The topic of repentance jumped on me as I prepared to preach Acts 26 this weekend.  In that text Paul faces the Roman governor of Palestine, Festus, along with King Herod Agrippa and his sister Bernice as a subset to his trials for sedition and for Temple desecration.  There Paul repeated his account of meeting Jesus on the road to Damascus to the listeners.  Central to the account is Christ’s commission to him:

“I am sending you to open their [i.e. Jewish and Gentile] eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.” [Acts 26:18]

In preparing the talk what struck me is the way Paul interpreted and applied Christ’s challenge: he obeyed Jesus by calling everyone he spoke with after this encounter to “repent and turn to God, performing deeds in keeping with repentance.” [verse 20]

Before then Paul (when he was still called by his Jewish name, Saul) was among the most self-driven young Pharisees in his generation.  So in his trial at Caesarea before Festus, Agrippa, and the others, he would have recognized many of the second-tier figures among his Jewish prosecutors.  He even touched on this in a wry comment during his defense—“They have known for a long time, if they are willing to testify . . .”—that he had been a rising star in his generation.

What drove Saul in those early days, before the Damascus Road event, when he would have had free access to the office of the High Priest in Jerusalem to get permits to search synagogues here, there, and everywhere, for possible heretics?  It was his ambition to be part of God’s blessing to Israel.  The “promise” he noted in verse 6 that had been given to Abraham and then restated to Isaac and to Jacob was a guiding light to any devout Jew.  A coming “Seed”—the promised offspring of the patriarchal fathers and of David—would eventually appear to rescue and to rule God’s people.  Until then Saul meant to protect Judaism from any false messiahs, including Jesus.

What Saul realized after he met Jesus is that he had been wrong.  He had missed the crucial lesson of Isaiah and elsewhere that the Christ must first suffer—even to the point of death—before he would return to his glory with the Father and only then be ready to establish his kingdom.  Saul had been earnest, but earnestly wrong!

So now, after taking up the Hellenized name of Paul, he was full of repentance.  Everything in his early training—though it was rich with elements of truth—had been misdirected.  He was utterly sincere but utterly wrong.  And now with heart filled with a passion for Christ he was urgent in challenging Festus and Agrippa to repent as well.  How?  By changing their direction of life!  By no longer treating the earthly rule of Rome as primary but as a mere backdrop to the true reign of Jesus, the Christ.

Repentance, in this context, is about finding someone so important in life, so compelling, and with a standing in reality so great that he commands instantaneous worship.  And then to say to him, “my Lord and my God.” 

Repentance, then, wasn’t so much a feeling of deep remorse for Paul; it was a heart-shaking realization that before meeting Jesus he had gotten everything wrong!  So much so that the only way to get things right was to reverse course.  So the once-stardom-bound Saul was ready to become the despised and hated Paul for the sake of his devotion to Jesus.

For Paul the message from Jesus had been personal: “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”  It was Jesus speaking of “you” and “me” in absolutely compelling and personal terms.  As Saul he had hated Jesus and all who followed him; as Paul he was hated by all who dismissed Jesus and refused to follow him.  This was repentance.  It was both passionate and practical.  It changed everything.  And it was a message that made me want to grow in my own personal repentance.  If many of us were to repent with Paul’s sort of repentance I suspect the world would begin to notice in a hurry.  I hope they do.  I think the end is near!

But then after stating the facts, I chose to share a narrative that would take us to the heart of who He was and what He came to do.  The facts took on flesh.  I wanted to try and offer the wow, and also the woo.  What do I mean by that?  Well, there are some who are wishy-washy on the facts about Christ, but they speak of their relationship with “their Jesus.”  And there are others who are strongly orthodox in their beliefs, but seemingly very cold and distant in terms of relationship.  But the reality should be both/and.  Who He is and what He’s done is vitally important.  And He wants to be in a personal relationship with us.  We must be clear on what the Bible teaches, but our relationship is not built on affirmations of truth statements alone. 

To speak of personal relationship with Christ is not some fluffy contemporary lightweight spiritual fad.  As Ron put it recently, the love we speak of is the blood red love of God.  A true encounter with Christ in His Word should both wow us, and woo us.

My wife and I learned early on in our marriage that thinking of the relationship between Christ and the church is helpful to our relationship.  How am I supposed to love my wife?  As Christ loved the church.  How is she supposed to respond to my love?  As the church does to Christ.  Etcetera.  But this can be turned around too.  What does it mean to be in a relationship with Christ?

