The Nations

"Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you." Jesus said these words in the closing verses of Mathew. When Jesus said "all nations", he was talking about everyone, literally all the nations. All people, all races, all families, all languages, all cultures. So we have this idea of spreading the Gospel to everyone in the world. That seems like quite a daunting task. To break this assignment down, it helps to put people into groups. In the book of Psalms, the word "nations" is referenced over 70 times. This word is used to describe two categories of people.

One verse in Psalm 67 describes these two types of people. The Psalmist writes, "that your[God] ways may be known on earth, your salvation among all nations." There is a distinction of two kinds of people- people who know God's salvation, and those who do not know yet. When the psalmist uses the word "may" he is implying a future date; he is saying that salvation has not yet been made known to all people, but it will be one day. The people who will find out about the Lord's salvation one day are under the category of people who do not know yet. Through the psalmist's writing we can see that he is among the people who know of the Lord's salvation. These are the two categories of people- those who know, and those who don't know.

Some might argue that these categories are vagued and undefined. I think that if Christians live an authentic Christian lifestyle, we don't need to break these categories down any further. There are simply people who are saved, and people who are not saved. Jesus commissions us to tell those who are not saved about salvation.