The meaning and the corruption of the Great Commission

One claim amongst those who embrace "Christian Nationalism" that is currently quite prominent is the claim that the Great Commission is the marching orders of their programme.

I've talked about this before, here. But earlier this week, missionary Bible translator Nathan Wells has written a brief and very helpful summary of why this equation perverts God's word. He amply demonstrates that the apostles would not have recognised the programme that is claimed by "Christian Nationalists" to be the one which they received and passed on to us, and that it is not recognisable in their actual activities or teachings. 

Rather, doing this to the church's marching orders, since they are so fundamental, is to pervert the Scriptures to our own harm, and the harm of those who hear such teaching. Nathan Wells distinguishes clearly, as orthodox explanations of the Great Commission throughout church history has, between believing, as we do, that "Christians today may rightly work for justice, integrity, and reform in the public square", and the novel and counterfeit Commission being pushed by "Christian Nationalism". I commend his article to you.

As this seems a suitable place, I'll add one final thought that occurred to me during the last year. Historically, orthodox Christians have generally recognised that the Great Commission is the New Covenant form of the "Dominion Mandate", the Genesis command to man to fulfil the earth and subdue it, filling it with God's glory, as man's great task. This mandate was given in new, covenantally-appropriate forms to Noah, Abraham, and Israel, during the Old Testament. It reaches its climax and fulfilment in the call to disciple amongst all the nations and establish obedient communities of believers in them all.

"Christian Nationalism" subverts this, and reads things as if the Great Commission does not fulfil the Dominion Mandate, but as if it actually were the Dominion Mandate. Instead of the New Testament showing us how, now, after Christ's Resurrection and before his return we are go out and glorify God throughout all domains of life as we await for the day when he'll be revealed to renew all creation and reign visibly, as the fulfilment of all that went before, instead it is re-read as if it were what went before. The precise same goal remains, to be achieved before the Eschaton, and the gospel only edits the means of how to get there. The victory of Christ is re-interpreted, such that having a redeemed people throughout the nations who overcome the trials of the world, flesh and devil is not itself a victory: it is only a preliminary step along the way towards dominating this present age at all levels, with political domination over all other ideologies being the crowning glory which we consciously aim for in order to fulfil the Commission. As such, the disciples in the gospels didn't, until Christ's resurrection, lack understanding of how the ages would unfold and overlap: they actually understood things just right, and just got the timings wrong. (And when they explicitly and repeatedly taught the churches about the overlap of the ages, we're supposed to just bracket that out as still having no real meaning in the end). Once you identify the significance of this mis-reading, it helps to make sense of "Christian Nationalists". It's not that they don't want to arbitrarily stop discipling people after teaching what obedience means personally and within families, but progress also to community life. That would still remain an entirely orthodox position. The problem is that their claims about the Great Commission subvert and change it fundamentally.

Evil, secularism and denial

I had not until today come across this quote from former Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks:

"‘But there was one sense in which the Holocaust changed the whole human equation,’ Sacks added. ‘The culture that produced the Holocaust was not distant. This colossal tragedy and crime took place in the heart of the most civilised culture that the world has ever known. A culture that had achieved the greatest heights of human achievement, in science, in philosophy, in rationalism – this was the culture of Kant and Hegel and Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, the culture of Goethe and Schiller and Bach and Beethoven. Half the signatories of the Wannsee Declaration [authorising the ‘Final Solution’ from 1942] carried the title of Dr. And that was just Germany. France: the country that gave us the Revolution and The Rights of Man had an astonishing history of anti-Semitism. As for Vienna: the cultural capital of Europe was also the epicentre of anti-Semitism. After the Holocaust some people lost their faith. Some people kept their faith and some people found faith in God. But after the Holocaust it is morally impossible to believe in man. The Holocaust is the final, decisive refutation of the idea that you can have a humane civilisation without fear of heaven and without belief in the sanctity of life. The Holocaust may make some lose their faith in God, but it must make all people lose their faith in humankind. After Auschwitz you have to be either very ignorant or very naive to believe in secular humanism. The real challenge of the Shoah is not to faith, but to lack of faith.’ (Rabbi Jonathan Sacks)"

That's very incisive. The reality of profound cosmic evil permeates our existence. To deny it is madness and is to choose to live in a fantasy world that has no real overlap with the one we are actually situated in.

