Missions Myth 4 (Missions Series 4 of 6)

A radical commitment to missions will cost you more than it will benefit you.

Missions Myth 4 is that a radical commitment to missions will cost you more than it will benefit you.

It’s common for people to feel pity for missionaries and their families because of the many sacrifices they make. But it’s also common for missionaries to feel pity for those who never make sacrifices for the global cause of Christ’s mission because they know Jesus’ promise, “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.” (Mark 8:34 

Jesus also said, “I tell you the truth, no one who has left home, or brothers, or sisters, or mother, or father, or children, or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age. Homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields and with them persecutions. And in the age to come eternal life.”

One of the primary reasons so many Christians today are suffering with such an anemic, joyless, powerless Christianity is because their lives are not more radically aligned with God’s global cause. The Scriptures teach that God takes pleasure in manifesting his presence and pouring out his power on those who will dare to radically align their purposes with his for the nations.

In 1996, John Piper preached a powerful sermon titled, “Doing Missions When Dying is Gain.” This sermon became a clarion call for followers of Jesus not to waste their lives but willingly embrace suffering and even death to do missions in the hardest places on earth.

Piper’s biblical thesis is that the pursuit of God's glory and the pursuit of our joy are not at odds. Instead, God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him and the fulfillment of his mission on earth. This is why we must learn to spend our whole lives being as happy as we can be – in God and in the fulfillment of His purposes for the world through us, even when we suffer for his name.

But we must be careful not to allow a biblical passion for God’s glory and an awareness of how God uses suffering in his global mission to lead us to a naive and romanticized view of suffering, martyrdom, and missions. Yes, we must do missions when dying is gain, but we must also learn to do missions when living is gain.

Sometimes it’s much harder and much more needed for you to live for Christ than to die for Christ. Speaking of his daily suffering for the cause of Christ, the Apostle Paul writes, “I die every day! (1 Cor 15:31).”

But this radical call for you to suffer and even die for the sake of Christ and his global cause is not merely for God’s sake. This is also for your sake. Jesus promises you that the benefits will far exceed any costs.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor hanged for his part in the conspiracy to assassinate Adolf Hitler, commented on Jesus’ radical call for all of his followers, not just pastors, to take up their crosses and follow him:

“The cross is laid on every Christian. The first Christ-suffering which every man must experience is the call to abandon the attachments of this world. It is that dying of the old man which is the result of his encounter with Christ. As we embark upon discipleship we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with his death—we give over our  lives to death. Thus it begins; the cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise god-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die. It may be a death like that of the first disciples who had to leave home and work to follow him, or it may be a death like Luther’s, who had to leave the monastery and go out into the world. But it is the same death every time—death in Jesus Christ, the death of the old man at his call.”[1]

In this call, Jesus reveals that the kingdom of God he is inaugurating is an upside down kingdom. If we want to save our lives, we must lose them. The way up is the way down.  Strength is found in weakness. Wisdom is found in foolishness. To be the greatest is to become the least. To be first is to be last. To live is to die.

The way to true happiness is not to focus on your reputation, your accomplishments, and your plans, but on God's glory, God's kingdom, and God's purposes. It’s no wonder the first-century Christians were described as “these who have turned the world upside down (Acts 17:6).”

The good news is that if you will surrender your life to Jesus Christ and to his purposes for the world, God promises to so reward you that afterwards you will not even be able to speak of having sacrificed anything.

David Livingstone, missionary to Africa, wrote, “If a commission by an earthly king is considered a honor, how can a commission by a Heavenly King be considered a sacrifice?” In his message to students at Cambridge about his leaving all the comforts, pleasures, and benefits of England for serving Christ in Africa, Livingstone said,

“For my own part, I have never ceased to rejoice that God has appointed me to such an office. People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. . . . Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blest reward in healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter? Away with the word in such a view, and with such a thought! It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger, now and then, with a foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause, and cause the spirit to waver, and the soul to sink; but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall be revealed in and for us. I never made a sacrifice.”[2]

Your obedience to God’s will and his purposes in the world is a vital part of your experience of truly knowing him and experiencing his presence and power in and through your life. And the core motivation for giving your life to Christ’s mission must not be rooted in guilt or mere duty, but in your authentic passion to commend to others the astonishing love of God in Jesus Christ that you have come to cherish.

In his book, “Let the Nations Be Glad,” Piper writes that this is why our worship should be seen as both the goal and the fuel of missions.” In other words, our goal in missions is to see God work through us to raise up people from all nations who are not only converted, but who become heartfelt worshippers of God who truly cherish and love him above everything.

