Mere Missions

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their souls. A world of nice people, content in their own niceness, looking no further, turned away from God, would be just as desperately in need of salvation as a miserable world – and might even be more difficult to save. . . . For mere improvement is no redemption, though redemption always improves people even here and now and will, in the end, improve them to a degree we cannot yet imagine. God became a man to turn creatures into sons: not simply to produce better men of the old kind but to produce a new kind of man. ~ C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity . C. S. Lewis clearly understood that niceness, though good, doesn’t necessarily mean you’re saved or lead to the salvation of souls. The Buddhists were nice people, but their niceness brought no eternal redemption of souls. It was John Wesley who said, “You have one business on earth – to save souls; therefore, spend and be spent in this work.” The Apostle Paul said the same thing to the Corinthian Church, “I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls” (2 Cor. 12.15a). Why this focus on souls? Why has the Church throughout history, from Paul the Apostle to John Wesley to the Church of the twenty-first century, sacrificed everything, and in some cases their very lives, for those lost without Christ? The crowning of all God’s creation is man and woman, for they are created in the image of God (Gen. 1.27; Ps. 8). When God breathed His life into man, he became a living soul (Gen. 2.7); an eternal being. Souls are not distinguished by ethnicity, color, race, gender, age, or class. God looks past the outer distinctions of His creation – “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (Ps. 139.14) – and looks at the inward eternal soul of a person. The Scriptures are clear that the soul does not die when the body dies (Eccles. 12.5-7; Matt. 17.1-3; 22.31-32; Luke 16.19-31; 23.39-43; Rev. 6.9). Not only is this scriptural but