by John Piper
43. Ibid., 226.
44. Ibid.
45. Ibid.
46. For my understanding, following Jonathan Edwards, on the relationship between passion for the supremacy and compassion for the souls of men, see chapter 6.
47. Hodge, Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, 553.
5
The Supremacy of God
among “All the Nations”
Can Love Decide?
How do we decide what the task of missions is, or even if there should be such a thing as missions? One answer would be that love demands it and love defines it. If people all over the world are under condemnation for sin and cut off from eternal life (Eph. 2:2–3, 12; 4:17; 5:6), and if calling on Jesus is their only hope for eternal, joyful fellowship with God (as chap. 4 shows), then love demands missions.
But can love define missions? Not without consulting the strange ways of God. Sometimes the ways of God are not the way we would have done things with our limited views. But God is love, even when his ways are puzzling. It may not look like love for your life if you sold all that you had and bought a barren field. But it might in fact be love from another perspective, namely, that there is a treasure buried in the field. So, of course, love will consult God’s perspective on missions. Love will refuse to define missions with a limited human perspective. Love will test its logic by the larger picture of God’s ways.
Two Sinking Ocean Liners
The limits of love’s wisdom become plain when we imagine missions as a rescue operation during a tragedy at sea.
Suppose there are two ocean liners on the sea, and both begin to sink at the same time with large numbers of people on board who do not know how to swim. There are some lifeboats but not enough. And suppose you are in charge of a team of ten rescuers in two large boats.
You arrive on the scene of the first sinking ship and find yourself surrounded by hundreds of screaming people, some going down before your eyes, some fighting over scraps of debris, others ready to jump into the water from the sinking ship. Several hundred yards away the very same thing is happening to the people on the other ship.
Your heart breaks for the dying people. You long to save as many as you can, so you cry out to your two crews to give every ounce of energy they have. There are five rescuers in each boat, and they are working with all their might. They are saving many. There is lots of room in the rescue boats.
Then someone cries out from the other ship, “Come over and help us!” What would love do? Would love go or stay?
I cannot think of any reason that love would leave its life-saving labor and go to the other ship. Love puts no higher value on distant souls than on nearer souls. In fact, love might well reason that in the time it would take to row across the several hundred yards to the other ship, an overall loss of total lives would result.
Love might also reason that the energy of the rescuers would be depleted by rowing between ships, which would possibly result in a smaller number of individuals being saved. Not only that, but from past experience you may know that the people on the other boat were probably all drunk at this time in the evening and would be less cooperative with your saving efforts. This too might mean fewer lives saved.
So love, by itself, may very well refuse to leave its present rescue operation. It may stay at its present work in order to save as many individuals as possible.
This imaginary scene on the sea is not, of course, a perfect picture of the church in the world, if for no other reason than that the rescue potential of the church is not fully engaged even where it is. But the point of the illustration still stands: Love alone (from our limited human perspective) may not see the missionary task the way God does.
God May Have Another View
God may have in mind that the aim of the rescue operation should be to gather saved sinners from every people in the world (from both ocean liners), even if some of the rescuers must leave a fruitful reached people (the first ocean liner) in order to labor among an (possibly less fruitful) unreached people (the second ocean liner).
In other words, the task of missions may not be merely to win1 as many individuals as possible from the most responsive people groups of the world but rather to win individuals from all the people groups of the world. It may not be enough to define missions as leaving the safe shore of our own culture to conduct rescue operations on the strange seas of other languages and cultures. Something may need to be added to that definition that impels us to leave one rescue operation to take up another.
This chapter shows that God’s call for missions in Scripture cannot be defined in terms of crossing cultures to maximize the total number of individuals saved. Rather, God’s will for missions is that every people group be reached with the testimony of Christ and that a people be called out for his name from all the nations.2
I believe that this definition of missions will in fact result in the greatest possible number of white-hot worshipers for God’s Son. But that remains for God to decide. Our responsibility is to define missions his way and then obey. That means we must conduct a careful investigation of how the New Testament portrays the special missionary task of the church. More specifically, we must assess biblically the widespread concept of “unreached peoples” as the focus of missionary activity.
The Indictment of 1974: People Blindness
Since 1974, the task of missions has increasingly focused on evangelizing3 unreached peoples as opposed to evangelizing unreached territories. That year at the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization, Ralph Winter shocked and indicted the Western missionary enterprise with what he called “people blindness.” Since that time he and others have relentlessly pressed the “people-group” focus onto the agenda of most mission-minded churches and agencies. The “shattering truth” that he revealed at Lausanne was this: In spite of the fact that every country of the world has been penetrated with the gospel, four out of five non-Christians are still cut off from the gospel because the barriers are cultural and linguistic, not geographic.