But worship is also our fuel for missions, meaning that it’s only when we truly cherish God for his amazing love for us in Christ, that we will be empowered to commend him both across the street and around the world. Piper writes,

“You cannot commend what you do not cherish.  We will never call out “Let the Nations be Glad!” if we cannot first say from our hearts “I rejoice in God...I am glad in Him.”  Missions begins and ends in worship...when the flame of worship burns with the heat of God’s true worth, the light of missions will shine to the most remote peoples of the earth. But where passion for God is weak, zeal for missions will always be weak.”

[1] The Cost of Discipleship, p. 99

[2] Cited in Samuel Zwemer, "The Glory of the Impossible" in Perspectives on the World Christian Movement, Ralph Winter and Stephen Hawthorne, eds. [Pasadena: William Carey Library, 1981], p. 259. Emphasis added.)

Missions Myth 3 (Missions Series 3 of 6)

A true commitment to missions means going overseas.

Myth number three is “A true commitment to missions means going overseas.” Another way of stating this myth is to say that that those who are truly committed to missions are in full-time ministry, especially full-time missions’ ministry.

There seems to be a sort of spiritual caste system in many people’s minds that separates what they consider to be first-class, really committed spiritual elites who go to the mission field from most normal, second-class Christians with secular jobs who stay home and only pray or give money for missions.

It’s very clear from Scripture that Jesus never calls anyone to follow him part-time. He calls all who follow him to full-time ministry whether they’re planting churches on the mission field or serving him in their normal work in the marketplace or with their family.

The roles of a pastor or missionary are important, but they are not more important in God’s eyes than followers of Jesus working full-time in their “secular” jobs. You might be called to be a full-time missionary in a culture that is foreign to you. If you are, that’s wonderful and missionaries are very needed.

But most followers of Christ are not called to be full-time evangelists, church planters, pastors, teachers, and missionaries, just like most citizens of a country do not go to war. Only a small minority of citizens go to battle in a foreign war. The majority need to stay home as senders and supporters to those on the field. Otherwise, the war will be lost.

And even in a cross-cultural context for missionaries, God’s plan is not for missionaries to do most of the work of evangelism, discipleship, and church planting. The missionaries’ role is primarily to equip followers of Jesus, like farmers, teachers, and mechanics who are working in “secular workplaces,” to do the work of evangelism, discipleship, and church planting.

So, the issue is not ultimately whether you go or stay. It’s whether you are truly being faithful to use all the resources and responsibilities he gives you for the sake of Christ and his kingdom mission on earth. Author John Piper summarizes this by saying there are only three kinds of Christians: 1) Radical goers, 2) Radical senders, and 3) The Disobedient.

A radical goer or sender is one who’s life purpose is wrapped around God’s mission for the world. These are the kinds of people who know the joy of putting their heads on their pillows at night saying, “I know my life is counting for Christ’s global cause.” And you can say that anywhere.

The goal is for you to become a world Christian And a world Christian is a follower of Jesus with a global vision and awareness that he or she is part of the international body of Christ, and who, as a member of this body shares a personal commitment to help start healthy, growing, reproducing churches in every nation on earth.

Theologian and missionary Leslie Newbigin is said to have always encouraged people to have three conversions as Christians, not just one. The first is a conversion to Christ. The second is a conversion to the church. And the third is a conversion to the world.

The first conversion is the most important. It involves a personal commitment to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. The second conversion involves a personal commitment to Christ’s visible body, the Church as a vital part of all ministry and missions.

Foreign to the pages of the New Testament is a commitment to Jesus Christ that does not include a vital commitment to his local, visible, church. This view of missions places the church at the center of all ministries. For example, the end goal of evangelism is not merely having individuals believe in Jesus on their own, but having their confession of faith in Jesus confirmed by church leaders who receive the new convert into the church through baptism and continue to provide spiritual care and shepherding.

Thirdly is a conversion to the world when followers of Jesus realize they are called by God to be what we called earlier “World Christians.” These are Christians committed to radically aligning their life purpose with God’s purpose to see his name glorified and his kingdom come on earth today through making disciples of all nations.

Missions Myth 2 (Missions Series 2 of 6)

You can have a commitment to sound theology without having a commitment to missions.

Myth number two. You can have a commitment to sound theology without having a commitment to missions. And there is an opposite myth that you can have a commitment to missions without having a commitment to sound theology.

