Calvin and Missions - World Evangelical Alliance

116 Calvin and World Mission
tion by making it unquantifiable. The universalist position is persuasively
argued by those who maintain that the election church is the servant
church. It does not differ from the world by being a company of the saved;
rather, it differs not in status but in function. The church is chosen to announce
to the world that every man is elect in Christ.
Missionary as this theology may appear in terminology, it destroys the
real meaning of missionary endeavour. God’s calling is not just to service
but to sonship. God redeems his people from bondage in Egypt that he
might bear them on eagle’s wings to himself (Exod. 19:4). The mystery of
God’s electing love cannot be explained in terms of some ulterior motive.
God tells Israel that he has not chosen them because they are more in number
than other people. No, he has set his love upon them because … he
loves them! (Deut. 7:7, 8). God has set his people upon his heart, written
their names upon his hands, rejoiced over them as a bridegroom over a
bride. He chooses them not simply or finally to use them, but to possess
them -that he might be their God and they his people.
God’s free grace, God’s sure grace, is the foundation of salvation. God’s
grace not only has a fixed point of origin with him, it also has a fullness
that is of him: the fountain of grace becomes a river of mercy. That is, God
not only plans salvation in electing grace; he also executes his plan. In the
fullness of time God’s grace triumphs in a way that surpasses anything we
could imagine. At the cross of Calvary God gave his only begotten Son to
accomplish the mission of his love.
Apostolic mission theology preaches Christ crucified. Contemporary
theologies of mission must be tested by that apostolic-zeal. The triumph of
God’s grace at the cross is still the despair of every humanist. To the Jews
the cross was a stumbling block, and to the Greeks, foolishness (1 Cor.
1:23). How can the arrest, torture and death of Jesus be regarded as God’s
victory rather than his defeat? Only when the cross is seen as God sees it
and as Jesus takes it. Paul preached Christ crucified as the sin-bearer, the
one who was made to be sin for us that we might be made the righteousness
of God in him (11 Cor. 5:21). Only if sin, not suffering, is the fundamental
human problem does the cross bring salvation.
At the cross the measure of God’s love is revealed in the price that the
Father paid. All the love of the Father through eternity is given to his beloved
Son (John 1:18). The Father so loves the Son that he gives him the
world (John 3:35). Nothing that the Son asks of the Father will be refused.
Yet in the mystery of God’s saving love he gives his only begotten Son for