Well, among many other aspects of relationship, surely it means spending time together, sharing experiences together, building history together, communicating in both directions, really listening to His Word, pouring out our hearts to Him, resisting anyone or anything that might draw our hearts away from Him.  And more.  Just like any relationship, there is no one-time quick-fix that will suddenly make me a mature Christian, or make my relationship with Christ a mature one.  My marriage to Melanie requires the certificate, but it doesn’t focus on the legal document, it grows through ongoing interpersonal connection over time.  Likewise a true relationship with Christ is much more relational than we often make it out to be.

I hope the message yesterday was in some way effective.  And I hope this continues to be true in my life.  As I look in His Word I see the wow effect of His grace in action, and the wooing effect of the God-man who actually desires to be in a personal relationship with me.

Cor Deo Latest – All systems go, actively recruiting . . . the board had a meeting earlier this month.  During this meeting we officially welcomed Jeremy Roberts onto the board (welcome Jeremy, so great to have you with us!)  It was a great meeting and the bottom line is that all aspects of Cor Deo are progressing well and we are very actively recruiting further participants for the 2011 team.  Please encourage any possible participants to get in contact and consider joining the group that is already forming!

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From Ron – What do I do when Cor Deo isn’t in session?  Let me share three snapshots of my other ministry involvements, all opportunities to see God’s grace at work!

(1) Mission – I’m on staff with Barnabas International, a mission committed to traveling worldwide in order to listen to, care for, and support those in ministry.  I do whatever I can to support their ministries. This vision also stands behind the life-to-life ministry of Cor Deo as Peter and I take what we’ve received from others—and what we wish had been available to us when we were younger!—and seek to extend the love of Christ to and through others.  When I’m not in the UK or the US I’m visiting other settings: going to India each year for pastors’ conferences; to Africa to shepherd the launch of a Bible college; and to locations in Asia and Europe to teach and encourage.

(2) Church – When I’m in the US I serve as one of the teaching pastors at Good Shepherd Community Church in Boring, Oregon.  This is a new opportunity for me and allows me to speak often of God’s love in the same terms we’re offering to Cor Deo participants.  A special joy at Good Shepherd is my partnership with one of the newest church elders, Chris, a man I noted in a 1987 article on Bible reading.  He was then a young college student (see the story on SpreadingGoodness.org) and now is a mid-career business leader who continues to be devoted to the Scriptures and to others.

(3) Teaching and Writing – I continue to teach at both college and graduate level from time to time.  This coming January, for instance, I’ll teach a course in Reformation and Post-Reformation theology at Multnomah Seminary in Portland.  Other teaching opportunities abound, for example at Good Shepherd this month I was one of four teachers examining how God’s wrath relates to God’s love.  Along with that I’m involved in a set of writing projects including a substantial revision and expansion of an earlier book, Discover the Power of the Bible.

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New Endorsement – In recent years Dr Joe Stowell has been a popular speaker at the Keswick Convention.  He used to be president of the Moody Bible Institute, and is now president of Cornerstone University in the US.  He has written many books, including Following Christ.  We were very encouraged to receive this encouraging endorsement from Joe:

“If the church is to move forward in culturally relevant ways, then it is vital that the next generation of church leaders is trained to handle God’s Word effectively, to love the Lord personally and to model His will and His ways in the exercise of their ministry. Cor Deo is a great step forward toward this kind of Christo-centric ministry training. I’m delighted to recommend it with enthusiasm!”

Thank you so much for praying for us as we move forward with Cor Deo.  These are exciting days, yet we are very much dependent on the Lord in all aspects of this ministry project!

With our gratitude for your prayers,

Peter & Ron

But let’s be clear from the outset that I don’t know many Christians who think their vision of God has anything to do with the divinities of Plato or Aristotle.  For most of us that’s certainly not the case, given that almost no one today knows or cares what the Greeks believed.  Yet to be unaware of the unhappy theological tributaries that once poured into Western Christianity doesn’t mean that by simply forgetting about these muddied sources our river is now somehow pristine.

So what is it about the true and living God that we need to know more than anything else—in order to test the purity of the water in which we swim today? 

Is God, for instance, mainly concerned to remind us that he’s in charge, as the Greeks would have it—with ultimate power over everything, past, present, and future? 

