Theological Thursday --- The Great Omission

And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." Amen. (Matthew 28:18-20)

The end of the Gospel of Matthew is known as "The Great Commission" and you will hear it in every Evangelism class, sermon on evangelism, etc. It is a challenge to us who call Christ our Savior to make disciples, baptize, and teach. At the seminary, I have an older friend I meet with several times a week, Dr. Walt Kime. He is a spiritual warrior and has taught me a lot about faith, prayer, and the Christian life. He taught me that if every Christian led just 2 people to Christ and discipled them for 2 years, and the trend continued, the Great Commission would be fulfilled in less than 30 years (although we know some will reject the message as the Bible tells us), but it does challenge us to look at how we are doing with Christ's challenge here!

This post is entitled "The Great Omission" due to some observations by Dallas Willard (a fairly well-known Christian author). He feels a huge part of Jesus' Commission is being ignored --- the discipleship and teaching people to observe God's Commands. We have instead watered down the Gospel message to make it more appealing. We ignore Jesus' words of the cost of following Him and only focus on getting people into heaven. There is a reason when we accept Christ that we aren't picked up by FEDEX and taken directly to heaven --- we are preparing ourselves for eternity (and hopefully fulfilling God's call to lead others). The main question here is, "Are we trying to get people in to heaven (it's all about you), or trying to get heaven into people (it's all about God)".

This ties into last weeks post because it is clear that heaven will not be all about us, but it will be all about God (see Isaiah 6). Some people may be in for a rude awakening when life ends and they find out its not all about them...and hopefully it won't be because we ignored God's call to not just lead people to Him, but to disciple and teach them how to live a life that glorifies God. The great paradox of the Christian life is there is nothing better for us than when we take the focus off ourselves and give all of it to God. That's how we find true fulfillment, and an even greater anticipation for eternity.

So how's your Christian walk...is it all about you, or all about Him?