The Field Is the World Part 2 -- By: George McKillop Cowan

Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 100:400 (Oct 1943)
Article: The Field Is the World Part 2
Author: George McKillop Cowan


The Field Is the World
Part 2

George McKillop Cowan

(Concluded from the July-September Number, 1943)

“So Have I Also Sent Them into the World”
(John 17:18)

Every Christian is a missionary. Christ said: “As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world.” Note the inexorable logic of this verse, “as...so...” “As thou hast sent me into the world.” Christ was God the Son. He was rightfully at home in glory. Heaven, for Him, was not a thing to be sought or striven for; it was His. He was, however, sent of the Father, and this sending had in view “the world.” “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.” “Thou hast sent me into the world.” For Christ the “field” was “the world.”

As Christ, so the Christian. From the moment of the new birth the Christian belongs in glory. His citizenship is in heaven (Phil 3:20). “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world” (John 17:16). Not of the world, yet sent into the world. “Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God” (2 Cor 5:20). This ambassadorship takes in the whole world, for “ye shall be witnesses unto me...and unto the uttermost part of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Can there be any doubt that every Christian is a missionary and that his field is “the world”?

It is to be noted that the Holy Spirit, when enumerating the gifted men given to the church (Eph 4:11; 1 Cor 12:28ff) failed to designate any as “missionaries.” What! No missionaries? What an omission! Has God forgotten to

appoint those who shall bear the gospel to the ends of the earth? No, God has not forgotten. “As thou hast sent me...even so have I also sent them.” Being a missionary is not the specific call of some, it is the responsibility of all believers, and therefore, in the list of specific gifts it finds no mention. “But I’ve never felt called” is so often the plea of the Christian. Dear Christian, you don’t need a call to be a missionary. God says you are one. God has spoken once through His Son. Must God repeat Himself for your special benefit simply because you have failed to heed, or else have obdurately continued to disbelieve, His Son?

What a well-meaning and unconscious denial of the fact that every Chris...

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