Editor's note: Internationally renowned Old Testament theologian Christopher J. H. Wright (abbreviated as Chris Wright below) shares his perspective on the mission of God and the role of Christians in today’s world in an exclusive interview with China Christian Daily. As the main architect of the 2010 Cape Town Commitment and former chair of the Lausanne Theology Working Group, Wright reveals the process of drafting the document. As the Fourth Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization (Lausanne 4) convened in Korea in late September, he expressed his hope for the Lausanne Movement to continue emphasizing the wholeness of the gospel relevant to the times, stressing that the need for holistic ministry, combining evangelism, social justice, and creation care, etc. Having been to China several times, he praises the Chinese church’s testimony to God’s faithfulness.
China Christian Daily: Can you introduce yourself?
Chris Wright: I have been a Christian since I was a boy of six, which is 70 years ago now. I live in London, but my original home is in Northern Ireland. I work for ministries founded by John Scott, who is quite well-known in China and throughout Asia. Our ministries aid theological education by enabling people to be funded to do doctoral studies and PhD., encourage writers, editors, and Christian publishing, and train those who need to know how to preach the Bible better.
China Christian Daily: According to your book, The Mission of God, what is the real mission of God?
Chris Wright: The word “mission” can be used in a number of ways, and sometimes it means simply to evangelize or try to make people become Christians. In the more general sense of a purpose, a goal, or an objective, the mission of God means that the God we read about in the Bible is the God whose will, purpose, and plan is ultimately to bring blessing to all creation. The mission of God means God's ultimate purpose of restoring, reconciling, and healing the whole creation into the new creation, and to have that new creation populated by people who have been saved and redeemed from every tribe and nation on the Earth, through Jesus of Nazareth who died for our sins, and whom God raised again from the dead.
China Christian Daily: You created a mythological approach to the Bible through the book, so are the Westerners responding positively to that?
Chris Wright: In that book, I explain that the whole Bible is the narrative of the mission of God. It began with creation, but went wrong because we chose to rebel against God. God chose to redeem humanity through His promises to Abraham and the Old Testament through the Lord Jesus and ultimately, Christ returns for a new age. God's mission includes sharing the good news that Jesus died to save us, proclaiming that God is king and that He's coming again. However, the Christian mission is a much broader: it's about participating with God in all His plans and purposes. That means caring for the needy, the poor, the sick, and the hungry, striving for justice between nations, working for reconciliation and building peace, and seeking to care for the creation that God has put us in. Mission means we are participating with God in all that He is doing for the restoration of creation, which is a big agenda.
I think in the West, many people would now agree with that. Some would say, “Well, God has given to the Church a variety of callings.” Some are called to preach and evangelize, some to teach theology, and some to get involved in medical caring, development work, or biological science for the sake of creation. We have multiple callings, but that are all part of one ultimate mission to participate. It's rather like what Paul says about the body of Christ. There are many parts, but our body has to be one whole body in which the many parts are doing different things. I think the same image holds true of mission as well.
China Christian Daily: Can you tell us what are the challenges facing today's Evangelicals, and how should we respond to them?
Chris Wright: The world is filled with war and suffering, some of it caused by climate change—and who is responsible for that? We have to face up to our need to repent of our neglect of the world, confess, and accept that is in part the responsibility of nations where Christians would want to claim their own majority.
We also need to respond publicly to the challenges of the technological, digital era in which we live, including the dangers of technology, the digital revolution, and artificial intelligence. In the Western world, there is a great deal of cultural change in relation to human identity and sexuality. As Christians, we are sometimes accused of being reactionary, judgmental, and negative in that. I want to emphasize that we are seeking to be faithful to what the Bible says, which is that sex is God’s idea. God invented it and gave us our sexuality as male and female. He also gave us the boundaries within which our sexuality is to be exercised, within marriage between a man and a woman. We need to say that the biblical view of sexuality is God's good gift to us as human beings, and not allow ourselves to be accused merely a big negative.
Additionally, we need to face the fact that there are still many people in the world who have never yet heard the name of Jesus or the gospel. Therefore, there is a need for Christians always to continue to go to the nations, to seek to bring people the knowledge of the Lord Jesus. That is an ongoing mandate. We must bring the gospel to the world, but the gospel is both a message to be proclaimed and also a life to be lived: engaged in the world, participating in cultures in every local context, and being sent into the world as Jesus and make followers of Jesus. Jesus cared for the sick, the poor, and the needy; he was the friend of tax collectors, sinners, and prostitutes and called people to follow him. The message of the gospel is a life-changing thing that involves engagement with the world, not just what you believe in your head. We have to become the good news that we share.