Why is this fact not more widely known? I’m afraid that all our exultation about the fact that every country of the world has been penetrated has allowed many to suppose that every culture has by now been penetrated. This misunderstanding is a malady so widespread that it deserves a special name. Let us call it “people blindness,” that is, blindness to the existence of separate peoples within countries—a blindness, I might add, which seems more prevalent in the U.S. and among U.S. missionaries than anywhere else.4
Winter’s message was a powerful call for the church of Christ to reorient its thinking so that missions would be seen as the task of evangelizing unreached peoples, not the task of merely evangelizing more territories. In a most remarkable way, in the next fifteen years the missionary enterprise responded to this call. In 1989, Winter was able to write, “Now that the concept of Unreached Peoples has taken hold very widely, it is immediately possible to make plans . . . with far greater confidence and precision.”5
A Milestone Definition, 1982
Probably the most significant unified effort to define “people group” came in March 1982 as a result of the work of the Lausanne Strategy Working Group. This meeting defined a “people group” as:
a significantly large grouping of individuals who perceive themselves to have a common affinity for one another because of their shared language, religion, ethnicity, residence, occupation, class or caste, situation, etc. or combinations of these. . . . [It is] the largest group within which the Gospel can spread as a church planting movement without encountering barriers of understanding or acceptance.6
We should be aware that this definition was developed not merely on the basis of biblical teaching about the specific nature of people groups but also on the basis of what would help missionaries identify and reach various groups. This is a legitimate method for advancing evangelistic strategy. But we need to distinguish it from the method I will use in this chapter.7
We also need to make c
lear at the outset that I am not going to use the term “people group” in a precise sociological way as distinct from “people.” I agree with those who say that the biblical concept of “peoples” or “nations” cannot be stretched to include individuals grouped on the basis of things such as occupation, residence, or handicaps. These are sociological groupings that are very relevant for evangelistic strategy but do not figure into defining the biblical meaning of “peoples” or “nations.” Harley Schreck and David Barrett have proposed distinguishing the sociological category “people group” from the ethnological category “peoples.”8 I agree with the category distinction but have found the terminology to be a linguistic straitjacket that I can’t wear. The singular “people” in the English language does not clearly signify a distinctive grouping. Therefore, when I use “people group,” I am only calling attention to the group concept over against individuals. The context will make clear the nature of the grouping.
“Test All Things”—Including People-Group Thinking
My aim is to test the people-group focus by the Scriptures. Is the missionary mandate of the Bible (1) a command to reach as many individuals as possible, or (2) a command to reach all the “fields,” or (3) a command to reach all the “people groups” of the world, as the Bible defines people groups? Is the emphasis that has dominated discussion since 1974 a biblical teaching, or is it simply a strategic development that gives missions effort a sharper focus?
So we turn now to the basic question of this chapter: Is it biblical to define the missionary task of the church as reaching all the unreached9peoples of the world? Or is it sufficient to say that missions is simply the effort to reach as many individuals as possible in places different from our own?
The Most Famous Commission
And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
Matthew 28:18–20
This passage is often called the Great Commission. The first thing to make clear about it is that it is still binding on the modern church. It was given not only to the apostles for their ministry but also to the church for its ministry as long as this age lasts.
The basis for saying this comes from the text itself. The undergirding promise of verse 20 says, “And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” The people referred to in the word “you” cannot be limited to the apostles, because they died within one generation. The promise extends to “the end of the age,” that is, to the day of judgment at Christ’s second coming (cf. Matt. 13:39–40, 49). Jesus is speaking to the apostles as representatives of the church, which would endure to the end of the age. He is assuring the church of his abiding presence and help as long as this age lasts. This is significant because the promise of verse 20 is given to sustain and encourage the command to make disciples of all nations. Therefore, if the sustaining promise is expressed in terms that endure to the end of the age, we may rightly assume that the command to make disciples also endures to the end of the age.
I conclude then that the Great Commission was given not just to the apostles but also to the church, which would endure to the end of the age. This is further buttressed by the authority Jesus claims in verse 18. He lays claim to “all authority in heaven and on earth.” This enables him to do what he had earlier promised in Matthew 16:18, when he said, “I will build my church.” So the abiding validity of the Great Commission rests on the ongoing authority of Christ over all things (Matt. 28:18) and on the purpose of Christ to build his church (Matt. 16:18) and on his promise to be present and help in the mission of the church to the end of the age (Matt. 28:20).
