The following is an excerpt from I Am Going by Daniel L. Akin, released by B&H Publishing (June 2026).
Missionary biographies inspire me. In many ways they have set the course of my life. One such individual is John Gibson Paton (1824-1907). He is popularly known as the missionary to the Cannibals. The Baptist preacher in London, Charles Spurgeon, called John Paton the “King of the Cannibals.” Such is an appropriate and accurate description of this brave missionary who risked his life and sacrificed so much that a tribe of murderous cannibals in the New Hebrides Islands might praise the Lord and trust Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. Jesus said go (Matthew 28:19-20) to the nations and Paton went. He knew obedience was not up for debate.
As far as we know, the New Hebrides had no Christian influence before John Williams and James Harris from the London Missionary Society landed there in 1839. Both of these missionaries were killed and eaten by cannibals on the island of Erromanga on November 20 of that year, only minutes after going ashore. Forty-eight years later John Paton would write, “Thus were the New Hebrides baptized with the blood of martyrs; and Christ thereby told the whole Christian world that He claimed these islands as His own.”
Paton’s passion for the nations was not something he reserved for himself. It was also his aspiration for his children! He said,
Let me record my immovable conviction that this is the noblest service in which any human being, can spend or be spent; and that, if God gave me back my life to be lived over again, I would without one quiver of hesitation lay it on the altar to Christ, that He might use it as before in similar ministries of love, especially amongst those who have never yet heard the Name of Jesus. Nothing that has been endured, and nothing that can now befall me, makes me tremble—on the contrary, I deeply rejoice—when I breathe the prayer that it may please the blessed Lord to turn the hearts of all my children to the Mission Field and that He may open up their way and make it their pride and joy to live and die in carrying Jesus and His Gospel into the heart of the [Lost] World!
He could write these words because of an unalterable conviction that gripped his soul: “Whatever trials have befallen me in my Earthly Pilgrimage, I have never had the trial of doubting that perhaps, after all, Jesus had made some mistake. No! My blessed Lord Jesus makes no mistakes! When we see all His meaning, we shall then understand, what now we can only trustfully believe that all is well—best for us, best for the cause most dear to us, best for the good of others and the glory of God.”
God said go. Paton obeyed—even though he knew very well the possibility of being martyred just as his predecessors were. What could possibly offer enough inspiration for him to do such a thing? One answer is this: he understood God’s mission in the world—and personally decided to take his place within it. His example should spur us all to say along with him, “I will go.” But that kind of response requires us, like Paton, to truly understand the biblical context of God’s mission in the world. Let us turn our attention to this, for it makes all the difference in how we spend our lives!
What Is God’s Mission In His World?
What is God’s mission in the world? If we, as Christians, are supposed to love God and obey him (Deut. 6:4-6), it would certainly help if we knew what he is up to. Fortunately, God has given us the Bible, a book that tells us exactly what he is doing!
If we are going to understand God’s mission, the first thing we have to understand is that the Bible is not primarily a storehouse of random facts about God or Israel or the world. Nor is it primarily a collection of rules. Instead, it is primarily a fascinating and powerful story about God. We call this “The Drama of Scripture” or “The Grand Redemptive Storyline of the Bible.” This story is told in four acts.
1. Creation: The first act is Creation. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). God created the world and everything in it, and he called it “very good” (1:31). God loved and blessed what he had created!
At the pinnacle of his creation are a man and woman. They were different from the rest of his creation because he created them in his image and likeness (1:26–28). Unlike the animals, they could be entrusted with managing the world God created (1:28), making families (1:28), and working to enhance the garden (2:15). Also, unlike the animals, they were moral and spiritual beings who were instructed not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Humans are uniquely responsible to God.
A good way to summarize the uniqueness of human beings is to say that they are spiritual, moral, social, and cultural beings who are to use the totality of their lives to please God. And at the time of creation, they did please God. In fact, everything in the garden was just the way it was supposed to be. Adam and Eve had a right relationship with God, with each other, and with the rest of the world.
2. The Fall: The second act is the Fall. Just after God created the world, the Bible’s story takes a dark turn. Adam and Eve decided to rebel against their Creator (3:1–7). Instead of loving him supremely and obeying him completely, they disobeyed him and sought to take his place on the throne of the world and the throne of their lives. They believed the lie of Satan that they could become gods. In response to their sin, God cast them out of the garden of Eden.
Being cast out from the garden of Eden teaches us that things were no longer the way they were supposed to be. Adam and Eve no longer had a right relationship with God, with each other, or with God’s world. Each of us, just like Adam and Eve, has sinned against God. Each of us, like Adam and Eve, experiences broken relationships with God, with others, and with the world around us. Our lives are characterized not only by God’s goodness but by sin and its consequences. Even as we experience the beauty and goodness of life in God’s creation, we also experience the ugliness and badness of sin and its consequences.
3. Redemption: The third act is Redemption. Immediately after Adam and Eve sinned, God promised to send a Redeemer, a Savior, to save them from Satan and from their sins (3:15). This promise represents our first “peek” at the gospel. Throughout the Bible, God continues to reveal more and more about who this Redeemer would be until, finally, in the Gospels, we learn that he is Jesus!
Jesus—fully God in all of who he is—came to earth and took on full humanity. He is fully man and fully God. He lived a perfect sinless life, but was crucified at the hands of sinful humans. When he died on the cross, was buried, and rose again, he made atonement for our sins and provided salvation for the world (John 1:29; 3:16). On the cross, he took the guilt for our sins upon his shoulders and suffered the condemnation that we should suffer. When he rose bodily from the dead, he rose as a victor, having paid fully for our sins and secured the future redemption of the world (Rom. 8:18-25).
When we trust in Christ for our salvation, God forgives us of our sins and begins the process of making us more like his Son (Rom. 8:29). This process of making us more like his Son is something that should happen daily (2 Cor. 4:16) and that involves the totality of who we are (Rom. 12:1). God intends for our salvation to shape not only our personal devotions and “churchly” activities, but also our family life, our workplace activities, and our speech and conduct within our immediate neighborhoods, greater communities, and the world at large. The gospel of Jesus Christ is good news for the whole world.
4. Restoration: The fourth act is Restoration. God’s work of redemption reaches its goal when Christ returns. When he returns, he returns as a conquering King (Rev. 19:16). As King, he will fulfill his role as the judge over all humanity (2 Cor 5:10). Those persons who are not saved in Christ will be judged on the basis of their deeds and will be condemned. Those persons who are saved will enjoy his good pleasure and will live under his blessings forever.
When he returns, Christ will invite us to live with him in the renewed cosmos, the new heavens and earth (Rev. 21–22). Our life in the new heavens and earth will be a thoroughly social and cultural existence. It is social, in that we will live together with believers from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation (Rev. 5; 7). It is cultural, in that our existence will be characterized by cultural things, such as art, architecture, song and work (Rev. 21–22). In this way, we will enjoy God’s presence and favor and will live in unity with each other for eternity.
In summary, we can say that God’s mission is accomplished through his Son’s life, death, and resurrection. His mission is to save us from our sins and to restore his good creation which had been marred by sin. But what does that have to do with us? In other words, how should God’s mission affect the way we live now? Today? In order to answer those questions, we will first look briefly at the way God’s mission affected the nation of Israel and the way it affected Jesus. Only after that will we be ready to understand how it affects us.
