Friday, March 1, 2013

You cannot accomplish the mission on your own!


1 Peter 2:9-10 (ESV)
9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy

Ephesians 2:19 (ESV)
So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God

Hebrews 13:14 (ESV)
For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come.

Matthew 28:18-20 (ESV)
18 And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of 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."

2 Corinthians 5:20a (ESV)
Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us.

It is incredibly important that Christians be members of a local church.

The church is to make God's kingdom, His rule and reign, visible in the world by submitting to it and bearing witness to it until Christ returns and His kingdom comes in its fullness. So as Jonathan Leeman has said, "We do not join churches like we join clubs. We submit to them. It is an act of citizenship. . . . Church membership is a deceleration of citizenship in Christ's kingdom. . . . Church membership is a church formally affirming your profession of faith and you formally submitting to the affirmation and oversight of that church.”[i]

Only when Christians submit themselves to the authority of a local church and link arms with their brothers and sisters in Christ can they truly partake in the mission of the church. I am in agreement with Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert who say, “the mission of the church is to go into the world and make disciples by declaring the gospel of Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit and gathering these disciples into churches, that they might worship and obey Jesus Christ now and in eternity to the glory of God the Father."[ii]

Mark Dever says, “The proper ends for a local congregation’s life and actions are the worship of God, the edification of the church, and the evangelization of the world. These three purposes in turn serve the glory of God.”[iii]This cannot be accomplished by one Christian, it takes the whole church. According to the Joshua Project there are currently 6,000 plus unreached people groups. That is roughly 2.8 billion people who have little to no access to the Gospel. 2.8 billion people who have little to no access to a church. 2.8 billion people who have little to no access to a Christian.[iv]

We as Christians need to get over ourselves and our bent towards selfish individualism and get to work at getting the Gospel out and making disciples. There is much work to be done!



[ii] Kevin DeYoung & Greg Gilbert, What Is the Mission of the Church? (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2011), 241.
[iii] Mark Dever, The Church: The Gospel Made Visible (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing, 2012), 69.