In manner of God

John commends Gaius not only for receiving traveling brothers but for sending them on their way “in a manner worthy of God” (3 John 6). What does this mean? Stott is certainly right to say that they are to be treated as servants of God.

But John’s language is more richly ambiguous. Who, after all, is doing something “in a manner worthy of God”? Is that a description of the way that the traveling brothers go, or is it a description of the way Gaius outfits them for their journey? Are the brothers traveling as God travels, or is Gaius equipping as God equips? Raymond Brown is right to suggest that John means both.

The equipping of missionaries (assuming that’s who the traveling brothers are) and the mode of travel are both to be God-like. Those who equip missionaries should do so with the same generosity and reckless abundance as God equips us. Missionaries should go out in the way that God goes out, endowed with all they need to carry out the humble service that is God’s glory.

In every mission-sending and in every missionary-sent, we ought to see a picture of the gospel, of the sending Father and the sent Son. The missions of God in Incarnation and Pentecost, Augustine said, display the internal processions of God. And the missions of God ought to be visible in the way the church engages in her mission.