This doesn't stop many people from doing so, from living in the fantasy world of post-war secular humanism, prioritising their personal career, entertainment and comfortable retirement. Evil, though, by its nature, can't stop rearing its head, whether at the personal, familial, national or other levels. The human capacity for evil - both to commit, and to pretend not to notice it going on right in front of our noses - is astonishing.

Denial is the preferred option in the West for those who have no answers. If you don't admit the problem, then you don't need to offer a solution. And if you can't offer a solution, then pretending that there is no actual problem that needs a solution is about the only option left (inasmuch as living in a permanent state of complete self-delusion can be called an option). And that is where we are. Secular humanism can't admit any concept of cosmic evil. Problem can only be failures of proper technical process. More training, more funding, better processes, and we'll lick the problems! Except, they keep conspicuously not doing so. Or rather, they would, if they were possible. But the human problem keeps intervening and corrupting the purity of the utopian vision (or rather, of the day-dream). It turns out that failing to factor original sin and our need for God's grace and our repentance into your thinking just makes things worse. 

Here's the secular paradox once we leave behind confident declarations of ideology and enter experienced reality: leaving out all the "irrelevant" supernatural realm leaves us with no tools to even understand the resulting mess in the natural one. Telling oneself that God needs to keep himself strictly to the realm of theory and not intervene in practice results only, time and time again, in practical catastrophe.

Jesus took the evil upon himself. He died and lived again, and teaches us to similarly give away our lives so that others might experience his life. It's not better processes, funding programmes or improved managerial oversight that can deal with cosmic evil. It's the risen life of the innocent one who freely took it all upon himself.

On national consciousness

National consciousness is an interesting thing, which we take for granted. As Christians, though, we should seek to examine and understand it, as part of loving God with all our minds.

By "national consciousness", I mean our awareness of ourselves as members of a particular nation, and that nation's corporate life, including its history, culture, conventions and the sense of belonging to a particular space as part of it.

Recently I was gifted, and read, Robert Massie's very informative biography of Peter the Great. (The whole series is currently on special offer on Kindle). One fascinating section explained the life of the typical Russian at the start of Peter's reign. I was struck by the fact that the typical peasant (which was the great bulk of the people) could, and did, pass their lives without knowing what was happening anywhere more than a few miles from their homes.

How different to today that is. How different to ours the thought-world of such people must have been. How different their relationships, and sense of what was going on and connection to not only those far away (almost no connection at all) and those near at hand (surely much heightened).

Today, it is common for us to know about events happening thousands of miles away, within hours or even minutes of their happening. And then, rapidly, the whole current "conversation" of entire countries is re-shaped by those events: people quickly begin to think "what does this mean for us, how does this change things?"; and commentators, partisans and those searching for followers after their cause (or just after themselves) begin to calculate how they can "weaponise" the event to aid them and promote whatever narrative they're promoting. We're so accustomed to this, that most of us probably only reflect upon the dynamics of it very rarely.

Encountering the 17th century Russian peasant reminds us not only that this has not been the universal experience of human beings, but also whispers the thought that it is actually in large point a choice for us today also. The fact that it's quite normal in the West to feel more familiar with a whole range of characters that we've only actually seen or heard through the mediation of LCD or OLED screens and speakers, than we do with the people who live in our streets, estates, villages and towns, is generally a decision of some sort (even if only the decision to lazily "go with the flow").

It's widely observed that a society in which everything is politicised is not a healthy or strong one. Speaking personally, it was really only with the "Brexit" referendum in 2016 that the new phenomena of specifically national politics being a constant topic of conversation entered into my experience. Brexit, Covid, BLM, Ukraine: a "new normal" arrived in which people's primary consciousness seemed to all be tuned into the "national conversation", by default, becoming the default setting in which they moved and discussed and evaluated life and their place within it.

