One of the characteristic feature of popular missionary movements today, is sadly, a great lack of proper appreciation of the gospel message. Most missions make appeal to Christians to join their cause, by showing how much earthly need - spiritual or physical, there is among the people groups they are serving. Rarely does a missionary organization appeal to the glory of the gospel message and inform the hearers the radical and joyful implications of it - to take it to the ends of the earth. In reality, if someone gets gripped by the message of the gospel, he needs little prodding to be zealous for the Great Commission.
It is in this matter that Reformed Christians have a distinct approach to missions. Reformed Christians work out their zeal purely by working hard on their theology. For if one properly understands and appreciates the theology of the Bible, then not only would one know that he ought to be taking part in the missionary work of the church, but also would have the proper, biblical, needed and liberating motivation for doing it. A lot of cheap zeal without knowledge that is so rampant in popular missionary movements can thus be avoided by us.
Dr. Michael Horton, the J. Gresham Machen professor of apologetics and systematic theology at Westminster Seminary California, has written a very excellent article, explaining the rationale for the imperative of the Great Commission to "Go into all the world". Horton seeks to show how the purposes of God are based on the promises of God, by focusing on the triumphant indicative given by Jesus Christ, before He commanded His disciples to go, namely, “All authority in Heaven and Earth has been given to Me”.
Horton begins his article by noting how raw zeal can trump the content of what we have been given to communicate [1] and let the message be subordinate to the mission and the evangel to evangelism. He notices the danger of taking sides on this issue of zeal and knowledge, by noting that if "zeal without knowledge" is deadly (Rom. 10:2-3), then knowledge without zeal is dead. He warns us that the Great Commission doesn't give any quarter to either of these extremes.
In the next two sections, Horton beautifully explains the relationship between the purpose of God and the promise of God, grounding the imperative to “Go” on the triumphant indicative of Jesus' sovereign authority. He shows how the whole Bible points to God's missionary purpose and how the church's role in missions is purely a derivative of the former. He then goes through the book of John to show how the Father, the Son and the Spirit are equally involved in the historic unfolding of the eternal covenant of redemption. Horton summarizes from the passages in John as follows, The Father chose a people in Christ from the mass of fallen humanity, giving them to Christ as their Mediator, with the Spirit as the one who will give them faith and keep them in that faith to the end. Not one of those whom the Father gave to the Son will be lost. Horton then appeals to the unity of the Bible and uses this understanding of the covenant of redemption from John to understand what Jesus meant in the Great Commission. Horton argues that the entire covenant of redemption finds it efficacy in the sovereignty of God. It is precisely because Jesus alone has the authority to save and to condemn that there is a Great Commission.
Horton then moves onto discussing the new birth and shows how new birth is only possible for fallen sinners, due to the authority that Christ has to give eternal life to all those whom the Father has chosen. Horton notes, All authority in heaven and on earth is in Christ's hands. If it were in the hands of a despot, we would never be free. If it were in our hands, we would never be saved. Because Christ has the power of life and death, however, there is not only the possibility but the assurance that there will be a church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.
After having thus established the truth that the rationale for the Great Commission is the sovereignty of God in Christ, Horton draws some massive implications for those who are involved in missionary work. For that he picks Apostle Paul as his example and observes, After explaining that God "saved us...not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began" (2 Tim. 1:9), Paul—on the verge of his execution in Rome—assured Timothy, "Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory" (2 Tim. 2:10). The greatest missionary in the history of the church was driven by the gospel indicatives. Because God chose sinners from a mass of spiritual death, Christ saved them, and the Spirit gave them faith through the preaching of the gospel, Paul could go on, enduring persecution and knowing that God's purposes would be realized. Not Caesar, nor the Jewish leaders, nor the sinners to whom he preached, nor Paul himself held the personal power to save or to condemn.
Horton then exhorts us to believe in the infallible surety of the success of God’s mission of gathering His elect in Christ Jesus, through our preaching of His gospel. He says, Because Christ accomplished his mission, ours is guaranteed success—defined by God's purposes, not ours. It is this confidence that motivates a missionary in Saudi Arabia to labor for years before witnessing a single conversion… The Father's decision is irrevocable. Christ's mission is accomplished already, and the Spirit will be just as successful in his labors. Therefore, the Great Commission cannot fail.
Even though all true Christians who embrace this truth of the sovereignty of God over all things including missions can be joyfully optimistic, we should be aware of the fact that there will be oppositions to face and persecutions to endure. Here again Horton comes with a comforting word from the same truth of Christ’s victorious work. He says, Caesars may still rule and demand the proper temporal allegiance of their subjects (Rom. 13:1-7), but they rule at the pleasure of the Sovereign of the universe. Disease may stalk and death may claim our bodies, but it no longer has the last word: "O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?" (1 Cor. 15:55). Our fate does not lie in the impersonal forces of nature. We are not at the mercy of insurance companies and health-care providers. Jesus Christ—not the invisible hand of the market—is Lord of all powers and principalities.... Are you rattled by the magnitude of opposition to the gospel, increasingly even in the nations once nominally committed to a vaguely Christian culture? Does the Great Commission seem threatened by the gathering forces of secularism, militant Islam, consumerism, violence, and moral relativism? These are among the "principalities and powers" that Christ has vanquished objectively, although their effects have not yet been finally and forever eliminated.Oscar Cullman compared Christ's resurrection and return in glory to "D-Day" and "V-Day" during World War II. There was first of all the landing assault that broke the back of the Nazi forces, but insurgent battles raged until victory in Europe was fully realized. Even now, Christ has crushed the head of the serpent and is setting prisoners free. All authority in heaven and on earth is given to him. Are you distressed by your lack of understanding, zeal, or faithfulness in your own discipleship, much less in your appreciation for the Great Commission? Christ is Lord! He has forgiven you all of your sins and has given you a new heart. In spite of every setback, you are assured that your Shepherd-King has already won the war!
Horton concludes his article with an appeal to pause, ponder and wonder at the glorious, triumphant indicative of the gospel before there can be any mission or evangelism. All Christians would do well in taking heed to Horton’s words of wisdom.
The Great Announcement Read
Footnotes
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All quotations taken from :
[1] "The Great Announcement" , Modern Reformation, Jan./Feb, Vol. 20, No. 1 2011, Pages 12-19
