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19 Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing
them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all things that I have
commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of
the age.” Amen
If you ever wondered what our responsibility is in the world
here’s the end of your confusion. Go and make disciples of all
nations. Jesus said that to the apostles but really that’s known
as the Great Commission and it extends to all of us. We are to
make disciples, disciples of Christ, people from all the
nations. In fact in the original language, the Greek, there is
really only one verb here and that’s the verb make disciples.
The rest of the verb forms are participles that modify the main
verb. Make disciples is the main verb. Go is actually a
participle, going. Baptizing is a participle, baptizing.
Teaching is a participle, teaching. What that means is make
disciples by going, baptizing, and teaching. That’s how you do
it. If you are going to make a disciple of Jesus Christ of
somebody in another nation you have to go. So you go where
Christ is not named. If you are going to make them a disciple
you have to baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and
the Holy Spirit. That is to say they need to come to an
understanding of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. A
full gospel understanding, this of course is demonstrated in
baptism. Then you teach them because if they are going to be
disciples they have to be able to be obedient to their Lord. So
you teach them to observe everything that “I (Jesus) have
commanded you.” You are not alone in this enterprise; “lo, I
(Jesus) am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Until
the time is completely done for evangelism I’ll be with you
helping you do this. This is our commission, to bring people to
Christ from all the nations by going, baptizing, and then
teaching them so that they can observe everything the Lord
commanded. Baptism is important not because it saves but
because it was the manifest confession of salvation in the early
church and still should be. Now, let me just expand your
thinking a little bit at this point. If I were to ask anyone,
maybe you, what is the reason for the church? Why are we here,
and what should we be doing? Somebody might say well we should
be living a holy life. That’s good, but that’s not the main
reason we are here. If that’s all the Lord wanted, we might as
well go to heaven because we can’t really get it here. We can’t
live a holy life the way we should here. Somebody else might say
well you know we were saved so that we can fellowship with
others. Well that’s good, we do have fellowship, but the
fellowship is very imperfect as you well know. We have all kinds
of problems getting along with each other even as Christians. So
we don’t do that very well. Somebody else might say the real
priority for us is worship. Well, we work on that but we don’t
always get that right either. Our minds wonder and we find
ourselves swept away emotionally sometimes in music and things
like that without very much thought about God and the depth of
His person. All of that simply to say our fellowship is
imperfect, our worship is imperfect, and our obedience is
imperfect. If those were the priority then we might as well all
go to heaven because when we get to heaven worship is perfect,
fellowship is perfect, and obedience is perfect. That leaves us
with only one reason to stay here and that’s because there is
one thing that we do here that we cannot do in heaven and that’s
to make disciples of all nations. And that’s why this is the
Great Commission. Make sure you are involved in it. Nobody is
exempt from this joyous duty. Go to people who don’t know
Christ. Tell them about the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit. Encourage them to acknowledge faith in Jesus Christ and
to demonstrate that by obedience in baptism. Then follow up by
teaching them all that the Lord has revealed to us and do that
with the promise that you are not alone for the Lord says I am
with you always, even to the end of the age. |
