Imperishable Inheritance

As we as the Body of Christ con­tinue to be dis­obe­di­ent to the pur­pose of God’s desire to ful­fill the great nation promised to Abra­ham there is a great need to define the task set before us. This is my the­sis to defend what mis­sions was always meant to be. It’s not new, nor is it extra-Biblical, it will sound uncom­fort­able because it’s com­pletely aber­rant to what most of you have grown up learn­ing about “missions.”

“Mis­sions” As From “The Great Commission”

We must estab­lish where we get “mis­sions” from before we can define it. If I tell you where we get this word from most would cor­rectly state that it came from the Great Com­mis­sion; but the prob­lem is rooted in the under­stand­ing of what the Great Com­mis­sion is. Let’s start where Abra­ham is promised a great nation by Yahweh.

Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go forth from your coun­try, And from your rel­a­tives And from your father’s house, To the land which I will show you; And I will make you a great nation, And I will bless you, And make your name great; And so you shall be a bless­ing; And I will bless those who bless you, And the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the fam­i­lies of the earth will be blessed.“
Gen­e­sis 12:1–3 (empha­sis added)

I’m not going to re-state a Bib­li­cal basis for mis­sions, but if you’re inter­ested in the whole thing it can be accessed online. I bring up the great nation to show that God’s plan in redemp­tion cir­cles around ful­fill­ing this promise through Abraham’s seed (Gen 22) which Paul tells us is Christ (Gal 3:8–9). Jesus com­mand to go make dis­ci­ples of all nations (eth­nos) or eth­nic groups is spe­cific not gen­eral much like His com­mand in Acts 1:8. Jesus’ view is on the day when some­one from every tribe, tongue, and nation will be around His throne wor­ship­ing Him to the praise and honor of His Father (Rev 5:9, 7:9).

From Our Insuf­fi­cient View of God’s Pur­poses in Redemption

We as the Body of Christ con­tinue to per­pet­u­ate the lie that God draws a cir­cle around His Son and tells all who want to come in the cir­cle. We view God not as going out and bring His elect to Him­self, but we view God as hop­ing all will come to repen­tance (based largely on incor­rect exe­ge­sis of 1 Tim 2:4 and 2 Pet 3:9). When we have a cor­rect view in the scope of Christ’s aton­ing work we then can under­stand that He pur­chased this great nation (Eph 5:25).

And they [the redeemed] sang a new song, say­ing, “Wor­thy are You to take the book and to break its seals; for You were slain, and pur­chased for God with Your blood men from every tribe and tongue and peo­ple and nation.
Rev­e­la­tion 5:9 (empha­sis added)

Jesus’ Escha­to­log­i­cal Focus on Reach­ing All Nations

When is Jesus com­ing back? His dis­ci­ples wan­dered the same, and He gives the answer that He’s only com­ing back when all the nations are reached (Mat 24:14). Is this some­thing we should just glance over, or is it some­thing that we should under­stand that Jesus Him­self put His sec­ond return around? Clearly, Jesus’ had His eyes on all the nations.

When we eval­u­ate all these things it is clear that we should view Christ’s com­mand as that to reach all the nations. There­fore, the equa­tion is sim­ple not incred­i­bly com­plex: If we have reached a peo­ple group then we move onto the next group. God is not about gath­er­ing as many as He pos­si­bly can, He has a elected amount from every­one of the peo­ple groups in His cre­ation; and we must also have a same per­spec­tive in reach­ing the unreached.

The Def­i­n­i­tion of Missions

The only def­i­n­i­tion of mis­sions that aptly fits all the Bib­li­cal evi­dence is this: Mis­sions is the reach­ing of the unreached. When we con­tinue to buy the lie that some are called to stay and some to go then we will con­tinue to live in bla­tant dis­obe­di­ence of God’s call­ing on our lives.

Lastly, of impor­tance is Paul’s own focus on what it means to be in min­istry. He boldly pro­claims that he doesn’t want to be where Christ is already named as to build on another man’s foun­da­tion (Rom 15:20). Does Paul under­stand some­thing that most of us don’t con­cern­ing the role of missions?

The Chal­lenge

I chal­lenge any and all fol­low­ers of Christ to defend a posi­tion that they have a rea­son to stay here in Amer­ica or any other coun­try while not reach­ing the unreached, but before I let you go I should say a few things. Yes, God does give dif­fer­ent gifts, but the ques­tion is what should we see the gifts being used for? Well if God’s pur­poses are for the nations then God gives us gifts to accom­plish His global purposes.

The prob­lem is that to many ‘Chris­tians’ love this world to much. Many of the pro­fess­ing Chris­tians wouldn’t have made the cut to fol­low Christ dur­ing His earthly min­istry by his own command.

And He said to another, “Fol­low Me.” But he said, “Lord, per­mit me first to go and bury my father.” But He said to him, “Allow the dead to bury their own dead; but as for you, go and pro­claim every­where the king­dom of God.“
Luke 9:59–60