This month, I have a book recommendation to share, in case you are looking for a ‘serious’ book to read this year. Maybe it should be Christopher Wright’s The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative (paid link), which came out in a second, revised edition in October of last year.
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In this book, Wright sets out to demonstrate that God’s mission – to redeem and restore all creation through Christ – is the central, unifying theme of the entire Bible’s grand narrative. In Scripture, mission is not just one topic among many. It provides a framework for reading the Bible as a whole. As such, it shows how ideas like monotheism, creation, covenant, and salvation all flow from God’s purpose to make himself known to all nations. Wright argues that this perspective unlocks the Bible as the story of God’s people actively engaging the world in line with the divine purpose.
In other words, Wright takes on the entire Bible to bring out its coherent story as that of God setting out to save the world and making himself known. The book does this incredibly well; it’s a marvellous read.
The Mission of God?
I have only one larger grievance with the book, and that is its title. Terminology like the mission of God and missional has been quite fashionable in theological circles for a while. But I don’t like the phrase.
Is God on a mission? ‘Mission’ suggests someone has been sent. The person is under obligation.
This does not always have to be the case. We can use the word more loosely for having a big aim in life: “He is on a mission”. Or a mission can be self-imposed, so there is no sender. But the more common implication is that someone has been sent on an assignment.
Even worse, once we recognize that this common implication does not apply – no one sent God on a mission – the new, modish phrase does not add anything. It simply means purpose. God has a purpose. Wherever the phrase the mission of God appears, it can be replaced with the purpose of God, his plan, his aim, perhaps even his project (what he is doing). Mission does not add anything. The phrase becomes superfluous and even misleading – a smoke screen that obscures rather than clarifies.
Wright admits as much when he states that “God has a goal, a purpose, a mission … This is the mission of the biblical God” (Wright 2025: 55). In other words, this is the purpose of the biblical God. No need to invent another phrase. This book is about the overall purpose of God.
And that makes it worth reading; don’t let my gripe with the title hold you back from reading it!
A Whole New Chapter in the Second Edition
Especially noteworthy is an entire new chapter that has been added to the second edition: “Election and Supersessionism” (Chapter 8; simply put, supersessionism is the view that the church replaces Israel in God’s purpose). If you are a regular reader of my monthly inputs, you may have picked up that Israel and Christian Zionism are a special interest of mine. I therefore paid special attention to Wright’s take on these topics.
In the biblical story as Wright tells it, the people of God take a central place. Indeed, it is the subject of Part 3. The book has four parts, and this one is by far the longest. The people of God are the aim and the object of God’s love and redemption. It is also a crucial agent through whom God accomplishes his purpose. Of course, in the Old Testament, this people is Israel.
And then, after Jesus?
If the biblical story is about God saving the world (the thesis of The Mission of God), initially through Israel, but really through Christ, then one might conclude that Israel is a mere tool, an instrument. As such, it could be discarded once Christ fulfilled the mission, to be replaced by a new, global community, the church – a view known as replacement theology or supersessionism.
Wright has been accused of holding this view, as he documents in Chapter 8, and the charge must have stung. The addition of a whole new chapter bears this out. Wright is adamant that he does not support supersessionism: “I must make it clear that I totally reject replacement theology of that sort“ (ibid.: 258). As we will see, Wright does qualify this rejection in important ways.
God’s election of Israel is irrevocable and grounded in God’s enduring love, so Wright. God did not choose Israel merely for its usefulness as a means to an end, even though Israel was indeed given a unique mission for the sake of the nations. Christ completing the mission, therefore, does not terminate the relationship.
Yes, But…
Yet at the same time Wright pushes back against his critics. He embraces the tension between Israel and the church, a tension that is inherent in Scripture. Paul writes of believers in Christ as “a people of his own possession” (Tit. 2:14), as does Peter (1 Pet. 2:9) – echoing the very words spoken to Israel at Mount Sinai (Ex. 19:5f), but now applied to mostly Gentile believers.
According to Galatians 4:21-31, these believers are the children of the free woman; she is the Jerusalem above. Paul places her in contrast to the slave woman, the present Jerusalem.
But we also have Romans 11:28f, “As regards the gospel, they [the Israelites of his time] are enemies for your sake. But as regards election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.”
Wright refuses the comfort of an easy answer. Fact is, the coming of Jesus marks a radical transition from promise to fulfilment. The biblical story progresses and moves on, rendering some things obsolete – but not Israel’s election:
It is not supersessionist, then …, to rejoice with the writer to the Hebrews in all that believers in Jesus (especially Jewish ones) have in Christ that is “new” and “better” without demeaning the precious realities that went before or denying the biblical affirmations of Israel’s election. It is not supersessionist to note Paul’s teaching to the Galatians that Christ’s coming moved the clock forward from Israel’s life under the paidagōgos [the guardian slave in charge of and responsible for a minor; see Gal. 3:24ff] of the Torah into the era of the Spirit- and Messiah-focused salvific faith, in the light of which there is neither Jew nor Gentile in the Christ-embodied family of Abraham, without denying that Jews remain Jews and Gentiles remain Gentiles. And … it is not supersessionist to agree with Paul that the promises of God to Abraham – the historical foundation of Israel’s election – reach their glorious and intended fulfillment in the ingathering of Gentiles into the people of God through faith in Messiah Jesus.
