(Jesus) “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)
Baptism is like a wedding. It publicly declares a person to be a disciple (follower) of Jesus Christ just as a wedding declares a couple as belonging to one another. The other side of both baptism and a wedding is that the participants no longer belong to anyone else.
In today’s
Scripture, we have what is often called, “The Great Commission”. A commission
is a clear assignment with distinct responsibilities. We may hear of someone
being “commissioned” to build a building, create a work of art, or investigate government
corruption. Both the assignment and its responsibilities are clear. Everyone
will know if those who were commissioned accomplished what was required of
them.
Let’s make this
commission really practical. If Jesus tells me to live like I am under his “all
authority”, do you recognize God’s authority to call you to follow Jesus?
And if Jesus has
commissioned me (along with all his disciples) to tell you,
“Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself” (Acts 2:38-39),
do you hear Jesus’ authority to call you to become his
disciple and confess him as Lord and Savior through baptism?
And if the Lord Jesus
Christ is “the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in
the beginning with God”, do you hear in me telling you about him that he has
authority over you as well since he is God?
And when you
discover that “All things were made through him, and without him was not any
thing made that was made”, and that this makes him your Creator, do you hear his
authority to call you back to his design for you in creation?
And when you hear that
“In him was life, and the life was the light of men”, and that means there is
no other “light” or “enlightenment”, do you hear his authority to call you to “walk
in the light, as he is in the light” so “we have fellowship with one another,
and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin” (I John 1:7)?
And when God says
to you in his Book, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not
overcome it”, do you feel the call of God to leave your darkness and come into Jesus’
light?
The world can do
nothing to stop Jesus’ commission because he testified, “I will build my
church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18).
Jesus’ disciples
can do nothing to save the world because “this is the judgment: the light has
come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light
because their works were evil” (John 3:19).
However, Jesus’ disciples
are still making disciples of all nations, calling them out of the darkness of the world into the light of Jesus' kingdom, joining God’s work to “deliver us from the domain of darkness and
transfer us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the
forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:13-14), and baptizing them into Christ,
confessing “Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians
2:10-11).
And I leave this
with you as a calling to either come to Jesus Christ so that “just as Christ
was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in
newness of life” (Romans 6:4), or, for those who are disciples of Jesus Christ,
to join God’s work of making disciples of all nations, baptizing them into the
name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to join you
in obeying everything Jesus has commanded us in “the word of Christ”, the
Scriptures we have in the Bible.
© 2024
Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8
Email: in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)
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