When the mission field comes to us

 Posted at Reformation Scotland:

"As ministers ought to be faithful, withholding nothing of the good counsel of God wherever providence calls them, so they ought to preach nothing but the glad tidings of salvation through the Mediator. In all their travail and labour among the people they should be aiming at nothing else but drawing poor souls in to Christ, catching them in the net of the gospel, desiring to know nothing amongst them but Christ and Him crucified."

Ordinarily, sinners are saved by hearing the Word of God preached in a local church. But what if the sinners who most need the preaching don’t come to church? Paul travelled extensively to bring the good news about Jesus Christ to pagans, but we do not need to travel beyond our own neighbourhoods to find a mission field. Our own local communities include many people whose lifestyle and philosophy of life is increasingly similar to the pagan world Paul inhabited, and who have never meaningfully encountered the truth about Jesus. Distance is now less geographical and more cultural and often literally in our neighbourhoods. Commenting on Paul’s missionary labours, John Brown of Wamphray insists words in the pulpit alone are not enough. On one hand, no outreach attempt will be successful without the Holy Spirit’s blessing. On the other hand, ministers must be visible enough in their own context that even when people are unaware of his labours within the church, the preacher’s whole life and behaviour — including the way he responds to difficulties and suffering — is a living witness to the gospel.

In Romans 15, Paul calls himself “a minister of Jesus Christ unto the Gentiles” (Romans 15:16). The whole employment and work of the servants of God in the ministry is about the glad tidings of salvation through the Mediator, Jesus Christ. All their activity is to unfold and make plain to poor sinners the mystery of the gospel that was hidden from the beginning of the world.
Ministry goals and routes to success

The main thing which the ministers of the gospel ought to be driving at, in all they do in the office of the ministry, is the salvation and reconciliation to God of the people they have responsibility for. It should be their main aim to get the people so wrought on at heart as to be willing to give themselves up and dedicate themselves to the Lord and His service, and that God would be well pleased with them. Paul’s aim was, “that the offering up of the Gentiles might be acceptable” (v.16).

At the same time, no service we can do will be accepted by God from us unless we are renewed, and made new creatures, having the Spirit of holiness dwelling and working in us, putting down the power of sin and corruption, and advancing the work of conformity to the image of God (“sanctified by the Holy Ghost,” v.16). Whatever lengths the ministers of the gospel go to in dealing with people, pressing them to abstain from sins and iniquities and to follow the ways of holiness, yet nothing of this will avail until the Spirit of God, who is the Spirit of sanctification, the only worker of holiness in God’s people, puts His hand to the work. They are “sanctified by the Holy Ghost.”

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