When we fight for justice and stand up for the oppressed, we are knowing God, making him known, demonstrating by the spirit his own passion for justice. When we delight in beauty and create more of it, God the glad creator is displayed and honoured. When we cherish freedom and share it; when we speak truly and especially when we speak new creation into being by articulating fresh truth, the God of Genesis and Exodus is present, celebrated and known. When we exercise power humbly and wisely, and hold to account those who do otherwise, we are living out publicly the power of the cross and demonstrating that the innate human vocation, given the creation of image-bearers, was a true signpost to the reality of God and the world. When we worship and pray, and above all when we enter into wise, self-giving and fruitful relationships, we are knowing and honouring God of creation in making him known. There will be grief in all this. There will be love in all this. There will thus be knowledge: we will be engaged in the true, image-bearing ‘natural theology’. Those who discern the dawn must awaken the world.
Such an image-bearing ‘mission’, shaped by Temple-cosmology and Sabbath-eschatology now refocused on Jesus, will be oriented toward the ultimate goal, when the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea….
N.T. Wright, History and Eschatology: Jesus and the Promise of Natural Theology. 248-249.