Our mandate: love

Love is the executive summary of the law (Romans 13:10) and it’s how Jesus commands us to live: to love God and neighbour (Luke 10:27), to love one another as he has loved us (John 13:34), and to love our enemies (Luke 6:27). And this mandate is mandatory; love is not an optional extra for a follower of Jesus; it’s what it means to follow him. Our lives of love are the fruit of our faith and the light which lead others to Jesus (Luke 8:15-16).

Our message: the gospel

Our message as a church is not actually our mandate (love). All of us as human beings have failed to love God and others because by nature and outside of God’s grace, we are ostracised from God and dead in our sin. To tell people to love is like telling dead people to breathe. But the gospel is not merely advice on how to live or more commands to obey. It is the good news that Jesus has done (through his life, death and resurrection) what we could not, and that anyone who looks to him in faith will be forgiven, made alive, transformed by his Spirit, and saved. Christ has entrusted his church with the job of calling people to repent and believe this message of life, and those who receive it in faith are given the power to live lives of love through the Spirit.

Our mission: make disciples

Before ascending into heaven, Christ commissioned his disciples to make disciples of all nations. He said to them:

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

The church continues this mission today. Christ has called us to make disciples of all nations. The new song that is sung before the throne of the Lamb in Revelation 5 is:

“Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals,
for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God
from every tribe and language and people and nation,
and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God,
and they shall reign on the earth.”

The end goal of history is Christ’s kingdom: multitudes of people from every nation bought by Christ’s blood and reigning on earth with him. To that end, we must strive to make disciples of the Lord Jesus from any and all backgrounds, that they may be rescued from the coming wrath and saved into Christ’s kingdom.

Putting everything together, our mission is

to make disciples

through the message

who obey the mandate.

In other words, we have been given the mission of growing and training and equipping more and more disciples of Jesus, through the preaching of the message, the gospel: disciples who, empowered by God’s Spirit, obey God and live loving and transformed lives.