What in the World Is God Doing —and How Can I Join Him?
THE MISSION OF GOD, LESSON ONE
STEVE CHILDERS
Introduction
Viktor Frankl, the Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, argued that our deepest need is not pleasure, possessions, or power, but meaning. In the concentration camps, he observed that people could endure unimaginable suffering when they still had something—or someone—worth living for.
Yet many of us live by a far smaller story. We pursue comfort, success, possessions, security, and the hope of an enjoyable retirement. Perhaps more than we realize—or care to admit—we often organize our lives around one central goal: minimizing pain and maximizing pleasure, frequently through genuinely good things such as family, work, and achievement.
But even the best of these things cannot bear the weight of our deepest hopes.
Jesus calls us into an upside-down kingdom, where the way to find life is to stop making our own lives the center of everything. He said, “Whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it” (Mark 8:35).
When our smaller stories become aligned with God’s larger story, the path may include sacrifice, loss, suffering, and even death. Yet it is precisely there—in surrendering ourselves to Christ and his purposes—that we discover a life no comfort can create and no suffering can destroy.
You were created by God in his image. And if you follow Christ, God is now recreating you by his Spirit so that you might live for something far greater than yourself. As Paul writes, “We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works” (Eph. 2:10).
This raises the central question of this course:
What in the world is God doing—and how can I join him?
In this course, we will learn from Scripture what God is doing in the world and how we can join him, and how, in doing that, we are redeeming and restoring the very purpose and meaning that God has for our lives.
In the process we will be exposing several myths about God's mission that are out there. One of them is that a radical commitment to missions is optional. We'll learn how your commitment to being a part of God's mission is a question of Lordship for every true follower of Jesus. It's not whether you are committed to joining God in his mission but how.
And there is another myth we'll also be dispelling in this course. That's the myth that making a radical commitment to join God in his mission will cost you more than it will benefit you.
Jesus also promised that anyone who leaves behind home, family, or possessions “for my sake and for the gospel” will receive far more—though “along with persecutions”—and, in the age to come, eternal life (Mark 10:29–30). So in this course we will also learn how "God delights to manifest his presence and pour out his power upon those who dare to align their lives with his purposes in the world."
The more fully our life mission becomes aligned with God’s mission, the more deeply we experience the purpose for which he created us and is now recreating us in Christ.
In this first of six lessons we're laying the biblical foundations for understanding who God is and what he is doing in the world--so we can join him more fully: Three main points in this lesson:
I. The whole Bible reveals the grand story of God's mission.
II. The grand story unfolds through Magnificent Acts of God in Mission.
III. The Magnificent Acts reveal God's Magnificent Purposes.
I. The Whole Bible Reveals the Grand Story of God's Mission
A. The Bible reveals one grand story of God's unfolding mission in the world.
We begin not merely with a few New Testament mission texts, but with the whole Bible itself.
From Genesis to Revelation, Scripture reveals one grand, unfolding story of God’s mission for the world.
The Bible is a library of books written by many human authors over many generations. It includes laws, history, prophecy, poetry, wisdom writings, letters, and apocalyptic visions. Yet it is not a hodgepodge of disconnected stories, doctrines, and moral lessons that we must arrange into a coherent whole. At its heart, the Bible is one divinely inspired book with one divine Author, telling one unified, unfolding story of God’s mission in history.
This is why we must be careful not to fragment the Bible into isolated pieces. As Michael Goheen warns:
We have fragmented the Bible into bits … moral bits, systematic-theological bits, devotional bits, narrative bits, and sermon bits. And when the Bible is broken up in this way there is no comprehensive grand narrative to withstand the power of the comprehensive humanist narrative that shapes our culture.
It is possible to know many Bible stories and still miss the Bible’s one great story. It is possible to master biblical doctrines and theology and still miss the unfolding mission of God that gives them their place and meaning. As theologian Edmund Clowney observed, “It is possible to know Bible stories yet miss the Bible Story."
Like every great story, the Bible has a beginning, middle, and end. It begins with God creating a world without sin in Genesis 1–2, and it ends with God restoring a world without sin in Revelation 21–22. Between those bookends lies the greatest story ever told: the story of the triune God’s mission to redeem and restore everything lost through humanity’s fall into sin.
