of the Church to the ends of the earth. The “why?” of some is sympathetic: Why do these nice but naive people waste their lives in discomfort and loneliness, vainly toiling at futility? The “why?” of others is antagonistic: Why should efforts be made to change men’s religion? After all, are not all religions essentially alike, all headed in the same direction? And are not religions culture-conditioned, each having developed in its own milieu as befitting the needs of its own adherents? And do not missions, in the light of present world tensions, interfere with good international relations? Isn’t there enough, too, for each church to do in its own land without setting forth to evangelize other lands? And isn’t there a profound Pharisaism, a distasteful spiritual pride, an unwholesome taint of religious superiority, lying behind the whole idea of missions? These and similar questions are fervently voiced by countless onlookers as the Church seeks to fulfill her mission in the world. But more—these same questions are frequently raised by many within the Church.

These objections are not to be taken lightly. Especially where they inadvertently are criticisms of missionary method rather than of the mission itself, the Church should penitently stand under their judgment and seek to mend her ways. But in so far as they strike at the heart and seek to deal a deathblow to the Church’s mission, they summon to a reexamination of missionary motives. 73Motive is defined as “any consideration… moving the will.” If the will of the Church is to be moved to—the mission task before her, she must reexamine those “considerations” which initially turned the Church out toward the whole world. All of the objections stated above, save interference with international relations, were as valid in the first century as in the twenticth.? And yet, “the history of the New Testament is a history of missions.” We turn to Paul, the greatest missioner of them all, to search for the motives which made this so.

The Self-Revelation of God

To Paul, mission was involved in the fact that God had revealed Himself. Paul was “a Hebrew born of Hebrews” (Phil. 3:5). To him, Israel was God’s “people,” “the natural branches” of the tree of God’s promise into which the Gentiles had been “grafted” (Rom. 11:17 ff.). His description of them even after he became a Christian—‘“They are Israelites, and to them belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and of their race, according to the fiesh, is the Christ” (Rom. 9:4 f.)—indicate that Paul’s faith was not a reaction against Judaism but an outgrowth of it. The Church, according to Paul, was the true Israel, the heir of ancient Israel’s mission. What Paul knew, therefore, of the God who had revealed Himself in the history of His people was basic to his understanding of his mission as a Christian.

1. The revelation of God as one is the ultimate foundation on which mission rests. If there is but one God, then He is the God of all men. How early a clearly defined monotheism developed is debatable, but it is now plain that its roots go back into the earliest stages of Israel’s history and underlie her whole development. The patriarchal stories interpret God’s call of Abraham from a missionary perspective: “in you all the families of the earth will be blessed” (Gen. 12:3, R.S.V. margin). Amos brought non- 74Israelite peoples into the purview of God’s purpose (Amos 9:7). The writer of 1 Kings records the purpose of the building of the Temple: “that all the peoples of the earth may know thy name and fear thee, as do thy people Israel” (1 Kings 8:43). The implications of monotheism are most clearly set forth by Second Isaiah: “there is no other god besides Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other” (Is. 45:21 f.).

It is clear that Paul’s concern to take the Gospel to the whole world was rooted in this aspect of his heritage. He insisted that the Gentiles were the heirs of God’s grace because God is one: “Is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one” (Rom. 3:29 f.; cf. also Rom, 10:12; 1 Cor. ff.; Eph. 4:6). Were there no other motivation, belief in one God who is thereby the God of all men lays on the Church an inescapable obligation to mission. The one God is God of all.

2. Neither Paul nor the Old Testament writers, however, arrived at this merely as the conclusion of a syllogism. They were not philosophers speculating about the nature of God and the relevance of this to life. Their monotheism rested ultimately on the fact that God had revealed Himself as Lord. His Lordship rested on the dual facts of creation and redemption. Although patently creation precedes redemption, yet it seems quite likely that it was through His redemptive activity that God revealed Himself as Creator.

