And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. 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, 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. (Matthew 28:18-20 - NKJV)
One of those popular sayings that have been around for many years is to say that a person has been “short-changed.” An example might be that a salesperson might owe another individual change on a purchase, and although the correct change may be $1.30, the salesperson only gives the customer back $1.20. It is considered to be not only bad business but unethical to short-change someone. Yet, have you ever noticed how we as the Church of the Most High God do that very thing? Not necessarily with money, but rather with His commands and expectations for His people. One of the most notable ways in which we “short-change” God is when we take a command of His, and only focus on a portion and neglect the whole. Such is the case with the Great Commission.
Over the past years Baptists have been driven to see a “resurgence” in the Great Commission being lived out in the local church as well as in the denomination as a collective fellowship. I watched as leadership in the denomination debated, postulated, mandated and a few other “ateds” over the Great Commission during its recent convention. And one simple thing leaped out at me during the proceedings…“We Have Short-Changed God’s Command.”
Let me share a simple illustration that might help. On the most basic of levels, what makes up an egg? If you were to hard boil that egg you would basically have three parts; the outer shell, the white, and the yoke. If you were to hold out to me the yoke of the egg and tell me that you held an egg, I would have to ask were the rest of the egg is. The yoke may be part of the egg, in fact in a fertile egg it is the life of the egg, but it is not the entire egg. The egg is made up of not only the life in the yoke, but the life sustaining white and the life protecting shell. As a people called by God to go into the world, we have held out the yoke of salvation and declared this to be the egg of God’s call to go.
Look more closely at what the words of Christ really are. He calls together His disciples and tells them to go into the entire world. Now, I have searched through many translations as well as the Greek manuscripts that are available to me and I noticed something. In none of the copies that I have found does Jesus tell His disciples to go and “make converts.” What He tells His people to do is to go and “make disciples”. Jesus commanded us to go and make life long scholars and pupils of His teachings. To do that we must first make converts, but that is just the yoke of the egg, the command is so much more than saving souls.
Over and over during that discussion about the Great Commission I listened as men and women of God spoke about how we could more effectively see souls saved for Jesus Christ. New strategies and organizational structures to allow us to see the most possible number of people won for the gospel. We were told that doing this would be living out the Great Commission. At the heart of this egg called the Great Commission is the need to see people saved. And without salvation a man or woman can never be a true disciple of Jesus Christ. It is a wonderful thing to see the joy that permeates a church body when someone publicly calls on the name of Jesus to be saved. After all, the very angels in heaven are rejoicing with that one and that local church. But then comes the days after birth. How many times have we watched as new believers, especially older youth and adults, have fallen by the wayside? The newness and excitement wears off and then life happens. Why is it that these excited converts so often become casualties of this spiritual war we are in? Simple, they are victims of a short-changed commission.
Let me try to put it another way. My wife and I are expecting a beautiful baby girl this coming November, our fifth child. Imagine with me. Joy Michelle is born and the entire family rejoices at her birth. We bring her home and tell her how much we love her. We even let it be known that we were going to feed her a feast of a meal once a week. We would also offer her a snack once or twice during the week. The rest of the time, because we love her, we would be praying that she find a way to feed, clothe, bathe and nurture herself. After all, we will tell her, God expects her to grow. If my wife and I did that we would find ourselves in jail for criminal neglect and the unethical abuse of a child. Yet that is the very thing that the Church does in its living out of the Great Commission.
When the people of God begin to live out the Great Commission by not only seeing souls saved, but putting the proper emphasis on nurturing and “discipling” them then we will see the Great Commission truly being lived out in our midst. In the early days of a new believer’s walk with Christ their viability and vitality, much like a new born babe, takes time, effort and sacrifice by the adults in their life. That baby needs to be fed the milk and given the time needed for them to thrive. And over the years to come, they are taught how to feed themselves and care for themselves. The Great Commission is a call for so much more than seeing people saved; it is a command to make life long pupils of Jesus Christ.
One of the most popular verses of Scripture that relate to Godly child rearing is found in Proverbs 22:6. “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” (NKJV) That, my friends, is the Great Commission. It is to not only birth babies into the family of God, it is to train them so they will not fall by the wayside. A good friend of mine once noted that we as Baptists have become devoted to spiritual obstetrics but have forgotten how to be spiritual pediatricians. We must commit ourselves, our time and our resources to grow these new believers into mature, meat of the word eating, Christians who can then be a part of living out the Great Commission. This becomes cyclic, in that these life-long disciples will then grow and become fruitful, thus increasing the numbers of souls saved for Christ and disciples that will then make more disciples and so on and so on. To train up a spiritual child in the way they should go is more than just enrolling them in a Life Group or Sunday School class. To train up a new believer is to put time, even daily at the beginning through spiritual mentoring programs, into that new life in order to give them every chance to live and thrive.
The challenge before us is to understand the call to move beyond the yoke and embrace the entire egg. Let us not short-change the Great Commission from Christ any longer. May the Church not only make converts, may she make disciples of all nations.