Jesus himself taught us to read the Bible this way. After his resurrection, he explained to his disciples “in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27). Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures and summarized their central message: “that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations” (Luke 24:46–47).
In other words, Jesus taught that the whole Bible points not only to his person and saving work, but also to God’s mission through him to all nations.
So, we need more than a biblical basis for missions. We need a missional basis for reading the whole Bible. God’s mission is not merely one theme among many in Scripture. It is one of the central threads woven throughout the entire biblical story.
Only when we learn how to read Scripture as the unfolding story of God’s mission can we see how its doctrines, stories, promises, commands, and events fit together in one magnificent whole.
B. This one grand story reveals the only true story of the whole world.
The Bible’s grand story of God's mission is not only the story that unites all of Scripture. It is also the story that explains all of reality.
Everyone lives by a story. Whether we realize it or not, we interpret our lives through some larger understanding of reality—a worldview that seeks to answer life’s deepest questions:
Where did we come from?
Why is everything so broken?
What is the solution to evil and suffering?
Where is history headed?
How do our lives fit into the story?
These questions are not abstract. They shape how we understand ourselves, our relationships, our work, our suffering, and our purpose. They help us answer some of the most ancient and significant questions in life:
Why is the world filled with both breathtaking beauty and heartbreaking brokenness?
Why do human beings display both profound dignity and deep depravity?
Why do we keep longing for meaning, justice, beauty, love, and transcendence?
We look for answers and we remain restless until we find a story large enough to make sense of life as it really is. In many ways, the history of civilization is the history of human beings trying to answer these ultimate questions.
Across cultures and generations, people have embraced many stories to explain reality: stories of human progress, political liberation, economic prosperity, personal fulfillment, scientific materialism, and more. Yet none of these stories can adequately explain both the beauty and brokenness of the world, both the dignity and depravity of humanity.
This is why we need to know the Bible’s unfolding story of history. Our understanding of universal history—the true story of humanity and the world—is what gives our lives meaning.
The Bible’s story of God’s mission tells us that we were created by God, for God, and in his image with great dignity; that we and all God’s good creation have been ruined by humanity’s fall into sin; and that God is now redeeming and restoring us and his world through his Son and by his Spirit, until the day when Christ returns to make us and all things new forever.
So, the Bible’s story of God's mission in the world is not merely one religious story among many. It is the only story large enough to explain the whole world—and our place within it.
Lesslie Newbigin illustrates this point through a striking encounter with a Hindu leader in India. The leader challenged missionaries not to present the Bible merely as another “book of religion,” because India already had many such books. What made the Bible unique, he said, was that it offered something far greater: a comprehensive interpretation of universal history—the story of the whole creation, the whole human race, and every person’s place within it.
The Hindu leader said:
“I can’t understand why you missionaries present the Bible to us in India as a book of religion. It is not a book of religion—and anyway we have plenty of books of religion in India. We don’t need any more! I find in your Bible a unique interpretation of universal history, the history of the whole of creation and the history of the human race. And therefore a unique interpretation of the human person as a responsible actor in history. That is unique. There is nothing else in the whole religious literature of the world to put alongside it.”
This is why Christian missions does not call people merely to adopt a new “religion,” as though faith belonged only to the sacred or private part of life. The biblical gospel summons people to turn from all their false stories and submit every sphere of life to the lordship of Christ.
C. This one grand story is meant to draw you in to find your place and purpose in life.
The Bible’s grand story of God’s mission is not merely a story that helps you understand Scripture more clearly or develop a truer view of reality and the world. It is the story in which God calls you to find your place and purpose in life.
God did not design us to find true joy by making personal happiness our life mission. Deep and lasting joy only comes as we turn from our self-preoccupation, embrace what Tim Keller calls “the freedom of self-forgetfulness,” and learn to align our life story with God’s greater story—and our life mission with his greater mission for the world.
The same God who created you in his image designed you to flourish as your life story becomes aligned with his story, your purpose with his purpose, and your mission with his mission for the world. We cannot fully understand ourselves apart from the God who created us, nor can we find lasting fulfillment apart from the purposes for which he made us.