At the Exodus God had made Himself known as a compassionate, saving God. Moses was commissioned in this fashion: “I have seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters; I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them” (Ex. 3:7 f.). The psalm commemorating the Exodus event exults: “The Lord is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation” (Ex. 15:2). The covenant was renewed to Moses with the words: “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love” (Ex. 34:6). Micah voiced the common conviction of the prophets when he termed the Exodus and what followed “the saving acts of the Lord” (Mic. 6:5). Second Isaiah encouraged his forlorn people with these words: “But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: ‘Fear 75not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine’”’ (Is. 43:1). In the history of His people, God had revealed Himself as a God of sheer grace and mercy.

But in so doing, He had manifested His power over all the forces of nature and over all the supposed gods who were identified with the forces of nature: “‘on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord [Yahweh]” (Ex. 12:12). God’s redemptive activity demonstrated Him as Yahweh (Ex. 3:14), “He who causes to be what comes into existence.” 5 He was the one who “in the beginning… created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). As maker and redeemer, then, Yahweh is Lord. To Him all that is belongs. Nature exists to serve His purposes. Man is a creature made to live under the loving will of his Creator.

The Lordship of the redeeming God Paul believed to have been manifested finally in Jesus Christ. Out of many examples, one may serve to make this clear. In Romans 10:13, Paul quotes Joel 2:32: “every one who calls upon the name of the Lord [Yahweh, in Joel] will be saved.” This word about the Lordship of Yahweh he applies directly to Jesus: “if you confess…that Jesus is Lord … you will be saved” (Rom. 10:9). But in addition to God’s Lordship in redemption, His Lordship in creation is also manifested in Jesus: “in him [Jesus] all things were created, in heaven ~ and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities—all things were created through him and for him” (Col. 1:16). “Jesus is Lord,” as the agent both of creation and redemption, is the earliest Christian creed.

Every rebellion, therefore, against God’s will, and all indifference to the claims of His love made known in Christ, is a challenge to His rightful Lordship. Those who do not acknowledge Christ’s Lordship are “alienated from the life of God” (Eph. 4:18), “enemies” who need to be “reconciled to God” (Rom. 5:10). Christian conversion, then, is a radical break with a world hostile to God and a decisive transference “to the kingdom of his beloved Son” (Col. 1:13). There can be no truce between the kingdom of Christ and alien forces. It is Christ’s purpose to subdue all enmity to God, to destroy “every rule and every authority and power,” including death, so that “God may be everything to every one” (1 Cor. 15:24 ff.). Those, therefore, who accept God’s Lordship in Christ 76cannot remain quiescent in the presence of any challenge to it. In Athens, Paul’s “spirit was provoked [rapwéivero, “pricked,” “irritated,” “exasperated”] within him as he saw that the city was full of idols” (Acts 17:16). He was stirred to action to bear witness to the Kingship of Christ established at the Resurrection and to be made final at the last judgment (Acts 17:31). The idolatries, the rivals of Christ’s Lordship, in our time are different in form from those of ancient Athens but quite the same in essence. Acknowledgment of Christ’s Lordship means mission, witnessing to that Lordship until “every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord” (Phil. 2:11).

The Nature of the Gospel

Mission is involved in the very nature of the Christian Gospel.

1. This may be seen first in its nature as revelation. In the Bible, God is never the object of contemplation. He is the subject who iMitiates action to make Himself known. By His very nature as God, He “sits above the circle of the earth” (Is. 40:22), of whom no “image” can be made (Ex. 20:4) nor any “likeness” imagined (Is. 40:18, 46:5), whose “thoughts” are beyond all human thoughts (is. 55:8 f.), and upon whose “face” man may not look and live (Ex. 33:20). He cannot be discovered by man’s search, but is to be known only when He discloses Himself. Yet He is One who does disclose Himself, who “speaks,” whose “word… goes forth from [His] mouth” and does “not return…empty” but accomplishes what He purposes (Is. 55:11).

