The Great Commission recorded in Matthew 28 and in Luke’s accounts of Jesus’ post-resurrection teaching in his Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles foretells the global expansion of the reign of God under the scepter of the exalted Messiah. In Matthew’s narrative Jesus declares, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matt. 28:18). He is identifying himself as “one like a son of Man” whom Daniel foresaw approaching the Ancient of Days to receive “dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him” (Dan. 7:13-14). Jesus’ universal authority warrants his commission to his apostles to “make disciples of all nations” (Matt. 28:19).
Likewise, in Luke’s Gospel the risen Lord shows his followers that Moses’ Law, the prophets, and the Psalms foretold not only his suffering and resurrection but also the preaching of repentance leading to forgiveness “in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem” (Luke 24:47). The redemptive kingdom of God, at last inaugurated in history through Christ’s death and resurrection, will spread both geographically and demographically until his glorious return from heaven.
At the opening of the book of Acts the geographic and demographic expansion of the Messiah’s realm is expressed in his well-known words: “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). The significance of this prediction becomes clear as we view it against three backgrounds: 1) the disciples’ question whether Jesus, having risen from the grave, would now “restore the kingdom to Israel” (Acts 1:6); 2) the Servant Song of Isaiah 49 to which Jesus alluded in his reply to their question; and 3) the unfolding history of the apostles’ and the church’s witness-bearing mission that fills the next twenty-seven and a half chapters of Acts.
“Will You at This Time Restore the Kingdom to Israel?”
Forty days earlier, Jesus’ execution had shattered his followers’ hopes that “he was the one who was to redeem Israel” (Luke 24:21). In their minds, the term “redeem” carried overtones of military and political liberation from oppression by pagan powers, as the aged priest Zechariah had anticipated over thirty years before: “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David… that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve [God] without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all our days” (Luke 1:68, 74-75).
For centuries Israel had been dominated, devastated, and dislocated by a succession of Ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean superpowers: Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Syria, and presently Rome. It is no wonder that the pilgrim crowds streaming into Jerusalem to observe the Passover had extolled Jesus as a new David, “the King who comes in the name of the Lord” (Luke 19:38, echoing Psalm 118:26, which in turn echoes 1 Sam. 17:45). As ancient David had defeated the Philistine champion Goliath, so now—they thought—this Son of David, so mighty in deed and word, would lead his people in a new exodus, expelling the infidel troops that occupied the Lord’s land. A new regime of righteousness and peace would dawn! But before the week’s end, their leaders had turned the fickle masses against their King, and their “Hosanna!” (“Save us!”) turned to “Crucify!” (Luke 23:21). Jesus’ crucifixion meant the death of dreams for political and military liberation, and Jesus’ faithful followers were devastated.
Yet his resurrection from the dead stirred dead dreams back to life in the hearts of those who saw the risen Messiah. Naturally, they asked him: “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” Their hopes were soaring again, even higher than on Palm Sunday; they dreamed again of a new era of peace and freedom for God’s oppressed nation. But their hopes were not high enough, their dreams not daring enough, their vision of the kingdom’s dimensions not even close to expansive enough! Jesus’ reply showed that their sights were by far set too low.
“Salvation to the End of the Earth”
Jesus first rebuked their relentless curiosity about secrets that belong to God alone: “Not yours is it to know times or epochs which the Father set in his own authority” (Acts 1:7; compare Matt. 24:36; in the Greek text “not yours” is thrust forward in the sentence for emphasis). Then he stretched their mental picture of the parameters of his kingdom by alluding to a rich reservoir of Old Testament prophetic promise he had cited often before: Isaiah’s portrait of the faithful, suffering, and glorified Servant of the Lord.
Through Isaiah, God had introduced a Servant whom he found well pleasing (Isa. 42:1). That Servant would be despised and mistreated by the very people he had come to rescue, bearing blows of divine justice in their place to bring them healing (49:7; 52:13-53:12). It would seem that the Servant had “labored in vain” and “spent [his] strength for nothing” (49:4). Yet at that moment of dashed hopes, the Lord would expand his Servant’s influence to global proportions: “And now the Lord says…’It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel; I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth” (49:5-6).
