faith for faith

From observation and experience, I believe it is safe to presume that ingrained in every human being is a desire to do something great with our lives–to make our short stint in this world count for something. Perhaps greater than the fear of death is this fear that we would have finished our lives unnoticed by the world and that our very existence would be forgotten by most soon after we die. For while we all know that we are mortal and that we shall all die (be it ten years or sixty years from now), many, if not all, of us feel that if we can be remembered for something after we die, we will achieve some sort of immortality in this world.

And while we who are Christians profess our immortality to be vested Elsewhere, we are certainly not exempt from this desire to be remembered in this age. And while our ambitions might be sanctified to some degree when compared to those of the world, the underlying desire is the same—to be remembered on this earth after we have passed from it.

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A common question is often raised, often in hostile dialogues, “If one believes in a God who has determined beforehand the destination of souls, why would one ever evangelize or do missions?” When that question is raised, I, more often than not, hear an inadequate or just plain bad response given instead of a proper response. Usually the answers are given by some poor, young soul who has not given much thought to the matter and does not want to get burned at the stake for the denying the present validity of the Great Commission, thus he says something like, “God has commanded us to do missions. We do not know who the elect souls are. Christ will not return until the Gospel has reached the ends of the Earth, etc.” All of these are true statements, but none of them are a proper answer to why we as Christians are to be about the work of evangelism and missions.

However, contrary to the popular belief that those who hold to a more Reformed view of theology are less apt and motivated to preach the Gospel and to reach the Nations than those who are not, I believe that the opposite is true, namely that those who are truly Reformed in their theology are better equipped both doctrinally and historically to be about the work of the Great Commission. Therefore, I hope that this post will not only adequately answer the question, “Why do Calvinists do missions?” but will also demonstrate that those who are genuinely Calvinists cannot help but “to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of [Christ's] name among the Nations” (Rom. 1:5).

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Several members of my church, including some dear friends, are leaving today to go to Honduras to help the Church there. They are leaving today–the day after Christmas, while many are going shopping, sitting around their homes drinking hot chocolate, or simply relishing a couple days off of work. They go sacrificing vacation time or wages for this upcoming week, possibly jeopardizing their fiscal stability and comfort. They go also after months of foregoing various luxuries in order to raise the money needed to fund the trip. They do this–what many in the world and in the church might consider a careless use of money and a waste of time, because they desire to glorify Jesus Christ by regarding others in the world as better than themselves.

Some in the Church grumble in the background, “Why do we continue to send our people and our money to places in the world where the Gospel has already been preached?” Others have grumbled about the nature of some of the past trips to Honduras, namely those that were done for the purpose of building dwellings and structures for the Church in Honduras rather than being a concerted effort to preach the Gospel to those who had not heard.

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What if we in the American Church, when doing foreign missions . . .

Instead of living in houses like this and building houses like this

We lived in houses like this and built houses like this?

What effect would that have on the Gospel? Would our love for the Church abroad be better demonstrated? Would the world view Americans and American Christianity in a different light? We likely will never know.