Paul shared this Old Testament view. He was convinced that “the world did not know God through wisdom” (1 Cor. 1:21), and that those who were outside the group to whom God had made His self-disclosure simply did “not know God” (1 Thess. 4:5). He was equally convinced that God had made himself known in Jesus Christ, who had come not as the end product of human searching but as God’s gift to man, initiated and carried through by Him alone. The “mystery” of God’s righteousness and wrath, the “secret and hidden wisdom of God” concerning man’s salvation and glorification, “kept secret for long ages,” is “now disclosed and… made known to all nations” (Rom. 1:17f.; 1 Cor. 2:7 ff.; Rom. 16:25 f.). The revelation was not the mere impartation of a new set of religious ideas to match or replace those of other men, but 77rather God’s gift of Himself to men in the objective, concrete, historic reality of His Son. True revelation is “the direct, temporally located self-manifestation of God, valid for all men,” which functions as “God’s judgment on man, as God’s active relationship to man, and His long-suffering dialogue with man.” ®

The fact of such a revelation is an unproved and unprovable assumption, but counter views rest on a similar undemonstrable basis. The assumption of revelation is the only objective criterion of truth which is not at the mercy of human subjectivity. How is the truth of a religion to be determined? It is mere subjective assumption to say by the height of its spiritual values, for another may assume that material values are superior to spiritual values. The measuring rod of unselfish altruism may be countered by one who insists that altruism is “the root illness of man” and that “it is the morality of altruism that men have to reject.” 7 The degree of mysticism, too, is a purely subjective measuring rod, for it may just as handily be argued that mysticism is an escape from reality which should be avoided at all costs. At long last, subjective judgments may be reduced quite largely to what one happens to prefer.® To posit the fact of God, however, and to hold that because God is God He can speak to man, and that in Jesus Christ He has done so, is an assumption, but it rests on a possible act of God outside man which, if true, has a greater degree of objectivity than rival assumptions. If this assumption has any validity, the criterion of truth becomes not what one prefers but what God has revealed.

God’s self-disclosure, then, is final truth which is the criterion of all truth. Christianity is thus a universal religion which by its very nature as revelation is impelled to mission the whole world. It cannot come to terms with any syncretistic tendency to amalgamate the good in all religions, on the theory that all religions are simply adaptations of one general species. Its aim is not to supplement other religions, but to supplant them. This can be considered arrogance only by those who misunderstand the nature of revelation, and can be arrogance only by Christians who do not understand their own faith. _

As an empirical religion, Christianity stands alongside other 78religions, partial, time-conditioned, fallible. The historic Christian Church is not the criterion of final truth, but Jesus Christ. In full humility, therefore, and in full recognition of how far historic Christianity has failed either adequately to embody or to witness to the truth in Christ, the Church, as the bearer of final revelation, is inescapably impelled to witness to all men. The witness must be made in full recognition of the fact that the Gospel “is as responsible for those who proclaim it as it is for those to whom it is proclaimed. It is the advocate of both.”⁹

2. That mission is involved in the nature of the Gospel may be seen, too, in its nature as proclamation. The very word “gospel” means “good news,” and news must be “heralded.” The nature of revelation as God’s objective action in the history of Israel and in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ demands that these events should be told. ‘Faith comes from what is heard” (Rom. 10:17). “And how are [men] to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without a preacher?” (Rom. 10:14). To believe that in Jesus Christ God has spoken His full and final word to all men lays on the believer the responsibility of bearing witness to this and of seeking to persuade others to a like faith.

