THE GREAT COMMISSION (1 of 5)

THE FOURFOLD COMMISSION

"And Jesus came to them and spake unto them, saying, All authority hath been given unto Me in heaven and on earth. Go ye therefore, and disciple the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost: teach­ing them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you: and lo, I am with you all the days, even unto the consummation of the age."—MATTHEW 28:18-20

"And He said unto them, Go ye into all the kosmos and preach the gospel to the whole creation. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that disbelieveth shall be condemned."—MARK 16:15, 16

"Ye are witnesses of these things. And behold, I send forth the promise of My Father upon you but tarry ye in the city, until ye be clothed with power from on high."—LUKE 24: 48, 49

"Jesus therefore said to them again, Peace be unto you: as the Father hath sent Me, even so send I you. And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whosesoever sins ye forgive, they are forgiven unto them; whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained." —JOHN 20: 21-23

            Any one reading these passages of Scrip­ture for the first time would certainly be quite as much impressed by their disparities as by their similarities. It is the custom of the Christian Church to speak of the commission of Jesus, as though there were but one, which the four evangelists record in different words. This conception is the result of superficial observation, and the measure in which it dominates our thinking is the measure in which we fail to recognize the spaciousness and inclusiveness of the missionary commission, and fail therefore to understand the real re­sponsibility of the Church. This has therefore been properly named the Great Commission.

            On the other hand, there are those who, rec­ognizing the differences between the records of the evangelists, affirm that they contradict each other.

            In order to avoid these two mistakes—that on the one hand of imagining that we have four re­ports of one commission in different words; and that on the other hand of imagining that the four contradict each other—it is important that we should recognize the true nature of these Gospel narratives. I am growingly convinced that the measure, in which we recognize the humanity of them, is the measure in which we shall be driven to the conclusion that they are infinitely more than human. To come to a study of them with a foregone and mechanical conception of inspira­tion is to miss the music of their harmony, and to fail to discover the ultimate meaning of their message.

            These Gospels are the narratives of four men, of different temperament, and consequently of different outlook. They are the natural, simple, and truthful accounts of things which they either saw and heard themselves, or learned from eye­witnesses. In these accounts, then, we gather the impressions which were made upon these differ­ent men by the Person of Christ, and by His teaching.

            This is equally true of the records of the hap­penings after the resurrection, as of the account of events in the life and ministry of Jesus, which culminated in the Cross. All the evangelists tell the account of the death and resurrection of Jesus.

            Moreover, they all give some account of the events happening subsequently to resurrection. Neither of them gives a detailed account of all that Jesus did or said in the forty days that passed between His resurrection and ascension. They rather de­scribe with perfect naturalness those doings of Jesus, or record with simple accuracy those of His words, which impressed them. They looked upon Him, and listened to Him in the upper room in Jerusalem, on the highways where they walked with Him, on the slopes of Olivet, or on the shores of the lake; or they heard the account of these things from those who did so look and listen to Him. Each man was impressed by things which Jesus did and said according to his natural temperament.

            This is perfectly natural, and is illustrated by the fact that it is always true that having listened to the address of a teacher, or the sermon of a preacher, any company of men, gathering to­gether afterwards to discuss the message, would find that different parts of the address would have impressed each man, largely according to his temperament or need.

            Recognizing this fact, we begin to understand these Gospel narratives. The harmony of result proves the divine overruling and choice of in­struments. The choosing of each of the evangelists for the writing of the account was the choos­ing of the Spirit; and the principle of choice was the necessity for recording and retaining, for the coming centuries, the very things which each man would naturally write.

            Thus to begin on the human level is to be driven to the conclusion of the Divinity of these narratives. When we understand that these are perfectly simple and artless accounts, written by men who had no conception that they were in­spired; and when we review the whole, and discover how part fits to part, and how each revela­tion complements the others, until the four merge into the perfect presentation of a perfect Person, then we see that these men who wrote truthfully, simply, and artlessly, on human levels; were guided, directed, inspired, by one Master-mind for the revelation to all time of great and suf­ficient truth. These are God’s words spoken through these men.

