We’ve had the New Testament for a while now, and it’s possible we’re taking much of it for granted. I don’t open with these words because I want to chastise us for failing to revere at eternal writ with constant wonder, but simply because sometimes we need to step back to see the story, see the proverbial forest for the trees, and let the testimony of Scripture’s total witness remind us who God is, what He’s doing, and how He’s revealed Himself to us already. The Bible calls this “remembrance,” and I often take advantage of mining through the lives of David and Paul for all the detailed retrospect the accounts provide.
Consider Paul’s life. We’re familiar with his conversion;[1] his encounter on a northern path has produced a variety of timeless adages. He was “blinded by the light” in a “Damascus road encounter,” to begin with. But the magnificent thing about Paul’s story was not his conversion, or his ministry to follow, or his doctrinal clarity and proficient eloquence. He was just a man. Once upon a time, he was making a mess in his diapers just like you and I have. He got in fights just like you and I have. He anchored his identity in what he accomplished and achieved just like—well, speaking for myself—just like I have. He imposed carnal bloodlust on an unsanctified commitment to steward the word of the LORD in his generation, unaware of the Law’s ability to betray our sin’s propensity to blossom under any provisions. “Stone the idolator? Check.” So Stephen saw the Son of Man giving him a standing ovation as he was buried under a rock pile, and Paul looked on with a satisfied sneer.
“But God.”[2] So a man who’d spent years striving to impress his father and uncles and grandfathers and great-grandfathers found out, perhaps more dramatically than anyone may have supposed, that he had been adopted by a better Dad since the dawn of time.[3] That was enough to change everything. But like a good student who was wrought in the womb to care deeply about the integrity of the Word, he spent some time searching out how the texts of his fathers bore witness to the One who answers to “Lord.”[4] Obviously, it was news to Paul in the encounter that God was Jesus. YHWH is Yeshua. Yeshua is YHWH. That was a groundbreaking revelation. He sought the One who met Moses with fire on the very mountain the Sinai covenant was sealed on. And then, like so many others in the stories of eternity, he emerged from the wilderness with a message.
We’re most familiar with the Paul who emerged, with the Paul who traversed the known world to make disciples who make disciples, who fought to shape and steer these fledgling, newborn communities into truth and fidelity to the Gospel. He was a tender-hearted father of many. But before that, he was a man who encountered the One who inhabits eternity[5] and reckoned with the story he found himself in—and at that point, he could see he was very clearly in a hinge of human history. All the prophets—which he was familiar with—bore witness to a day when the God of Israel would be revealed, known, and magnified with the rest of the world. “In you all nations of the earth will be blessed”[6] was woven into the earliest promises and provisions of the Everlasting Covenant. All nations of the earth.
Paul so quickly became the valiant sower of the parable of seed and soil, indiscriminately and generously sowing the message of the Gospel of the Kingdom anywhere and everywhere, indeed, “all things to all people that by all means [he] may save some.”[7] He was driven by urgency and adoration of Jesus. I want to spend my days and decades driven by the same. As like-minded pioneer William Carey once said, “I’m not afraid of failure. I’m afraid of succeeding at things that don’t matter.”[8]
One of the things that has impacted and influenced me most—and on this issue I can also speak on behalf of the FAI family—is the way Paul did not discriminate against existing communities of disciples (e.g. Rome, Ephesus, etc.) in favor of finding new, shiny fun pioneering exploits on the Gospel frontier. Nor did he ignore and abdicate the haunting, exhausting tasks of reaching the unreached with the name of Jesus to allow himself the comfort and cushion of raising existing communities. He kept a fatherly presence, but he encouraged men like Timothy who were wired to stay and build as he, in keeping with his own wiring, went out to find. Nothing captures Paul’s dual-edged vision like his letter to the Romans (which he wrote, in part, to get a stake in the ground to establish a new “Antioch” in the west of Europe so he could get to Spain).[9]
Now I don’t want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that I often planned to come to you (but was prevented until now) in order that I might have a fruitful ministry among you, just as I have had among the rest of the Gentiles. I am obligated both to Greeks and barbarians, both to the wise and the foolish. So I am eager to preach the Gospel to you also who are in Rome.
