Mission then, as articulated in the Great Commission, is the reflex of the new covenant. Mission is an unavoidable imperative founded on the covenantal lordship of Christ our King. Its task is to produce self-replicating communities of covenantal obedience to Christ among the nations. And it is sustained by the covenantal promise of the perduring presence of Christ among his followers.
But we cannot stop short of the climactic vision of the whole of Scripture, the Book of Revelation. Revelation is gloriously covenantal and presents the presence of God among His people as the crowning achievement of God's cosmic redemptive mission. Revelation 21-22, indeed, combines imagery from all the covenants of the Scriptures.
Noah is there in the vision of the new creation, a new heavens and a new earth after judgment. Abraham is there in the ingathering and blessing of all nations from every tongue and language. Moses is there in the covenantal assertion that "they will be His people and God Himself will be with them and be their God," and "the dwelling of God is with men and He shall live with them". David is there in the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, and in the identity of Jesus as the Lion of Judah and the Root of David. And the New Covenant is there in the fact that all of this will be accomplished by the blood of the Lamb who was slain.
p355-356.
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