Many people think that a commitment to sound theology is only for those relatively few Christians who like to study and teach Christian doctrine. This view is that those who are committed to having sound theology and doctrine are normally not committed to missions, and they don’t really need to be. And those who are committed to missions are not normally interested in doctrine and theology, and they don’t really need to be either.

So it’s common to hear people talking about a missionary like this, “He was not a very good student of the Bible and theology, but he has a great zeal and heart for lost people in other cultures who do not know Jesus. So we think it’s best for him to be on the mission field.”

Think about the absurdity of this way of thinking about theology and missions. Who should go to the mission field? The answer is our very best bible scholars and theologians should be our missionaries, not our worst. Why?

Because understanding the bible and theology in order to teach God’s word faithfully in your same culture is challenging enough. But teaching God’s word faithfully in another culture than your own is far more challenging. This is why it’s even more important to have a commitment to developing strong, biblical doctrine and theology in order to communicate God’s word accurately across cultures in missions.

And yet, many people committed to missions are not committed to developing sound biblical doctrine and theology. And many people committed to developing sound biblical doctrine and theology are not committed to missions.

The Apostle Paul is an example of someone very committed to both sound theology and missions. This is the man who wrote the great doctrinal letters in the New Testament to the Romans and Galatians. Yet this is also the man who gave his life to doing evangelism and discipleship cross-culturally all over the world in order to plant and strengthen churches that would continue these ministries after he left.

When Paul wrote the doctrinally rich letter to the Romans, he didn’t write it like a seminary professor would write and publish a scholarly article. Instead he wrote it as a missionary, church planting movement leader to prepare the church in Rome for his upcoming visit to them on his way to the unreached people of Spain where Christ was not named.

In a little more than ten years (A.D. 47 – A. D. 57), the Apostle Paul planted and established churches in four major provinces of the Roman Empire: Galatia, Macedonia, Achaia, and Asia. Under his missionary methods, the church flourished so much throughout the Mediterranean world that Paul considered his work done there.

So Paul decided to move his mission headquarters to the West, from Antioch to Rome, in order to use Rome as his new base to reach out into the far Western world, Spain, where Christ had never been named.

But before he arrived in Rome, he wrote them a letter to help them better understand the gospel, our New Testament book of Romans. Paul knew that if they were deeply grounded in the rich doctrines and theology of the gospel, their hearts would be stirred up to see all people, all nations, especially Spain, know about this astonishing grace of God’s love in Christ.

This is why you cannot separate a commitment to sound, biblical doctrine and theology from a commitment to missions. Instead missionaries need to see themselves as those whom Arthur Glasser calls, Task Theologians:

The New Testament authors and local communities of faith, in whose midst these documents were written, talking about the New Testament, were not marginal to participation in the mission to which God had called His church. These authors were all missionaries. When they were engaged in theological reflection, its focus was on the missionary task at hand. They were task theologians. And what they produced had relevance to the particular task in which they were involved.

John Stott often writes that God-centered theology is always missional because God is a missionary God. God the Father sent the Son. God the Son sent the Holy Spirit. God the Holy Spirit sends His church. That's a Trinitarian, missiological understanding of the nature of God as a sending God.

David Bosch writes, "Theology ceases to be true theology if it loses its missionary character … Just as the church ceases to be the church if it is not missionary, theology ceases to be theology if it loses its missionary character. We are in need of a missiological agenda for theology, rather than just a theological agenda for mission, for theology rightly understood has no reason to exist other than critically to accompany the Missio Dei (Mission of God).”

This is why John Piper often says, “You can easily measure the authenticity of your theology by measuring your commitment to God’s global cause”.

Many do not realize that almost all of the fathers of the modern missionary movement, were men with deep, solid theological and doctrinal commitments. As you study the passion for world evangelism in men like William Carey, called “The Father of Modern Missions”, you find that it flowed out of a rich theology planted deep in his heart through the writings of theologians like Jonathan Edwards.

The same can be said of the other great missionaries of this era, including Livingstone, John Patton, Sutcliffe, and Judson. These were all frontline missionaries who were deeply committed to a robust theology who gave their lives to promote Christian missions globally.

The more biblical your understanding of God, the more passionate will be your commitment to global evangelization. You cannot be a truly sound theologian without having a burning heart for world evangelization. And you cannot be a truly effective missionary without having a commitment to sound theology.

Missions Myth 1 (Missions Series 1 of 6)

A radical commitment to missions is optional

Foreign to the pages of the New Testament is a commitment to Jesus Christ that is divorced from a commitment to his global cause.

