Koinonia:  Evangelism

Part I

Matthew 28:16-19a

Bishop Thomas L. Hoyt, Jr.

In the 2002 Episcopal Address given by Bishop Paul A. G. Stewart, Sr., stress was placed on revival and renewal of the church. In my opinion, this is a call for evangelism.  At our Annual conferences during this year, we placed particular emphasis on proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ, following-up of new converts and teaching others who have been a part of the communion of saints. This edition of the newsletter will review the biblical teaching of the Great Commission. Let us study it and apply it to our own work as evangelists and as people of God.

Once one has believed, and received, one is called to pass what is received to others. That is the meaning of the commission reported in Matthew 28:16-19a, which reads:

Vs. 16 -    Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them.

Vs. 17 -         And when they saw him they worshipped him, but some doubted.

Vs. 18 -         And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”

Vs. 19a -    Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations.

    In this passage a witness is given about events that took place during the forty days after the resurrection. It was a period of teaching, which was to prepare his disciples to carry on in the period between the ascension and the parousia. The Great Commission, which is recorded at the end of the book of Matthew, is concerned with the evangelism and follow-up of new converts.

Matthew’s report of Jesus’ commission instructed the disciples to go and “make disciples” of all peoples, “teaching them to observes all that Christ had commanded and taught them. They were to go in the name of Jesus Christ who has been given all authority, who has overcome the world and the militant cycle of death itself, who has inaugurated a whole new order in human affairs called the Kingdom of God, who has called out a faithful people to serve as active agents of that kingdom which he himself will consummate at the end of the age.

The Great Commission is concerned with the evangelism and follow-up of the converts. The purposes of the follow-up are (1) to keep the new converts from quitting the new faith, (2) to assimilate with the Christian community, and (3) to grow in spiritual life. The text shows that (1) “Make disciples” (adherents, followers) is for keeping the new converts, (2) “baptizing” shows us the seal of assimilation with the Christian Community and (3) “teaching them to observe all things” which Jesus Christ commanded means to help them grow in the life of the Kingdom of God.

If we would carefully examine each section of this great commission, it may prove instructive for evangelism and discipleship as called for by the Church. He called into being two functions of the church:  the evangelistic (19) and the pastoral (v. 20a).

The Evangelistic Function: V. 19a.

            “Go therefore.” This sweeping imperative rests upon the authority of the risen Jesus. He has the authority to delegate power to whom he will and confers the commission accordingly. His own life was one of authority. He first called His disciples by “Follow me” (Mt. 4:19). He then nurtured them with “Abide in me”  (Jn. 15:4), and finally He sends them by the word “Go.” “As the Father has sent me, ever so I send you” (Jn. 20:21).

What is the purpose of the going?  It is for evangelism as parallel verses in Mark 16:15 tells us: “And he said to them, ‘Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation.

Where is one to “go?” one is called to go into all the world, wherever there is a need for repentance.  Repentance means a radical break with the past and a determination to follow the path of obedience to Christ. Jesus, who in Matthew (10:5-7) sent the disciples out to preach the kingdom and to only the house of Israel, now sends them out to make disciples to all nations.

If the disciples go to the nations they are doing what their Lord and Master had established as an underlying principle during his own earthly ministry. He had rejected the major options of his day: identification with the religious and political establishment (the Sadducees), the path of proper religious observance (the Pharisees), the quietistic possibility of withdrawing from conflict and tension to a place of comfort and non-involvement (the Essences), and the movement toward violent revolution (the Zealots).  Instead he chose another option.  He preached the judgment of God upon the present order and heralded the coming of a new order, then called into being a community of faith that would witness to the hope and power of that new order and already begin to make its presence felt in the world. This was continuous with the purposes of God throughout history: to call out a faithful people, Set apart from the world, but radically involved in it as witnesses to and agents of God’s salvation in history.

    This community would be the one “that has not made itself one with the nations,” (Num. 23:9) but would demonstrate by its own life and action a whole new order in human affairs called the kingdom of God- It would be a voluntary society made up of those who had given their lives over to Christ and his kingdom. It would be a mix of humankind, breaking down barriers of race, class and sex. It would be centered around a new way of life and a new way of responding by forgiving its enemies, sharing its money freely, being willing to suffer violence rather than inflicting it resisting the temptation of power by adapting the posture of a servant, responding to evil by overcoming it with good, evoking leadership through the gifts of the whole church body, confronting the state by its moral independence and prophetic witness, and challenging the old society by building a new one.

