Jesus is the King of kings and the Lord of lords. His authority transcends all other authority. Now there are other legitimate authorities as well and we’re instructed to recognize them. There is the authority of the state. There is the authority of parents. There is the authority of church officers. These are all legitimate authorities. But over all of these authorities is the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ, and it is on the basis of that authority over us as individuals within the church that He makes the Great Commission which follows.
Not only is His authority over us as Christian people, but His authority is over the world, over the nations to whom He sends us. You see, it is on the basis of His authority over us that we go, because we must respond to His command. But it’s on the basis of His authority over the unbelieving world that we go joyfully expecting Him to bring the results. All things are within His hands. And as we go, and as we spread the good news of His death and resurrection, He in the power of His own Holy Spirit takes that Gospel and applies it to the hearts of men and women who desperately need to hear it. They can’t hear it apart from His grace, they can’t respond to it—they won’t respond to it—apart from His grace, but He speaks through us, and as we are faithful to proclaim Him, He draws men and women to Himself as He has promised on so many occasions.
John Stott, speaking of this authority of the Lord Jesus Christ has said, “Only because all authority on earth belongs to Christ dare we go to the nations. And only because all authority in heaven as well is his have we any hope of success.”1
Second, the Lord gives a great command. It is what we think of as the Great Commission, and it falls into three parts. As we go into the world—and in Greek the word “go” is a participle, meaning that Jesus is not commanding us to go but assuming we will—the first part is that we will make disciples of all nations; second, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit; and third, teaching them to obey everything Jesus has commanded.
We are not to leave this work of communicating the best news the world has ever heard to a professional core of evangelists. It was never meant to be that. Rather, it was meant to be the task of all Christian people in all ages. This commission of the Lord Jesus Christ to go, make disciples, baptize, and teach is something that cannot be overlooked by Christian people if Jesus really is the Lord.
I once heard R. C. Sproul tell this story. He had been in a class with his teacher, Dr. John Gerstner of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, and they had been talking about predestination. Dr. Gerstner had expounded this doctrine and he stated that God through His eternal decrees elects those who will later come to Him for salvation. The students were all seated around in a semicircle; Sproul was down at one end and Dr. Gerstner began at the other end, and he asked this question of the first student: “Now, sir, if predestination is true, why evangelize?”
This student looked up at Dr. Gerstner and said, “It beats me.”
Then Dr. Gerstner moved to the second in line and asked the same question, “Why if predestination is true should we evangelize?” The student said, “I’ve always wondered about that myself, Dr. Gerstner.”
And he moved to the third student and that one said, “I haven’t the faintest idea.”
Gerstner was going all the way around the semicircle. Sproul said as the question kept getting asked down the row, he got more and more nervous. When the question finally got to him and Dr. Gerstner asked, “Now, Mr. Sproul, suppose you tell us why if predestination is true, we should evangelize?”
Sproul looked up and said with many apologies, “Now, Dr. Gerstner, I know you are probably looking for a very profound answer to what is obviously a very difficult question, an answer which at this particular stage of my education I am not prepared to give and I know that you are going to instruct us on the intricacies of this question. But just as a basis for discussion, one small point that we could begin with, that we don’t want to overlook, or perhaps we shouldn’t overlook, is the fact that Jesus commanded us to evangelize.”
Gerstner laughed and said, “That’s right, Mr. Sproul. And what could possibly be a smaller point, a more insignificant point, than that your Savior, the King of kings, the Lord of glory, has commanded you to do the work of evangelism?” Sproul said he got the point in a hurry, and we need to get this point too.
1John R. W. Stott, “The Great Commission,” in One Race, One Gospel, One Task: Official Reference Volumes of the World Congress on Evangelism, Berlin1966, ed. Carl F. H. Henry and W. Stanley Mooneyham (Minneapolis, MN: World Wide Publications, 1967), 46.