When most people read the final words of the resurrected Jesus before he ascends to heaven in Acts 1:8, they understand his words to be a command. Jesus says, "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

At first it seems like Jesus is commanding his followers to be witnesses. But when you look closer, you’ll see that Jesus is actually making a prediction, not giving a command. Jesus is telling them what will happen in the future when the Holy Spirit comes on them. They will be his witnesses everywhere, to the ends of the earth.

This is a description of all followers of Jesus Christ who receive the gift of God’s Holy Spirit. They will be his witnesses, beginning with where they are and extending to the whole world. And Jesus is not presenting this as an option but a reality. It’s what all followers of Jesus do, they are a part of God’s global mission as witnesses to the end of the earth.

Think about the normal answers you get when you ask someone who professes to be a follower of Jesus today, “What is your commitment to world missions, to the global cause of Jesus Christ?” Normally, professing Christians will say “Of course I’m committed to Jesus cause and mission.”

But if you learn more about them, you often find that’s not true. How do you know? It’s usually not difficult to measure a person’s commitment to anything. Just find out how much of their money, time, talents, and other resources they invest in it.

What happens when you ask that same person, who is not really committed to world missions, about their personal commitment to Jesus Christ? They normally say something like, “Of course I’m committed to Jesus Christ, with all my heart!”

I want you to be gripped with the contradiction between someone who says they are very committed to Jesus Christ but they are not committed to his global cause. That’s absurd. That’s like saying, “I’m committed to my country but I’m just not committed to helping my country win the war they are now fighting.” If you’re not committed to your country’s mission to win their war, you are not truly committed to your country.

This is why your commitment to world missions is an issue Christ’s Lordship in your life. Jesus said, "Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and do not do what I say?" In other words, “Why do you call me Lord and not obey my command to make disciples of all nations? And “Why are you not my witnesses to the end of the earth.”

In Matthew 4:19 we learn that when Jesus saw Peter and Andrew, he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Again, Jesus’ assumption is clear, If you are a follower of his, then you are a fisher of men. This is what true followers of Jesus do, they are fishers of men. To say you are not a fisher of men but you are a committed follower of Jesus makes no sense.

Similarly, when Jesus calls people to follow him in his mission, he assumes they will all suffer as he suffered in fulfilling his mission on earth. This is why Jesus said, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it (Luke 9:23-24).”

Jesus knows that one of the greatest tests of his followers’ commitment to his mission is their willingness to suffer in order to see it advanced. Again, Jesus assumes his followers will suffer in carrying out his mission. It is never whether they will suffer, it’s just when. In John 15, Jesus said, “If they persecuted me, they will persecute you.” The Apostle Paul wrote, “All who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.”

This does not mean that Christians should seek persecution, but it means that when Christians truly advance God’s mission in the world today they will inevitably suffer and be persecuted. And when they suffer for the sake of Christ and his kingdom, they will inevitably experience deeper union with Jesus who empathizes with them in their suffering and draws near to them giving them his power in their weakness to continue advancing his mission.

But for many professing Christians, the whole concept of personal suffering for the advancement of God’s mission in the world is totally foreign. This is because they have accepted as normal a low level of commitment to missions that is not biblical. There is no passionate sense of radical alignment of their purposes with the global purposes of God for which they are willing to lay down their lives and die.

We must realize that we are not living in a time of peace but in a time of war. This battle of all battles that is now raging is a cosmic, demonic battle for the hearts and souls of people and nations. But most of us, myself included, live our lives as if we are not in a time of war. But when you realize that you are really in a time of war, you do not act the same way as when you are in a time of peace.

This is why a radical commitment to missions is not optional. The Scriptures call all followers of Christ to a war-time mentality. Paul writes to Timothy, "Suffer hardship with me as a good soldier of Jesus Christ." So be forewarned. This course is built on the biblical premise that a radical commitment to missions is not optional. You are going to be challenged to make a commitment to Christ and his global mission that is greater than you ever have.

Paying It Forward (Faith & Work Series 6 of 6)

Work is not part of God’s curse because of sin. However, God’s curse often makes our work painful and frustrating: “Cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life … by the sweat of your face you shall eat bread. (Gen 3:17-19)”

But the good news is that God’s redemptive work through Jesus Christ is redeeming, restoring, and expanding God’s original purpose for our work.

When Jesus returns he will remove the curse from the earth and make it new: “No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him” (Rev 22:3).

Some wrongly use this verse to teach that our “worship” in the new earth will be a solely vertical, motionless, and utter absorption of our souls with the eternal contemplation of God as a “beatific vision.”