No.  Focusing on that reality is a bit like telling children each morning, “Don’t forget to breathe—you’ll need your oxygen!”  Of course God is all-powerful: he made and sustains everything in the creation!  So while the Bible offers brief notices that other “gods” are only pretenders and that Yahweh alone is the true God and sole ruler of all that is, the main thrust of the Bible runs elsewhere.  On the matter of power, God is fully secure about his eternal standing; and so are those who know him well.  I will also note, mischievously, that many people who want to represent God as his prophets, priests, and pastors today may be prone themselves to be fixated on God’s power as they rule others by attributing God’s power to their own ministry ambitions.

In another option, is God mainly concerned with his own glory—with some superabundant need for huge crowds of created beings to tell him how wonderful he is?

Once again, that’s not what the Bible tells us.  Aristotle, in his Metaphysics, gives us a God who can only think about himself; but the Bible portrays a God whose glory is displayed in a self-giving love that pours out of the Triune heart.  In John 17, for instance, we discover that Jesus spoke of glory as the environment he shared with the Father before the creation, and as a place he wants to share with all of us who believe in him.  It was a glory given by the Father to the Son because, as Jesus put it, “you loved me.”  So it boggles the mind to think that a God whose glory consists in the selfless giving of love is mainly driven by self-concerned glory-seeking.  Of course for all who know and love him we find joy in expressing our delight in his glory.  Glory is the offspring of love: the flower, not the root.

What we do find in the Bible is a passionate God.  He is the God who has always existed in the bond of love, so much so that John labels that bond as “love” (e.g. “God is love” in 1 John 4:8 & 16).  In the eternal past, before the creation, what was God up to?  In the glimpses we have from places like John 17 the Father was spending his time in devotion to the Son, and the Son was reciprocating that devotion to the Father; and (drawing from 1 Corinthians 2) the Spirit supported and sustained this shared mutual delight.  It was and still is a love story.  By our creation we were invited to the party.

Now, back to the Greek philosophers.   Aristotle defined goodness as the stable center found midway between the extremes of human passions.  God, however, calls for passion in the Bible: for our selfless love for him that reciprocates his prior love for us.  He made us so that love rules every heart in every activity.  With love as his motive for our creation and the aim of our calling, God then presses all of us to commit to either loving him or to hating him.  There is no neutral middle! 

So let’s enjoy our passionate God by being more and more passionate in our devotion while our philosophical neighbors grimace as they obey the disaffected deity of their own making.  For us who embrace the biblical God let’s join in David’s passion: “O, taste and see, the LORD is good!”

As a young believer I was taught the A.C.T.S. acronym.  Adoration leads to confession, to thanksgiving and finally to supplication.  It made sense and proved helpful over the years.  Yet I couldn’t help but notice the tendency of my flesh to “meify” the pattern.  Adore (because that cracks open the door for God to be favourable to later requests), confess (since sin always gets in the way of getting prayer answered), be thankful (again with an eye toward what is to follow), and then finally get to shopping, uh, I mean, supplication (the real goal throughout).  Wretched man that I am!  Who will deliver me?

Over the years I’ve developed a three-part structure that I follow in focused prayer times.  I begin with “Redirecting the gaze – dependence.” Recognizing the tendency of my fleshly self to curve in on myself, I begin by looking to Him.  All the concerns, the anxieties, the cares are cast on Him (because He cares for me).  As well as petition, I may find myself confessing, or expressing thankfulness in order to look beyond the gifts to the giver.  If I stop here there is a danger that I am loving God for my own sake, so I move on to loving God for God’s sake.

The second stage is “Responding to the object of the gaze – devotion.” Time spent in God’s presence will lead to devotion, to adoration, to praise, to worship.  Now the worshipful part of prayer is not a duty, but a delighted response.  Yet if I stop here I suspect I still fall short of all that a relationship should include.  I’ve moved from a me-focus to a God-focus, which is good.  But in a genuine relationship two hearts will start to beat together in shared values and desires…

The third and final stage is “Reflecting the heartbeat of God – intercession.” God passionately and sacrificially loves others.  Time spent with Him will stir the same in my heart, the spreading goodness will spread.  So my responsive and God-reflecting heart will be stirred to pray for the world, the church, the widow and the orphan, the lost, the injustices, the mission field white unto harvest, etc.

Does this progression reflect a relational responsiveness to our others-centred Triune God?

Jesus answered his disciples with a pattern that is simpler still – pray to your Father about the Father, then pray to the Father about the family (give us, give us, give us).  Love God and love others.

A pattern for prayer.  By no means an exhaustive post on prayer, feel free to go where you like in your comments, but perhaps this post might be a helpful nudge for some.

