I recently heard an awesome description about what the Great Commission, as discussed in Matthew 28, means for us as Christians today.
As a youth, I heard a lot of pastors teach about the Great Commission and, often, it was for the purpose of persuading young people to the mission field — taking the Gospel to far-flung parts of the world that we considered “unchurched.”
Here’s the reality: the vast majority of Christians will never participate in what we often refer to as a “mission trip” — i.e. a place we go to share the Gospel in service and with our witness.
In the Message translation, the Great Commission reads like this:
Jesus, undeterred, went right ahead and gave his charge: “God authorized and commanded me to commission you: Go out and train everyone you meet, far and near, in this way of life, marking them by baptism in the threefold name: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Then instruct them in the practice of all I have commanded you. I’ll be with you as you do this, day after day after day, right up to the end of the age.”
For the vast majority of us, as I heard in an excerpt in a podcast (click the video on the right to listen), the Great Commission is the commandment of Christ for how we are to be his disciples as “we are going” — the “near” as opposed to the “far.”
So while we are going to school, we allow Christ’s love to shine through us; while we compete in team sports, we allow the kindness and grace of Christ to shine through us. In our interactions with people in need, we offer Christian hospitality.
As we have discussed in the past, once we’ve made the decision to follow Christ, and have taken on this vocation as part of our identity, we cannot set it aside. We take it with us wherever we go, as his representatives in this world.
We will talk more on Sunday morning at Faith Formation (9:30 a.m. in The Pipe).
Hope to see you there!
The Pipe 