A gracious disturbance is at work in the world today. With the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the age to come has broken into this present evil age. It’s not business as usual. God isn’t coming alongside us to empower us for our projects of personal and social transformation. God did not become flesh and suffer an ignominious death at our hands so that we could have sprawling church campuses, programs, and budgets. There’s something more profound—more radical—going on. But what is it?
In Christ, God has broken into our world of sin and death and is even now bringing the powers of the age to come into the present age by his Word and Spirit. It is a profound disturbance of our lives and our world: disorienting, dividing, and delivering us from the supposed givens of what we thought were “reality.”
But for that reason, it’s a gracious disturbance. God is interrupting the regular news to bring us a special report and through us is bringing this report to the ends of the earth. Around this news from heaven the Spirit is gathering a colony or embassy of grace in a world of fear, guilt, rebellion, and distraction. Jesus’s mandate in the Great Commission is a lodestar for refocusing our mission as Christians and as churches on the central calling for this time between Christ’s two comings.- Michael Horton, Gospel Commission, The: Recovering God's Strategy for Making Disciples
, p.7(HT: Erik Raymond)
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