The Great Commission Through Immigration

April 30, 2025 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Fall of Saigon. Yet terror continued in Vietnam even as the war ended and American troops pulled out. My wife’s family was forced to flee because her father had fought alongside the U.S. They barely escaped on a fishing boat, then languished in a crowded refugee camp until a sponsoring country took them in. Many such stories, however, resulted in salvation when Christian churches sponsored refugees. My wife herself came to Christ through the disciple-making ministry of a local church.

It is no accident where any of us live in place and time. For God “made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him” (Acts 17:26–27a).

Although we come to this country for various reasons, God’s sovereign purpose in immigration is that more will follow Jesus Christ as his disciples. So, regardless of your political view on immigration, do not neglect Christ’s Great Commission. Instead, let’s make a difference, make a relationship, and make disciples of Jesus Christ.

Make a Disciple: The Great Commission

The church’s mission is to “make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19a). And amazingly, the arrival of immigrants has brought the nations to our doorstep. According to the International Mission Board, there are more unreached people groups in the United States than any other country in the world except for China and India. Los Angeles, for instance, is home to people from over 140 countries speaking more than 220 languages and dialects. 

As the nations come to us, we have a unique opportunity to fulfill the Great Commission without going far from home. Many students and temporary workers will also return to their country of origin as effective, culturally-competent evangelists. So, we should never stop sending missionaries from America, but there is something terribly wrong “when we are willing to send people across the oceans, risking life and limb and spending enormous amounts of money, but we are not willing to walk next door and minister to the strangers living there.”[1]

In addition, the vast majority of immigrants are already faithful Christians who will bring the gospel to unbelieving Americans. The most rapid growth in American evangelicalism is actually occurring in immigrant congregations. As Christianity has shifted from the Global West to the Global South, many immigrants breathe life into churches which desperately need revitalization.

The gospel narrative, which shapes our thinking on immigration, can be summarized as Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Consummation. As Christians, we affirm that all men are Created in the image of God and we must not curse those made in God’s likeness (James 3:9). Yet sadly, life in a Fallen world is hard. At the Fall, sin separated man from God and from each other. This means that those trying to get into America are sinners, while those living in America are also sinners. Some immigrants take advantage of government, while some citizens use government to disadvantage immigrants. 

We need only glance at history to see how we have failed in the past. Proponents of the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) claimed that Asians lacked “sufficient brain capacity for self-government.” In other words, they weren’t smart enough for America to let them in. The pseudo-scientific theory that immigrants were “biologically inferior” influenced a Congressional report finding that “certain kinds of criminality are inherent in the Italian race.” 

Our fallen world produces selfish sinners and a broken system. Politicians across the aisle can’t seem to get along and churches remain blind to the issues around us. For these reasons, immigrants face various kinds of suffering and some never hear the gospel of salvation.

God has always had a plan, though, to Redeem the nations for himself. For he “desires all people [including immigrants] to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4). Jesus Christ “is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2). He is the only way of salvation no matter what our documented status (John 14:6). So, if we do not know him today, our greatest need is not immigration reform or learning to welcome the stranger, but a relationship with Jesus Christ. 

Our broken thinking and failure to love reach the very core of being. Yet God has created us for relationship with him and with our fellow man. He saved us by his grace and extends that message to the entire world (Ephesians 2:1–22). For although we are “sojourners and exiles” (1 Peter 2:11), “our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Philippians 3:20).

This is the glorious Consummation of the gospel story. As Russell Moore writes, “Immigration isn’t just an issue. It’s an opportunity to see that . . . there will be a day when the United States of America will no longer exist. And on that day, the sons and daughters of God will stand before the throne of a former undocumented immigrant. Some of them are migrant workers and hotel maids now. They will be kings and queens then. They are our brothers and sisters forever.” 

Though we are aliens and strangers in this world, we look forward to that day when men and women from every tribe and tongue will join together in worship around the throne of Christ. As John marvels, “Behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!’” (Revelation 7:9–10). 

So, may our love for the immigrant stir in us a greater longing for heaven and the glories of Christ.

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[1] J.D. Payne, Strangers Next Door: Immigration, Migration, and Mission (InterVarsity Press, 2012), 33.