II. The Grand Story Reveals the Magnificent Acts of God in Mission
Act I: The Magnificent Acts of the Father in Creation
The grand story begins with the magnificent acts of the Father as Lord of creation, working through his Son and by his Spirit. Creation sets the stage for the entire biblical drama. Everything God made was good, yet neither humanity nor the world had reached the fullness he intended.
Scene One: The Father Creates Humanity—Good but Not Complete
The curtain rises on Adam and Eve, created in God’s image and without sin, flaw, or defect. They were good, but they were not yet complete. They had not yet been tested, proven, or brought to full maturity.
They stood at the beginning of a life meant to grow ever deeper in wisdom, love, holiness, and Godlikeness. As they walked with God, they were to mature together with the world entrusted to their care, finding their joy in his presence and their purpose in his mission.
Scene Two: The Father Creates the World—Good but Not Complete
The scene widens from the first humans to the world around them. The earth God made was also good, but still undeveloped. Genesis draws our attention from the whole earth to the land of Eden and then to the garden God planted within it.
There Adam and Eve experienced heaven on earth. They lived in God’s presence, enjoyed fellowship with him, and knew his shalom—peace, wholeness, blessing, and joy. Their communion with God overflowed into harmony within themselves, with one another, and with creation.
But the garden was only the beginning. Beyond it lay a world filled with possibilities waiting to be cultivated—a small realm of order, beauty, and blessing intended to spread until it filled the earth.
Scene Three: The Father Begins His Mission for Humanity and the World
Now the view pulls back to reveal the meaning of the whole act. God did not intend the garden to remain an isolated paradise. His mission was to work through Adam and Eve to extend the blessings of his presence from Eden throughout the earth.
As God’s image-bearers and royal representatives, they were commissioned to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it” and to exercise dominion under his lordship. Adam was also placed in the garden “to work it and keep it”—to cultivate God’s world and guard the sacred place of his presence.
Creation, then, was not a finished paradise but the beginning of God’s unfolding mission.
Humanity’s original mission was to enjoy God’s presence, represent his rule, reflect his character, and extend his blessing until the whole earth became his dwelling place—an eternal display of his glory.
It is hard to imagine what humanity and the world would have looked like had history taken this path of fulfilling God's mission uninterrupted — if Adam and Eve had matured into the fullness God intended, filling the earth with his glory without ever falling.
Yet we do not have to imagine it. The new heaven and new earth, which close out this story in the last act--SPOILER ALERT!--show us in vivid detail what the completion of God's original mission will finally look like.
Act Two: The Rebellious Acts of Humanity in the Fall
The second act opens with catastrophe. A real enemy, Satan, enters the drama and sets out to overthrow God’s mission by tempting Adam and Eve to reject his lordship. Through their rebellion, sin enters the world, humanity falls under God’s just curse, and creation comes under Satan’s tyrannical influence.
Scene One: Humanity Is Cursed—But Not Erased
The curtain rises on Adam and Eve as Satan entices them to seek life, wisdom, and glory apart from God. They reject his gracious rule and choose independence.
Their rebellion changes the condition of the entire human race. Innocence gives way to guilt and condemnation. Pure hearts become corrupt hearts filled with disordered loves—dead toward God, enslaved to idols, and bent toward disobedience. Bodies once untouched by suffering become subject to sickness, decay, and death.
Yet humanity is not erased. God’s image is defaced, but not destroyed. Every fallen person still possesses dignity and bears traces of the glory for which humanity was created.
Scene Two: The World Is Cursed—But Not Erased
The scene widens as the consequences of humanity’s rebellion spread throughout creation. Paradise is lost. Adam and Eve are driven from the garden and barred from the tree of life. God’s shalom—his peace, wholeness, blessing, and joy—is shattered.
Like a polluted river, humanity’s broken relationship with God flows into every other relationship. Shame and fear distort our relationship with ourselves. Blame, conflict, injustice, and violence corrupt our relationships with others. The world becomes broken spiritually, socially, culturally, economically, and politically.