(I just started A Praying Life by Paul Miller, so far so good.  Maybe a review on here in due course.)

“But judging by the behavior of most Christians, they’ve become secularists. And the sea of hypocrisy between Christian beliefs and actions is driving Americans away from the institutional church in record numbers.”

The bottom line of the article is that too many professing Christians today—despite Christ’s prayer in John 17—are both “in the world” and “of the world.”  The distinction between followers of Christ and those who don’t know Christ is blurred to the point of being lost.

Let me take up one element of this tragedy: the relationship between Christ and the church.  The church, we must remember, is not a self-defined social club, or a branded set of religious consumers (like “Mac users” are among computer aficionados), or a group of theological devotees who mainly guard a creedal gospel.

The church is, instead, the extended life of Christ: his body.  Christ is alive in us and among us as those who have union with him—those who are “in Christ” and who have Christ in us as the proof of present life and future glory.  This union is accomplished by the Spirit who joins our spirits so we are “members of Christ” and “joined to the Lord” in a marital unity—made to be “one spirit with him” as “temples of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God” (citing elements of 1 Corinthians 6:12-20).  With that unity comes a devotion to the Truth Christ offers us and a confidence to call God “Daddy”.

1 Corinthians 6 was Paul’s warning against a corrupt spirituality.  This was a problem then and it’s also a problem today.  An ancient impulse to corruption was captured in the mantra being expressed by the immature believers in Corinth: “All things are lawful for me” (6:12) which meant, in effect, that Christ’s gracious work on the cross covers all our sins, so we’re now free to sin with impunity.

As Paul would say, “God forbid!”  All of us who really have the life and love of Christ poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit will be increasingly like Christ and, with our new affective DNA, will turn from our former ways of life.  A new love produces new values and new behaviors.  Which explains why, in nearly the same locale (in 5:13), Paul—a great promoter of free grace—still set out a stark moral demand: “Purge the evil person from among you!”

 Yet we often find the profound warning by Jesus against spiritual bullies to be misapplied as if it dismisses Paul’s point:  “Don’t judge lest you be judged”.  It then has been turned into a mantra that allows churches to avoid confronting sin.  But in biblical terms they then become anti-Christ. That is, the church, by ignoring her own immorality no longer reveals Christ as he really is.  And with that we find two opposed versions of faith: one devoted to pleasing Christ, and another “gracious” church that winks at widespread promiscuity, accepts multiplied divorces and remarriages, enjoys debased entertainments, silently accepts abortions-for-convenience, freely pursues selfish materialism, replaces compassionate relations with clannish individualism—and more—in ways no different than we find among those who either ignore or despise Christ.  In fact, as the cited news article rightly points out, non-believers often display values more refined than are seen in many churches.

It’s time, then, to join Paul and say “God forbid!”  Let the church shrink as needed when she confronts unrepentant sin; until she once again resembles Christ who says both “you are forgiven” and “go and sin no more”.  Then his beauty in the church will attract the poor, the shamed, the debased; and sinners will be supported as they enter into a new life of love and purity as a bride washed in the water of the Word.  As we grow in his love let’s also grow in his image.

At a conference of sociologists in America in 1977, love was defined a “the cognitive-affective state characterized by intrusive and obsessive fantasizing concerning reciprocity of amorant feelings by the object of the amorance.” (The Mother Tongue, 1990, p19.)

Thankfully, in church circles, we know what love is without such an obtuse definition.  Why, it is an act of the will for the good of the other, isn’t it?  (How often our definitions are inherently critiques of alternative or prevailing notions.  In this case, of course, most are quick to seek to overcome fluffy notions of flitting feelings with a strongly will-centred definition of love.)

Definitions of terms are important, but what are we to do with words as important as love?  Rushing to an English dictionary usually isn’t definitive.  Definitions tend to begin with “a strong feeling of affection …” But we know that the Bible offers something more refined than the world’s version of love.  So in church we hear references to agape love – a so-called God kind of love, and typically there is some reference to “an act of the will” since the Lord couldn’t have gone to the cross based on feelings alone, so agape love must be an act of the will.

We are right to suggest that in the Bible we can know what true love is.  But what if our definition of love were actually more biblical instead of just another nod to the stoic notion of the centrality of the will?  What if love is a central and defining feature of how God has revealed Himself to us in His self-revelation? (As opposed to an incidental, or even “anthropopathic” pseudo-attribute, as some suggest.)  What if we chased down the path of the “God is love” references in 1 John 4?  What if love begins in respect to the bond between the persons of the Trinity?  What does that mean for us as we explore the love of God, and consequently, our experience and knowledge of it?  We love, because He first loved us, after all.   (D.A. Carson, in his The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God, urges readers not to allow one aspect of God’s love to trump and thereby define all aspects of God’s love . . . am I falling into that here?)