This is not a mere matter of propagandizing others, or of seeking to dominate their thinking by overwhelming pressures. It is rather a question, of obedience to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. “Grace means bearing witness to the faithfulness of God which a man has encountered in Christ, and which, when it is encountered and recognized, requires a corresponding fidelity toward God. The fidelity of a man to the faithfulness of God—the faith, that is, which accepts grace—is itself the demand for obedience and itself demands obedience from others. Hence the demand is a call which enlightens and rouses to action; it carries with it mission, beside which no other mission is possible.”¹⁰

3. The nature of the Gospel as invitation also means mission. From the question of God to man in the Garden of Eden, “Where are you?” (Gen. 3:9), to the thrice-repeated “Come” on its last page (Rev. 22:17), the Bible is the record of one great search on the part of God for man. God is the great “extrovert” who has 79turned Himself out toward man in relentless love. “When Israel was a child, I loved him… How can I give you up, O Ephraim?” (Hos. 11:1, 8), is a refrain which haunts every movement of the Old Testament symphony. But the love God had for Israel was His love for the world. “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son” (Jn. 3:16) is simply the Old Testament refrain in a New Testament key.

No one grasped more clearly than Paul the nature of the Gospel as invitation, God’s summons to the whole world to be reconciled to Him. Paul knew the radical nature of this unbelievable invitation because he knew the radical nature of man’s situation. Man is “estranged and hostile” to God, an outright “enemy” (Col. 1:21; Rom. 5:10). But God has acted in love which could not be destroyed by man’s enmity. Entirely apart from anything man could do or desires to do, God has “reconciled to himself” all men “by his grace as a gift, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus” (Col. 1:20; Rom. 3:24). If the very nature of the Gospel is the active seeking of God’s reconciling love, then to believe this gospel is, in our measure, to be the active agents of this reconciling love to others.

The Nature of the Church

The nature of the Gospel determines the nature of the Church. As Emil Brunner has said, ““The Church exists by mission, just as a fire exists by burning.” 11 Without flame, no fire; without mission, no Church!

1. This is clear when the Church is seen as the body of Christ (Eph. 1:22 f., 4:4 ff.; 1 Cor. 12:12 ff.). A “body” is the organ of expressing the will of its head, the active agent by which the impulses and desires of the head are given concrete form. The Church, then, is that body which exists to give continuous expression to the will of God in Jesus Christ.

As such, the Church is the true heir of ancient Israel. Through Second Isaiah, God speaks of Israel as “the people whom I formed for myself that they might declare my praise” (Is. 43:21). That this declaration was not mere verbalizing but concrete action is made clear in that Israel was given “as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out 80the prisoners from the dungeon” (Is. 42:6 f.). This is echoed in the New Testament in Peter’s description of the Church: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Pet. 2:9).

Paul, too, described the Church as those who “shine as lights in the world” (Phil. 2:15), and by example and precept insisted that it was the Church’s business “to make the word of God fully known” as the fulfillment of God’s having “made manifest to his saints” the riches of the mystery of Christ (Col. 1:25 ff.). But in one place he particularly connects the Church with this task, when in speaking of “the eternal purpose which [God] has realized in Christ Jesus” he insists that it is “through the church” that “the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known” (Eph. 3:9 ff.). The redeeming work of God in Christ is now to express itself through Christ’s body. “To be a member of Christ’s body is to be involved with Him in all His concerns…. The Church is to be responsible for all those for whom Jesus assumed responsibility.” 1”

2. Mission, too, is involved in the nature of the Church as servant of the Servant. A servant does not determine his own tasks. They are set for him by another. His service does not rest on his own initiative, or desire, or the advice of others. It consists in doing the bidding of a master. So it is with the Church. But in this instance, the Master himself was the great Servant. “I am among you as one who serves”; “For the Son of man also came not to be served but to serve”—these sum up Jesus’ ministry in his own words (Lk. 22:27; Mk. 10:45). Hence, for the Church to serve this Master is to be a servant of the Servant.

This concept is involved in the very idea of apostleship, which lay behind all of Paul’s missionary effort. The great Apostle—the one “sent” to speak and act on behalf of God who sent him—was Jesus Christ (Jn. 3:17, 6:29, 8:42, 17:3; Heb. 3:1). But as the Father had “sent” him, he in turn had “sent” the apostles (Jn. 17:18, 20:21). In most of Paul’s letters he describes himself as an apostle, and in Galatians he vehemently defends his apostleship (Gal. 1:1 ff.). In his deepest consciousness he was convinced that Christ had “sent” him to herald the Gospel (1 Cor. 1:17). The Church, however, is heir to this apostolic mission. Paul was 81aware that his own apostolic mission was to be Christ’s servant in building a church through whom “the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known”: a “household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets” which was to be “a dwelling place of God in the Spirit” (Eph. 3:10, 2:19 ff.).

