The Mission of God

Andrew's anniversary gift to me was a journaling Bible. I am to pick a "lens" with which to view scripture as I read through it and write about how I see this hermeneutic playing out. I picked "The Mission of God"

Andrew and I had discussed this concept a while back. The discussion revolved around the phrase "Missio Dei", which is latin for the mission of God. Does God have a specific purpose that He is pursuing? What is God doing in the pages of scripture? Most importantly, if God does indeed have a mission, and intention with the world, shouldn't that be the mission of Christians? Shouldn't I be about what God is about? And so, I wanted to look for what God doing in scripture, so to be able to align myself with Him.

How am I defining Missio Dei? At first, I had pretty little direction. I just listened to four lectures by Dr. Mark Young, who gave a series at DTS called "Turning Theology Inside Out: Missio Dei". The thrust of his lectures was around a biblical theology of mission. That is, looking at how the idea and theme of mission unfolds throughout scripture. And mission, needs to be defined, not simply as the sending out of people from one locality to another, but as the very characteristic of being a sent-one of God, and imager of the Lord.

I have a few ideas that have been developing around this concept. For the sake of clarity I will write about them separately.

But here is my working definition of Missio Dei:

God glorifying Himself through the merciful salvation sinners restoring them to be His image bearers unto the ends of the Earth.