by John Piper
45. See note 24.
46. One of the questions raised by those of us who believe God means to pursue worshipers from all the peoples of the world is, “What about peoples who exist and then die out before any gospel witness comes? If you believe that these people are lost, as you have argued, then none of them will be represented in the worshiping host of heaven.” I have three responses to this question: (1) I do not know for sure that the biblical assurance that Christ has “ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation” must include those who live and die out before any can believe. (2) While the biblical teaching on the final state of those who die in infancy is not explicit, I hold the view that infants who die do not perish but prove to be elect and are brought to faith in Christ and eternal life in a way we are not told. (See chapter 4, note 27.) Therefore, those who have died as infants in the vanishing tribes would be represented among the redeemed. (3) But the way I argue in this closing section as to why diversity glorifies God points in another direction for the decisive answer. Among the main reasons diversity glorifies God is that conscious allegiance to one leader from a greatly diverse group magnifies the unique glory of the leader. See below. But this would suggest then that perhaps the decisive aim of God in commanding our pursuit of living peoples is that only those who hear of Jesus and consciously follow him will glorify him in this way. This may suggest then that the issue of vanished peoples is simply not in view when the “every” of Revelation 5:9 is contemplated.
47. I omit discussing the real possibility that there are mysterious correlations between the numbers and the purposes of the peoples and the numbers of the saints or the angels. Deuteronomy 32:8 says, “When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when He separated the sons of man, He set the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the sons of Israel” (NASB). The Greek Old Testament contains the strange rendering: “. . . according to the number of the angels of God,” which the ESV follows, by translating, “. . . according to the number of the sons of God.” Making much of this would be speculation, but it does remind us that God has reasons that are often high and hidden.
48. Bruce, Commentary on the Book of Acts, 357–58.
PART 3
MAKING GOD
SUPREME
IN MISSIONS
THE PRACTICAL OUTWORKING OF
COMPASSION AND WORSHIP
6
A Passion for God’s Supremacy
and Compassion for Man’s Soul
Jonathan Edwards on the Unity
of Motives for World Missions
Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn’t. Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God is ultimate, not man. When this age is over, and the countless millions of the redeemed fall on their faces before the throne of God, missions will be no more. It is a temporary necessity. But worship abides forever.
With those words I began this book on the supremacy of God in missions. There are deep roots to those sentences, and I owe more debts than I can ever pay. The person most responsible for my views and for my articulation of those views (under God and after the Bible) is Jonathan Edwards, the eighteenth-century pastor and theologian whose God-entranced worldview sheds its light across all the pages of this book. The impact that Edwards has had on my thinking as it relates to worship and missions (and almost everything else) is incalculable. This chapter is another tribute that I pay to him and to his God on the occasion of this three-hundredth anniversary of his birth.
The Pervasive Influence of Jonathan Edwards
You can hear his influence in the questions behind the first sentence: What is the ultimate goal of the church? What is the ultimate goal of redemption and of history and of creation? Edwards was always asking about the ultimate end of things, because once we know and embrace the final and highest reason that we and the church and the nations exist, then all our thinking and all our feeling and all our acting will be governed by that aim. It continually amazes me how few people ask and answer with conviction and passion the most important questions—the ultimate questions.
But that is what Edwards cared about most. Edwards was absolutely clear on the ultimate question of why all things exist, including you and me and the church universal and the nations and history. He was absolutely clear on it because God was absolutely clear on it. Edwards wrote a book called The End for Which God Created the World.1 In my own thinking, it is the most important thing he ever wrote. Once we understand what he wrote there, everything—absolutely everything—changes. His answer to the question, What is the ultimate goal of creation and history and redemption and your life and everything else? is this: “All that is ever spoken of in the Scripture as an ultimate end of God’s works, is included in that one phrase, the glory of God.”2
Edwards’s Biblically Saturated Argumentation
Edwards is sure of this because the Bible is clear about this. For nearly seventy pages3 Edwards piles text upon text from the Scriptures to show the radical God-centeredness of God. He puts it like this:
God had respect to himself, as his highest end [or goal], in this work [of creation]; because he is worthy in himself to be so, being infinitely the greatest and best of beings. All things else, with regard to worthiness, importance, and excellence, are perfectly as nothing in comparison [to] him.”4
He cites Romans 11:36: “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever.” And Colossians 1:16: “All things were created through him and for him.” And Hebrews 2:10: “For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering.” And Proverbs 16:4: “The Lord hath made all things for himself ” (KJV).5
The point of these texts—and dozens more6— is not that God has deficiencies he is trying to remedy but that he has perfections he wants to display. God’s aim in creation is to put himself on display. “The heavens declare the glory of God,” Psalm 19:1 says. Who set it up that way? God did. This is his aim in creation. To make himself known as glorious. And the same thing is true of the history of redemption. Isaiah 48:9–11 is like a banner not just over God’s rescue of Israel from exile but over all his acts of rescue, especially the cross:
For my name’s sake I defer my anger, for the sake of my praise I restrain it for you, that I may not cut you off. Behold, I have refined you. . . . I have tried you in the furnace of affliction. For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another.
