In Matthew 28, the Great Commission, Christians are instructed to bring the gospel to all people and nations. Think about how radical this is. It is a command to transgress the ethnic, national, and social boundaries of this world with the gospel. Of course, Christians are to do this in an honorable, charitable, and tactful way. But make no mistake about it, it is a command to make converts from people’s current systems to Christianity.
Think about how unsettling this would be if other institutions adopted this same charge. David VanDrunen, in his very helpful book Living in God’s Two Kingdoms, says this:
This missionary task distinguishes the ethic of the church from the ethic of common kingdom institutions. Any earthly society that sees its task as evangelistic in nature has radically transgressed its proper boundaries. A Nazi regime that seeks to make the whole world German—or any American regime that seeks to make the whole world American, for that matter—is a frightening thing. No civil government could accomplish such a goal except by trampling other civil governments through unjust warfare. No particular culture could dominate the world except by a cultural imperialism that fails to respect the creativity of image-bearing human beings in other cultures.
In contrast, the church rightly calls every person in this world to itself and invites them to forsake every other ultimate allegiance for the sake of Christ’s kingdom. Yet it does so without violence and without any injustice. It forsakes “the weapons . . . of the flesh” (2 Cor. 10:4) and simply wins people to faith and salvation “through the folly of what we preach” (1 Cor. 1:21; see Rom. 10:14-17).
This nonviolent missionary task not only sets the church apart from the institutions of the common kingdom but also from other world religions such as Judaism and Islam. Contemporary Judaism is essentially a nonproselytizing religion, content to let Judaism be for Jews while Gentiles relate to God in other ways. Islam is a proselytizing religion, but it seeks the aid of the sword to achieve and defend its claims. Islam’s cultural claims are in fact allencompassing, for it has no true doctrine of a distinction between mosque and state or any other cultural institution. Unlike Judaism, Christianity calls every individual in the world to itself. Unlike Islam, Christianity does so (or at least should do so) without pursuing violence or a broader social revolution. –David VanDrunen, Living in God’s Two Kingdoms, p. 145
The Great Commission charges the church to the non-violent takeover of the world through the gospel. This sounds pretty unsettling, don’t you think? Exactly.