Creation remains God’s world, but it is now subjected to frustration and exploited by the one Jesus calls “the ruler of this world.” Satan falsely cries, “Mine!” over what belongs to God and bends humanity and creation toward his destructive purposes.
Scene Three: God’s Mission Is Thwarted—But Not Abandoned
Now the view pulls back to reveal the meaning of the fall for God’s mission. Humanity’s mission is not merely neglected; it is reversed. Instead of extending God’s kingdom and filling the earth with his glory, fallen people seek to establish their own name, fame, rule, and purposes. God’s royal representatives become builders of rival kingdoms.
The fall, then, is not only the loss of paradise. It is the loss of humanity’s true purpose in the world.
Yet God’s mission is thwarted, not abandoned. He would have been perfectly just to leave humanity and creation under his curse forever. For his mission to continue, both would have to be rescued from judgment and Satan’s rule, then restored as a new humanity in a renewed world.
What God chooses to do next is nothing less than astonishing grace.
Act Three: The Magnificent Acts of the Son in Redemption
The third act opens with a promise of astonishing grace. Humanity has rebelled, creation lies under God’s curse, and Satan appears to have seized the world. Yet even as God pronounces judgment, he announces the gospel for the first time: a descendant of the woman will come to defeat the serpent, reverse the curse, and rescue God’s people and world (Gen. 3:15).
Scene One: The Son Redeems Fallen Humanity
This scene unfolds in two great movements.
Movement One: The Son Redeems Israel
The eternal Son did not begin his work of redemption only when he became human in the first century. Every act of God involves the Father, Son, and Spirit. Just as the Father created all things through his Son and by his Spirit, so throughout the Old Testament the Father redeemed his people through the Son and by the Spirit.
Jesus taught that the Old Testament Scriptures revealed both himself and God’s unfolding mission. Jude even identifies Jesus as the one who delivered Israel from Egypt, while Paul writes that the spiritual Rock accompanying Israel was Christ (Jude 5; 1 Cor. 10:4).
Through a series of covenants, God gradually unveiled his plan. Through Noah, he preserved the world until his saving mission was complete. Through Abraham, he promised that the Redeemer would come from his family, bring blessing to all nations, and lead his people into a fruitful land—a foretaste of the renewed world to come.
Under Moses and David, Israel became a redeemed nation called to live by faith in God’s promised deliverer. Its slavery, exodus, covenant life, kingdom, and exile all pointed beyond themselves to a greater rescue still to come.
Yet Israel repeatedly failed and broke covenant with God. Still, God did not abandon his missiom. Through the prophets, he announced a coming Redeemer King who would establish a new covenant, forgive sins, give his people new hearts by the Spirit, defeat their enemies, and bring them into a restored world.
Movement Two: The Son Redeems All Nations
Then the lights rise on the climax of the drama. In the fullness of time, the Father sends his eternal Son into the world. Jesus comes as the new and obedient Adam and as the true and faithful Israel, succeeding where both Adam and Israel had failed.
He announces that God’s kingdom is at hand and reveals himself as the promised Redeemer King:
In his birth, the eternal Son enters our story as one of us.
In his life, he obeys God perfectly and displays the coming kingdom through his words, signs, and wonders.
In his death, he bears the guilt and curse deserved by his people.
In his resurrection, he conquers sin and death and inaugurates God’s new creation.
In his ascension, the Father enthrones him as Savior and Lord, from where he advances God’s mission by his Spirit until he returns.
The Son’s redemption now reaches beyond Israel to gather a new humanity from every tribe, language, people, and nation.
Scene Two: The Son Redeems the Fallen World
The scene now widens. Humanity is not the only captive needing rescue. The world itself lies under Satan’s tyrannical rule and the powers of darkness.
At the cross, Jesus strikes the decisive blow against those powers. What appears to be Satan’s greatest victory becomes his greatest defeat. Through his suffering and death, Christ disarms the rulers and authorities and triumphs over them (Col. 2:15).
His redemption is therefore not only personal but cosmic. Through the blood of his cross, God purposes to reconcile all things to himself—things on earth and things in heaven (Col. 1:19–20).
