Imperishable Inheritance

As we have seen, the con­cept of making dis­ci­ples of all nations is not a New Tes­ta­ment idea, but some­thing has rad­i­cally changed. With the Advent of Christ, the Anointed Mes­siah, the Abra­hamic Covenant will finally find ful­fill­ment. God told Abra­ham that “In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen 22:18), and Paul clar­i­fies in Gala­tians that Christ is the promised seed (Gal 3:16). Christ has “broke down the bar­rier of the divid­ing wall” (Eph 2:14) to allow all nations (people groups) into covenant with God.

The Gospels

In Matthew 13 sev­eral para­bles illus­trat­ing evan­ge­lism are uti­lized (sower, weeds, mus­tard seed); this leads to ask how things have changed and not changed since the Old Tes­ta­ment. The idea of God’s name being made known through­out His cre­ation is the same, but now the means becomes a spir­i­tual inher­i­tance and not a phys­i­cal one as the Jews had thought for so long (which led to their mis­un­der­stand­ing of Christ).

Jesus com­mis­sioned His dis­ci­ples with the well known com­mand, “‘All author­ity has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go there­fore and make dis­ci­ples of all the nations, bap­tiz­ing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teach­ing them to observe all that I com­manded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Mat 28:18-20; cf. Mar 16:15, Luk 24:47). The “Great Commission” is really an “old commission,” because Christ is re-​stating God’s promise to Abra­ham. Think of it, Christ is restat­ing the Abra­hamic Covenant thou­sands of years later!

In Matthew 24, Jesus’ dis­ci­ples ask Him when He will return (Mat 24:3). Jesus responds that earth­quakes, wars, and tribu­la­tion are not to signal the return, but Christ will return when, “This gospel of the king­dom shall be preached in the whole world as a tes­ti­mony to all the nations, and then the end will come” (Mat 24:14). Jesus is saying that only when God’s promise to Abra­ham is com­plete will He return! This pas­sage should chal­lenge us to rethink we view the return of Christ and our role in it. In other words, Christ is basi­cally saying, “if you want me to come back, then get the gospel to all the people groups!”

For more ref­er­ences: Mat 6:9-10, 9:35-38; Luk 2:30-32, 4:16-21, 10:2; Joh 1:29.

Acts and the Epistles

Jesus restates the com­mis­sion­ing of His dis­ci­ples right before His ascen­sion, “you shall be My wit­nesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth” (Act 1:8). The early church con­tin­ues to strug­gle with the “mystery” of the king­dom (Act 10:45-48) which is the in bring­ing of the Gen­tiles into covenant with God (Rom 11:25).

Paul later pro­claims boldly that those who are of faith are true Jews (Rom 2:28-29), that those of faith have Abra­ham as our fore­fa­ther (4:16), and that Gen­tiles are included in “Israel” or the covenant people of God (Rom 9:6). He also pro­claims that in order to believe the Gospel some­one must be sent (Rom 10:14-15), and that he wants to preach the Gospel where Christ is not known so as not to “build on another man’s foundation” (Rom 15:20).

Lastly, we will look at Gala­tians 3. Paul says in this chap­ter, “The Scrip­ture, fore­see­ing that God would jus­tify the Gen­tiles by faith, preached the gospel before­hand to Abra­ham, saying, “ALL THE NATIONS WILL BE BLESSED IN YOU.” So then those who are of faith are blessed with Abra­ham, the believer” (Gal 3:8-9). This there­fore ver­i­fies that God’s eter­nal plan was to bring Gen­tiles into covenant with Him. This finally gives us some much needed unity to the Bible in theme and intent.

For more ref­er­ences: Acts 2:1-13, 3:24-26, 5:27-29, 6:7, 8:1-8, 9:15-16, 11:18-21, 13:1-3, 13:46-48, 14:26-28, 15:10-14, 28:28; Rom 1:5, 3:28-31, 9:22-24, 10:17-21, 15:8-11; Heb 6:13-14, 8.

The Consummation

John sees a vision in Rev­e­la­tion, “And they 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” (Rev 5:9; cf. 7:9). What is John seeing? He is seeing the ful­fill­ment of the Abra­hamic Covenant! That is a vision of heaven to look for­ward to: when every people group will be wor­ship­ing the Lamb of God!

What Now?

You know have an intro­duc­tion into God’s heart for the nations. There are 6 things you can do from here, but one of them you want to avoid. First you can be pray­ing for the unreached and that labors would be sent into the field (Mat 9:35-38), you can be wel­com­ing inter­na­tional stu­dents who are vis­it­ing Amer­ica, you can be send­ing mis­sion­ar­ies mon­e­tary sup­port and encour­age­ment, you can be mobi­liz­ing other Chris­tians to under­stand and get on board with God’s heart for the unreached, and you can phys­i­cally go to an unreached people to share the Gospel. These five items are not mutu­ally exclusive’they fall and rise together. The sixth thing you can do it be dis­obe­di­ent to God. From the sta­tis­tics in the intro­duc­tion, you can see that the Body of Christ is largely being dis­obe­di­ent to the pur­pose of God.

I sug­gest taking Per­spec­tives on the World Chris­t­ian Move­ment for a more in-​depth exam­i­na­tion at these and many more issues in mis­sions. Con­sider taking a summer to go to The Trav­el­ing Team’s Inten­sive Train­ing Summer Project, and spend seven weeks taking Per­spec­tives and learn­ing from mis­sion­ar­ies about dif­fer­ent reli­gions and con­cepts. You can start first by look­ing up an unreached people group, and just being pray­ing for them. God will show you decid­edly that His plan is for the unreached.