To be sure, all my life we've been aware of what's going on nationally; the radio and newspapers were a normal part of life long before. But from 2016, something seemed to come to fruition, with Brexit being not the cause, but the final trigger.

In this post I want to just highlight the fact that this pervasive, default "national consciousness" does very much remain a choice. And as Christians, it's a choice we should evaluate, and consider how it relates to serving our Master. There is no law of our existence which requires anyone to be continually plugged into the ebb and flow of events several layers above them in society, requiring them to make it the main thing that they think about as they think about their relationship to the world. To be sure, just as Peter the Great's policies reached into the lives of every village and home, so some national and international events will reach into ours at some level. But even so, that in no way requires them to be the default and most prominent background to our thought-world.

This post has been long enough, but I'd like to end with a suggestion. God loves people, and after loving him with all that we have and are, our other great duty is to love our neighbour. God has made us physical beings, and during Covid we had the "opportunity" to be reminded of how fundamental and irreplacable embodied life is. When Jesus came in the flesh, it wasn't only a means to the end of offering himself in his death. It was also a statement about his love for us. He sat at the tables of tax-collectors and sinners, a whole assortment of complete "nobodies", because of his love. He showed the value that he had for all of those he visited, by visiting them. Surely this has implications for us? Just because someone can decide that he's called to broadcast to the world, does not mean that there's any indication that he should. If we understand the implications of Jesus' incarnation and manner of conducting his ministry, then I'd suggest that there must be very few people who truly are called to such a ministry. The vast, vast majority of us are called to love all the people whom God has placed us among. If 99% of those focussed upon the national scene withdrew themselves, there'd still be plenty of people to speak to that scene... but there'd also be vastly more people to minister in the way that we should, not by word only (whether online or offline), but by meaningful and sustained involvement in the lives of those that God has created.

No man can serve two masters. Meaningful, sustained involvement in the lives of people around us demands a lot of time. The time that we spend making the choice to live primarily as if the national level and conversation were where we should locate ourselves could instead be used for it. If we are to be honest with ourselves, isn't it very likely that the time would be used far, far better if we turned off the news and the Twitter feed and invited the lonely (but perhaps complicated) widower or widow a few doors away if they'd like to come around for tea and cake, or if we could mow their lawn?

On having a good name

Proverbs 22:1 says "A good name is more desirable than great riches; to be esteemed is better than silver or gold."

Whether or not we have a good name is not, finally, under our complete control. And if we are faithful, we are very likely to be despised by those who despise God. We follow the one who was crucified, and his apostles were seen by their enemies as "the filth of the world, the off-scouring of all things until now" (1 Corinthians 4:13). So, the Bible is not telling us to make the pursuit of our reputation a priority above all others. Sometimes we must say or do things that will make some people think badly of us, in order to be faithful to our Lord.

Nevertheless, the Bible commands us to behave with integrity - wholeness, one-ness, being a single person who does not have different "sides" to him, in different situations. We must live as those who obviously think that integrity is a better thing to possess than great riches. The elder of a church must "have a good testimony among those who are outside" as taught in 1 Timothy 3:7; and examination of that passage will show that ultimately the elder is simply required to actually, clearly, manifest the behaviour that is demanded of all Christians. Elders should demonstrate general Christian maturity consistently, in practice.

What does it take to gain such a reputation? Life-long consistency; and if there are falls, then, as Spurgeon said, one's repentance should be as notorious as one's sin was.

Ecclesiastes 10:1 says "Dead flies putrefy the perfumer’s ointment, and cause it to give off a foul odour; so does a little folly to one respected for wisdom and honour". Ruining your reputation is easy, and will take a long time to undo. It's no good saying "don't look at the 2% of folly; look at the other 98%!" That's not how human beings work. Try that argument in a court of law and see how far it gets you! If someone "only" commits adultery once a year, and the rest of the time is a model of faithfulness and loving self-giving, then what do we call that someone? We'd call them an unrepentant, serial adulterer. This sort of illustration/example could be extended to just about anything. Once the dead fly is in the perfume, it's not just a tiny bit of ruin that can be bracketed off; it's just ruined, generally, and everyone will notice.

