Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 119:476 (Oct 1962)
Article: The Primacy of Missions
Author: Greg Peters

BSac 119:476 (Oct 62) p. 335

The Primacy of Missions

George W. Peters

[George W. Peters is Professor of Missions Dallas Theological Seminary.]

Christian missions finds its authority, motive, and purpose in the character of Christianity as revealed in the Bible with its concepts of God the Father, Christ the Savior, the Holy Spirit the Advocate, and man as created in the image of God and for the fellowship and glory of God.

The Nature of Christianity

Christianity, according to the Bible, is not primarily a comprehensive philosophy, a higher way of life, a superior code of ethics, or a beautiful system of theology. It is all this and infinitely more. It is worship of a Person. It is a walk with God. Christianity objectively is the revelation of God in Christ as recorded in the Bible and subjectively the experience of Jesus Christ the Lord in His life, death, and resurrection by faith through the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit. Upon that initial experience the Holy Spirit indwells the life continuously to make Christ real to and in the soul of the believer, progressively transforms the personality into the image of the Savior and identifies the believer with the purpose of God. Christianity can never be dissociated from Christ as the eternal Son of God, the historic Son of Man, and the present glorified Lord, Mediator and High Priest at the right hand of the throne of God. Christ is the very essence of Christianity. Griffith Thomas is therefore correct when he speaks of Christianity as being Christ.

The Incomparable Religion

The finality, absoluteness, fullness (pleroma), adequacy, inclusiveness, and exclusiveness of Christ lift Christianity from the midst of all religious systems to a uniqueness which makes all comparative religion studies relative. Christianity

BSac 119:476 (Oct 62) p. 336

is presented as the “incomparable religion” of the world with Christ as the universal and sufficient Savior and Lord who becomes efficient to all who believe. As such Christ in His person and work is the absolute and authoritative ground and efficient motive of Christian missions and makes missions primary and imperative. “The supreme argument for foreign missions,” says an earnest missionary advocate, “is the word of Jesus Christ himself.”1 This is correct but for three words. The supreme argument for foreign missions is not any word of Christ’s—it is Christ Himself, and what He reveals and signifies. The words of Christ did not create new duties. They revealed eternal duties, the grounds of which lay back of all words in the nature of things and in the facts of life.

Missions Inherent in the Nature of Christi...

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