    The community inspired by Jesus is told to “go” proclaim the gospel of the kingdom of God, which would lead to repentance.  Just as the New Testament call to repentance was grounded in a situation of political oppression and revolutionary upheaval, of human suffering and spiritual blindness, even so must the call be seen in the context where repentance is meaningful in a social and political context. Where, I repeat, must we go?

Wherever violence and force have become the means to all ends, the call to repentance must proclaim the gospel that came to “guide our feet into the way of peace” (Luke 1:79). Wherever the facts of race, class and sex are used to oppress and divide, the gospel message must speak of the meaning of the cross and resurrection of Christ in abolishing former divisions and barriers and creating a new humanity where all men and women are reconciled as one. Wherever and whenever the wealth of the affluent imprisons so many in poverty and the rich nations and classes worship the god of mammon while the poor starve, the gospel must be preached as a social and economic revolution. Even in a political environment where power is its own justification and where manipulations and self-perpetuation are the dominant style of leadership, the gospel must testify to a messiah who “did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mt. 28). We are to go where there is a need for repentance and the inauguration of the Kingdom of Cod.

    “Make disciples.” The Greek word means to teach, to school, to train (Mt. 13:52) to make adherents. There are several groups of disciples in the New Testament. “The disciples of Moses” (John 9:28b), the disciples of John (Mt. 9:14a) and “the disciples of Jesus” have a double significance, referring (1) to the large company of Jesus’ followers in general (Lk. 19:37) and (2) to the twelve apostles in particular (Mt. 10:1). Make disciples” means to make the (others) what you yourselves are! Have them learn what you yourselves have learned. In the same manner as Jesus “made” apostles from the first disciples (Mk. 3:14-15), the apostles are called to make apostolic Christians of all others. The kingly ministry of the Messiah is here entrusted to the first disciples constituting the king’s troops.

Most of our contemporary Christian proclamations are not involved in making disciples and are therefore failing to respond to the commission of Christ to His Church. This statement means that modern evangelism is calling many to belief but few to obedience. The evangelistic question has become what do we believe about Christ, rather than are we willing to forsake all and follow him. When the theology of faith is ripped apart from the life of faith, what results is an evangelism that has more to do with doctrine than with transformation. If believing entails trusting1 then action is a necessary part of faith~

In our times, obedience to Christ has been seriously compromised by an evangelism of easy belief and simple formulas. The radical demands of Christ have been reduced and all but wiped out by the modern evangelism that takes the liberty to conceal the cost of discipleship. What we have when evangelism does not speak to the social, political and economic order is evangelism without the gospel.

When evangelism restricts its message to personal morality and private salvation, the church becomes friend and spiritual advisor to the rich and powerful. The state will often give religious freedom” to Church leaders and evangelists who are willing to allow the gospel to be stripped of its political meaning and to preach an individualistic message which is no threat to injustice and oppression and is prophetically impotent.

To put it simply, proclamation and demonstration of the gospel has the power to make disciples. We must resist a spiritualized or privatized message which does not issue forth in radical obedience to all that Christ commanded, and we must resist the secularization of the gospel in a way that denies its spiritual power. We must contend against the constant temptation to accommodate the gospel message to the world in a captive civil religion that doesn’t threaten the social and political order. We are contending, instead, for a living affirmation of the Lordship of Jesus Christ which brings his message of life, liberation, healing, wholeness, justice and reconciliation into active confrontation and combat with the pervasive power of oppression, sin and death of this present age. The personal, social, political, economic, global and cosmic meaning of the gospel must be recovered and clearly set forth if we wish to restore integrity to the church’s evangelism.

            Modern evangelism is always concerned with asking how many have been converted and brought into the churches. It is seldom asked how many have been turned away because of the radical claims Christ is making on their lives. A dangerous respect for numerical success has led to reducing the demands of the gospel, blurring the meaning of discipleship, and accommodating the evangelistic message to what the audience will find more easily acceptable.  We are called not to make the Gospel easier but to make it clear.

(Part II will be continued in the next edition of The Connector)