The Central Importance of Mission

Jesus made it clear throughout His life that He was here for one purpose only; to show a dying race what God was really like. His preaching, His teaching, His storytelling, His miracles, and almost more than anything else, His healing, all proclaimed unequivocally that God loved them. It had come to be popular, as it does periodically in human history, to believe that God was either distant and uncaring or angrily watching closely for every transgression, just daring each person to give Him an excuse to curse them. People who were sick, poor, or otherwise afflicted were assumed to have displeased God—or perhaps their parents had done so even before they were born! Now, along came this pretentious Rabbi, (who didn’t even have proper rabbinical training) not only being very careless of some of the rituals, but claiming that the Most High, unnameable Holy One was His Abba! “Abba,” insisted Jesus, “loves you!”

So when He left, He made it equally clear that His followers were to take on the same mission. Beginning in Jerusalem and moving outward like some mighty vortex of love and joy, they were to pass on the Good News. The Best News, in fact, that the human race had ever heard. John the Beloved reports that when Jesus appeared among the disciples in the upper room some days after His resurrection, He “said, ‘Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.’” (John 20:21) Just as Jesus had come with one agenda, one mission, and had stuck to it no matter what through the years of His time here, now His followers were being sent with the same mission.

But first, they must be prepared. Aside from the three years and more of hands-on training they had received, they needed the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. This seems to have come in two phases. John continues, “And with that he breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” (Vs. 22)

Then He told them, as recorded in Acts 1:4-5, that the Spirit was to come in even more power, and that they were not to leave Jerusalem until this happened. “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” Do you suppose they wondered how they would know when it happened? Today, Christians sometimes argue about what it means to be “baptized with the Holy Spirit,” but there was no doubt on Pentecost!

All the “Great Commission” passages, in the four Gospels and in the book of Acts, show us the picture of a God who, like a commanding general, prepares His troops for battle. In Matthew 28:18-20, Jesus bestows power on the disciples (Verse 20); Jesus authorizes the use of His power in clearly defined ways (Versus 19-20); Jesus promises to back up His disciples in times of need (Verse 19); Jesus prepares them before He sends them out (Verse 20).

Now, they were ready. They were to go. And go they did. They turned the known world upside down in a generation.

Nothing has changed. The Great Commission is still a priority for the Christian. The salvation of many depends on our ability to spread the news of God’s grace (vs. 16). The Bible establishes an unambiguous route to salvation. “No one comes to the Father,” but through Christ (John 14:6, NIV); salvation is found in “no other name” (Acts 4:12, NIV); and we can know whether or not we have eternal life, because it is “in his Son” and “he who has the Son has life” (1 John 5:11, 12, NIV).

Notice in 1 John 5:11, 12 that God does not ask us to earn eternal life. As if we could! God has given it to all who have placed their trust in Jesus as their personal Savior. God has one Way to eternal life, and He has not only given it to us, He has provided the means to get there. Hence, the choice to accept Jesus as Savior and Lord is the most important decision we make in life.

Yet it is also true that the Bible explains that God has “winked at” (KJV) or “overlooked” (NIV) times of ignorance, when people honestly did not know how to serve Him. There will be uncounted multitudes in heaven who never heard of Jesus or only heard lies about Him, but followed in the honesty of their hearts the Creator they instinctively knew existed. According to clear Bible truth, whether they knew Him or not, they are there only and entirely by the blood of Jesus.

Therefore, we must take care how we present the Gospel. Not all well-meaning missionaries have made it sound like good news. The apostle Paul explained to the fledgling Timothy that the law of God addresses those who behave contrary to “sound doctrine” (1 Tim. 1:10). The Greek word for sound, as used here by Paul means “to be healthy.” It is the word from which we get the term hygiene. “Salvation,” for that matter, means wholeness and health. The early people had a much more complete vision of these matters than many today who are only concerned with the future state of souls, and not with the present and future state of the whole being.

Seventh-day Adventism has built-in safeguards against errors on both sides of this road, believing as we do that health is “the right arm” of the gospel. In many, many countries, in both hemispheres, once people have learned that we care about their well-being here and now, whether physical, mental, emotional, or social, they become interested to learn about our understanding of the everlasting gospel.