            If that be true of the whole Book, it is cer­tainly true of the commission of Jesus. The complete manifesto of missionary enterprise is not contained in any one Gospel. If we would know what the missionary responsibility of the Church really is, it is not enough to read what Matthew has written. We must also read what Mark records, what Luke reports, and what John reveals. We must gather the whole mani­festo from the harmony of these Gospel revela­tions.

            In this introductory article I propose in barest outline to consider the whole commission. In succeeding articles I shall take the separate parts thereof, as reported in the four Gospels, and consider each carefully; finally dealing with the resources and consequent responsibilities thus revealed.

            Before the harmony of the Missionary Com­mission can be appreciated, the harmony of the Gospels in their presentation of the Person of the Christ must be recognized. We have all at some time either purchased a harmony of the Gospels, or attempted to arrange these accounts in chrono­logical order. The result of our purchase, or our labor, has been unsatisfactory. In such labor I personally discovered the impossibility of the task. It is important to remember, moreover, that when a chronological harmony of the Gospels is attempted, the one so attempting is in grave peril of destroying the spiritual harmony. This spiritual harmony consists in the presentation of the Person of the Christ in a fourfold aspect as seen and heard by these four men.

            In the Gospel according to Matthew the King­ship of Jesus is revealed. It is impossible to escape from that impression. It is the Gospel of His authority: authority by all rights—the rights of inherent royalty as revealed in His character; the right of perfect legislation, as indicated in His manifesto; the right of vic­torious administration, which includes conflict, and issues in victory as accomplished through His Cross and Resurrection. Matthew closes his Gospel with a picture of this King, standing in the power of resurrection, and saying with quiet dignity, "All authority hath been given unto Me." Jude and Peter call Him the Despot. Matthew's Gospel is ultimately that of the royalty of Jesus.

            The Gospel according to Mark is the Gospel of the service of Jesus. He is seen therein per­petually stripped of royal apparel, and girded "with the slave's apron"; forevermore at work in remarkable and victorious power. As we watch Him at His work, we see the aims of His activity—the destruction of the destroyer, the casting out of demons, the cancelling of disease.      But His work is constructive also: He makes again those who had been destroyed; He flings out death and gives back life; He cures disease, and thus restores men to ability. Through all these processes He is seen restoring the groaning creation; destroying things that destroy, in order that those destroyed might be restored; in order that man, and all beneath Him, might be healed and helped. It is the Gospel of the Servant of God, mighty in power, working without cessa­tion even to the point of weariness, until He crowns service in actual and absolute sacrifice.          Mark presents the Servant, and closes his Gospel with the statement that the Lord works with those who go into Creation with His evangel of renewal. The perfect humanity of Jesus is portrayed in Luke's Gospel. As Luke, the master-artist, the cultured Greek, proceeds with his work, we see in Jesus the realization of the Divine purpose; a perfect personality. He records the develop­ment of the early years—the birth of the Boy; the mental awakening, and the confirmation at twelve years of age; the spiritual crowning of the Man at thirty years of age. We then see this perfect Man, passing through the three years of public ministry, victorious through testing; submitting to temptation, but mastering it; walk­ing the common way of ordinary human life, yet never failing, never deviating; moving straight forward with calm strength and dignity through all opposing forces to the realization of His own human life. We see finally, not merely the vic­tory of personality but the accomplishment of vocation. This perfect Person, victorious in His own probation, has a mission. "The Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost." And before the Gospel ends we see Him accomplishing His Passion, rising from the dead, promising the gift of the Holy Spirit, and ascending to the right hand of the Father. Luke records the command of Jesus that His dis­ciples should be witnesses to His victory in the power of the Spirit.