Therefore, these words of the Lord are crucial for deciding what the missionary task of the church should be today. Specifically, the words “make disciples of all nations” must be closely examined. They contain the very important phrase “all nations,” which is often referred to in the Greek form panta ta ethn (panta = all; ta = the; ethn = nations). The reason this is such an important phrase is that ethn, when translated as “nations,” sounds like a political or geographic grouping. That is its most common English usage. But this is not what the Greek means, nor does the English always mean this. For example, we say the Cherokee nation or the Sioux nation, which means something like “people with a unifying ethnic identity.” In fact, the word “ethnic” comes from the Greek word ethnos (singular of ethne). Our inclination then might be to take panta ta ethn as a reference to “all the ethnic groups.” “Go and disciple all the ethnic groups.”
But this is precisely what needs to be tested by a careful investigation of the wider biblical context and especially the use of ethnos in the New Testament and its Old Testament background.
The Singular Use of Ethnos in the New Testament
In the New Testament, the singular ethnos never refers to an individual.10 This is a striking fact. Every time the singular ethnos does occur it refers to a people group or nation—often the Jewish nation, even though in the plural it is usually translated “Gentiles” in distinction from the Jewish people.11
Here are some examples to illustrate the corporate meaning of the singular use of ethnos.
Nation [ethnos] will rise against nation [ethnos], and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places.
Matthew 24:7
Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation [ethnous] under heaven.
Acts 2:5
There was a man named Simon, who . . . amazed the people [ethnos] of Samaria.
Acts 8:9
You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation [ethnos], a people for his own possession.
1 Peter 2:9
By your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation [ethnous].
Revelation 5:9
What this survey of the singular establishes is that the word ethnos very naturally and normally carried a corporate meaning in reference to people groups with a certain ethnic identity. In fact, the reference in Acts 2:5 to “every nation” is very close in form to “all the nations” in Matthew 28:19. And in Acts 2:5 it must refer to people groups of some kind. At this stage, therefore, we find ourselves leaning toward a corporate “people group” understanding of “all the nations” in the Great Commission of Matthew 28:19.
The Plural Use of Ethnos in the New Testament
Unlike the singular, the plural of ethnos does not always refer to people groups. It sometimes simply refers to Gentile individuals.12 Many instances are ambiguous. What is important to see is that in the plural the word can refer either to an ethnic group or simply to Gentile individuals who may not make up an ethnic group. For example, consider the following texts, which illustrate the meaning of Gentile individuals.
Acts 13:48—When Paul turns to the Gentiles in Antioch after being rejected by the Jews, Luke says, “And when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord.” This is a reference not to nations but to the group of Gentile individuals at the synagogue who heard Paul.
1 Corinthians 12:2—“You know that when you were pagans, you were led astray to mute idols.” In this verse, “you” refers to the individual Gentile converts at Corinth. It would not make sense to say, “When you were nations . . .”
Ephesians 3:6—Paul says that the mystery of Christ is “that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body.” It would not make sense to say that nations are fellow heirs and members (a definite reference to individuals) of the same body. Paul’s conception is that the local body of Christ has many individual members who are Gentiles.
These are perhaps sufficient to show that the plural of ethnos does not have to mean nation or people group. On the other hand, the plural, like the sing
ular, certainly can, and often does, refer to people groups. For example:
Acts 13:19—Referring to the taking of the Promised Land by Israel, Paul says, “After destroying seven nations [ethne] in the land of Canaan, he gave them their land as an inheritance.”
Romans 4:17—“As it is written, ‘I have made you the father of many nations.’” Here Paul is quoting Genesis 17:4, where “father of a multitude of nations” does not refer to individuals but to people groups. Ethnon is a Greek translation of the Hebrew goyim, which virtually always means nations or people groups. For example, in Deuteronomy 7:1, Moses says that God will clear “away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Per-izzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.” The word “nations” here is goyim in Hebrew and ethn in Greek.
Revelation 11:9—“For three and a half days some from the peoples and tribes and languages and nations [ethnon] will gaze at their dead bodies.” In this sequence, it is clear that “nations” refers to some kind of ethnic grouping, not just to Gentile individuals.
What we have seen then is that in the plural ethn can mean Gentile individuals who may not be part of a single people group, or it can mean (as it always does in the singular) a people group with ethnic identity. This means that we cannot yet be certain which meaning is intended in Matthew 28:19. We cannot yet answer whether the task of missions is merely reaching as many individuals as possible or reaching all the people groups of the world.
Nevertheless, the fact that in the New Testament the singular ethnos never refers to an individual but always to a people group should perhaps incline us toward the people-group meaning unless the context leads us to think otherwise. This will be all the more true when we consider the Old Testament context and the impact it had on the writings of John and Paul. But first we should examine the New Testament use of the crucial phrase panta ta ethn (“all the nations”).