But how was this apostolic mission to be carried out? Paul frequently associates with his calling as an apostle the words “slave” (SoéAos) and “servant” or “minister” (Rom. 1:1; Phil. 1:1; 2 Cor. 4:1; Gal. 1:10; Eph. 3:7 ff.). Since Jesus was a Servant, the Church’s ministry is to be the channel through which he may still serve the world. This service is the expression of Christ’s love for the world. “For the love of Christ controls us,” Paul wrote. This is not love for Christ, but rather the love Christ had for the world which led him to die in order to “reconcile” men to God by bringing them into a “new creation” (2 Cor. 5:14 ff.). The “ministry of reconciliation” is now “given” to the Church. Christ, who loved and still loves the world, is now expressing his love to men through the service of the Church. “So we are ambassadors for Christ” (2 Cor. 5:20).

The Church’s service is to express the passion of the Servant. Paul boldly stresses this by rejoicing in his sufferings; for, said he, “in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Him we proclaim… that we may present every man mature in Christ. For this I toil, striving with all the energy which he mightily inspires within me” (Col. 1:24 ff.). And he summons the Church to have the servant “mind” which “you have in Christ Jesus, who emptied himself, taking the form of a servant” (Phil. 2:5 ff.). The Church is never more the Church than when it is the servant of the Suffering Servant, in “the sustained, determined act of announcing the good news” of his suffering love, until every knee bows and every tongue confesses that he is Lord.

3. The Church is involved in mission also as “debtor” to all men. “I am under obligation,” said Paul, “so I am eager to preach the gospel” (Rom. 1:14 f.). The obligation did not stem from anything which those to whom he preached had given him. He was not paying back a debt, but passing on to them something which God had given him for them. As a servant of Christ Paul was a “steward of the mysteries of God” (1 Cor. 4:1). A steward was one who handled that which did not belong to him, the resources 82of his master. And if his master’s graciousness led him to make gifts to others, it was the steward’s business to see that the gifts were delivered. Paul was under obligation to all men, therefore, because he held the Gospel in trust for them. God had given him “grace and apostleship to bring about obedience to the faith for the sake of his name among all the nations” (Rom. 1:5). If he did not pass the Gospel on to others, he was keeping back that which belonged to them, and was thus recreant to his duty.

The missing persons bureau of a large city recently broadcasted a plea for knowledge of the whereabouts of a missing lady. Her father, from whom she had been separated years before, had died in a foreign country and left her a sizable estate. The frantic plea was for someone to locate her and give her the news of her good fortune, so that she could acquire her inheritance. Without owing her a debt in the sense of having received anything from her, whoever knew her whereabouts and had the knowledge of her legacy was under obligation to inform her of it, though he may never have seen her before. Likewise the Church, knowing of the rich inheritance left to all men by God, is under obligation to pass on the news to all. “For necessity is laid upon me,” said Paul. “Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!” (1 Cor. 9:16). To know the Gospel, therefore, is to be obligated to mission.

The Predicament of Man

The need of man is justification for mission. Paul viewed man’s need not from a human perspective, inspired by psychological and sociological analyses. His whole understanding of man was theological. Jesus Christ was for Paul the measure of man’s depravity and his glory. To measure man by what Jesus was as a man is to see how far short of God’s glory man has fallen (Rom. 3:23). Yet the fact that in Jesus God became man reveals the glorious fact that man may become the dwelling place of God, the temple of His Spirit (1 Cor. 3:16 f.; 6:19; 2 Cor. 6:16; Eph. 2:21).