            Turning to the last Gospel, we are conscious of the clouds and darkness of a great mystery; yet out of it there flashes such light as man had never seen before. The Gospel of John is not a life of Jesus. It is an orderly and sequential setting forth of certain words and works that reveal the deepest mystery of His Being. We see in Him the manifestation of Deity. In His Being, we come to knowledge of the Being of God. In His sayings, we learn the truth of God. In His doings, we discover the activities of God. John records the inspiring words in which Jesus sent His disciples forth for the continuation of that ministry for which He was the Sent of God.

            So these men wrote. Matthew, the tax-gath­erer, living in the midst of things imperial, saw the King and described Him. Mark, the friend of Peter, a fisherman accustomed to the long vigil of the night and the ceaseless toil of the day, wrote of the Man at work. Luke, the Greek physician, individual perfection being the master idea of his mental outlook, saw the fulfillment of that ideal in Jesus. John, the mystic dreamer of the Galilean sea, looking ever on, and looking through to the ultimate, saw the "Word made flesh."

            In the light of that fourfold revelation we discover the harmony of the missionary commis­sion.

            Matthew, who portrayed the royalty of Jesus, was absolutely impressed with Christ's words on the slopes of Olivet. "All authority hath been given unto Me in heaven and on earth. Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you."

            "Go ye, . . . disciple the nations," is a much broader commission than that indicated by the translation, "As you are going, make disciples of the na­tions." The individual application is recognized in the following words, "baptizing them," that is in the Names of the Three involved, spoken to those who might obey the proclamation of royalty by submission; "teaching them," that is, the bringing of such under His ethical system. "Go . . . disciple . . . teach." Three parts to this commission of the King, the Lawgiver. It rings with the note of authority.

            The commission according to Mark is all too superficially read and considered by Christian people. "Go ye into all the kosmos" does not merely mean, Travel over the surface of the earth and speak to men; the term "kosmos" here in­cludes man and everything beneath him.         The preaching of the Gospel to individual men is the beginning of the work, but the Gospel is to be pro­claimed to the whole creation. He can only reach the kosmos and the whole creation with the evangel through men. In the proportion in which men hear the evangel, and, yielding to it, are re­ made by the healing ministry of the Servant of God, they become instruments through which He is able to reconstruct the order of the whole crea­tion. He is no longer straightened.

            Take the simplest illustration. In the Welsh revival years back, when a profane, degraded, brutalized coal miner who was brought to God, went back the next morning to the mines to begin his day's work, he found him­self unable to induce his horse to work, because he no longer swore or ill-treated the animal, which only understood profane language and only answered brutal blows.

            Through the renewed man the whole creation is affected and redeemed as it passes under the dominion of love. We are to go into the whole creation, the whole kosmos, and to preach the evangel, not merely to men and women, though that is first and fundamental, but through them to the whole creation. This blog enters so far into 50 separate countries with these messages.

            This Servant of God comes into human life, and wherever it is limited and bruised He destroys the destroyer. The work of His people is that of carrying on His work. They must speak with the commanding note of authority; but there must also be that sacrificial service which enters into the life of the world, and comes into contact with the suffering, in order that there may be in­fused into the healing virtues of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.

            Luke, the writer of the Gospel of the perfect Manhood of Christ, records His declaration. "Ye are witnesses of these things . . . but tarry ye . . . until ye be clothed with power from on high." Christ was victorious in life and death, and we are to vindicate His victory by re­peating it in our lives, and manifesting to men the fact that the power of His life and the value of His death are at their disposal. We are to be witnesses.

            John heard the mystic words that the others possibly were afraid to chronicle, because they so little understood their meaning. "As the Father hath sent Me, even so send I you. . . . Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whosesoever sins ye forgive, they are forgiven unto them; whose­soever sins ye retain, they are retained." John, who had seen the gleaming glory of Divine light shining through the love-lit eyes of his Master; John, who had heard in the sweet tones of his Master's voice the very music of the infinite and undying Love, now heard Him say, "As the Father hath sent Me, even so send I you." As He came into the world for the manifestation of God, He sends His own into the world for that manifestation. As that manifestation of God included the work whereby sin may be forgiven, we are to go in the power of all He has accomplished and are to exercise this great and holy function of remitting and retaining sins.    This word was spoken, not to the apostles as such, but to Christian men and women. They are all called to reveal the Father to men, and to exercise the right of the remission or retention of sins.

