As a church, the body of Christ (Ephesians 1:22), we are a body of witnesses. All of us. We live different lives, but we were all created to be Christ’s witnesses to the world. We are fitted by God for that purpose. Some of us go overseas as witnesses, some stay closer to home, but all of us share a calling as Christ’s redeemed witnesses.

“Mission” and “missions” are words used by God’s people to describe what we are called to participate in as believers. Some biblical texts describe where we fit in. Matthew 28: 18-20 describes Jesus’ command to the church to make disciples of all people, baptizing them in the name of God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. People come into the life of Christ and integrated into God’s church as we the people of God introduce them to the gospel, but then commit to their growth in their new faith. As we can see, this involves God sending us into the world to raise up followers of Jesus. In this way, our mission involves doing. We are to follow Jesus’ command not just to make converts, but to make disciples, committed believers who are “on the way.” learning and growing in Christ.

Reformed churches share all of these commitments, but this is not where mission starts. Missions does not start with our doing anything. Mission starts with God. For ordinary sinners like us, mission describes God’s intentions and actions that redeem us from our fallenness and recreate us with new lives that reflect God’s beauty and glory into his creation. In Genesis 1:26, when God’s created Adam and Eve, God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” It goes on to describe our relationship with God who made us and slowly unveils what a relationship with God means. This means that everyone of us, every person, is created as a reflection, representative, and a relation of God. As the Bible introduces us to our new lives in Christ, we begin to see how big and grand that word “mission” is.

Ephesians describes this miraculous work of God, his mission, most completely. Here is a very brief outline of God’s mission. Paul, the apostle, writes a letter to a seriously challenged church. It was full of conflict and interpersonal barriers. The city had experienced centuries of warfare and struggle between ancestral enemies. There are tragic stories of massacres, race hatred, riots and more. What could better demonstrate how great our God is than to make one new body of people who radiate the love of God out all that violent raw material? That is just what God did. And the rebuilding of enemies into brothers, sisters, families, and churches started with what God purposed and accomplished.

To sum it up, our salvation started with the will, sacrificial love, and perfect accomplishment of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, all working in perfect love (because God is love, 1 Jn 4:8) to save undeserving people like us by giving us, as my old friend said, “new hearts, new records, and new lives.” Ephesians shows how salvation flows down from the heart of God through Christ. It gets better. The Holy Spirit unites us to Jesus our Savior who then brings us back into the life of God we were designed for when God made us. Think of it…when God chose to save us, he made it happen and that opened up a whole new life for us.

Because all believers are “in Christ,” we are all together in Christ. The Bible describes us as being one body in Christ because we are all in Christ. The people of Ephesus were divided by hatred and deep prejudice. But, in Christ, they become one people, one family. This is what we were created for in the beginning; to reflect the one who made us. In the New Testament we find out that what it means for us is that we begin to resemble Christ (Col. 1:15), the perfect reflection of God who we grow to resemble and then represent by reflecting him into the world.

Let’s pause for a moment. Our triune God, chose to love us by creating us to resemble the kind of love they have, even though we are just humans and can never express that kind of love perfectly. In Christ, we are then gathered together to reflect that wonderful saving love into world. In Christ, as new people with new hearts, records, and lives, we represent Christ and reflect that love back into our families, our neighborhoods, our work, our schools, so that as 2 Corinthians 2:15 says it, “we smell like Christ to those around us.”

In Christ, we the church, his body become a family. But the Bible takes it even further. Christ is not static. He is on the move, spreading salvation, through the Word and by the Spirit, in every part of the world. Because we are in him, we go out into the world with him. Hebrews 12:1-2 describes this work of reflecting and representing Christ into the world as running a race together with Christ. Rev 1:5 describes Christ as the faithful witness. That means if we run with the faithful witness, Jesus, we run as his witnesses. Can you see the point here? We were made by God and remade in Christ, filled by the Holy Spirit, to be his witnesses everywhere.

That also has two aspects to it. God moves out into the world with his redemption, let’s call that centrifugal grace. He also moves the world into the church. Let’s call that centripetal grace. God does both and we participate in both. We bring people into the church from the world so that they experience God’s Word by God’s Spirit and we go out into the world carrying God’s Word in the Spirit. Both are part of God’s mission.

As a church, the body of Christ (Ephesians 1:22), we are a body of witnesses. All of us. We live different lives, but we were all created to be Christ’s witnesses to the world. We are fitted by God for that purpose. Some of us go overseas as witnesses, some stay closer to home, but all of us share a calling as Christ’s redeemed witnesses, being transformed (2 Cor. 3:18), day by day to look like Christ and reflect his saving grace everywhere we go. That is what it means to be not just individual believers but a whole people on God’s mission.

There is one more bit of good news that comes with this calling. Ephesians describes what a life lived out as spiritual warfare looks like. Being witnesses in a fallen world is hard, much too hard for us. But incorporated by Christ into the world of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we are also equipped for the battle. As we step out into the world we live in, we are protected from spiritual harm by armor that safeguards our souls (Ephesians 6:10-20). It is defensive in protecting us from the mortal opposition of Satan. If you look at all the elements of armor we are granted in faith by God, all are protective, but their protection works in two ways. They are defensive in protecting our eternal future. They are also offensive in protecting our witness to the world through the Word of God and our transformed lives. The gospel was never made simply for our protection. It was made for the advance of Christ’s kingdom throughout the world, in little ways and big ones, locally and globally.

If you are in Christ, you have already been incorporated into this new calling. The question is where will you serve? How is God calling you to follow him? The church has many different ways to serve Christ and be his witnesses. The question is not whether you will be his witness, but how. It is our joy to welcome you to the fray.

Bill Nikides is a minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and serves as a missionary with Reformed Evangelistic Fellowship