1. The futility of man’s life in alienation from God motivated Paul to offer man Christ’s deliverance. Paul shared the radical view of man’s alienation from God voiced in the Old Testament. Created as a creature to live under the sovereign will of a loving Creator, man had sought to be independent of God and thus to be equal to Him (Gen. 3). Made in the “image” of God, man was 83unwilling to be a reflection of the divine nature; he aspired after deity itself. The paradox of man’s lot is that, thus aspiring to deity, he rather fell under the power of the demonic. “For although they knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened” (Rom. 1:21). Men became subjected to “the prince of the power of the air” (Eph. 2:2), fell under “the dominion of darkness” (Col. 1:13), became “‘slaves to the elemental spirits of the universe” (Gal. 4:3), victims of “death” (Rom. 5:12). To Paul these descriptions were not the philosopher’s proud attack on human stupidity, implying that man could do better if he would only choose to do so. This was rather a description of the radical dislocation within man to which all are victims, himself included. “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me…?” was the confession of his own futility apart from Christ (Rom. 7:24).

But this futility of man’s Adamic nature has been overcome by Jesus Christ, the “last Adam” (1 Cor. 15:45). “He has delivered us from the dominion of darkness” (Col. 1:13), he has overcome death (1 Cor. 15:20 ff.), and he “delivers us from the wrath to come” beyond death (1 Thess. 1:10). Through this deliverance he has overcome man’s alienation from God, restoring him to his rightful sonship and sending “‘the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’” (Gal. 4:6). It is the duty and privilege of the Church to answer the human cry, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me…?” with the ringing answer: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Rom. 7:24 f.)

2. Paul also was motivated to mission by the fact that man is under divine judgment. In dealing with the human predicament, Paul insists that “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of men” (Rom. 1:18). If this were but an isolated statement, it might well be dismissed. But Paul refers to this concept over and over again, always in the most serious vein (Rom. 2:5 ff., 9:22; Eph. 5:6; Col. 3:6; 1 Thess. 2:16). Some have sought to avoid the implications of this by holding that the wrath of God is an “impersonal” thing, “an inevitable process of cause and effect in a moral universe.” 19 It is more Biblical to think of wrath as “a personal activity of God… eternal 84reaction against evil without which God would not be the Moral Governor of the world.” 14 God’s wrath is never in conflict with His love. The opposite of love is hatred, not wrath. Divine wrath is God’s holy love in action against sin.

Furthermore, to indicate that God’s wrath was not merely the impersonal operation of a moral law which is the nemesis of evil in this life, Paul speaks of a hardening of heart which does not acknowledge that “God’s kindness is meant to lead… to repentance,” and is “storing up wrath…on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.” “Wrath and fury,” rather than being impersonal forces, are contrasted with “glory and honor and immortality” and “eternal life’ (Rom. 2:4 ff.).

Although we move in the area of mystery here, and although universalism is an inviting prospect, it is difficult to see how Paul could have taken God’s wrath so seriously if he felt that ultimately all men would be saved. Hendrik Kraemer seems to be moving on truly Pauline grounds when he writes:

“Hardening of heart” is in Greek oxAnpoxapdia, “kardiosklerosis.” It is a terribly clear word to express that this is a hopeless lethal case. The more so, when we remind ourselves that in the Bible “heart” is man in the totality of his being. These cases exist, just as there exists the mystery of Judas. Without minimizing in the least the Biblical teaching that the gospel…is meant for the whole world, we should not lose sight of the important marginal flashes the Bible throws on the mystery that man can get by his own acts into an irretrievable situation, and that God puts the seal upon it by making it

To do all that can be done to dissuade men from such an irretrievable course is a part of the motivation to mission. As this discussion has indicated, it is by no means the only motive, and if it were withdrawn, there would be ample motivation for the Church’s mission. But that this is one motive which we would do well to ponder seems inescapable. Paul worked constantly under the stimulus of this motive, and even kept always before his mind the solemn fact that he, too, was to be judged at the last day. “Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade men” (2 Cor. 5:11).

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