Of all the subjects we could wrestle with on here, this is surely one we can never exhaust.  Was it Edwards that spoke of heaven as a “world of love” where the Son will continue to reveal the Father to us for all eternity?  Trying to define love may be like trying squeeze an ocean into a thimble, but definitions do matter.  As we wrestle with our language and converse on this, let’s be sure to remember that our response matters too – may our hearts be stirred with worship as we ponder the reality of what love really is.

Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade;
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.

1. a clear version of the person and nature distinction, entailing the principle that whatever is predicated of the divine nature is predicated of the three persons equally and understood to be one;

2. clear expression that the eternal generation of the Son occurs within the unitary and incomprehensible divine being;

3. clear expression of the doctrine that the persons work inseparably.

The care taken by the early church fathers in expressing their shared faith in the Triune God has been critical to the health of the Church in the centuries that followed. 

A question for us: how well are we doing today in maintaining the clarity and force of these insights?  And, if we do speak of the Trinity in these terms, what sort of narrative emerges?

Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo, established one option when he portrayed the Triune relationship as an eternal, non-material One (contra the Arians & Stoics) whose being is characterized by love.  The Father is the lover, the Son is the beloved, and the Spirit is the love between them—that is, the communicator of that love.  Each is fully personal and distinct—so that the Father is always the Father and never the Son; the Son is always the Son and never the Father; and the Spirit is neither Father nor Son, but is uniquely engaged in searching the depths of both the Father and the Son as he communicates their mutual and reciprocal love.  Their oneness is maintained in that love.

In Augustine’s way of speaking of the Trinity he maintained the set of values noted by Ayres.  The activities of God, whether in his creation; in his addressing the Fall through the Son’s incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension; and in his self-giving purpose to offer eternal communion to the saints; are all explained by the Triune God who invites humanity to enter the mutual love and glory of God.  The Spirit pours out this love into the hearts of believers.  God’s passion is an expression of his united yet diverse Heart.

There are, of course, other ways to speak of God.  After the Reformation some Protestants elevated God’s stability in terms well aligned with the prevailing Greek notions of linear causation and divine necessity.  It was crucial for them to first define God’s singular essence—as rooted in the Father—and then to extend this essence to both the Son and the Spirit.  William Ames, an English Puritan, promoted this approach in his acclaimed The Marrow of Theology (1620-22 lectures to Dutch students).  In Book I:4 Ames presented “God and His Essence”. 

Ames presented God’s Essence in 67 items.  The Trinity, by the way, wasn’t featured as a starting point—it was addressed next, in section I:5.  In speaking of God’s essence Ames took up an apophatic starting point—featuring God’s hiddenness rather than his self-disclosures.  Ames explained that much of what is said of God in the Bible is anthropopathic: using human qualities to speak of God (item 4).   Yet any anthropopathism fails to represent God’s essence in adequate or accurate terms.  What is affirmed of God by Ames was aligned with the classical Greek portrayals of God as pure act (actus, item 20) as guided by a perfect knowledge and singular will (items 52-61).

If we compare this approach to Augustine’s relational God who is essentially a Triune lover who shares his eternally pre-existing love with his creation, we find a starkly new way of portraying God.  Ames, for instance, followed up his assertions about the divine knowledge and will by disavowing any affections in the divine: “The affections attributed to God in scripture, such as love, hatred, and the like, either designate acts of will or apply to God only figuratively” (item 62).

So while both narratives of God—Augustine’s and Ames’—are arguably consistent with the Nicene insistence that the Triune “persons work inseparably”, the bases of the two views are very different.  Augustine treats the Father, Son, and Spirit as actively engaging one another from within their distinctions yet with complete (“inseparable”) accord because of their unity in love.  Ames, however, treats the divine unity as rooted in a singular, guiding, disaffected will—i.e. “God’s essence”.

What sort of narratives of the Trinity are active today?  Of the two I sketched out here I certainly prefer Augustine over Ames.  I see a much broader alignment with the biblical portrayal of God who “is love”—a love rooted in a relational context.  The disaffected essence that Ames promotes seems well out of step with texts like John 3:16.  In Augustine’s picture I see a basis for our own growing alignment with God’s will as our love for God reciprocates his love for us.  Our love engages his desires.

