Mission is not just one of a list of things that the Bible happens to talk about. Mission is, in that much-abused phrase, ‘what it’s all about’.
Now this is a bold claim. Does it make sense to speak of the Bible being ‘all about’ anything? Well, Jesus certainly thought so. In Luke 24, first to the two on the road to Emmaus, and then later to the rest of the disciples, Jesus made himself as Messiah the focus of the whole canon of the Hebrew Scriptures (verses 27 and 44).
The whole Bible revolves around the person of Christ. Jesus went on, however, beyond his Messianic centring of the Old Testament Scriptures to their missional thrust as well.