China Christian Daily: How can theology offer answers to this ever-changing world?
Chris Wright: The only answer to the ever-changing world is the never-changing good use of what God has done to save the world. The word “gospel” doesn’t just mean a theory, a prayer, or some formula to get to heaven. In the New Testament, the gospel means announcing as good news that the God who created this world has acted in human history to save the world from the consequences of our sins. He's done so specifically through his son, Jesus of Nazareth, dying on the cross to bear the sin of the world and rising again to defeat death. It's not us answering the world because we can't save the world. God has already done that through Christ, and ultimately will do it in Christ’s return of the new creation. Our job is to be followers and disciples of Jesus, to make him known, to live and love like him, and to bring people into that relationship to be ready for when he returns.
According to the Bible, we are not going somewhere else to heaven. The way the Bible ends in Revelation 21 and 22 is God coming here to bring a new heaven and a new earth, the City of God, and new Jerusalem with His dwelling with us in a renewed, healed and reconciled creation. That's the story we are living in. We don't live in the world story, but in the Bible story.
My hope for Chinese Christians would be that the book Mission of God would help the church to realize that God is on a mission and that we participate with God in what He is doing. The Apostle Paul said we are co-workers with God. It's God's work to save the world, but amazingly, He calls us to work with Him in what He's doing. I hope my book will help Christians in China to see our story are the Bible narrative. We live within the Bible story, we live for the Bible story, and we look forward to the way the story ends.
China Christian Daily: You led to write the Cape Town Commitment, the statement which came out of the Third Lausanne Congress in Cape Town, South Africa, in 2010. Tell us more about that.
Chris Wright: As the then chair of the Lausanne Theology Working Group and the chair of the statement group, I was asked to craft something that would pull what we as Christians believe together. That’s Part One “For the Lord We love”: we are Christians because we love Jesus; because we love Jesus, we love his world, the people of God who are called to serve Him, and God’s mission in the world. The whole part has been written in the language of covenantal terms. The second part is a call to action in six parts connected to all six major themes of the Cape Town Congress. It’s more practical and related to the world we live in. This is a peace recreation justice for beyond reach all sorts of areas.
The first draft of Part One took me a whole week of nonstop writing in January 2010. It then went through a process for several months with the theology group and was then submitted to the board of directors and was produced for the Cape Town Commitment in October. Part Two was edited together after the Third Congress, which was in October 2010. I finally finished it at the end of January of 2011, and it was published. That was like four or five months of work.
China Christian Daily: What is your takeaway from Lausanne 4?
Chris Wright: I hope that Lausanne will continue to uphold an integrated mission theology and practice that reflects the wholeness of the gospel, addressing the need for individuals to repent and be saved, our engagement with societal issues of compassion and justice, and our care for God's creation. These elements should not be seen as separate or needing to be balanced against each other, but as fully integrated around the centrality of the gospel.
The gospel is at the center of all our mission work, and we need to carry out this mission together, without dividing it into evangelism, social action, or creation care. Just as in our bodies, where different systems—like nerves, digestion, and circulation—are distinct but function together, my hope is that the Lausanne Movement will see mission more like an interval of body: as a unified, interconnected commitment to the centrality of the gospel in all aspects of life, including personal life, the workplace, family, society, and creation.
China Christian Daily: Have you ever been to China? What was your impression about China?
Chris Wright: In 2006, I went to China with John Scott to meet with some of the TSPM leaders. We met in Shanghai and visited the national seminary in Nanjing. I returned to teach a one-week course on the Old Testament at the philosophy department of Peking University. I visited Hong Kong, too. I enjoyed those visits. History has moved on, and things have changed since then.
China Christian Daily: Do you have any words for the Christians in China?
Chris Wright: We have so much to learn from you and to receive from the church in China because of God's faithfulness to believers there for centuries. The church in China is an example, a model of the fact that God is sovereign over all human history, and even things that seem human level to be evil, God can use them for good. People may think that would be the end of the church when Western missionaries were expelled from China in 1951, but it wasn’t. There are more Christian believers every Sunday in a church in mainland China than in all of Western Europe put together. God is good and faithful, so continue to be faithful to Him and bear witness to Jesus.