All of creation, all of redemption, all of history is designed by God to display God. That is the ultimate goal of the church.
Why Did I Put “Worship” Where the Glory of God Belongs?
But that is not what I said in the first sentence of this book on missions. I said, “Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is.” Why the substitution of “worship” for “the glory of God”? Why not say, “Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. The glory of God is”? The reason is that missions is demanded not by God’s failure to show glory but by man’s failure to savor the glory. Creation is telling the glory of God, but the peoples are not treasuring it.
His invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him.
Romans 1:20–21
Natural revelation is not getting through. Honor and thanks to God are not welling up in the hearts of the peoples when they see his glory manifest in nature. They are not worshiping the true God. That’s why missions is necessary.
Missions exists because worship doesn’t. The ultimate issue addressed by missions is that God’s glory is dishonored among the peoples of the world. When Paul brought his indictment of his own peop
le to a climax in Romans 2:24, he said, “The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.” That is the ultimate problem in the world. That is the ultimate outrage.
The glory of God is not honored.
The holiness of God is not reverenced.
The greatness of God is not admired.
The power of God is not praised.
The truth of God is not sought.
The wisdom of God is not esteemed.
The beauty of God is not treasured.
The goodness of God is not savored.
The faithfulness of God is not trusted.
The commandments of God are not obeyed.
The justice of God is not respected.
The wrath of God is not feared.
The grace of God is not cherished.
The presence of God is not prized.
The person of God is not loved.
The infinite, all-glorious Creator of the universe, by whom and for whom all things exist—who holds every person’s life in being at every moment (Acts 17:25)—is disregarded, disbelieved, disobeyed, and dishonored among the peoples of the world. That is the ultimate reason for missions.
The opposite of this disrespect is worship. Worship is not a gathering. It is not essentially a song service or sitting under preaching. Worship is not essentially any form of outward act. Worship is essentially an inner stirring of the heart to treasure God above all the treasures of the world—
a valuing of God above all else that is valuable
a loving of God above all else that is lovely
a savoring of God above all else that is sweet
an admiring of God above all else that is admirable
a fearing of God above all else that is fearful
a respecting of God above all else that is respectable
a prizing of God above all else that is precious
Worship from the Inside Out
In other words, worship is right affections in the heart toward God, rooted in right thoughts in the head about God, becoming visible in right actions of the body reflecting God. These three stages of worship from inner essence to outward display can be seen in three texts.
• First, Matthew 15:8–9: “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me.” So if worship is not from the heart, it is vain and empty, meaning it is not worship. That means the essence can’t be outward. The essence of worship is affection, not action.
• Second, John 4:23: “The hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him.” Notice, the Father seeks worship in spirit and truth—right affections rising for God, rooted in right thinking about God.
• Third, Matthew 5:16: “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” God intends for his glory to be public. He did not create the world so that his glory would remain incognito. And he does not redeem people so that they will have merely private experiences of his preciousness. His aim is that his glory be openly reflected in the deeds of his people, whose thoughts reflect his truth and whose affections reflect his worth. Worship is seeing, savoring, and showing the glory of all that God is for us in Jesus Christ.
The first and ultimate goal of missions is that this worship happens among all the nations of the world—that God’s glory and greatness find a fitting reflection among the peoples.
Not Just More People but People from All Peoples
Note that I said “peoples,” not people. The aim of missions (as distinct from local evangelism where the church already exists) is that there be a church who worships God through Jesus Christ in all the peoples and tribes and languages and ethnic groups of the world. We have seen this goal of missions most clearly in the result of missions in Revelation 5:9. The song to Christ in heaven will be, “Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.” Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died to redeem a worshiping people for his Father from all the peoples, tribes, languages, and nations. Missions exists to plant Christ-purchased, God-exalting worshiping communities of the redeemed in all the peoples of the world.
