Mission Theology and the Image of God

A proper, Lutheran theology of missions easily centers around the concept and image of God because His being and attributes, as the source of everything good, contain everything needed to know about salvation. 

First, one should learn of His triune nature and its specific connection with the redemption story:  the Father sending His Son, the Son’s vicarious work, and the Holy Spirit’s bringing to faith and sanctifying.  Studying His power, one sees that He is able to provide everything necessary for salvation, and anything outside of Him is weak and powerless.  Examining His eternal nature, one understands Him as being beyond time, before sin started and lasting after sin ends.  In His immutability, the person should realize that He is the One that never changes, letting go of love for changeable, temporal possessions.  Connecting His immutability with His truthful nature, the new believer should understand that God is just, rewarding good and punishing evil, and that no error can be tolerated in His sight – unlike our wavering sense of morals.  Noting His omniscience, the person could and should see that the just Lord of all knows about every sin, closing any path of escape, but also that He knows the condition of the sinner’s deep degradation and exactly how to rescue him or her.  In His omnipresence, any place of “hiding” proves to be of no avail, but this also assures that God always knows our situation and how to protect us from any harm and danger. 

Looking at God’s love, anyone ought to be moved to love Him more and carry out love for others, knowing that He has set the ultimate example in the sending and self-sacrifice of His Son, and noticing nothing but self-service in the world.  Learning about His goodness, one should recognize that He alone supplies good in the world, and all other motivations and acts of men are driven by an evil, sinful heart. In His graciousness, one should compare His bestowing of goodness (ultimately eternal life) as a free gift aside from merit, whereas any human being requires some self-gratifying deed in return for another. 

Most of all, the person reached by this missionary theology should be taught that these features of the image of God are for him or her.  God’s image is the way it is without being dependent on man’s need or humanity, but He particularly determined for His attributes to work together, as we speak of it, to bring about our salvation as He willed it from eternity in time.  With instruction about the image of God, the new convert must discover that His characteristics that motivated our redemption from sin are like no other religion’s deity, including the theology of self.