Matthew 28:16-20
The Great Commission
16 Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. 17 When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. 18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
Jesus changed the world with His Teachings...He died for our sins knowing that we fall short of the Glory of His Father, with our sins...But with Him giving us the Great Commission in Matthew and then telling us in the Acts that His Father knows the time and dates for all things when the world would be reshaped and put back into harmony, we are to be active and teaching others the gospel...For God has set a day when He will judge the world with justice by the Man He has appointed...He has given proof of this to everyone by raising Him from the dead...We will receive power we need until His Second Advent, as the Holy Spirit comes on you and will be indwelt in us...We will be His witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of all the earth...
So as followers of Jesus we are to reshape our world with love and kindness to all people...We are to recognize its fallenness and to announce to others His gospel...The world is broken and needs love among everyone to heal it...So we are to proclaim its brokenness, and to proclaim love and give trust to a world that knows only despair, exploitation, love of material things, fear and suspicion...Jesus in the Great Commission points us in a direction of love for all the world and love for all its and our neighbors, wherever they live...He is urging us in His Commission to be at the leading edge of our cultures and to come into harmony with His LOVE, because God is LOVE...Each country's culture is to be shaped by the gospel and the LOVE from the Father and Son...Followers of Jesus are to lead the Way as we read His Commission to us...We are to lead it with love, joy, patience, gentleness, truth, goodness, peace, and good judgment and true wisdom...And it is to be done now. and by each of us!..
Theologian, author and Anglican Bishop N. T. Wright puts it this way: “Our task as image-bearing, God-loving, Christ-shaped, Spirit-filled Christians, following Christ and shaping our world, is to announce redemption to a world that has discovered its fallenness, to announce healing to a world that has discovered its brokenness, to proclaim love and trust to a world that knows only exploitation, fear and suspicion...The gospel of Jesus points us and indeed urges us to be at the leading edge of the whole culture, articulating in story and music and art and philosophy and education and poetry and politics and theology and even--heaven help us--Biblical studies, a worldview that will mount the historically-rooted Christian challenge to both modernity and postmodernity, leading the way...with joy and humor and gentleness and good judgment and true wisdom...I believe if we face the question, "if not now, then when?" if we are grasped by this vision we may also hear the question, "if not us, then who?"...And if the gospel of Jesus is not the key to this task, then what is?”...