What Is the Difference Between God’s Mission and Christian Witness?

A Distinction

I think we often confuse these two areas—both important areas. God’s mission is what the triune God is doing in the world to save sinners. That’s different than Christian witness: the way we participate in what God is doing. If I define, first, God’s mission, the triune God has a plan, and he has already been busy with fulfilling that plan and still is in the world today. We can actually go back to the church father Augustine, who spoke about missio (the mission of God). He defined it as God’s two missions, actually.

God the Father has a plan of redemption. He sends his Son. That’s the first mission. God the Father sends God the Son to accomplish redemption. And then God the Father and Son send the Spirit into the world to apply that redemption. And this is God’s mission, and it’s what God is busy doing in the world today. Now, that’s God’s mission, and compared to Christian witness, it’s a little different. Christian witness is how we participate in what God is doing.

Christian witness is the church commissioned by Christ, sent out, empowered by the Holy Spirit to speak about what God is doing. Witnessing is to speak of Christ and his gospel truth, salvation in Christ alone, to speak about God—the only true God—and his truth claims in Scripture, and to speak to sinners and to bring the gospel to them in various ways. That’s a Christian witness: participating in God’s mission.

The term “Christian witness” is an umbrella term, and under this term comes all different forms of the witness of the church. It can be an evangelistic witness in a local community or at a prison or in some other local context. It can be apologetics, whether it be a rational defense of the faith or whether it be cult evangelism. It can be international partnerships, global partnerships, going to faraway places and bringing the gospel through church planting or theological education.

Christian witness can also be cultural engagement, biblical counseling, humanitarian ministries, or hospitality. There are many forms that it takes, but all Christian witness is participating in what God is doing in the world to save sinners. And so it’s very helpful to keep these two separate. God’s mission that we participate in as Christians through the witness of Christ.

Brian A. DeVries is the author of You Will Be My Witnesses: Theology for God’s Church Serving in God’s Mission.

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