The problem with this view is that two verses later we see this worship includes our ruling with Christ over the new earth: “And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever” (Rev 22:5).

On the new earth, Adam and Eve will resume their godly dominion over the earth. So will Noah and his godly offspring. And so will the offspring of Abraham, David, and all the disciples of Jesus from the first century to today. And so will we. The age to come on the new earth will not be an eternal day off.

Our life to come will not be spent in heaven with Christ as disembodied spirits, like believers who are now in heaven with the Lord. Our final state as believers will not be some ethereal heaven somewhere off in space where we’ll just float around forever singing and praying.  On the contrary, heaven is not our final destination.

Everyone who goes to heaven is making a round trip. When Jesus returns to make all things new, he will bring heaven, and all who’ve been with him in heaven, back down to earth. And he will give them new bodies in which they will rule with him over a new earth carrying out God’s original mission to subdue the earth forever.

The Bible teaches that our new bodies and this new earth will not be completely different from the first ones. But our bodies and the earth will be glorified, meaning they’ll be renewed and purified. In 1 Peter 3 the Apostle Peter tells us about God’s coming fiery judgment on the whole universe that will precede the coming of the new heavens and new earth. Peter is not saying that God will completely annihilate everything and start over with a totally new creation.

Instead, he draws a parallel to God’s earlier judgment on the whole earth by water during the time of Noah. So God’s coming universal judgment by fire will be a refining fire that does not completely annihilate, but renews and restores all things to God’s original design.

There is much mystery regarding what our work will look like in the age to come. And there is a tension we experience between “the already” and the “not yet” of God’s kingdom on earth. But we know that our work will be fulfilling and joyful, bringing glory to God.

The Bible’s promise of a new earth teaches us that the events of human history matter. All of history is moving toward the fulfillment of God’s mission to redeem and restore his fallen universe in Christ. (Eph 1:10, Col 1:20) In the age to come we will all hear: “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever” (Rev 11:15).

This does not mean that Jesus will destroy or replace the kingdom of this world, but that the kingdom of this world will actually become the Kingdom of Christ. In Revelation 21 we read, “[t]he kings of the earth will bring their glory into it [the holy city] … they will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations” (Rev 21:24-26).

Again, there is a lot of mystery here, but the implication in Scripture seems to be that everything of ultimate worth from the history of the nations that enriched this present earth will somehow enrich the life of the new earth. Author, Randy Alcorn writes:

As the magi, kings of foreign nations, once came to the old Jerusalem seeking to worship the Messiah King, on the New Earth countless magi will journey to the New Jerusalem and they will humbly offer King Jesus the tribute of their cultural treasures.[1]

King Jesus will be pleased to receive their faithful work on the old earth as worship that will enrich life on the new earth. He will delight in rewarding those whose work served him faithfully in this world, with the privilege of continuing to rule and serve with him in all their work in the world to come.

In the parable of the talents, Jesus paints a picture of his return as a master who returns to learn how faithful his servants have been with what he entrusted to them while he was gone. To the servant who was faithful, the master does not say to him, “Well done, now you can retire from working for me.” Instead he says,

“Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master” (Matt 25:23).

What we do in this life truly matters in the life to come. God calls all followers of Jesus, not just the clergy, to be an integral part of his cosmic restoration project of making all things new.

This includes all of our real life domains of influence, not just “religious areas,” over which God sovereignly places us as his vice-regents to help make his invisible kingdom more visible. The Apostle Paul summarizes it like this

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving. (Colossians 3:23-24)

So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God (1 Cor 10:31).

Footnotes:

[1] Heaven, Randy Alcorn, p. 205.

Cosmic Restoration Project (Faith & Work Series 5 of 6)

After the Fall Adam and Eve were banished from paradise, but they were still image bearers, rich in beauty, dignity, and worth. Even though they knew and believed in God’s promised conqueror who would one day defeat Satan and restore God’s kingdom on earth, it hadn’t happened yet.

So what were they to do now that paradise was lost and they and all their children, were cursed, corrupt, and banished from Paradise to a cursed and corrupt earth? Should they just fold their arms and wait for the conqueror to come and defeat Satan and accomplish God’s Cosmic Restoration Project?  

In the second part of Genesis 3:23, we find the answer: “Therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken.” The Hebrew word used here for work (לַֽעֲבֹד֙) is the same word used in Genesis 2:15 to describe the work God gave them to do in the garden paradise as his vice-regents.

