Of Mandates and Commissions

In the first chapter of the Bible, God commanded man to:

Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth. Genesis 1:28

This is appropriately termed the “dominion mandate.” Man was to exercise dominion over the earth. There was no separate higher, deeper, or inner aspect to man. Adam was a man of the earth. He glorified God by getting his fingernails dirty.

But soon there was trouble. Adam sinned. He was corrupted by his sin and so was the domain he ruled over, the earth. The mandate, however, was not rescinded. Every man, male or female, remains responsible to exercise dominion in his sphere of activity and involvement—family, community, and work.

Exercising dominion establishes order in some way. We know that Adam was to cultivate the garden and name the animals. For us it is things like disciplining a child, baking a pie, composing music, repairing a car, expressing a thought, shoveling snow, running a business, teaching a truth, binding a wound. We violate the mandate when we create chaos instead of order or, more passively, allow things to descend into disorder.

In the future, in the re-creation when the curse is removed and all things are made new, the mandate still remains in effect. Christian hope is not that our disembodied souls will rise to heaven. It is that we will live on the new earth in resurrected bodies. We get a glimpse of this in the last chapter of the Bible. On the new earth, God’s servants reign forever and ever (Rev 22:3, 5). The redeemed serve and rule. This is the eternal fulfillment of the mandate given to Adam. 

Given the end-to-end scope of the mandate, you would expect Christians to view their lives in the context of dominion. But we don’t think this way. Our vision of godly living is more limited. We are focused on another directive from God—the Great Commission:

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Matthew 28:18-20

We rightly recognize the importance of this commission, and walking in obedience to Christ surely means exerting ourselves in order to fulfill it. But we Evangelicals have a narrow definition of disciple-making, or commission work. We define it as missions, witnessing, and related work. Everything else—all other dominion activities—are considered secondary or supportive…and, ultimately, worthless in God’s economy. Spiritual maturity, it is thought, means more commission and less mandate.

Now, let us return to the Bible to find the right perspective. What is required of the Christian? Consider the epistles—the manual of Christian living—in broad strokes. Here we see much mandate instruction concerning family, community, and work. In fact, compared to these dominion topics, relatively little is said about the commission.

Instead of devaluing the mandate in order to emphasize the commission, we should view faithful dominion living as the context in which we fulfill the commission. The gospel always involves embodied living. That is why Jesus came in the flesh.

What are we to make of all of this? Two things. First, acknowledge that we are responsible to fulfill the mandate. All we do, not just certain things, are significant and accountable before God. If we think like this, we will become “whatever you do,” full-life, full-time Christians. Second, understand that dominion living is not a distraction from more important commission work—it is the context in which we fulfill the commission. This we also learn from the epistles. We are to exercise dominion in every area of life, aiming at God’s glory. As unbelievers see how we live, they will—by God’s grace—listen to what we have to say.

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