The burden I have on my heart is to bring a balance in the matter of fulfilling the Great Commission. All Christians know how important it is to fulfill what is known as "the Great Commission," which Jesus gave to His disciples just before He left this earth.
The first part of that Great Commission is found in Mark 16:15, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creatures. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned." But there's another part of this Great Commission -- the other half, so to speak -- which is described in Matthew 28:18-20. There Jesus says, "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age."
I have observed Christendom -- born-again Christians, Christian missions, and Christian churches -- in the last 52 years since I was born again, and I find that most Christians emphasize the Mark 16:15 aspect of the Great Commission. Very few emphasize the other half, Matthew 28:19. My guess would be that 99% make Mark 16:15 their primary focus, while only about 1% prioritize Matthew 28:19-20. To use an illustration, that is like a hundred-people trying to carry a log, with 99 people at one end of the log and only one person at the other end, struggling to hold that end up. That's the way I see it.
So I found that the Commission the Lord gave me when I began to teach the Word as He gifted me was to emphasize the other aspect of the Great Commission, the one which is being fulfilled only by about 1%, because the true balance should be 50-50. The first part of the Great Commission is what we know as evangelism. It is generally called missionary work, and often requires going into unreached areas. It is very essential to bring the message of the Gospel (that man is in sin, that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, that Christ died for the sins of the world, that He is the only way to the Father, that Christ rose from the dead, that he who believes in Him and is baptized will be saved, and that he who does not believe will be condemned) to these unreached areas.
But did the Lord want it to stop there? Once a person has believed, accepted the fact that he's a sinner, and received Christ as a Savior, is that all? Not at all. In Matthew 28:19, He asks us to go into all nations and make disciples.
The early apostles who heard this commission for the first time had no doubt in their minds as to what was meant by "disciples," because Jesus had explained it very clearly to them in Luke 14. When Jesus saw a great multitude of people coming along with Him, as we read in Luke 14:25, He turned and said some of the hardest words that He ever spoke to anyone.
In the next few weeks, we will take a deeper look at each of these “conditions of discipleship.” It is good to examine ourselves: have we come into discipleship as Jesus defines it? And do we have a proper balance in our understanding of the Great Commission, and the emphasis Jesus places on discipleship?