The Father had spoken twice from heaven, pronouncing Jesus “well pleasing” (Matt. 3:17; 17:5). Jesus had announced that, as the Servant of Isaiah 53:12, he would “be numbered with transgressors” (22:37) and pour out his lifeblood “for many” (Mark 14:24). Now he was the glorified Servant of the Lord (Acts 3:13, alluding to Isa. 52:13), raised from the dead. His exaltation meant that the dimensions of God’s redemptive kingdom were about to expand to envelop the entire world. So Jesus lifted his friends’ sights beyond Israel’s borders to “the end of the earth,” to which the Lord’s Servant would bring salvation. Restoring wayward Israel—rescuing the righteous remnant who yearned for Israel’s consolation and “the redemption of Jerusalem” (Luke 2:25, 38)—would be one aspect of the Servant’s mission. But God’s agenda for his Servant is far wider, far weightier than retrieving Israel’s strays: “I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” (In the Greek Septuagint, the Hebrew word goyim, typically rendered “nations” in English versions, is translated by the term ethn?. Both the Hebrew goyim and the Greek ethn? refer to people groups that have distinct cultural identities [“nationalities” or “ethnic groups”] rather than the geopolitical states with territorial boundaries [like modern “nations”]. Although ethn? occasionally refers to all “nations,” including Israel [Exod. 19:6], more often in the Bible the ethn? are non-Israelite people groups outside the Lord’s covenant—that is, the Gentiles.)
In Acts 1:8, Jesus echoed Isaiah’s wording, setting his disciples’ constricted conception of the kingdom in sharp contrast to the horizon-expanding promise of Isaiah 49:6: the Lord’s light would shine not merely on benighted Israel but also on the diverse people groups at the earth’s extremities. As the good news of salvation in Christ moved out from Jerusalem into Judea and Samaria and beyond, Paul and Barnabas would quote this prophecy from Isaiah in a synagogue far from Israel’s borders. Though their testimony about Jesus hit a wall of resistance among their fellow Jews, and though they seemed to have “labored in vain” (Isa. 49:4), they would bring this good news to Gentiles, fulfilling the Lord’s commission: “For so the Lord has commanded us, saying, ‘I have made you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the end of the earth'” (Acts 13:47).
“My Witnesses in Jerusalem, in All Judea and Samaria, and to Earth’s End”
The book of Acts tells the story of the expanding boundaries of God’s kingdom of grace, both geographically and demographically. On the day of Pentecost, when Christ poured out God’s Spirit in power on his church, the result was a miraculous preview of the succeeding centuries of the church’s mission. People of diverse nationalities and languages— from Mesopotamia in the east, to Cappadocia in the north, to Egypt and Libya in the south, to Rome in the west—exclaimed in astonishment that Jesus’ followers were “telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God” (Acts 2:8-11). The listening crowd comprised “Jews” (natural descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) and “proselytes” (Gentile converts to Judaism who, like ancient Ruth, had abandoned their pagan roots in order to serve Israel’s God). Proselytes entered Judaism through circumcision and other rituals, vowing obedience to the moral, civil, and ceremonial commandments that God gave Israel at Sinai. The proselytes at Pentecost were previews of the kingdom’s international, multicultural expansion profiled later in Acts. As the gospel crossed regional boundaries and ethnic divisions, people from all the world’s peoples would be embraced in Jesus’ reign of grace—and without Judaism’s ceremonial rites.
Intercultural tension in the early church would launch the geographic expansion of kingdom boundaries toward “the end of the earth” (Acts 6:1-7). Still centered in Jerusalem, the church now numbered in the thousands. The believers’ practice of sharing meals and worship in homes (Acts 2:46-47) had spawned numerous small congregations, some apparently worshiping in Aramaic while others used Greek (6:1). The sheer numbers, as well as the language difference, meant that some widows were overlooked in the daily sharing of food. To address the crisis, the apostles instructed the believers to select seven men “full of the Spirit and wisdom” to manage their tangible expression of Jesus’ mercy. Among those seven was a living preview of the breadth of the kingdom: Nicolas, a proselyte from Antioch (6:5). One born among the pagan Gentiles had become a trusted leader of the church.
Another of the seven, Stephen, soon met martyrdom. His testimony about Jesus “the Righteous One” (the Suffering Servant, Isa. 53:11; Acts 7:52) provoked a violent persecution that scattered Jesus’ followers “throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria” (Acts 8:1). Thus the first wave of geographic expansion that Jesus predicted in Acts 1:8 began. With it, the demographic walls of racial identity, cultural custom, and religious regulation that once insulated Israel from its pagan neighbors began to crumble.
