"Go and make disciples!"

"All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 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, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age." - Matthew 28:18-20

"Go and make disciples of all nations" is terrifying. I instantly look at myself and see my weakness, inadequacy, and fear. I see the sin that eats at my life and feel that evangelism is hopeless. There are so many things I would rather do that I forget my call. I forget why and how I am to do ministry.

"All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me." Amazing! Jesus prefaces our duty to witness to others with the fact that he has all power and all authority that there is or ever conceivably could be. Therefore because of his power, we are enabled to make disciples. He is with us always, while this age endures, propelling us forward, supporting us from every side, enabling us to carry out his work in this world. We are privileged children who's Daddy lets them come to work with him and push big important buttons. All the while he is there with us, finding joy in our excitement and wonder and showing us exactly what what we need to do. We are the arm of his power in this world.

What hope to my callused mind and feeble heart! When Christ cried out, "It is finished!" it was true. He accomplished what my fearful hands could never do. In his atoning death and glorious resurrection he secured not only my salvation from sin, but took the weight of evangelism onto his own shoulders. He won the war, and enables us to collect the spoils. He has planted, watered, and grown a harvest and gives us the tools to bring it into the barn.

Have you ever been working with someone and felt completely useless because they were carrying all the weight and you were just walking along with nothing to do? In Christ that is not the case, although we are not really producing the work, we are the instruments of the work, He being at work through us. Jonathan Edwards talks about this seeming paradox of our sanctification by the Spirit when he says, “In efficacious grace we are not merely passive, nor yet does God do some and we do the rest. But God does all, and we do all. God produces all, we act all. For that is what produces, viz. our own acts. God is the only proper author and fountain; we only are the proper actors. We are in different respects, wholly passive and wholly active.” Jesus talks about the yoke we bear in Matthew 11 as being easy and his burden being light because he places us in the yoke, attaches us to the plow that we have been given, proceeds to lift up the entire apparatus, and with our legs dangling in the air, he plows the field. We can find joy in our work of discipleship because he does the hard labor and at the end of the day is responsible for its culmination. He who began a good work is faithful to complete it, using the strange, broken tools called Christians.

Let us then praise Christ and spread the joy of his gospel like little kids sitting on our Daddy's shoulders, yelling to anyone we see that we are going to climb a mountain, and His legs and back are doing all the work. The gospel frees us from the guilt of not being the perfect witness and not instantly seeing massive change in those we minister to. Therefore in his power, let us go out with joy and be led forth in peace, with no fear of rejection for our identity is secure and He has already overcome the trials of our failure. God is at work!