Christian, do you want to be someone who causes your brothers and sisters in the faith to inwardly mourn at your foolishness, at how your testimony dishonours as much as it lifts up the name of Christ, and to be making it a matter of prayer that you'd instead care about having a good name that honours Christ before the world, rather than putting people off him? Does it bother you if, when people say "following Christ doesn't really make a difference", part of what they're thinking is "after all, look at you - you lack self-restraint just as much as us, we don't think you take it all that seriously in the end yourself; you say that Christ is Lord, but is that what you really believe" ?

Brothers and sisters, let "every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath; for the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God" (James 1:19-20).  This goes not only for wrath, but for all sorts of foolish behaviours.

God says, "Even a fool is counted wise when he holds his peace; when he shuts his lips, he is considered perceptive" (Proverbs 17:28). We live in the age of quick fixes and life-hacks. Well, I don't know if I've come across many better ones than that one.

Prophetic speech, prophetic lament

A very perceptive article here, which doesn't just apply to its target, but to all Christians on the media who are building their brands in partnership with the mistaken belief that their ungodly speech is actually some form of prophetic witness: https://mereorthodoxy.com/doug-wilson-is-not-a-prophet

On a related note: recently Douglas Wilson's son-in-law recently tweeted, in relation to a review of the development of his church's ministries over the years: "We do many wonderful things here. We make great tri-tip, we make viral videos, we make progressives lose their minds, and it's all just a lot of fun. All of that together is just a whole lot of fun. ..." (I had to look up "tri-tip"; it is "a triangular cut of beef from the lower part of the sirloin").

Watchers of Christ Church, Moscow, Idaho, and their associated ministries are accustomed to this rhetoric. It's consistent and uniform enough - without anything said to the contrary - that you eventually notice it. Whatever they're doing, it's a blast, they're having great fun (often in small or large part because they're provoking ideological opponents), and the Christian life in this age is a great party (preferably with good steak). The above is one example of a consistent pattern of output over the years.

God's servants in the Bible do not have anything like this pattern of speech, or presentation of the realities of their ministries.

God's servants in Scripture pen Psalm after Psalm after Psalm of lament, wrestle with the painful experience of God's mysterious (yet good) providence in trying to understand why the wicked enjoy the good life whilst the righteous struggle, say things like "I die daily" (1 Corinthians 15:31), teach that through many troubles we must enter God's kingdom (Acts 14:23), and rebuke and expose the poor understanding of those who think that it's already time to reign with Christ in this age, when in reality it's time to suffer with him (2 Corinthians 8).

They spoke of being lambs for the slaughter (Romans 8), of carrying the precious treasure in earthen vessels of weakness (2 Corinthians 4), and asserted against all outward appearance that the sufferings of the precious time were not worthy to be compared with the glory that would come at the appearance of Christ (Romans 8 again). They commended themselves as God's servants "in much patience, in tribulations, in needs, in distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labours, in sleeplessness, in fastings", amongst other things (2 Corinthians 6:4-5). They followed Jesus, who taught us that if we want to save our lives, we shall lose them: so, instead, we must consciously, continually, be counting the cost and then giving them away. Such references could be multiplied very many times over, so consistent and pervasive are they.

Yes, Jesus' apostles rejoiced - but not because it was fun to lampoon the follies of either unbelievers in their darkness, or other Christians. They rejoiced because as the crucified Christ dwelt in them, so did the resurrected Christ - they life that they lived, they lived by Christ living in them, having died to self. And they saw this in those they invested their lives for too: "so then death is working in us, but life in you" (2 Corinthians 4:12). The Spirit of the one who has met with death, died, and then beaten it and entered into endless life, was also in them at the same time. Great sorrow, and invincible joy, together. They served "by honour and dishonour, by evil report and good report; as deceivers, and yet true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold we live; as chastened, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things" (2 Corinthians 6:8-10).

