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The Church and its Mission to the Nations

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church and its mission to the nations

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and Samaria, and as far as the remotest part of the earth. (Acts 1:8, NASB)

Through the agency of the Holy Spirit, the New Testament Church came into being as an evangelizing, teaching, worshipping, and serving fellowship of the people of God. The Church takes up the destiny of the true Israel and becomes the missionary people of the kingdom of God. The Church is an essential part of the plan of God for the salvation of the nations. She is sent into the world in the power of the Spirit to bring the nations to faith and obedience (Romans 16:26).

However, the early Church was slow in bringing the Gospel to the nations in the beginning. Having received the Commission from the Lord already on several occasions, the disciples did not rush out to evangelize the nations. Only when persecution scattered the believers throughout Judea and Samaria did they begin preaching in the regions (Acts 8:1, 4). They first confined their witness to the Jews, but later on, in the Book of Acts, we see the mission to the Gentiles started and finally carried out and made central in their lives and ministry.

About the priestly calling of Israel in Exodus 19: 3-6, Peter has a new understanding that Christians are now the ones who are to perform the priestly calling, to be the ones standing in the gap between God and the nations (I Peter 2:9 ff.).

The Book of Acts provides the history of the earliest out-workings of the Church’s obedience to the missionary command to make disciples of all nations. The Apostle Paul is the well-known and greatest apostle to the Gentile nations. Aside from the Lord, he is the best example of someone who had a heart for the nations.

About Israel’s mandate for mission, Paul attempted to bring back God’s original plan, e.g., for the Jews to bring the blessing of salvation to the Gentile nations. However, the Jews rejected Christ and the Gentile Church.

We also see that in Acts 17:26-27, Paul taught that God had directed the times and places of the people groups or the nations in such a way that they would seek God and find Him. Paul had a clear understanding of God’s heart and His plan to bless all the nations of the world by the blessing of salvation. His Epistles were written in the context of mission. His ambition was to preach the Gospel to places where Christ was not known or to the unreached peoples and nations who are the objects of God’s concern (Romans 15:18-23). Paul considered a people group or nation reached when a church is already planted among them, churches which are self-governing, self-supporting and self-propagating. After he had planted churches from Jerusalem to Illyricum, he was ready to move on to the unreached areas.

An important aspect in mission that Paul understood is the connection between the Church and Abraham. 

What is the link? In Galatians 3, Paul first repeats how Abraham was justified by faith and then continues: “so you see that it is men of faith who are the sons of Abraham” and who, therefore, “are blessed with Abraham who had faith” (v.6-9). What then is the blessing with which all the nations were blessed (v. 8)? In a word, it is the blessing of salvation. We were under the curse of the Law, but Christ has redeemed us from it by becoming a curse in our place, in order “that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith” (v.10-14). Christ bore our curse that we might inherit Abraham’s blessing, the blessing of justification (v. 8) and the indwelling Holy Spirit (v. 14). Paul sums it up in the last verse of the chapter (v. 29): “If you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.”

Paul explains that we, the Church, are Abraham’s descendants by faith. God blessed us with the blessing of salvation so that we can be a blessing to other nations or people groups as well. God’s promise to bless the nations can only be made through Abraham’s descendants, the Church. If by faith we belong to Christ, we are Abraham’s spiritual children and have the responsibility to reach all the nations of the world.

Ike Agawin
EFCC International Mission Director

Mission, Theology and the Bible

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mission

If we ask about the biblical basis for mission, many will answer and direct us to the words of the “Great Commission” (Matthew 28:16-20).

But for Paul, the biblical basis for missions went much further back. The “Great Commission” in its present Scriptural form did not yet exist. In Paul’s missiology, he defended both his mission practice and mission theology based on the Old Testament scriptures. In the Old Testament Paul found a rich and deep theology of the mission of God for the nations, and he built his mission theology on that foundation.

Paul sees the mission of God as bringing the whole of the created order to liberation along with the sons and daughters of God (Romans 8:18-27). He proclaims the Messiah’s resurrection as the first fruits of that new creation and can affirm that a new person is already a new creation when a person is in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17).

Paul also goes back to Abraham. He sees the mission of Israel as being called into existence as the covenant people of God and to be the agent of God in blessing all the nations (Galatians 3:6-8). This understanding is Paul’s foundational block of his theology that he calls “the gospel in advance” – that is, the good news that God intends to bless the nations from the call of Abraham.

For Paul, the mission of God through Israel for the salvation of the nations was the message of the scriptures. Paul’s mission as the apostle to the Gentiles was grounded in the Bible of the time. His biblical theology was a theology of mission – the mission of God.

Our Lord Jesus did the same thing. He fully understood his mission in light of the Old Testament, and He taught His disciples to see mission in the same light and on the same foundation.

44 Now He said to them, “These are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all the things that are written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” 45 Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, 46 and He said to them, “So it is written, that the Christ would suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, 47 and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48 You are witnesses of these things.

(Luke 24:44-48)

Jesus says that this passage is the whole point and thrust of the scriptures: the Law of Moses, the Psalms and the Prophets. The message of the Old Testament is the death and resurrection of the Messiah and the preaching of the gospel to the nations.

The Old Testament then is as much about mission as it was about Jesus. These two are an inseparable part of the same reality – the saving mission of God. If you truly know who Jesus is from the Scriptures, then to confess Jesus as the Messiah is to commit yourself to His mission to the nations.

With the New Testament, the biblical basis for mission is the whole bible – from Genesis to Revelation. God revealed Himself in the scripture as a missionary God. Biblically, mission is the mission of God (Missio Dei), and the Church is God’s agent in fulfilling God’s mission. God’s mission is to redeem all the nations (people groups) of the earth, and He is carrying this out through His redeemed people, the Church. Mission is not an optional ministry of the Church. The mandate of the church is to be on mission with God. “As the Father has sent Me, even so, I am sending you” (John 20:21). The Missio Dei is God the Father sending the Son, and God the Father and the Son sending the Spirit. The Father, Son and the Holy Spirit send the Church into the world.

Ike Agawin
EFCCM International Director