Calvin and Missions - World Evangelical Alliance

Clowney: The Missionary Flame of Reformed Theology (1976) 121
Jesus predicts that the gospel will divide men, cutting between husband
and wife, parent and child, brother and sister. More than that, Christ demands
of everyone who follows him that he write off in advance every
other tie: “If any man cometh unto me, and hateth not his own father, and
mother, and wife and children, and brethren and sisters, yea and his own
life also, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26).
The exclusive bonds that unite us to Christ bind us together in the body
of Christ. The unity of that fellowship must be proclaimed as part of the
gospel and manifested if the church is to be presented as a pure virgin to
Christ. The point at which human barriers are surmounted is the point at
which a believer is joined to Christ and to his people. The sacrement of
baptism does not seal the union of the believer with Paul, Cephas or Apollos
but with Christ. Christ is not divided and we cannot sanctify in his
name the social barriers that wall up the Babylons of human pride.
The church can be a city set on a hill that cannot be hid only as it manifests
in its life before the world the transforming reality of the community
of the Holy Spirit. The church reaches out to every strata and segment of
human society: Peter is called as an apostle to the Jews and Paul to the
Gentiles. But if Peter breaks church fellowship to accomodate himself to
Jewish prejudice, he must receive deserved rebuke (Gal. 2:14). If the life of
the new community is divided by the barriers of the old, the power of the
gospel and of the kingdom of Christ is denied.
How does all of this affect the Presbyterian Association in England?
This Association is not just a vision to say that a denomination got lost in
the shuffle of British history and ought to be put back into the picture. No,
what is it that is really wanted? You may say a more biblical structure of
church government; to that I say, ‘Amen!’ but that is not all. It is biblical
doctrine subject to the word of God. In talking to the Ephesian elders, Paul
said that he held nothing back in preaching the gospel. The doctrines that
Paul taught were not always popular doctrines. Paul could have preached
only portions of that doctrine, but that would not have made a strong
church, a church that would hear and heed the preaching of all the fullness
of the doctrine that the word of God teaches. In the world in which we live,
we need to be drawn back to hear the word of our Creator-God, the Redeemer-God
who is also the Saviour-God. The vision of this Association
should not be simply to propogate a denomination or to replicate churches
where people have enjoyed fellowship in the past. The mission of this Association
must be to be truly biblical in the fullness of the teaching of the
word of God, to exalt the grace of God and to exalt the kingship of Jesus
Christ as the only Saviour in the power of the Holy Spirit. The glory of