Satan has been decisively defeated, though not yet finally destroyed.
Like the White Witch in C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, he mistakes sacrificial death for final victory. Yet Christ’s resurrection reveals a deeper triumph: death itself becomes the means through which the enemy’s power is broken.
Scene Three: God’s Mission Is Accomplished—But Not Yet Complete
Now the view pulls back to reveal the meaning of the whole act. Through the birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ, God has accomplished the redemption of both humanity and the world. The decisive victory has been won.
Yet redemption has not reached its final consummation. Like the Allied landing at Normandy, Christ’s victory has determined the outcome even though the battle continues. Satan is defeated but still active. Death is conquered but not yet removed. The new creation has begun but has not yet filled the earth.
God’s redeemed humanity and world must now be restored. This prepares the stage for the final act, in which the Holy Spirit applies the Son’s completed redemption, forms a new humanity, renews creation, and brings God’s kingdom toward its appointed fullness.
Act Four: The Magnificent Acts of the Spirit in Restoration
The final act begins when the risen Christ pours out the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. The Son has accomplished redemption; now the Spirit applies that redemption, restores God’s people and world, and carries God’s mission toward its appointed fullness.
This act also unfolds in two great scenes. Scene One is the world in which we now live—the kingdom already present and being proclaimed. Scene Two begins when Christ returns—the kingdom coming in its fullness.
Scene One: The Proclaimed Kingdom—Already (You Are Here!)
The curtain rises in Jerusalem. The disciples are waiting and praying when the sound of a mighty wind fills the house, tongues like fire appear, and the Spirit is poured out. Pentecost reveals that Jesus has been enthroned at the Father’s right hand and now reigns over all things as Savior and Lord. The age Scripture calls “the last days” has begun.
Movement One: The Spirit Is Restoring Redeemed Humanity
The Spirit begins reversing the curse of Act Two by applying the redemption accomplished in Act Three.
There, humanity’s innocent standing before God became a standing of guilt; here, the Spirit grants forgiveness, righteousness, and adoption to all who turn to Christ in repentance and faith.
There, humanity’s pure heart became corrupt and enslaved to idols; here, the Spirit gives a new heart, indwelling and regenerating all who believe, and restoring them to live under his gracious rule.
From Pentecost onward, the Spirit forms the church as the firstfruits of God’s new humanity. The gospel moves from Jews to Samaritans to Gentiles, gathering people from every nation into one body under one Lord.
Movement Two: The Spirit Is Restoring the Redeemed World
The scene widens as the Spirit sends this new humanity into the world. Like Abraham, the church is blessed to become a blessing to all nations.
Gathered for worship and scattered throughout daily life, believers enter homes, workplaces, neighborhoods, cultures, and communities as salt and light. They resist decay, expose darkness, serve those in need, pursue mercy and justice, and make Christ’s invisible kingdom increasingly visible through faithful obedience.
By the Spirit’s power, God’s people begin to embody the life of the coming kingdom in every sphere of life. Yet they will not perfect the world before Christ returns. The kingdom is truly present, but not yet complete. Christ reigns, the gospel advances, and the Spirit is at work, even as sin, suffering, injustice, and death remain.
The church does not carry out an independent mission for an absent Christ. The risen Lord continues his own mission from heaven through his people by the power of his Spirit. Through the church's obedience to Jesus' Great Commission, he gathers a new humanity from all nations and restores his image-bearers to reflect his character, represent his rule, and extend his blessing throughout the world.
This is where we are in the drama now. We live between Christ’s resurrection and the restoration of all things. His kingdom is already present, but it has not yet come in fullness. Christ reigns, the Spirit is at work, and the gospel is advancing—yet sin, suffering, injustice, and death remain.
To borrow C. S. Lewis’s imagery, Aslan is on the move. Winter has not disappeared, but spring has begun to break through. This is the proclaimed kingdom, and every follower of Christ is called to take an active part in its unfolding mission.
But the curtain has not yet risen on the final scene.
Scene Two: The Coming Kingdom—Not Yet
The second scene begins with the return of Christ in glory. The kingdom inaugurated by the Son and proclaimed by the Spirit will then come in its fullness.
