NB: Church as used in this write-up refers to the Body of Christ rather than the physical building where the Body meets.
Is the Church losing focus today? Or it’s just majoring the minors and minoring the majors? In today’s Church it won’t be uncommon to sit under a sermon and not hear the name of Jesus Christ. Now pastors have become expert health speakers, wonderful financial advisers, fund raisers and others. This makes me ask, what’s the purpose of the Church.
When you look through out the gospels we see Christ declaring that He Himself was going to build His Church (Matthew 16:18). And when He was about to ascend into heaven He vividly and specifically declared the purpose of the Church to the Apostle in the statement below:
And Jesus came and said to them, “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)
Now the major work of the Church is simply stated in this statement above. We will quickly analyse and see what the purpose of the Church is.
All Authority in Heaven and on Earth has been given to Me.
In this statement we see the authority with which Jesus is talking with. He declares to them that the authority with which He’s coming to give the command transcends all human powers, it is not limited to just the Palestinian Peninsula but goes beyond national boundaries. In that same statement we see that His power supersedes all spiritual forces. This is what the Apostle Paul declared in Philippians 2:9-11:
Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
With this we see that Jesus’ authority is a universal rather than a local one. That’s why He was able to declare the following instructions.
Go therefore and make Disciples of all Nations.
The first purpose for the Church is to go and make disciplines. I will break this into two. The first is go therefore; as they were going what were they going to do? Preach the gospel of cause. In Romans we see the reason why the Church needs to go first:
For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!”
Romans 10:13-15 (Emphasis mine)
After going out to preach and people believing, they were not to be left to their own fate but to be trained to become disciples. This is the second part of that statement. From this we see that Jesus did not just send the Church out to make believers but rather disciples. This has an underlying secret and a multiplier effect which is summarised in the statement “it takes disciples to make disciples”. Paul stated this in 2 Corinthians:
that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
2 Corinthians 5:19-20
The lack of desire to win souls in the Church today therefore makes me worried if really there are disciples because “disciples make disciples “. We have a mandate and we seem to be losing focus on this purpose. The Disciples (Apostles) stayed with Jesus and became soul winners. In the Acts of the Apostles we see the early believers staying under the feet of the Apostles and after persecution broke up in Jerusalem some of them went out to preach wherever they went (Acts 8:4).
Baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
I wouldn’t spend much time on this because it’s inherently performed after a person becomes a believer. This let us understand that the Church must baptize everyone who believes. This is important because it is Jesus who instructed the Church to do that. But I would like us to take note of something, this statement establishes the formula for baptism, which is “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”. We see an example in the new testament where some people received baptism but they had to be baptized again because it was not according to the formula (Acts 19:1-5). This particular statement also reveals a deeper truth which a lot of denominations of the Church are divided, that is the Doctrine of the Trinity: the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. This is what the Apostle Paul reveals is the God Head (Colossians 2:9). God is one, there are three Persons (not Gods), different yet inseparable, performing Their functions towards one goal.
For there are three that bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one.
I John 5:7 NKJV
Teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.
The ‘them’ found in the statement is a pronoun which can be understood in the entire context of the Matthew 28:18-20. From the text we see that the them refers to the disciples who were going to be made. The disciples who were listening were already obeying Christ, so they were also to teach those who were going to be disciples to obey.
A lot at times people ask whether Christians are to obey what is written in the Bible or use it as just a point of historical reference to prove the existence of Jesus and His teachings. From the verse above we see the former is true. The Gospels recorded the birth, life, teachings, miracles, examples, struggles, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. Though it didn’t record the second by second records (which could not be practically possible) but it touched the most relevant, necessary and sufficient issues needed for our salvation and living (John 20:30-31, 21:25). From the book of Acts to Revelation of the New Testament, it also seek to explain the work of Jesus and his teachings for disciples. Followers of Jesus Christ are to obey what is written in the Bible. Jesus Himself likens people who hear the gospel and obey it to wise people and those who hear but do not obey to foolish people (Matthew 7:24-27). The avoidance of the word of Christ for teaching in the Church only creates confusion and diversion of the purpose for which Christ establishes the Church. It therefore removes Christ from the foundation of the Church and makes man the centre of attention. It was for a reason Christ instructed the disciples to teach other disciples not only to know His word but more importantly obey it. This is how the apostle James puts it;
But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.
James 1:22-25
From the verse, as one looks into the word of God and obeys it, he is liken to looking into a dressing mirror. As you observe yourself in the mirror you adjust and correct the part which doesn’t look nice. That is the same with the Bible, the goal of Christianity is to be like Christ Jesus. So as you look into the Bible and realise you don’t look like you ought to, you correct yourself. The Bible is a guide for all believers and it trains us to become disciples (2 Timothy 3:16-17). As Paul says:
But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.
2 Corinthians 3:18
Jesus ends the instructions with a promise to be with us always and this should make us bold with the work He has assign us to do.
And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age
Picture Credit: http://cgi.org/news-and-events/2014/6/20/if-we-are-the-body
oak27oak 