I confess that for a long time after first encountering it I didn't reflect upon this consistent self-testimony of the ministers of Christ Church Moscow, that their ministry has always been a great ride, full of fun, with little to say on the other side of the ledger. (And probably I hadn't yet reached enough maturity of understanding to do so). Now I've come to the viewpoint that when people repeatedly tell us this in a way that makes clear that it's an important part of their self-identity and self-identification to the world, we should believe their self-testimony, and understand its implications. Frankly, the world, the flesh and the devil have made the ministries I've been involved in difficult in various ways for many years, and the thing that helps me to take up the cross and persevere in them is the knowledge that those who die with Christ will be raised with him, and the experience too of a harvest of joy as we see his life appearing in others too: this brings the conviction that he is worthy to be served despite the pains.

If someone else wants to say that their ministry runs, year after year, on quite different lines to that then, well, I'm at least grateful that they have been clear about this.

It is certainly not a coincidence that Christ Church, Moscow promotes theonomic post-millenialism (which the same author wrote a very good critique of around a couple of years ago). The implications of theonomic post-millenialism is that whilst in the Bible and generally subsequently, God's method of discipling people is through the way of the cross, yet in the future there will be a golden age before the return of Christ in which Christianity will be generally popular and accepted, and so suffering will fade into the past, as memory. God's people will then be discipled some other way, not described in Scripture (I've never yet read an explanation of what it will be). It seems to me that many adherents of these beliefs then manage to mentally confuse themselves into believing that this supposed coming age has already dawned, and that they personally are living in it. And that is understandable at some level: your eschatology drives how you live in the present. That's why it's important not to get it wrong (I wrote about the misplaced hope of post-millennialism here).

(Related piece written in 2024, with some similar concerns to those Jeremy Sexton raises). 

Do we want a pagan nation? And - why does social media lead to clever people saying silly things?

"Christians who are against Christian nationalism - seems (sic) to want to convert a nation but not disciple it, want it to be Christian but live under pagan laws! If you are Christian, but against a Christian national identity, I think you are suffering from cognitive dissonance."

On X (Twitter), one British Christian Nationalist with 50,000 followers (re-tweeted by another, one promoted repeatedly by Christian Concern with 8,000 followers), posts the above.

I realise that X is not the place to look for nuanced presentations of ideas, but, the above sort of reasoning is what we see from many Christian Nationalists in their longer-form pieces too. It is all so beautifully simple, and you wonder how could anyone oppose it? Jesus tells everyone to obey him, whoever and wherever they are, and Christian Nationalists are just applying this to kings and presidents, applying it at the national level. Surely you don't want people to disobey Jesus, do you?

In 2025, a lot of people with thoughts about ideas that seem reasonable to them don't then proceed to buy a few books to find out how historically Christians have thought about those ideas. They go straight to X and promote their ideas to their followers, and start accumulating likes and re-tweets. But let's not make this too much of a grumble-fest about social media.... let's answer the point being made instead. I'm a "Christian who is against Christian Nationalism". Does that mean that I am one who "seems to want to convert a nation but not disciple it, want it to be Christian but live under pagan laws" ? Well, no; and also, no.

Seems? Or actually are? 

First thing: what's the word "seems" doing there? It's a typical "muddy the waters" word, obscuring the difference between something that the poster wanted to say, and what he actually could justifiably say. i.e. One of those words used when the person using it intuitively feels or suspects that what they're saying isn't true, or that there's something that doesn't quite hold in their argument, but they haven't yet done the thinking to sort it out and present the argument properly. What does it mean to merely "seem to" want to convert a nation but not disciple, and to actually want that? If they don't actually want it, then why, in your eyes, do they "seem to"? Are you conceding already that what "seems" to be so to you is in fact merely a naive reading off from immediate appearance, something that disappears once you start to make basic distinctions and think carefully? (In which case, there would be no case to answer, and no pointing tweeting it).