Philip, another of the seven, made his way into Samaria. Samaritan religion was an amalgamation of Israelite piety and pagan practice, reflecting its origins in the corruptions of Israel’s northern tribes and Gentiles relocated into the region by Assyria (see 2 Kings 16:7-41). Samaritans occupied a covenantal “no man’s land” between Judaism and paganism. Although they revered the books of Moses, they rejected later Old Testament Scriptures that documented the Northern Kingdom’s decline into idolatry. Consequently, Jews typically did not share utensils with Samaritans (John 4:9) and regarded them as “foreigners” (Luke 17:18). On Jewish lips, “Samaritan” was a term of insult (John 8:48). Yet as Philip spoke “good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ,” Samaritan crowds believed and were baptized (Acts 8:5-12). The descent of God’s Spirit on Samaritan believers confirmed to the apostles Peter and John that indeed “Samaria had received the word of God” (8:14-25). God’s salvation was moving out, crossing territorial, traditional, and cultural boundaries.
The next wave of expansion was minor in miles but monumental in the religious distance it spanned. Philip was directed to a deserted road southwest of Jerusalem, into ancient Philistine territory, where God orchestrated his rendezvous with a eunuch, the treasurer of the queen of Ethiopia (Acts 8:26-39). Since God’s law excluded eunuchs from the worshiping assembly of Israel (Deut. 23:1), this official—though he had traveled many miles in his quest to know the true God—would have been excluded from the inner courts of the temple in Jerusalem. Yet as Philip explained Isaiah 53 and “the good news about Jesus,” the eunuch entered the family of God by faith—a living, breathing fulfillment of God’s promise to welcome foreigners and eunuchs into his “house of prayer for all peoples” (Isa. 56:3-8). As the Ethiopian headed home—among the first Christian missionaries to Africa—Philip preached in coastal towns until he reached Caesarea, the capital of the Roman province of Judea.
Peter followed Philip’s footsteps along the coast (Acts 9:32-43) until summoned to Caesarea by a Roman centurion. Cornelius, like the eunuch, longed to know the God of Israel (10:1-8). He gathered an audience to hear Peter’s saving message. As Peter proclaimed Jesus to these foreigners with pagan pasts, the Holy Spirit signaled that he had cleansed their hearts by faith (10:44-48; 11:15-17; 15:7-11). Jesus had dismantled the wall separating Jew from Gentile at his cross (Eph. 2:13-16), and Jesus’ Spirit now led the church to recognize the divine demolition of that divider: “Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life” (Acts 11:18). Jesus the glorified Servant was shining “like a light to the Gentiles,” to the end of the earth.
Through the remaining chapters of Acts, the story unfolds further. Those scattered by persecution reached Antioch in Syria, the third largest city of the Roman Empire (11:19-26). At first, they evangelized only Jews, but soon some were “preaching the Lord Jesus” also to Greek-speaking Gentiles. A congregation of gospel-transformed ex-pagans was established in that cosmopolitan center at the crossroads between East and West.
Saul of Tarsus, whose violent zeal scattered Christians into Judea and Samaria, was en route to Damascus to seize more believers when he himself was seized by Christ in a blazing display of blinding glory (9:1-19). Called “to carry [Jesus’] name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel” (9:15), Saul proclaimed Jesus as the Christ first in Damascus, then in Jerusalem, and then in Antioch. From Antioch the Holy Spirit sent Paul out (13:1-3) to distant lands—Cyprus, Asia Minor, Macedonia, and Achaia—until he reached Rome, the imperial capital, to stand before Caesar himself (27:24; 28:11-31).
Living as we do at “the end of the earth,” we may find the ethnocentric “tunnel vision” of Jesus’ first followers, so focused on Israel’s political fortunes, quaint or even offensive. But we too can fall into a nearsighted preoccupation with problems close at hand—in our personal lives, families, congregations, communities, denominations, or nations. We may fail to glimpse the global dimensions and the glorious advance of Christ’s kingdom through the proclamation of the cross in the might of the Spirit and the wide embrace of God’s grace that knits persons from every race, ethnicity, and language into one new people of God. How diverse is our mental portrait of Christ’s kingdom people? How global is our passion for his kingdom mission?
