"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." (NIV)
As soon as someone becomes a Christian, they should be informed that their primary duty is to become both a student (a disciple) and a teacher. We were never left on this earth to receive blessings, but instead to become a blessing to those around us by teaching them how to obey everything. And the only way we can teach how to obey everything is if we do it ourselves.
Stuart Briscoe, in The Fullness of Christ, writes:
"Men and women born of God, rich in Christ, blessed beyond their wildest dreams, who have failed to develop normally into the ‘measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,’ are tragic misrepresentations of all that life in Christ could and should be." (p. 18).
Part of why this has happened is because we have reduced Christianity to a fast food drive-through window. All one has to do is raise their hand or walk down the aisle, say the "sinner’s prayer" and heaven is guaranteed. We have become salesmen that sell fire insurance against hell rather than true disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ. We have failed to understand that being a Christian is work, hard work, which includes learning how to obey, how to grow, and how to teach others what we have learned. And it’s more than simply an obligation which we can conveniently forget. To teach others how to obey is a command given to us by the Lord Jesus Himself: "teach them to obey everything I have commanded you." This wasn’t a command given to only the leadership of the Church or only to the early apostles. This is a command given to every believer. It is what we are here for.
You know, God could have determined that once a person becomes saved they would be transported immediately to heaven. We know that He is fully capable of doing that because He did it twice in history, once with Enoch and once with Elijah. But God doesn’t do that. Instead, He commanded that we stay on this earth and make disciples from all nations.
The apostle Paul understood this mandate intimately. In his early life, as Saul, he was a disciple of Gamaliel, a famous Jewish rabbi. After his conversion (and name change to Paul), he saw the Lord’s command with new understanding. "Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ" (1 Corinthians 11:1) and "Therefore I urge you to imitate me" (1 Corinthians 4:16). The writer to the Hebrews also wrote: "Imitate those who through faith and patience inherit the promises" (Hebrews 6:12b).
Part of teaching is more than explaining; it’s modeling. Modeling means to show someone else how to do something. It’s not enough simply to tell how to do it. In fact, simply telling is often not teaching because we can tell someone how to do something and that "telling" can be totally off-base, totally ineffectual.
Years ago, after I first got out of college, I entered a recipe contest. Now understand, at that point in my life, I was not a cook. In fact, I could ruin a box of macaroni and cheese! But the contest peaked my interest, so I whipped out a recipe that sounded wonderful and entered it in the contest. Lo and behold, I won! (No one was more surprised than I was.) But the fact was, this was a recipe I had made up. I had never made it. So when my very proud father asked me to make my "winning" recipe for dinner, it was a disaster. The recipe didn’t work at all! Of course, after many tears later (and in the privacy of my room), the Lord and I had a talk. God convicted me of the sin of passing myself off as someone other than who I was (a good cook) and then told me something I’ve never forgotten: "Don’t share a recipe that you haven’t first cooked."
Of course, the lesson I needed to learn was far greater than simply about cooking. The Holy Spirit was reminding me that I should never teach something I hadn’t first lived, that the finest kind of teaching comes from modeling what I have already mastered.
As believers, our first and most important duty to those around us is to teach them how to obey God’s commandments. But we can’t teach what we haven’t learned ourselves. When the writer to the Hebrews talks about running the race, the passage is explicitly about how we should live as believers.
"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God." (Hebrews 12:1-2).
Think about a race. In a race, we are doing our best to stay ahead of those behind us. That is the same for Christians. We are growing spiritually as fast as we can so that those who follow us can follow a true course and imitate us as we are imitating those who’ve gone before, including Christ!
Notice the characteristics of this race:
* Throwing off everything that hinders
* Throwing off the sin that entangles
* Running with perseverance
* Fixing our eyes on Jesus
When we learn how to run the race, when we can call out to those around, "Follow me. I know the way," when we can teach others how to obey God’s commands . . . at that point, we will have truly become the Church that God established on this earth, the Church that will one day become His bride.
© 2016 Robin L. O’Hare. All rights reserved. Permission granted for nonprofit and church groups to use this article in its entirety (including this notice). For other uses, please contact servinggodalone@yahoo.com.
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