And of course, that is the case here. "Convert a nation but not disciple it". The key point is that conversion is the entrance-door into discipleship. You cannot disciple those who are not converted. Converted first: then discipled. That's basic to Bible Christianity: you must be born again (John 3), and the new birth is an event that happens to people as individuals. Until you can actually see the kingdom of heaven, you cannot enter it, much less be discipled in its ways. This must happen to people personally, one-by-one. Under the New Covenant, a household can be divided, two against three, and three against two, because some are converted and some aren't. How much more a clan, village, town, city or nation? Some are "born from above", and some aren't: and that's not something dispensable, something you can bracket out as optional for the purposes of discipling them.

So, any talk of Christian discipleship for people who aren't Christians is wrong-headed: it is a mistake. In historical Biblical theology (not just from the Reformation), three uses of God's law were recognised. (These are not three in a temporal or logical sequence: they have inter-relations, but the ordering is not intended to imply sequence). The first is, as a mirror showing us God's perfect holiness, which has the consequence of showing us our sin so that we might seek salvation. The second is to curb and restrain evil - in individuals and in societies. The third is to teach those who are regenerate and do know God how to walk with him in his covenant. Notice that the third is the one that particularly applies to disciples, and not to non-disciples. The first two apply universally. This is how Christians generally have historically understood God's law to apply in the context of nations: that the first two are operative amongst them, and we preach God's requirements to non-believers with them in view. The law does not exist for the purpose of discipleship of non-believers. It has a much more limited purpose, and that is linked to the fact that the whole of God's law will not be applied exhaustively within national law (which is to say, there are many sins which will not be crimes: contempt in the heart towards one's neighbour is not an offence for the civil authorities to prosecute). Restraint of societal evil is not discipleship, and restraining evil, whilst a God-honouring and legitimate activity, is not the subject of the Great Commission.

Only two options for how to apply Christianity to nations? 

The X poster above then presents us with a false dichotomy: if you don't think that the purpose of civil authority is to disciple people in the ways of Christianity, then this must mean that you wish to live under "pagan laws". These, apparently, are the only two options. You can be a Christian Nationalist, or you can wish society to be ordered by paganism. This sort of absolutist, completely-polarising statement, though, reveals nothing about the actual range of options and possibilities that do exist. It merely reveals that the person making it is completely ignorant of the attempts of Christians in the last 2000 years to wrestle with these questions - or at least, he presents himself as one when tweeting. Is it too much to point out that twisting the Great Commission into something that it isn't, and promoting paganism, aren't the only two available options for Christians?

"If you are Christian, but against a Christian national identity, I think you are suffering from cognitive dissonance." Here's the rub. A nation whose general character is not Christian, cannot have a "Christian national identity", in any meaningful sense that could be recognised from the New Testament. Christian identity begins with recognising that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, the Son of God, repenting of our sins and trusting in him for our salvation. It is an identity wrought in us by the Holy Spirit. Under the Old Covenant there was a nation of people who did not, in general, have God's laws written on their hearts - and despite having a perfect law written on tablets of stone, they continually descended into the worst of idolatry. God, through many centuries, patiently taught us that it doesn't matter what is written externally: you need the Holy Spirit to make it a living reality. That reality is now present in Jesus Christ, and in the gatherings of those who know him and manifest that that knowledge is not a legal fiction, but a living, present and glorious reality. The label "Christian" should not be attached to a nation whose national character is profoundly non-Christian. The United Kingdom is not a nation of people who have seen true God, and delight to worship him, trusting in his risen Son. It is not a "Christian nation", and changing all of its laws would not make it one. Trying to re-create something akin to Israel living under the law, via making external changes, in order to have a "Christian nation" shows a profound confusion and lack of understanding of Scripture.

The previous paragraph is basic to understanding the Biblical covenants and their intended fulfilment in the New Testament church, which is a gathered body of people who have experienced the realities that the gospel describes, as demonstrated by their actual lives. There is no concept of a "Christian Nation" of people who are largely unregenerate, but who have been discipled by a great set of laws in order to largely conform to the outward requirements of Christian morality. As we say today "that is not a thing". It does not exist. There is no such concept. The apostles did not teach it, and what they did teach about understanding what had happened in Jesus Christ directly contradicts it. That's not because they were secret pagans; it's because they had grasped the fundamentals of the Christian faith and its relationship to history.