            It is as we discover the distinctions between these records that we also discover the harmony of the commission. Each is related to the Per­son of Christ, and each emphasizes one ultimate value thereof. The King sends us to proclaim His royalty. The Servant calls us to co-operation in His sacrificial service. The Perfect Man calls us to demonstrate the possibility of perfection through His victory won in our lives. God manifest sends us forth to exhibit "the excellencies of Him" Who has called us "out of darkness into His marvelous light."

            We may now approach the subject from an­other standpoint that of the harmony of these commissions as related to the needs of the world.

            The need of humanity today is fourfold. Its first necessity is that of authority. That is true in many directions. I now make one applica­tion only. Humanity preeminently needs to hear the voice of authority on the matter of moral standards. To turn away from the religion of the Lord Christ and to study the philosophies of men is to discover a great disagreement on the question of sin. There is no final authority on this subject. Therefore the utmost need of the world is the enunciation of an ethic which is binding and authoritative, and which therefore gives a clear revelation of what sin is.

            The first note of the Christian commission is the proclamation to the world of the authority of Jesus. The Lordship of Christ should be the first note of preaching, whether at home or abroad. We wrongly imagine that our first duty is to declare His love, and the fact that He is able to save. It may be an old-fashioned doc­trine, but it is one to which we need to return, that man never enters into the experience of conversion until he has come to conviction of need. That conviction of need, which is convic­tion of sin, can only be produced by an authori­tative moral standard. That standard is pro­vided in the ethic of Jesus, proclaimed in His teaching, and exemplified in His life.

            If the first note of the world's need is that of authority, the next is that of the universal consciousness of sorrow and pain. These two matters are not related in the thinking of man today as they should be. Man wants to know what is right and what is wrong, and cannot find his final standard. He cannot determine that from a depraved condition himself or from the depraved condition of those who claim to know right and wrong. He is also conscious of sorrow, of pain; and that pain is felt through all the life that lies beneath him in creation. He fails too often to recognize that the pain results from the violation of law, through lack of sub­mission to a final authority. When the nature-poet found a dead robin on his garden path, he said—

"Our human touch had on him passed,
And with our touch, our agony";

And the whole truth is expressed in the pulsating, throbbing words of the great apostle, "the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now." Humanity needs healing in order for the healing of creation.

            The second note of the great evangel is that of the carrying to the whole creation the message of healing and renewal. The world's agony is the world's need. That need is to be met by the Disciples of Christ, as they enter the creation which groans and travails in pain, in sacrificial service, through which the destructive forces are to be destroyed and new life communicated. They are to go.

            The third note in the world's need is its con­sciousness of inability to realize the highest, to do the noblest, and to be the best. In the presence of that inability men think differently, and act in various ways. Some deny the ideal, because they are unable to realize it. This need stripped of all false arguments and philosophies may be expressed in the language of Paul, "To me who would do good, evil is present." I am a thoroughly depraved creature.

            The third note in the commission is, "Ye shall be My witnesses." The disciples of Jesus are to go through the world demonstrating Christ's ability in their victorious lives. They are to be His witnesses, the men and women who are able. Paul also said, "I can do all things in Him that strengtheneth me." Those submitted to His royalty, who know the healing power He be­stows, in whom the forces that destroy are des­troyed, are to be witnesses to Him, in the home, in the city, in shop and office and factory, and to the uttermost part of the earth. Wherever they go they are to be credentials, evidences, demonstrations, proofs, samples of Christ, an­swering the world's wail of inability with their perpetual song of ability.

