Skip to main content

Spiritual War: Our Objective, part 2 of 3


Here is the command stated again:

“Then Jesus came to them and said, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Mt. 28:18–20).

All new Christians are to be taught to obey everything Jesus commanded, including this command. This means that the Great Commission is self-perpetuating. Each generation of Christians is supposed to hand it off to the next generation.

“On that day a great persecution broke out against the church at Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria . . . Those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went” (Acts 8:1b, 4).

In the first century, thousands of Christians left Jerusalem, preaching the gospel everywhere they went. But the apostles (the official “evangelists”) stayed in Jerusalem.

We would be concerned if we knew that there were active terrorists in every neighborhood. What we don’t realize is that the Enemy has such spiritual terrorists everywhere. Is the world concerned that we have active, effective evangelists in every neighborhood? If we did have them, believe me, the Enemy would take every means to silence them. We do have them, but they are not being effective. It seems that our sleeper cells went to sleep.

“I have appeared to you to appoint you as a servant and as a witness of what you have seen of me and what I will show you” (Acts 26:16).

“Go! This man is a chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel” (Acts 9:15).

“At once he began to preach in the synagogues that Jesus is the son of God” (Acts 9:20).

The common element in these three verses is that the Apostle Paul was sent as an evangelist at the time of his conversion. His position as an evangelist is one of the reasons the Bible gives for his conversion, and upon being converted he became that evangelist without further training or growth in the Lord. We might conclude that Paul was unique in this and that the rest of us cannot, nor are we expected to, follow this pattern. Or we can say this is God’s requirement for us all. The apostle says exactly that in his second letter to Corinth:

“And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:15–21).


When Paul speaks in verse 15 of “those who live,” and in verse 17 of, “anyone in Christ,” he is clearly not speaking of himself alone, but of all believers. He goes on to say this: “who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.” The “us” is “anyone in Christ.” Therefore, anyone who is in Christ, as soon as he is in Christ, is immediately commissioned in the ministry of reconciliation at his conversion. The ministry of reconciliation is not only given to reconciled men: it is given at the moment of reconciliation. The demon-possessed man Jesus healed is an example of this:

“As Jesus was getting into the boat, the man who had been demon-possessed begged to go with him. Jesus did not let him, but said, “Go home to your own people and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.” So the man went away and began to tell in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him. And all the people were amazed” (Mk. 5:18–20).

God has given us the ministry and the message. We are to preach the Word everywhere, just like the new Christians in Acts.


*Excerpted from Weapons & Tactics. To purchase, visit ccmbooks.org/bookstore.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Why Is Obedience So Hard?

There are several reasons why obedience seems hard. I will comment on some of them and then speak positively on how obedience is easy. We think: 1) Obedience is an infringement on freedom. Since we are free in Christ, and obedience is somehow contrary to that freedom, we conclude that obedience is not good. Yet we know it is good. Thus, we become confused about obedience and are not single-minded. 2) Obedience is works. We who have been justified by grace through faith are opposed to works; therefore, we are opposed to obedience. 3) We have tried to obey and have failed—frequently. Therefore, the only solution is to disobey and later confess to receive forgiveness. It is easier to be forgiven by grace than to obey by effort. 4) We confuse obedience to men with obedience to God. Although these are sometimes one and the same (see Romans 13, 1 Peter 2-3, Ephesians 5-6, Colossians 3, and Titus 2), sometimes they are not the same (see Colossians 2:20-23, Mark 7, 1 Timothy 4:1-5, a...

Ripe for Harvest: Prepared to Give an Answer

As you read through the book of Acts, look at every conversion, and see what happened right before it: what was said, who said it. The situations are the same today.     A long time ago, my duty in the Officer’s Christian Fellowship was the east coast of the United States. I went to an officer’s office at Fort Lee, VA, and stayed overnight, then I went on to Norfolk and Fort Bragg.    Forty years later, I was no longer on the staff of OCF, but I had to go to Denver. While I was in Denver, I checked in at the OCF offices. There was the same Air Force officer I had met in Fort Lee, retired now, a colonel. I had stayed in his house when he was a first lieutenant. He asked me, “Do you know what happened when you stayed overnight?” I said, “No, I just remember staying in your home.” He said, “You led the next-door neighbor to Christ.” I had no memory of it.    Ten years after that, I was speaking at a banquet at the Hotel Salisbury, and who was th...

Lifted Up

In the first thirteen verses of John 3, Nicodemus did not understand what Jesus was talking about. It was nonsense to him. When Jesus said verse fourteen to him, Nicodemus finally understood Jesus. Here it is: “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up…” (John 3:14). The reason it made sense to Nicodemus was because he knew of the event that Jesus spoke of. People who had been bitten by a serpent could look at the bronze snake and did not die. Nicodemus knew the Bible story.   Here it is: “Then the LORD sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, ‘We sinned when we spoke against the LORD and against you. Pray that the LORD will take the snakes away from us.’ So Moses prayed for the people. The LORD said to Moses, ‘Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.’ So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then ...