We can do better than this... 

As I say, the above was re-tweeted by someone else who is promoted by Christian Concern, a former Bible college lecturer in the UK - i.e. someone who should know better. He added his own comment: "If Christians are not actively trying to Christianise their nation, what on earth are they doing? Did Jesus not call you to disciple the nations, teaching them to obey Christ?"

It ought to be uncontroversial with us that the proper manner for implementing the Great Commission is sufficiently described for us in the Holy Scriptures, where they record what the apostles who first received the Commission actually went out and did. They preached the gospel, called for response to it, gathered the converts into churches, taught them how to follow Jesus in every part of life, and to look with expectancy for his return. Concerning relating to the civil authorities, they told them that their general posture was to be one of honour and obedience (whilst allowing that there may be occasions when they must be disobeyed in order to maintain obedience to God). Concerning campaigning for creating entities "Christian nations" through reform of national laws, they have nothing to say - because, as per the above, their actual understanding radically contradicted such a mistaken idea. Jesus Christ's teachings to his disciples do not, in fact, contain a section in which he lists what laws a nation should have on its statute books - and the Great Commission is not a mandate which required the apostles or the church to campaign for specific laws as part of the New Covenant, i.e. as part of Christianity.

We are asked, what on earth are we doing? Quite often I have the feeling that I don't know what quite a few people on Twitter are actually doing (as opposed to just talking around in circles to themselves about), but for myself, I'm seeking to preach Jesus Christ, and perform good works which testify to the love which God has made known in him, so that his people might be added to and built up. That, after all, is what the apostles did and told Christian servants to do, as recorded in the Scriptures (with the pastoral epistles giving especial guidance to those in formal ministry). A Bible college lecturer ought to be able to avoid trivial semantic fallacies such as finding "disciple" and "nations" in the same sentence, and then building a non-biblical doctrine that bears no resemblance to the rest of the New Testament out of that. But in 2025, this cannot be taken for granted at all. The "hot takes" put out by people with PhD-level education are as routinely full of error here as anyone else's, sadly. Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us get out of our social media bubbles of people who agree with us on everything, and who stir us up more and more to say more and more absurd and extreme things in order to maintain the previous buzz or keep gaining our followers or whatever. Let us try to love God with our minds sufficiently to say things that edify and help people to do what the Bible actually told us to do, in ways that a reasonable person reading the Bible can recognise as implementing the activities of the apostles and early church in contemporary society. Let us tremble and run ten miles before we take Jesus' Great Commission to his church, and pervert it into something else that his apostles would not have recognised as the mission they were told to implement, and did implement, and which the Holy Spirit carefully recorded for us in Scripture.

(Follow the "Christian Nationalism" tag link below to see more posts on this subject). 

Christian discernment and notable silences

Christian discernment, when understanding where some individual, or a ministry, is coming from or going to, does not only involve listening to what they do say. You should also notice what they don't say.

This, of course, takes longer, and has to be done fairly. If someone writes a short article about marriage which fails to list every article of Christian belief then, well, that's as you'd expect things. But nevertheless, people reveal their hearts clearly by their silences as well as their speeches. Not only what excites them: but also what is barely, or not at all, on their radar, or only in a nominal, box-ticking way. What does their belief system and the direction of their desires *not* interest them in? Why not? Is it because their over-emphasised belief in something else is also not actually representing the Biblical view-point, but is based upon a distortion of it?

Of course, this also demands of us that we have a solid and comprehensive understanding of the Scriptures. Otherwise we might identify people as failing to have a sufficient interest in some topic when it's actually us who has an excessive one. What did the apostles actually teach the churches? What excited them? What motivated them? What were their responses in different situations? What are the consistent presences and the driving desires and assumptions about the great pillars of their understanding of things in those responses, as opposed to what someone claims they can detect in the silences in between the lines, or as a dubious interpretation of an ambiguous phrase? If we don't have a strong grip on this ourselves, then we can never be discerning when listening to others, but will be vulnerable to being blown around by every wind of doctrine.