As billions remain without access to the gospel, Alex Hawke explores why the Great Commission remains the most urgent calling for the church today.
The Urgency of Mission
Throughout history, amazing feats of sacrifice, risk, and courage have led to the rescue of people from great danger. I think of the incredible stories of Jews rescued from the Nazis by being hidden and secretly taken out of occupied nations to places of safety. Those involved felt the urgency and compulsion to do whatever it took to save as many as possible.
Two aspects of world mission have struck me as I’ve reflected on this. Rather than trying to get people out of places, we partner with churches to get followers of Jesus into places where millions continue to live and die without hearing the good news of Jesus.
Secondly, this is urgent; the stakes are even higher than any other type of rescue in history. God is the great rescuer, who sent Christ to redeem us from sin and death and reconcile us to himself, so that we’d no longer be separated from him but have eternal life. And he’s sent us to make this known to those who haven’t heard.
How Will They Hear?
Approximately 3 billion people have little or no access to the gospel or have never heard it. Of the world’s approximately 16,000 ethno-linguistic people groups, around 7,000 have no local community of Christians large enough to evangelise the rest of their people group.
In many parts of North Africa, the Middle East, Central and Eastern Asia, and Europe, the number of followers of Jesus is significantly less than 1% of the population. Whole people groups have literally no believers, while others have only a handful.
When we gather with our churches on Sundays, let’s remember that more people are sitting around us than there are believers in many, many people groups. Without people being sent to them, millions in these regions will live and die having never heard or responded to the gospel. His people are the means God uses to bring the people of the nations to know him and be saved.
Paul writes to the Romans, ‘How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent?’ (Romans 10:14-15).
A Matter of Eternal Life and Death
The Christian life comes with the tension of celebrating and enjoying the glorious hope we have in Christ, while feeling a burden to participate in advancing the spread of the gospel to where it’s not been heard.
When Paul shares his testimony with King Agrippa, he recounts that Jesus said he was sending him to the Jews and the Gentiles, ‘to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.’ (Acts 26:18).
This is an empty commission if people’s eyes don’t need to be opened; if they don’t need to turn from darkness to light; if they don’t need to escape the power of Satan to come to God, and don’t need the forgiveness of sins that comes only by faith in Christ.
At stake in world mission is where millions of people will spend eternity.
In Romans 10:9, Paul writes that only those who declare that ‘Jesus is Lord’ and believe that God raised him from the dead will be saved. All others will be eternally separated from God. Jesus declared that he is the way, the truth and the life and that no one comes to the Father except through him (John 14:6). Preaching to the rulers and elders, Peter proclaimed that, ‘Salvation is found in no one else for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.’ (Acts 4:12).