The movie City Slickers taught me that the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.  So, I’m excited that my own congregation is recommitting to keeping the Great Commission the main thing.

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The Great Commission is very familiar to most Christians, but not always fully understood.  To better understand the Great Commission, one must realize that when Jesus gives his followers these instructions before ascending to heaven, He is amplifying Genesis 12:1-3 where God tells Abraham that He will bless him and make him a blessing to all nations, or more accurately, all ethnic groups.  That theme of God’s mission to bless the nations and his call to join Him in the work runs throughout all of Scripture.  We are blessed for the specific purpose of participating in God’s redemptive plan to bring the nations, scattered in Genesis 11, back together in reconciliation to God and to each other in Revelation 7.

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But what does it mean for “all peoples to be blessed through you”?  You could say that we are to be about establishing the Kingdom of God in every people group.  Blessing others and establishing the Kingdom of God is about more than just saving souls.  It is about restoring everything that was lost in the fall including pushing back against hunger, disease and death.

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If we are working to address injustice and put things right in the local community that is part of the work of the Great Commission.  But it is incomplete if we aren’t also addressing spiritual needs and bringing the spiritually lost into right relationship with Christ.  And conversely, if we are saving souls but not addressing injustice, we really aren’t becoming disciples learning to obey all of Christ’s commands.

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To understand the final component of the Great Commission we need to understand the ultimate purpose of the Great Commission.  The ultimate purpose is to bring God ultimate glory.  And God gets ultimate glory by bringing the tribes and nations back together in genuine oneness.  It’s not enough that every tribe and nation be present around the throne worshiping the Lamb and it’s not enough that hunger, disease and death have been destroyed.  God brings Himself glory by bringing all the different ethnic groups and cultures back together in unity.  Jesus prays for this unity in John 17:21 and tells us that this unity is a witness to the world that it is Christ working in us bringing that unity.  But our current multiethnic unity isn’t merely a strategy to reach the lost.  Our unity is part of the ultimate outcome that God is pursuing.