Any thoughts?

Since it seems to be all action at the moment, here are some action-updates:

Discovering – Discover Cor Deo was a special time.  We were joined by nine folks wanting to find out more.  We enjoyed rich discussions, a memorable meal in an Italian restaurant (since Cor Deo’s first team ministry opportunity, will probably be a missions conference in Italy next February), and once the day ended, many of us continued to enjoy conversation in the London sun.

Conversing – The new Cor Deo blog is now live. We take turns posting at the start of the week and then enjoy the interaction as the week progresses.  Please take a look, and please add a comment (profound or simple, they all help!)  

Networking – Yesterday I (Peter) enjoyed meeting the new national training director of a UK-wide church movement.  We had a great time together and I hope we can be of help to each other in the coming years.  Our goal with Cor Deo is to be a blessing to the churches and training ministries across the country. 

Recruiting – We are continuing to pray for God to bring together the first Cor Deo team for 2011.  Please help us spread the word and encourage anyone you think might be well suited to the programme.

Moving – Peter and family are moving to Chippenham on the 2nd of August.  This is a big move and we value your prayers.

Organising – Once we are in Chippenham we can start to think more specifically about some of the practical matters that need organising: accommodation for Ron, for participants, finding a vehicle for Cor Deo use, collecting the Cor Deo library, figuring out the study space, etc.   Please pray for all this to come together.

Ministering – It’s not all about preparation.  That is happening in the gaps around other ministry involvements.  Ron is currently in the US for a few weeks.  Peter is off to help lead and teach K2 (young adults) at Keswick, then next month will take the family to a conference for missionaries in France, followed by the OM new recruits’ conference in Holland.  All prayer appreciated!

So that is where we are at.  Next time we’ll get an update on progress in Chippenham, and hear news of Ron’s ministry developments too. Thanks for praying!

For the team,

Peter

PS To answer the question of how donations can be made to support the ministry of Cor Deo:

Support from the UK can be given via Stewardship – click here for form.
Support from the US – please contact us for information as we are in the process of establishing a tax efficient way to give to Cor Deo.

(The mentors do not receive a salary from Cor Deo, for information on how to give to their personal support, please ask specifically.)

Since levels of motivation vary, many seek to stir the interest of others in missions. Personally I see a whole host of potential motivations springing from the pages of Scripture, but we can save that for another day. What concerns me is when people present one motivation as if it is the exclusive legitimate motivation, thereby dismissing other biblical options.

Let’s look at a possible example.  Here’s a quote from John Dawson that critiques the possibility of loving “the lost” (in the context he is addressing the challenge of a lack of compassion for others and how to witness anyway based on our love for God.):

“It is impossible to love ‘the lost.’ You can’t feel deeply for an abstraction or a concept. You would find it impossible to love deeply an unfamiliar individual portrayed in a photograph, let alone a nation or a race or something as vague as ‘all lost people.’”

(quoted in Crossman’s Worldwide Perspectives Manual, p77)

Is that true? Is it impossible to love an unfamiliar individual, nation or race? My experience and that of others would beg to differ. But let’s also challenge this idea with more than just personal experience.

In the gospel the other-centred relationality of the Trinity spreads out to encompass us. He loves us, drawing us to become lovers of Him, to participate in an utterly others-centred community. A central feature of the New Covenant is the giving of a new heart, making us passionate to glorify Him because we love Him and to value what He values – including, of course, the nations (for God so loved the world). We passionately give ourselves and our resources for missions motivated by His love as our hearts beat with His and like His. We become like the person we love. To use the name of a blog I often read, God’s spreading goodness spreads to us, and through us.

So we can love the lost, we can love the masses, because the Lord does (when He saw the crowds, He felt compassion for them, Matt.9:36), and we become increasingly like Him. Perhaps a lack of love for the lost is an indication of creeping concupiscence (self-love), for if we love Him, we will also love whom He loves. So often, then, the fuel for missions is found as we fall, broken and needy, before the cross of Christ, again overwhelmed by His love for this world, including me, including them.

I appreciate this quote from Nate Saint, missionary pilot to Ecuador: “When we weigh the future and seek the will of God, may we be as moved with compassion as our Lord.”

Is it possible to love “the lost”? What might it look like if our hearts were so captivated by His that His values became ours? As we open the shutters onto the vast field of global missiology, with all its biblical and theological foundations, where does your thinking go?