Adam’s Mission

The good news is that God’s original mission for Adam and Eve, to glorify him as his vice-regents by multiplying and also subduing his creation, could not be thwarted by Satan or sinful people. Even though God had to keep his promise to curse Adam and Eve, it did not change the reason he created them and the world. 

Noah’s Mission

Later, we see God’s same mission continuing in Noah’s generation. After God poured out his judgment of a flood on all humanity and creation, in his amazing grace, he saved Noah and his “offspring.” Then God gave them the same mandate he gave Adam and Eve, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (Gen 9:1-9).

Abraham’s Mission

Four hundred years later, God made the same promise of an “offspring” or “seed” to Abraham that he made earlier to Adam and Eve as the “offspring” or “seed of the woman.” And God reveals more of his mission by promising Abraham that through his seed God would bless all nations (Gen 12-17). God also promised to bless Abraham by giving him and his future offspring “a land on the earth.”

David’s Mission

With the passing of generations, God’s unfolding mission to redeem and restore fallen humanity and reestablish his kingdom on earth, became more clear. Soon the “promised seed” became known as the “promised son” of not only Abraham but King David.

Jesus’ Mission

When we open the New Testament and look at the first verse of the first book, we find the culmination of God’s mission in the good news of “Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham” (Matt 1:1). And in Galatians 3, the Apostle Paul tells that Jesus Christ is the promised seed of Abraham, “And to your offspring, who is Christ.” (Gal 3:16).

Therefore, when the resurrected Jesus gives us his Great Commission to “make disciples of all nations,” he’s not announcing a new mission from God. Instead, we hear the echo of God’s promises to Adam, Noah, and Abraham (Gen 12:1-3, Matt 28:16-20). Author Christopher Wright says, “It’s as if Jesus is saying, ‘Go…and be a blessing…and all nations on earth will be blessed through you.’”[1]

Our Mission

Just as Adam, Noah, Abraham, David, and Jesus gave their lives to God’s cosmic restoration project, it’s now our turn. In Galatians 3, Paul tells us that Abraham’s offspring now includes all followers of Jesus Christ, “If you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise” (Gal 3:28-29).

What does Paul mean that we, as Abraham’s offspring, are now heirs according to promise? It means that God’s three-fold promise to Abraham of a holy offspring to bless the earth with a holy land is now God’s three-fold promise to us.

First, this means God calls us to continue his mission by multiplying and filling the earth with a holy seed. For most followers of Jesus, this involves reproducing a spiritual seed physically by becoming parents. But for all followers, this involves reproducing a spiritual seed by multiplying disciples.

God also calls us to continue his mission by ruling and reigning as his vice-regents over all the domains of influence he entrusts to us so we might bless all the nations on earth. The reason we multiply and fill the earth with a holy seed is so that we, and our children, will be used by God to cause “his kingdom to come and his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven (Lord’s Prayer).”

Also, to be an “heir according to promise” means that the land God promised to give Abraham is now the same land God promises to give us. At first Abraham thought the land God promised him was the land of Canaan near modern Israel. But Abraham never possessed that land, he just lived in it as a foreigner. And through that experience God taught him to look for another land on the earth:

By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God. (Heb 11:9-10)

The New Testament teaches that the promised land of Canaan was only a symbol of the coming reality of the promised new earth (Heb 4:9). When the Apostle Paul speaks of Abraham’s promised inheritance of the land, he even changes the word “land” to the word “world” to show us this refers to the new world (Rom 4:13). And the Apostle John gives us a breathtaking description of this coming new earth at the time of Jesus return:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. (Rev 21:1-2)”

 The Bible presents “heaven and earth” as a way of describing the one entire universe God creates and rules. In the opening chapters of Genesis, God creates a heaven on earth and puts his image bearers in it to carry out his mission of building his kingdom on it.

When sin entered the world, heaven and earth were temporarily separated, with the holy God revealed in Scripture as up in heaven and sinful humanity pictured as down on earth. But in the final chapters of Revelation, God brings heaven back down to earth and puts his image bearers in this new heaven and new earth to continue carrying out his original mission of building his kingdom on it forever.

God’s mission for us to rule with him establishing his kingdom on earth was never abandoned or revoked. It’s only been temporarily interrupted and corrupted by the Fall. Neither Satan nor sin is able to thwart God’s mission for humanity and the earth.  Just as work was a vital part of the original creation paradise, it will be a vital part of creation regained as the new earth.

In the next article, we’ll learn why our work in this life truly matters in the life to come.

Footnotes:

[1] Christopher Wright, “The Mission of God,” p. 213