Martin Sutherland

The Baptist vision of Church springs from an understanding of the centrality of Christ who reveals the nature of God, inaugurates the Kingdom, and calls his disciples into a new society. Thus Baptist ecclesiology requires an integration of our grasp of the incarnation, the Trinity, eschatology, and mission. When thought out in the context of passages considered in Radical Discipleship, a dynamic picture emerges of the saving love of God.

The Trinity and Creation

At the centre of the Christian understanding of God is the life of the Trinity. God exists, not as some remote lonely figure but as a community of love - Father, Son and Spirit. Three, whose connection to one another is so perfect, so complete, that they are properly called “one”. That relationship was so perfect that it did not require anything else. God could have existed in eternity, with no creation to complicate the picture. However, whilst Christians do not accept that God had to create, that God needed the world or was forced into making it, we may nonetheless declare that creation was inevitable. Not that it was something imposed on God, but that the creative act sprang from the very heart of the Trinity itself.

The love of God is a giving love, agape love, not selfish in any sense. With such a love perfectly in operation, creation is neither surprising nor inexplicable. Put in simple form: this was a love too good not to share. So God created the universe - not merely as an object “out there”, nor as a plaything; but as a further focus of divine love. The plan of God, the “end” in mind, was a universe wholly in harmony with himself. Though disrupted by the fall, this plan did not alter. This is the vision of “all things coming under Christ” (Ephesians 1:20), of God “reconciling to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven” (Colossians 1:20).

The aim then, the eternal plan, the mission of God, is for a created order in harmony with himself. This is natural: it reflects exactly the life of the Trinity, the very nature of God. As the three persons subsist together in perfect harmony, so it is planned that the created order too will ultimately exist in such harmony with God. Now, of course, at least when viewed from our perspective, this harmony is not yet achieved. The world seems fractured, out of kilter with God. We have located the cause for this in humanity’s rebellion from God. We call this rebellion “sin”. Its product is separation from God, or “death”.

The Mission of God

“Sin and death” – these together constitute a “problem” to be overcome. So, with that ultimate goal of perfect harmony always clear, God sets about solving the “problem”. Crucially, everything about that solution is natural. It reflects the nature of God, the nature of the problem and the nature of the ultimate goal.

The very act of incarnation is a triumphant demonstration of the ultimate goal. God’s plan for the universe is that it will be in perfect harmony with himself. In Christ that plan is seen fulfilled – in miniature, perhaps - but the perfect demonstration of what God intends. Divine and human, in one person. This is the plan for the end of time enacted in time. Christ is the initiative of God, solving the problem - or, better, beginning the unfolding of a new reality. Jesus came declaring the kingdom of God, God’s reign, the fulfilment of God’s mission.

The mission includes us. The church is a part of the plan.

When we recall what Paul says about continuing the suffering of Christ, about Christians being children of God, joint heirs with the Son, about how the church is the body and “fullness” of Christ and about how the creation looks for the revealing of the children of God, we see the true enormity of what God has done in Christ and is doing through the church.

In Christ, by the power of the Spirit, Christians have been reconciled to God. Thus, in us, too, the plan for the end of time is now mysteriously fulfilled. The church plays an integral part in the unfolding plan of God. We are imperfect to be sure. We may still groan and wait for adoption to become evident in our midst but, for all that, we are the body of Christ – declaring God’s new order to the universe. This is what is signalled in the benediction in Ephesians 3:21. Amazingly, God may be glorified in the church as well as Christ. The concept of “glorifying” God here is a rich one. The Greek doxa, when applied to God in the New Testament transcends the simple notion of praising God. It is determined by the very divine nature. Christians do not merely offer praise, they participate in God’s glory as they participate in Christ. Conversely, in manifesting the fulfilment of the missio Dei, the church glorifies God, displaying to the universe who God is and what God has done, demonstrating by its very existence the divine nature.

This is our role in the mission of God. This is the cosmic dynamic that we call non-believers to join. As the incarnation of the missio Dei, church does not merely do mission, it embodies it. For Baptists this leads to important conclusions about the shape and membership of the church.

• Baptists and the "Real" Church
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