Movement One: The Spirit Will Fully Restore Redeemed Humanity
Christ will raise the dead, judge all humanity, and, by the power of the Spirit, clothe his redeemed people with incorruptible resurrection bodies.
Those who belong to Christ are already free from sin’s penalty and are being delivered from its ruling power. Then they will be freed from sin’s very presence.
They will not merely return to Adam and Eve’s original condition, in which falling remained possible. They will enter the glorified state toward which humanity was always meant to grow—fully mature, perfectly holy, and no longer able to fall.
Every relationship shattered by sin will be healed. God’s people will flourish in communion with him, within themselves, with one another, and with creation. Before the throne will stand a multitude from every nation, tribe, people, and language.
At last, redeemed humanity will become all that God created it to be.
Movement Two: The Spirit Will Fully Restore the Redeemed World
When Christ returns, he will judge evil and finally defeat every enemy—Satan, sin, and death. Satan, the usurping ruler of this world, will be cast into final judgment, and creation itself will be liberated from his tyranny and its bondage to corruption.
As Paul writes, creation now “waits with eager longing” and will one day be “set free from its bondage to corruption” to share in the freedom and glory of God’s children (Rom. 8:19, 21). The restoration of God’s people and the restoration of his world therefore belong together.
Heaven and earth will then be fully united. The whole creation will become God’s dwelling place, and redeemed humanity will reign with Christ forever. God will wipe away every tear. Death, mourning, crying, and pain will be no more. The old order will pass away, and the One seated on the throne will declare, “Behold, I am making all things new” (Rev. 21:1–5).
God’s redeemed people and world will flourish forever under his gracious rule, and “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea” (Hab. 2:14).
Then God’s mission to restore humanity and the world will reach its eternal fulfillment. In the new heavens and new earth, his mission will not simply end; it will attain the fullness toward which it has been moving from the beginning.
No longer will Satan oppose God’s purposes, sinful humanity rebel against them, or corrupt powers distort them. Redeemed humanity will joyfully serve, cultivate, create, discover, reign, and flourish under Christ’s lordship forever.
The Father’s good creation, redeemed by the Son and fully restored by the Spirit, will finally become what it was always meant to be from the opening pages of Act One: the eternal kingdom of God on earth. Heaven and earth will be one, humanity and creation will flourish according to God’s original design, and the whole earth will be filled with his presence, his rule, and his glory—world without end.
III. How God’s Story Reshapes Our Stories
The magnificent acts of God are not merely historical events for us to understand. They reveal who the triune God is, what he is doing in the world, and how our lives can be transformed as we dare to find our place within his unfolding story.
This is where the course becomes deeply practical.
During the next lessons, we will look more closely at the Father’s magnificent acts in creation, humanity’s rebellious acts in the fall, the Son’s magnificent acts in redemption, and the Spirit’s magnificent acts of restoration—already and not yet.
As we study each act, we will pursue three practical goals. We will ask how God’s unfolding story can deepen our understanding and experience of the gospel of God, the salvation of God, and the mission of God—and how these realities can bring our own stories into greater alignment with his.
A. How Does God’s Story Deepen Our Understanding and Experience of the God's Gospel?
The gospel is far greater than many Christians realize.
It is not only the good news of who Jesus is and what he did—although his life, death, resurrection, and ascension stand at its center. It is also the good news of who the triune God is and what he has done: "The Father’s creation, ruined by humanity’s fall, has been redeemed by his Son and is being restored by his Spirit into the eternal kingdom of God on earth." This is the cosmic gospel.
This good news about who the triune God is and what he has done is also deeply personal. It's also the good news that "the Father so loved the world that he sent his Son to redeem us. God promises all who believe in him forgiveness of sin and the gift of his indwelling Spirit who will restore us to the fullness of life and mission for which God created us.
In the lessons ahead, we will ask how this gospel reshapes our identity, relationships, work, suffering, possessions, hopes, and calling. Our goal is not merely to believe the gospel at the beginning of the Christian life, but to learn how to bring every part of life increasingly into line with its truth.
