DISCIPLING THE NATIONS INTO THE FULLNESS OF CHRIST

October 2024 

As we approach our Annual World Mission’s Conference, and as I contemplate my two-year anniversary as the Pastor for Missions, here at 1st Presbyterian, I wanted to share a few thoughts.

I am very thankful for the grace and goodness of God to me, and to Joan, for these last two years.  I sincerely hope we have made some positive difference in our ministry here, and have helped move the ministry of our church, and specifically the ministry of missions, forward in its effectiveness and in the enthusiasm of our people.  God is good and I praise him! 

Certainly, our congregation has a long history and positive legacy when it comes to missions and our support of missionaries.  We seek to be agile and flexible in culturally sensitive adaption to methods and means as we preach the Gospel around the world; through agencies, movements, partnerships, and people (missionaries).  Please keep praying of us and pray for more people to come to believe in Jesus, and for more churches to be planted, and for more nations to be discipled.  Pray for a constant spirit of generosity in us to respond to human and physical need, especially where we are sending our people to serve.

Lately our church hosted what was called a “Mission’s Roundtable” sponsored by the Tennessee Valley Mission to the World (MTW) Committee.  It recalled several ideas that I would like to share with you.  I suppose you could put it under the heading of, “What Are We Doing, And Why?”  Of course, the previous questions are, What is God doing, and from that, What should we be doing? 

   We were reminded of how God has been a missionary God in caring about the nations, in how he loved the world by sending his only Son, and then how Jesus has commissioned us to go into all the world and make disciples of all the nations.  I shared a few of these thoughts lately for a staff devotional. 

When you look at the Scripture and read the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18ff) , what do you notice, what is important to remember?  Your answer should quickly be, “all of it!”  Of course, but let’s be more specific.  Here is the text:

18. “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 

This is such a wonderful comfort and encouragement.  The task ahead of us is entirely possible by the one who is behind us.  And, in verse 20, the comfort about the one who is always with us.  One could speak a lot about these blessed encouragements from Jesus, but that is not my object today.  I want to focus on the task.

19. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, … In this phrase we receive the command to make disciples, this is the main point of the Great Commission, the actual work we are to be doing.  To do it we must “go” and so in Greek it is a participle (going) with an imperative punch from the one command in the passage (make disciples).  We will speak more in a moment of the process of discipleship, but Jesus makes the point about the object and place of our discipleship…all ethnic groups.  Our English version is nations, but it is not what we think of as nation states, it is more focused than that, but to each ethnic identity in the world, first to the Jews and then among the Gentiles.

19. continued…baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20. Teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.  And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

So, lets break the process down into some parts.  The idea of going to the nations means we are to be evangelizing.  This means we go to proclaim the Gospel, the good news of Christ’s first coming, his death for us, and his resurrection.  We share this message without apology or shame since when people believe, by God’s grace, God unleashes his power to save them.  They become new creations in Christ.

Part 1, go!  Part 3, proclaim!  But before we get to proclaim we come to part 2, which is the nation’s part, or, the places we are to go.

  God cares about the nations.  He created them, primarily at the tower of Bable, through the confusion of tongues.  From Genesis to Revelation, we see the Lord having concern for the nations, and for each nation.  Several times in the Old Testament the nations are cited are the ones witnessing how God treats his people Israel, and it seems God cares about what they think concerning his covenants and his promises. 

The Bible calls nations out by name, the Bible tells us that righteousness exalts a nation but that sin is a reproach to any people (Proverbs 14:34).  In short, nations have reputations, and their morality and their faith or lack of it is of concern to God.  The righteousness of the United States of America is not a matter of indifference to God. 

  Is the fact that God is creating one new people out of Jews and Gentiles (Ephesians 2) cancelling out God’s concerns for the nations?  I don’t think so.  God has sovereignly designed when nations rise and fall, and what their boundaries are, even though we are all from one blood (Acts 17:26).  God has planned to provide the leaves of the Tree of Life for the healing of the nations in Revelation 22:2. All the way to the end God is concerned about the nations.

There are implications to this idea.  One is that God wants nations, or ethnic groups, to be discipled.  Not just individuals, but whole people groups and cultures.  It starts with individuals and families being saved, but God wants even more than that.  As more and more people are saved in a culture, that culture should and ought to change.  Each ethnic group should become more righteous as more people become disciples.  I see cultural discipleship more concerned with goodness, joy, and beauty than a list of rules and outward pretense.  More concerned with real faith and broad love.

   This is not the same as trumpeting nationalism, or idolatrous patriotism, but rather national humility, blessing, and love as Jesus is exalted among any people, i.e, producing righteousness.  In the missionary enterprise we see the Lord giving certain people a “burden” for nations or ethnic groups.  God raises up someone who hears the “Macedonian Call” as Paul did.  A specific place and time, reached by a specific missionary.  

I am an American, and I care about my nation’s righteousness.  I want our nation to be exalted by its goodness and godliness.   So, I am concerned to continually evangelize them. I also have a great concern for African Americans, as I am married to a black woman.  I have seen what it is like for black people to know Jesus, to worship him, to care about mercy and justice.  What a witness!  But I am deeply concerned and distressed by the part of any ethnic group that does not know Jesus.  I pray for God to save this people group.

Part 4 is discipleship.  This means that as we evangelize, we not only call people to believe, but to follow Jesus.  We teach them everything he has commanded.  Baptizing people means that they receive the sign and seal that they are part of the people of God.  For me this strongly implies their inclusion in the church.  

Some people have taken the concept of discipleship to mean being trained and mentored in basic Christian ideas and practices, usually by a process of one on one, life on life.  This kind of personal investment is wonderful.  I would submit that is not the only view of discipleship here, and maybe not the average one.  I think the Scriptures envisions Christians being and growing as Christians in the body of the local church.  The local church is where we each do our part, where we impact each other, and where we corporately express the “fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4).

I am not suggesting either or, but both/and, as the way of discipleship.   If I only pursue my individual discipleship without learning how to love the brothers and sisters in my local congregation, I am not much of a disciple.  If I pursue my own maturity in Christ and not help others in theirs, I am not much of a disciple.  It is not about simply realizing my own gifts, but sharing my gifts, in the body of Christ.  Yes, I must seek my own growth and learn from older and deeper saints so I can grow, but I also grow as I share and give to others. 

Sometimes the “technology” of discipleship is learning a pattern of Christian practices and trying to discipline myself to follow it.  Yet, true discipleship is not only deep, but broad.  Is our church representing the “fullness of Christ”?  That phrase means truly representing, as a church, all the personality and life of Jesus.  Each church should be proclaiming the Truth, as he did.  Each church should be full of love, and practicing love, as he did.  Each church should be full of people serving one another, as he did.  Each church should be pursuing the lost, as he did and does.   Each church should have compassion for the human needs of people, and rise to meet those needs, as he did.

   These are the kind of churches we should be planting around the world, in each ethnic group.  To some degree this will change the world, though the impact of the Gospel will ebb and flow, rise and fall, in each nation according to the sovereign direction of God, and the obedience or disobedience of his church to proclaim and live it, until he comes.

END.