HOPE! - The Great Commission

As Christians, we are to follow the command of God and multiply, filling the whole earth. We are called to make Christ-like disciples among the nations, teaching them to walk as Jesus walked (see 1 John 2). We are to bring other people into the Kingdom.

This principle was demonstrated in the life of Jesus. He called his disciples to go out and make other disciples. This is seen when Jesus sends out the twelve into the surrounding countryside, it is seen when Jesus sends out the seventy into Judea, and it is further seen in the Great Commission given at the end of the synoptic Gospels and the beginning of the book of Acts. Jesus said to his disciples just before he ascended into heaven, “Go into all the world and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” These are the last recorded words of Christ before he ascended back to the Father, and the Christian community is to take his instructions very seriously. 

Jesus did not just tell his disciples to reproduce. He told them that he would go with them and would go before them. Matthew records that after Jesus spoke these words to them, he said, “And surely I am with you always to the very end of the age.” Jesus will go with us in our disciple-making journey, and he is already ahead of us as well, even at the end of the age.

Matthew also records that right before Jesus gave his disciples these instructions he said to them that all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to him. He then turns to them and gives them this authority and instructs them to make disciples of all the nations, etc. The authority of Jesus has been given to the church to make disciples. Jesus even said that the church would do greater things than the miracles he himself had performed on earth.