XII — MEANING OF SENT
XII — SO, WHAT THEN IS THE MEANING OF BEING SENT INTO THE WORLD?
Because it is the object of Christ’s redeeming love, the world is on the receiving end of the sending of God and the mission of the church. Being sent means that the community of saving faith is fully aware that it is sent to more than the church. It is sent to more than simply the land or the earth, the sea or the animals, the plants, or the sky. Being sent means more than going to geographical places – nation states, cities, and villages. The primary target of God’s love is His created people (anthropos, homo, mensch, man). The community of faith is being sent into the “world” which was decorated and adorned (κόσμος or cosmos) with His created mankind – with families, men, women, and children. This “world,” this “decoration,” is a humanity that desperately needs to be saved.
The community of faith and mission is committed to being sent into the “world” of people who were created in the image of God. God created humankind with spirit, reason, and senses, with ways of thinking and logic, with relationships, with emotions, with language and communication, with actions and interactions, with learning, wisdom, and material things.
The church is sent to a mankind that was created holy and yet is fallen. We are all sinners, lost and condemned, with unbelief, disobedience, and distorted world views, with deviant behavior. We all live in darkness and filth, tribulation and sorrow, under the prince of this world and under God’s judgment.
And yet, this fallen and lost world was in the beginning wonderfully created and perfect.
The community of faith cannot let this scare us. We cannot stay comfortably behind locked doors, hiding in self-preservation and fear. We cannot face inward. Rather, Christ calls us to be immersed in the fallen world – to know it and study it, to relate to others and to suffer for and with them. He calls us to love this world. All people of the world need love, precisely because they are living in a world of tension that is inescapable because of sin.
52. John 17:14-16 I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.
53. John 17:18 As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.
54. 1 Corinthians 9:19-23 For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.
55. Romans 8:17-18 …and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.
56. Philippians 1:29 For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him butalso suffer for his sake.
