With voices of hope, the psalmists looked forward to the day when all peoples of the planet would praise the Lord and relish his favor. Paul, as a servant of Messiah Jesus, identifies that the aim of the gospel is “to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of [Christ’s] name among all the nations” — a mission that defines the very makeup of the church (Romans 1:5).1 Three elements are noteworthy with respect to this aim.

ABSTRACT: The apostle Paul described his life mission, and the mission of the church as a whole, as a calling “to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of [Christ’s] name among all the nations” (Romans 1:5). From Eden onward, God has been moving history toward the day when Satan and sin are finally conquered, the knowledge of his glory covers the earth, and the redeemed from all peoples praise the Lamb who was slain. That mission, still incomplete, spurs every Christian either to send or go, either to hold the ropes for others or cross boundaries and cultures for the sake of Christ’s name.

Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel,
who alone does wondrous things.
Blessed be his glorious name forever;
may the whole earth be filled with his glory! (Psalm 72:18–19)

All the nations you have made shall come
and worship before you, O Lord,
and shall glorify your name. (Psalm 86:9)

Praise the Lord, all nations!
Extol him, all peoples!
For great is his steadfast love toward us,
and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever.
Praise the Lord! (Psalm 117:1–2)

With voices of hope, the psalmists looked forward to the day when all peoples of the planet would praise the Lord and relish his favor. Paul, as a servant of Messiah Jesus, identifies that the aim of the gospel is “to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of [Christ’s] name among all the nations” — a mission that defines the very makeup of the church (Romans 1:5).¹ Three elements are noteworthy with respect to this aim.

First, the phrase “the obedience of faith” probably means “the obedience that always flows from faith.”² Faith is the root and obedience the fruit, yet in a way that the two are never separated; saving faith submits to Christ’s lordship (Romans 6:17–18; 10:13–17).

Next, the target of the gospel mission is to see people saved and satisfied from “among all the nations.” All the nations experienced God’s curse, and some from all the nations will experience God’s blessing. The good news that the reigning God eternally saves and satisfies believing sinners through Christ’s life, death, and resurrection is for the Libyan and the Bolivian, for the expats in Dubai and the mountain tribes in the Himalayas, for the Latinos in Miami and the poor in rural Minnesota.

Finally, this passage tells us that missions is a means to white-hot worship. As John Piper explains, “Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn’t.”³ One day, the need for missions will pass away, but the redeemed will forever magnify the majesty and glory of God in Christ. Missions exists “for the sake of [Jesus’s] name.” There is no higher goal than seeing and savoring Jesus’s glory among the peoples of the world.

Commission and Curse

When God first made the world, he planted a garden-sanctuary like a temple, and in it he placed his image — a man and a woman, whom he commissioned to expand his garden temple by carrying his image to the ends of the earth.⁴ “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth’” (Genesis 1:27–28). God commissioned humanity to reflect, resemble, and represent his greatness and glory on a global scale.

Our first parents initially rejected this calling by choosing to imitate the serpent in their rebellion. But God remained committed to magnifying himself in the universe, and he promised to overcome the curse through a male royal deliverer — an offspring of the woman who would one day overpower the serpent and reestablish global blessing (Genesis 3:15). Later prophets identified how this person would fulfill God’s promise and fill the whole earth with God’s glory (Psalm 72:1–2, 17–19; Isaiah 11:1–2, 9–10; cf. Numbers 14:21; Habakkuk 2:14).

Sin escalated after Adam’s fall and moved God to justly punish humanity through the flood. As Noah and his sons repopulated the world, Yahweh punished the proud at the Tower of Babel. Far from seeking to magnify God’s name, people sought to elevate their own names, so the Lord dispersed them — seventy different family groups — and confused their languages throughout the world (Genesis 11:8–9). For God’s blessing to overcome curse, he would now need to address the sins of peoples (plural) and to call for surrender across language groups.

Two-Stage Abrahamic Promise

Yahweh pledged to overcome the sin and language barriers through one of the seventy families — the family of Abraham:

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you so that I may make of you a great nation, and may bless you, and may make your name great. And there, be a blessing, so that I may bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I may curse. And the result will be that in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Genesis 12:1–3, my translation)

Growing out of the two commands to Abraham to go and be a blessing, a two-stage process emerges for overcoming the curse. First, Abraham would need to go to the land of Canaan, where God would make him into a great nation. God fulfilled that promise in the Mosaic covenant era. Second, Abraham, or one representing him, would need to be a blessing, so that God could ultimately overcome global curse and bring blessing to all the families who earlier spread around the earth (cf. Genesis 10:32). The Lord ultimately realized that promise in Christ and the new covenant.

God promised Abraham that he would become “the father of a multitude of nations” (Genesis 17:4–6), but he also stressed that this move from being the father of one nation (Israel) to a father of many nations would happen only when the single, male deliverer would rise — one who would expand kingdom territory by possessing the gate of enemies, and through whom all the nations would be blessed (Genesis 22:17–18; cf. 26:3–4). Missions as we know it — carrying a message of reconciliation outward to the nations — would become operative only in the day when this king would arise and crush the powers of the serpent. Let’s now consider each of these two stages as they play out in Scripture.

Stage 1a: Israel’s ‘Come and See’ Calling

During the Mosaic covenant age, many non-Israelites became Israelites — people such as the mixed multitude coming out of Egypt, Rahab the Canaanite, Ruth the Moabite, and Uriah the Hittite. While Israel as a people was, at some level, a multiethnic community, during the entire Old Testament period Abraham remained the father of a single nation. And like Adam in the garden-sanctuary, God called this people his firstborn son (Exodus 4:22; cf. Genesis 5:1–3) and charged them to be priest-kings by representing, resembling, and reflecting him to a needy world. Others would see their good deeds, and those good deeds would direct them to the greatness of God.

Thus, Yahweh told Israel, “If you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant and be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine, then you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:5–6, my translation). Through radically surrendered lives, Israel would mediate God’s presence and display God’s holiness to a needy world. Similarly, Moses wrote, “Keep [the statutes and the rules] and do them, for that will be your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people’” (Deuteronomy 4:6).

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