Vol 2:38 The Soul of God: Living and Breathing the Mission of God – A Mission that is Personal

God’s mission is deeply personal.  This insight is expressed in Ray Anderson’s theological memoir, The Soul of God.        

In the fourth chapter of The Soul of God, Ray Anderson shares a perspective from this theological mentor Thomas F. Torrance “that God confronts humans as subjects” (p. 61). 

Anderson states that Torrance expressed “that God confronts humans as subjects ‘by addressing them personally and claiming from them personal responses’” (p. 61).  The implications of such an understanding, as Anderson reveals, is that God’s revelation and communication with humanity is deeply personal and rooted in the communities in which humans reside.  To speak of God’s encounter apart from a personal and communal understanding is to, in my words, to misunderstand the personal and communal nature of God’s redemptive mission.

Anderson expresses, that Torrance concluded, “Knowledge of God takes place not only within the rational structures, but also within the personal and social structures of human life, where the Spirit is at work as personalizing Spirit.  As the living presence of God who confronts us with His (sic) Being, addresses us in [God’s] Word, opens us out toward Himself, and calls forth from us the response of faith and love, [God] rehabilitates the human subject, sustaining [them] in [their] personal relationship with God and with [their] fellow creatures” (pp. 61, 62).

Mission can sometimes be seen as an impersonal task – it is something we do or are called to do – with the focus being on the something.  But this understanding of God and God’s nature as One who addresses us personally and claims from us personal responses – either a yes or no to God, which involves our hearts as well as our minds, leads me to regard mission as not something that is impersonal, but as an activity, an engagement that always embraces someone.  God’s mission, God’s acts of salvation, therefore, are not somethings, they are always personal acts engaging and embracing someones.

How can I say this in another way? 

Just as Jesus is the embodiment of God’s reign, Jesus is also the embodiment of God’s mission.  Jesus in his person lived out the mission of God – by bringing the presence of God to encounter the sinful brokenness of humanity.  God’s mission has a heart, God’s mission has a circulatory system, God’s mission has a nervous, muscular, and skeletal system, God’s mission has organs.  That is to say – God’s mission is lived through the thoughts, actions, relationships, dreams, sufferings, struggles, and hopes of people – most fully in Jesus Christ, but also now through us – as the people of God, as we are identified and rooted in Christ Jesus.

God’s mission is not something that happens outside of us, as it did not happen outside of Jesus – God’s mission happens in us, through us and engages others in their lives and through their lives.  God’s mission is deeply personal and not at all impersonal, not at all about something – it is always about someones – bringing about liberation, setting us free from what binds us, what binds others, bringing healing and wholeness, conquering sin and death – not just out there, but in us and the power it has in us.  God’s mission is deeply personal, because God is personal, because humanity is personal.  The power of sin and death would have us see humanity impersonally, but the grace of God gives us eyes and ears to notice that God intends us as human beings to be deeply personal – with one another and with God.

So, may we help each other live and breathe the mission of God in our lives.