For I am not ashamed of the Gospel, because it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew, and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, just as it is written: The righteous will live by faith.[10]
God’s purpose is that the Gentiles may be an acceptable offering, sanctified by the Holy Spirit. Therefore I have reason to boast in Christ Jesus regarding what pertains to God. For I would not dare say anything except what Christ has accomplished through me by word and deed for the obedience of the Gentiles, by the power of miraculous signs and wonders, and by the power of God’s Spirit. As a result, I have fully proclaimed the Gospel of Christ from Jerusalem all the way around to Illyricum. My aim is to preach the Gospel where Christ has not been named, so that I will not build on someone else’s foundation, but, as it is written,
Those who were not told about Him will see,
and those who have not heard will understand.
That is why I have been prevented many times from coming to you. But now I no longer have any work to do in these regions, and I have strongly desired for many years to come to you whenever I travel to Spain.[11]
Imagine being able to use the words “I have fully proclaimed the Gospel from Jerusalem all the way to Croatia. I’m done, and I need a new base of operations (that’s you guys, nice to meet you) so I can keep moving westward—because the words of the prophets are so deep in my bones I don’t sleep at night. I have to keep going.” I’ve done it all already. I’ve run out of work here. So I have to keep going. If he would’ve lived long enough, Paul would’ve—without question—beat Patrick to Ireland.
Yet as he felt obliged to share the Gospel with all men everywhere, he did not neglect existing communities. Those who received the letter we know as the “book of Romans” as delivered by Paul’s ministry partner Phoebe[12] had already heard the Gospel. They’d already said yes. They would be violently persecuted in the days ahead—the very ones who first read the letter. Part of Paul’s whole point was to help them make sense of the deeper nuances of the Gospel, particularly as it related to the relationship between Jew and Gentile in God’s eternal purposes.[13] Paul’s “ambition” was to lay foundations for the Gospel where there were none—to reach those who do not have the Gospel—and his commitment was to resource those who did have the Gospel as he did so.
We as the FAI family share Paul’s strategy that bookended his letter to the Romans: We are committed to resourcing those who do have the Gospel while we labor to reach those who do not have the Gospel, and lay foundations for the Gospel where none exist yet. Our three mandates are today what they were when the Lord first assigned Frontier Alliance International on a backroad in Georgia on December 23, 2011: International Recruitment & Advocacy for Regional Training & Mobilization, both unto and towards exponential, catalytic Local Evangelism & Discipleship. This is why a creative access pioneering ministry has so prioritized filmmaking and media production right alongside relief and humanitarian aid in war zones, why we’ve launched schools and release free Global Bible Studies. What drove us at the start and drives us still is what drove Paul from Jerusalem to Illyricum to (reaching for) Barcelona: the exaltation of the Man Christ Jesus, in all His worth and beauty, among the unreached and unengaged at the end of the age. May we help hasten His return.[14]
Maranatha.
Stephanie Quick (@quicklikesand) is a writer/producer serving with FAI. She lives in the Golan Heights and cohosts The Better Beautiful podcast with Jeff Henderson. Browse her free music, films, and books in the FAI App and at stephaniequick.org.
[1] See Acts 9
[2] See Ephesians 2:4
[3] See Galatians 1:13-16
[4] See Galatians 1:17
[5] Isaiah 57:15
[6] Genesis 12:3
[7] See 1 Corinthians 9:19-23
[8] This phrase is widely attributed to William Carey. Source unknown.
[9] As persecution increased in Jerusalem, Antioch became the regional hub for the church (see Acts 11). This community cultivated a deep missional culture, having received the first Gentiles to preach the Gospel (see Acts 11:20) and sent Paul & Barnabas (Acts 13) to follow the Lord. Some 300 miles north of Jerusalem, nestled in southeastern Turkey in a lower region just above Lebanon and between Syria and the Mediterranean Sea, it became too far to serve and support Paul’s westward movements in a very pertinent way. He aimed to make Rome the “Antioch” for his work to the westernmost reaches of the Roman Empire.
[10] Romans 1:13-17, CSB
[11] Romans 15:16b-24a, CSB
[12] Romans 16:1-2
[13] Ephesians 3:8-12
[14] 2 Peter 3:12