B. How Does God’s Story Deepen Our Understanding and Experience of God's Salvation?
God’s salvation is also far greater than many Christians realize. It is more than the forgiveness of sins or the promise of heaven after death—as central and glorious as those truths are. Salvation is God’s work of restoring everything the fall has broken.
The early church father Augustine described God as our “Former and Re-Former,” our “Creator and Re-Creator,” and our “Maker and Re-Maker.” Creation is formation, the fall is deformation, and salvation is reformation.
Herman Bavinck later summarized this biblical vision with the memorable words, “Grace restores nature.” This means that God’s grace does not rescue us from his creation. It rescues us from sin so that humanity and creation may become what God always intended them to be.
In the lessons ahead, we will see how Christ’s salvation restores our broken relationship with God, with ourselves and our relationships with others. It also restores our calling in the world. God is not merely preparing us to leave creation. He is recreating us in Christ so that we may flourish as restored image-bearers under his gracious rule—now in part and one day in fullness.
C. How Does God’s Story Deepen Our Understanding and Experience of God's Mission?
The mission of God is likewise far greater than most people realize.
God’s redemptive mission to rescue sinners and make disciples of all nations is central to what he is doing today. But that redemptive mission serves an even greater purpose.
Before Jesus gave the Great Commission at the end of Matthew, the Father gave humanity its first commission at the beginning of Genesis. Adam and Eve were created as God’s image-bearing representatives to multiply, fill the earth, extend his gracious rule, cultivate creation, and fill the world with his glory.
Humanity’s rebellion thwarted that creation mission. God therefore inaugurated his redemptive mission to rescue and restore his fallen people and world so that his original purpose could still be fulfilled.
The Great Commission tells the church what to do: make disciples of all nations. The Lord’s Prayer reveals why: so that the Father’s name will be hallowed, his kingdom will come, and his will will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
In the lessons ahead, we will learn that joining God’s mission includes both making disciples and living as restored disciples in every sphere of life. Through our worship, relationships, vocations, witness, service, mercy, justice, and obedience, the Spirit enables us to make Christ’s invisible kingdom increasingly visible in the world.
These three questions will guide us throughout the rest of the course:
How does this act deepen our understanding and experience of the gospel?
How does it deepen our understanding and experience of salvation?
And how does it help us understand God’s mission and align our lives more fully with it?
The goal is not merely to understand God’s story. It is to be drawn into that story so that our smaller stories, in this generation, may contribute faithfully to his greater work in the world.
Conclusion: Serving God’s Purpose in Our Generation
This is where the purpose of this course becomes deeply personal.
As we emphasized in the introduction, the central conviction of this course is that when we understand the magnificent acts of God in his unfolding mission for humanity and the world, we also begin to see that:
God delights to manifest his presence and pour out his power upon those who dare to align their life mission with his mission for the world.
Our goal, then, is not merely to understand God’s mission, but to align our lives with it. During the lessons ahead, as we study God’s unfolding mission in greater depth, we want to be drawn more fully into the plot of his story so that our smaller stories may make a genuine contribution to his greater work in the world today.
Paul said of King David that, “after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, [he] fell asleep” (Acts 13:36). Like David, each of us has been placed in a particular generation and given a brief span of life in which to serve God’s purposes before we die.
But our highest example is the One far greater than David. Near the end of his earthly life, Jesus prayed to his Father and ours, “I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do” (John 17:4). What greater hope could we have than to reach the end of our lives able to say and pray something similar?
When I was in my early twenties, an elderly retired pastor named Robert Cox mentored me. He was finishing his race just as I was beginning mine. I can still hear him saying, “Steve, never forget: Only one life will soon be past; only what’s done for Christ will last.”
If you are a follower of Jesus, you are not here by chance at this moment in history. God set his love upon you before he created the world. The One who created you is now recreating you in Christ so that you may find your place in his story, make his mission your mission, and serve his purposes in the brief time entrusted to you.
In the lessons ahead, we will learn more clearly what God is doing in the world—and how this chapter of our lives can become more fully aligned with it.
The question is not merely, “What in the world is God doing?”
The question is also, “Will I join him?”
