Mere Missions

J esus I s L ord : E ndearment • 51

must be rooted deep inside of you. It is a serious call to a devout and holy life. The seed of the root is the certainty that Jesus is Lord. All power and authority have been given to Him (Matt. 28.18) and his Kingdom is unshakeable (Heb. 12.28). Let me make it clear. Though this is a book on missions with the mandate of our Lord to go and keep moving forward, missions is not the Christians first duty nor the chief end of man. To be and to do are both action words that are integral to life. What a man is comes first in the sight of God, “Let us make man in our own image” (Gen. 1.26). We were created to be like God. We then were given a responsibility to do: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue” (Gen. 1.28). The Fall changed who we were created and intended to be. Our nature, our very heart, became corrupt which then corrupted what we did. God saw the cause of man’s wicked ways and that “every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” “The stream of our doing now flows out of a fountain polluted by evil thoughts and imaginations.” The fountain needed to be sanctified in order that our doing would be good and pleasing to God. We needed a new nature if we were to do anything of good for that is what we were created for, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2.10). Our being and doing are related. It is a cause-and-effect relationship. The primary work of the Holy Spirit is to restore the lost soul to intimate fellowship with God through the conviction of sin, righteousness, and judgment (John 16.8). Those who respond in faith to God’s redemption in Christ are reconciled to God and become a new creation (2 Cor. 5.17). The Holy Spirit then leads the willing heart of the new creation into deeper communion and active missions. The willing heart is the one who purposefully seeks to draw near and be endeared to Christ.