Wright’s writing is dense, but its core is simple: it is not enough to claim, “Israel is God’s people” and cry “Supersessionism!” whenever someone responds “Yes, but…” Much has changed, even though fulfilment in Christ does not cancel Israel’s election:
That is to say, such explorations of New Testament fulfillment texts are not supersessionist … unless one further asserts that the fulfillment of God’s promises to Israel nullified or terminated Israel’s election – and that is an assertion I do not make, since it flies in the face of Paul’s emphatic statement in Romans 11:28-29.
You can see why I described Wright’s response as “adamant”. This, I submit, is the right word for the – understandably – emotional tone here. Next, Wright turns to the question of Israel and Palestine today:
More controversially in the present day, I would add that it is not supersessionist (nor is it antisemitic, as so often accused) to raise serious questions and critique regarding the policies and actions of the modern, post-1948 state of Israel, or to express theological and hermeneutical disagreement with the presuppositions and outworkings of Christian Zionism. One can do both of these, in my opinion, on strong and sober biblical grounds, without questioning the right of Israel to exist or denying the irrevocable election of the Jewish people. Penetrating critique can cohabit with – indeed, can be an expression of – profound and agonizing love for Israel and the Jewish people, as the Bible itself shows through all the prophets beginning with Moses and in the hearts and tears of Jesus and the apostle Paul. (Ibid.: 265f; emphasis in original)
Here, too, Wright is unwilling to settle for easy answers.
Israel and the Church
What, then, is his view of Israel and the church? According to Wright, Gentile believers have been added to the existing community of faith. The olive tree has therefore been enlarged by the grafting in of Gentiles through faith in Israel’s Messiah, forming a single olive tree rather than replacing Israel with the church (Rom. 11:17-24). This is enlargement, not displacement:
There is only one olive tree. God has only one family – the family of Abraham. But that one family has now been extended by the inclusion of “wild branches” – Gentiles who were coming to faith in Israel’s Messiah, Jesus. Abraham is the “father of many nations,” as God promised (Rom 4:16-18). But those “many nations” are now “children of God” and “Abraham’s seed” (Gal 3:26-29), grafted in to [sic] Israel through Christ. (Ibid.: 272)
We can still speak of Israel in an ethnic sense as distinct from the church. But ‘Israel’ in the sense of the community of God’s people has been expanded: other ethnicities now, too, share in the blessing of Abraham. This, so Paul in Galatians 3:8, is the gospel according to Genesis 12:1-3.
So…
This gives you a small taste of a great book. As for the ‘mission of God’ – I continue to think it’s a poor choice of words. As for everything else in this book, I encourage you to go read for yourself 😊!
Appendix: Michael Bird Weighs in
As an ‘extra’, I include a quotation from a different source. It grapples with the same tension in Scripture. It is dense, but worth chewing on. The book offers a strong critique of supersessionism. And yet, Bird writes:
Jewish-ness and Gentile-ness are retained in some senses, but negated in other senses because of a new shared identity that is pneumatic and participationist. There is also a kind of inevitable type of supersessionism between Judaism and Christianity just as there is between Judaism/Christianity and Islam, Christianity and Mormonism, or between Pharisaic Judaism and Rabbinic Judaism. The reality is that if salvation is of Christ and of Christ alone (somewhere, somehow, for someone) then alternative paths of salvation (somewhere, some-how, for someone) are rendered obsolete. Christianity has an inescapable supersessionist quality. As Joel Kaminsky and Mark Reasoner soberly note: “Any Christian reading of the Hebrew Scriptures is likely to involve some form of supersessionism, by which we mean that the early Christians came to believe that their reading of Israel’s scriptures superseded other earlier and contemporary readings of these sacred texts by other Jewish readers and that God’s acting through Jesus’s death and resurrection had ushered in the beginning of the eschaton [the time of the end], thus opening a path for gentiles to participate in God’s promises to Israel.” … Now, among religious practitioners, what one does with the supersessionist substructure of Christian faith is a serious matter for theological ethics and inter-religious dialogue, but some type of supersessionism, even if far removed from a replacement theology, is intrinsic to Paul’s thought. (Bird 2023: 20f)
Attribution
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References
Unless indicated differently, Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Bird, Michael. 2023. ‘An Introduction to the Paul within Judaism Debate’, in Paul within Judaism: Perspectives on Paul and Jewish Identity, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen Zum Neuen Testament, 507 (Mohr Siebeck)
Bird, Michael F., and others (eds). 2023. Paul within Judaism: Perspectives on Paul and Jewish Identity, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen Zum Neuen Testament, 507 (Mohr Siebeck)
Wright, Christopher J. H. 2025. The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative, Second edition (IVP Academic; paid link)
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