As followers of Christ we are challenged by Jesus to “do” something with our
life. In Matthew, Jesus lays it out pretty concisely.
“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name
of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I
commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
-Matthew 28:19-20
If you’ve grown up in the church or not, it’s easy to find yourself stuck in a
comfortable and complacent lifestyle. It can be difficult to receive the severity of
the message that Jesus is trying to get across here in Matthew if you are just serving
your time on Sunday mornings and have the “hippie, limp wrist, tree hugging,
tolerant Jesus” that society likes to make out to be “our example”. This box that
Jesus has been put into by our culture today to fit our likings is not the Jesus that is
in the bible. He took a beating with a whip embedded with shards of metal, bone or
pottery that tore deeply into his flesh and left him so physically torn and mutilated
that people were not asking, ”What happened to that man?”, but, “What is that
thing?”. The wounds from scourging typically were so deep that the victim lost a
great deal of blood and went into severe shock even before the actual crucifixion.
Not everyone survived the scourging so that quite commonly the crucifixion that
followed would be that of a dead, or at least dying, body. Jesus was not only forced
to drag Himself to a mile or two to Golgotha, the place where He was to be nailed
to the cross, after being scourged, but our mutilated Savior carried the patibulum,
cross-arm, which on average weighed about one-hundred and twenty pounds. After
nailing Jesus to the cross, He then proceeded to muster up enough strength to hang
on the cross for hours and to promise the thief next to Him that he would spend
eternity with Jesus then He offered His spirit up to God.
This is not some meek, limp wristed, sissy of a man. Christ bore more pain
and hurt then any modern day “hero” Hollywood could dream up. He felt the
abandonment of His Closest friends, His family, and God. If the physical pain wasn’t
enough the emotional pain of having no one there for Him was even worse, His own
mother was at least a quarter mile away, watching from another hill. The physical
and emotional abandonment and pain that Jesus felt was only a glimpse of the pain
He truly felt. God then proceeded to pour out all of the wrath that not just you and I
deserve but the punishment for all men before Christ, after Him, and after you and I
are long gone. He was completely alone.
This is the example that Jesus left us.
This being said, Christ gives us a mission in Matthew 28. It is called the
Great Commission for a reason, if it wasn’t so, it would have been called the Great
Suggestion. Christ lays it out in the most concise manner. All men are to go, baptize,
and teach others to observe Christ’s commands. This is a pretty straight forward
message.
Are you still uncertain if the Great Commission really applies to you
as a follower of Christ? A good friend of mine once put it this way, “The Great
Commission applies to everyone, if it didn’t it would be called The Commission.”
Don’t be content with the way the world is. God wants to reach the world and
He uses His Word and you and I to do it. Step into the Glory that God has in store
for His Children and His Ambassadors. Make your life count and make your blows
count.
