All About It
All
About It
This is a funny English (American?) way of saying, "that is the thing that I am most excited about!" or a positive response, even extreme interest to a statement / question.
“18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 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, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
What are we all about at RIC?
Making disciples
Baptizing
Learning to obey Jesus
One of the fun modifiers in verse 19 is the word GO! A great thrusting word to get us up off the couch, out of our norms and move forward with purpose. Disciples of Jesus are to GO wherever God sends them and do these things with all the confidence of Jesus' authority and presence. BUT, "GO" is not a command in this text. Nope. GO is a participle, a helping word that gives context to when or where the commands or actions are to be done. So if we read this a little more greekly it would say:
As you are going, therefore...
The imperatives, or commanded actions are: make disciples, baptize, teach to observe (obey).
This actually takes a little pressure off of us having to thrust ourselves forward into new places (although there's nothing wrong with that). For the international community especially, we are all already going. In fact, have you ever thought, "I won't be here long enough to make a disciple, or baptize, or really do a good job helping someone obey Jesus". I've heard this out of my own mouth! It sounded like this: "Shouldn't sharing about Jesus be relational? Build relationships over time so as to lead someone to Jesus organically." Although there's some truth to that and is strategic enough, it often becomes an excuse to not be obedient to Jesus' great commission.
What may have been our excuse before is actually the very context in which Jesus would have us obey. Going. It's in our going that Jesus lays out his purpose for his disciples.
And that's where this becomes a church address, not an address to individual Christians. Jesus is talking to all of his disciples. Where we cannot possibly make disciples, baptize them and teach them everything Christ commanded, we trust that together we can do these things by Jesus' authority and presence among his church.
This Sunday, we get to see and celebrate how Jesus is building his church (us) by making disciples. His church (we) will baptize them. His church (we) will graciously and lovingly point them to the commands of Jesus.
Thank you church for obeying together what we could never obey on our own!
That's what we're all about.
Loren