            The final note of the world's need is expressed in the universal unrest, that surging undercur­rent of unexplained dissatisfaction which char­acterizes humanity everywhere. Probe it, solve it, and it will be discovered that it is all the out­come of the fact that humanity is out of harmony with God. One cannot turn in any direction without being made conscious of unrest and fear and suspicion; instability in government and all forms have been tried, wicked­ness in diplomacy, the breaking of treaties; all the things of unrest are parts of the same lack of God. The sins of men result from the sin of man wherein he turned from God. For the forgive­ness of sins men need reconciliation to God.

            The last note of the commission is, "As the Father hath sent Me, even so send I you"; with its necessary sequence, "whosesoever sins ye for­give, they are forgiven unto them; whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained." In the mystic power of her fellowship with Christ, the Church is sent to reveal the Father, to work to­gether with the Father in order that the world may find its rest where it alone can be found, in restored fellowship with Him by the putting away of sins. And this is accomplished under the teaching of the Spirit using the words of Christ bringing meaning to all He spoke.

            Finally, let us note the harmony of results fol­lowing obedience to the whole commission.

The immediate result of the proclamation of the royalty of Jesus is conviction of sin.

            The immediate result of the proclamation of His evangel to the creation, in the power of sacri­ficial service, is that of a conviction of the possi­bility of righteousness. That possibility is demonstrated by the healing of humanity's wounds, the ending of sorrow, the putting away of pain and the communication of power. The knowledge of God Who is so big He is revealed as Three Persons Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Let them be known through baptism into each of their names.

            The immediate result of witnessing to the power of Christ among the nations is that of the conviction of judgment, because the prince of this world hath been judged. A Christian man, living the strong, pure Christian life, is an evi­dence of the fact that the forces of evil are mastered, and that all who obey the Evangel may be victorious over them.

            The immediate result of conveying to the world the great revelation of the Father and the mes­sage of the forgiveness of sins, is that of the creation of a belief which becomes the basis of that repentance which is the rock foundation on which character is built and human life developed.

            This, then, is the full manifesto of the King concerning the responsibility of His Church.

She is sent to the waiting world to proclaim His royalty.

            She is called to serve with Him in suffering by going, in order that she may communicate healing to the whole creation.

            She is to prove her Master's power to realize in men the highest and the noblest, by the trans­figured lives of her members.

            She is to reveal the Father through the guidance of the Spirit, in the mystery of that Passion, whereby sin is remitted when men yield to His claim, or retained when they persist in rebellion against Him.

            These are the values for which the world is waiting. The authority of the King must be the first note in all the Church's preaching. She must never lower the standards of His ethical requirement, nor remains passive when others do so. Moreover, she must keep pressing on through all cities and countries and continents proclaiming His will by going. By its own inherent truth His teaching will appeal to the hearts and consciences of men when it is preached. In His words the world will find the final laws of conduct, and in Himself the final standard of character.

            But the Church must also strip herself of her purple, and array herself in the garments of service, girding herself with humility as with a slave's apron. Passing into the midst of crea­tion's sigh and sob and sorrow, its wounds and weariness, she must touch it with new life, heal­ing by contact. She is to bring to that world-agony, which results from the fact that the world has lost its center of authority, the answering agony of sacrificial service by which, and by which alone, it can be healed. She shall wear her royalty robes later when she reigns with Him.

            The Church is to scatter through all the nations the living witnesses. The groaning creation is "Waiting for the revealing of the sons of God." That word, though prophetic, has an immediate and present application. Wher­ever those come, in whom Christ has won His victory, by their lives they preach in power the gospel of His ability.

            Finally, the Church is to go with the great message of the forgiveness of sins. The man who is brought face to face with the royalty of Jesus will put his hand upon his lip and cry, "Unclean Unclean!" He will thus become con­scious of all the sorrow and pain resulting from his sin. He will then know as never before the agony of inability to do that which he would. To such the Church must declare the possibility of the forgiveness of sins by the unveiling of the Father through the guidance of the Spirit.

            This is the Church's deposit. If she rejoice in all that she possesses of authority, of service, of witness, and of revelation; and fail to communi­cate to others, she is untrue to the intention of her Lord, and is in grave peril herself of losing all.