Who is Commanded?

I passed off a responsibility to my son the other day. It was my job, but I wanted him to do it. Yet, he didn’t know how to do it, and he wasn’t equipped to figure it out on his own. If he was to be successful, I still had to do the job and teach him how to do it at the same time. It would take a lot more work, but it would be worth it in the long run. Handing off responsibility is not so simple. Something similar happens in the church with the commands that God has given to it.

Our familiarity with scripture sometimes causes us to overlook simple yet profound truths. We take for granted what we have thought about so many times. Yet, we don’t realize how our thinking has been locked into some preconceived notions. Our individualistic society can sometimes creep into our thinking and cause us to see scripture from a point of view that is not intended.

I admit that I used to have more of this individualistic perspective, especially when it came to the very familiar verses of the Great Commission. I used to think that responsibility was placed completely on me for being a good disciple, to be obedient to Christ and be baptized, and to go into all the world and preach the gospel. Now, these things are all good things that need to happen, but the burden of responsibility is not solely placed on me as an individual Christian.

Let’s take a closer look at the commands given in the Great Commission. Who is the command given to and what exactly is the command? It’s easy to highlight the commands here: go, make disciples, baptize, obey. Yet notice what it does not say. It does not say, “Be a disciple”. It does not say, “Get baptized.” It does not say “Obey everything that Jesus has taught us.” Read in this way, the commands are given to the individual Christian, and the burden is placed on them to get baptized, to obey Jesus, and to go into all the world as a missionary. Yet, that is often our experience. A good number of churches and their leadership are passively sitting around waiting for people to step up and obey these commands.

But what does scripture say? The primary command is “make disciples”. The modifiers to that command are that we are to make disciples by going to them, by baptizing them, and by teaching them to obey. The burden is placed upon those who are already mature and obedient disciples. More specifically, the burden is placed upon the church and its leadership to carry out these functions. We should not expect those that we are making disciples to be able to figure it out on their own, we must lead them into it. A new believer is not going to feel the need to be baptized. We are commanded by God to baptize them.

The leaders of the church cannot claim to be obedient to the Great Commission if they simply preach this text and throw out obedience to it like bait on the end of a fishing line. We don’t wait for disciples to step up and take the bait. We must take the initiative to make disciples. The leaders of the church are commanded to baptize their new disciples. The church is supposed to be going, and so we send out preachers. Romans 10 tells us that they won’t preach unless they are sent. We must send. Leaders must teach their disciples to obey, just like I had to teach my son how to do the job I wanted him to do. This is what leadership does.

Something needs to change for many churches when it comes to the Great Commission. We need to stop being passive. We cannot afford to sit around waiting for a volunteer to become a missionary so that we can send them. That initiative is not for the individual Christian. That is the initiative of the church and its leadership to send missionaries. It’s not surprising that volunteerism rules our culture, but the church should have a culture of disciple-making, and that includes helping others to know how to obey, baptizing them, and sending them as missionaries.