The passion of a missionary—as distinct from that of an evangelist—is to plant a worshiping community of Christians in a people group who has no access to the gospel because of language or cultural barriers. Paul was one of these “frontier” missionaries: “I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named. . . . But now, since I no longer have any room for work in these regions . . . I go to Spain” (Rom. 15:20, 23–24).
The first great passion of missions, therefore, is to honor the glory of God by restoring the rightful place of God in the hearts of people who presently think, feel, and act in ways that dishonor God every day, and in particular, to do this by bringing forth a worshiping people from among all the unreached peoples of the world. If you love the glory of God, you cannot be indifferent to missions. This is the ultimate reason Jesus Christ came into the world. Romans 15:8–9 says, “Christ became a servant to the circumcised . . . in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy.” Christ came to get glory for his Father among the nations. If you love what Jesus Christ came to accomplish, you love missions.
Compassion for People, Not Just Passion for God
But now comes the question this chapter is mainly designed to answer:
How does the motive of compassion for people relate to this primary motive of a passion for the glory of God? Most of us would agree that Jesus came not only to vindicate God’s righteousness and uphold God’s glory but also to rescue sinners from everlasting misery.
Alongside the truth that we are all guilty of treason and have dishonored our King, we must now put forward the truth that we are therefore worthy of execution and everlasting punishment. With mutiny comes misery.
Unbelief not only dishonors God but also destroys the soul. Everything that discredits God damages man. Every assault on God’s holiness is an assault on human happiness. Every thought or feeling or action that makes God look wrong or irrelevant increases humanity’s ruin. Everything that decreases God’s reputation increases our suffering.
And so missions is driven by a passion not only to restore the glory of God to its rightful place in the worshiping soul but also to rescue sinners from everlasting pain. If there is one thing that almost everyone knows about Jonathan Edwards, it is that he believed in the reality and eternality of hell.
Edwards Wanted to Honor God and Rescue People from Hell
In his most famous sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” Edwards was not a cool, detached observer of perishing people. He was a passionate evangelist pleading for people to receive mercy while there was still time. After referring to Revelation 14:20, which speaks of “the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God,” he says:
The words are exceeding terrible. . . . “The fierceness and wrath of God.” The fury of God! The fierceness of Jehovah! O how dreadful must that be! Who can utter or conceive what such expressions carry in them? . . . Consider this, you who are here present, that yet remain in an unregenerate state. . . . Now God stands ready to pity you; this is a day of mercy.7
And Edwards believed not only that hell would be horrible and conscious but also that it would be never ending. He would have been appalled at the number of so-called evangelicals today who have abandoned the biblical teaching on hell as eternal, conscious torment in favor of a view of annihilation (Matt. 25:41, 46; Mark 9:42–48; 2 Thess. 1:5–10; Rev. 14:9–11; 20:10, 14–15).8 In response to the annihilationists of his own day, Edwards preached a message on April 2, 1739, with the stated doctrine, “The misery of the wicked in hell will be absolutely eternal.” In another sermon, he makes the point that annihilation is not the form of punishment t
hat unbelievers receive but the relief from punishment that they desire and don’t receive. “Wicked men will hereafter earnestly wish to be turned to nothing and forever cease to be that they may escape the wrath of God.”9 I believe Edwards is right, and we should tremble and fly to Christ, our only hope.10
So I say again, missions is driven not only by a passion for the supremacy of God in all things but also by a compassion for perishing people, whom we all once were.
Edwards preached a series of fifteen sermons on the “love chapter,” 1 Corinthians 13 (“Charity and Its Fruits”) and said in sermon four, on verse 4 (“Love suffers long and is kind”), “A Christian spirit disposes persons meekly to bear ill that is received from others, and cheerfully and freely to do good to others.”11 One of his applications was:
Men may do good to the souls of vicious persons by being the instruments of reclaiming them from their vicious courses. They may do good to the souls of secure and senseless sinners by putting them in mind of their misery and danger and so being the instruments of awakening them. And persons may be the instruments of others’ conversion, of bringing them home to Christ. We read in Daniel 12:3 of those that turn many to righteousness.12
The motive of love toward sinners and the desire to do good to them are essential to the Christian spirit. It is the spirit of Christ himself. Mark 6:34 says, “When [Jesus] went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And he began to teach them many things.” In Luke 15:20, in the parable of the prodigal son, Jesus portrays the heart of his Father in the same way: “[His son] arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.” “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). The love of God for perishing sinners moved him to provide at great cost a way to rescue them from everlasting destruction, and missions is the extension of that love to the unreached peoples of the world.
