Calvary Baptist Church, Grenada, MS, USA
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CHAPTER V

THE POWER OF THE CHURCH ON THE ROCK

Matthew 28:18-20

 

 

The 18th verse of Matthew 28 may be the most neglected important passage in all the Bible. When we omit verse 18 from this version of the "Great commission," we provide a built-in mechanism for failure. Yet all too often, when we ask people to memorize the commission our Lord gave, we begin it with the expression (from verse 19), "Go ye therefore...''. 

No wonder our lives and our churches are so powerless! Little wonder if we feel defeated and discouraged in our Christian mission! Without even realizing it, we have become cars without motors, water systems without pressure, machinery not harnessed to a driving force. 

The word translated "power" in verse 18 is the primary motive of the "therefore'' in verse 19. Someone has well said, "When you see a 'therefore' in Scripture. you had better pause to see what it is there for! '' This linking word ties the following statement to the previous content with unanswerable logic. When one begins to quote our "marching orders'' by saying, "Go ye therefore, '' we may well stop to ask, "Why for?" 

Like the disciples who waited at the foot of the mountain of transfiguration but could not heal the boy controlled by demons, or like the "dozen dead disciples'' of Ads 19:1-7, our lives are powerless either because we have failed to utilize the power available to us in Christ, or simply because we are not in Christ. 

The word exousia, here translated “power,” means more than our word power. There are two Greek words translated by "power" in our standard English versions, this and dunamis. From the latter, we derive both the concept of  "dynamite," or explosive power, and the even greater concept of a "dynamo," a continuing source of motive power. In Acts 1:7-8, these two words form an interesting study in contrasts. 

The author's free translation may be helpful. 

"And He said to them, "It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father has put in His own authority (exousia). 

"But ye shall receive dynamic power, after the Holy Spirit is come upon you: and ye shall keep on being My witnesses, both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth."

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The dynamic drive of verse 8 is a frequent subject of our Southern Baptist preaching, and well it should be. The heavenly authority which precedes it is all too often ignored, both in the pulpit and in the pew, both in preaching and practice. How often do we come together for evangelistic visitation, assign the prospects, utter a prefunctory "Hail Jesus, '' count our rosary of cards, and rush into the maelstrom of human (all too humah) activity, returning exhausted and disgusted from our unanalyzed failures? I well recall a study course on prayer in one of our churches some years ago in which the teacher began by saying, "I am so eager to get into this great study that we will dispense with the opening prayer to give more time." 

The word exousia does not come into English easily. It is authority, but it is more than we commonly mean by that word. Power can be a misleading translation. Possibly an illustration will define more effectively than a dictionary at this point. 

All of us have seen, whether at the theatre, or on the screens where we watch in our living rooms those things we so strongly opposed a few years before, the stock western movie. Gene, or Roy, or whoever the "good guy'' is rides along singing his song, when he discovers that not all is well in movie-town. Villains (who used to wear black hats to be easily identified in the shoot-outs) have taken over a near-by community, appointed their own sheriff, and are about to perform some particularly dastardly deed, which for some odd reason, the townspeople seem unable to stop. Their puppet sheriff is someone who once had a great reputation, but now couldn't hit the side of a barn, and the bottle in his hand shows the reason for his predicament. He has authority (the badge), but no real power. 

Gene, or Roy, or whoever, rides in, clean and capable, but with no star. He has power, but no real authority. There is a shoot-out, the old sheriff at the last moment either steps in front of a bullet meant for the hero, or shoots the villain at the instant he is taking aim to "bush-whack'' the hero. The old sheriff, or the townspeople (who now take courage and come out to fight), pin the badge on Gene, or Roy, and he has both authority and the power to exercise it. That's exousia! 

And this powerful authority, the authoritative power, is exactly what we must have before entering the path of service found in verses 19 and 20. It belongs to the Father, is vested in Jesus, and is available to authorize and enable our lives and our ministries. Without it, we are the old, cynical sheriff or the anxious but inadequate do-gooder. With it, we are Great Commission Baptists. (There are two kinds of Baptists: ''Great Commission'' and "Great Commotion.") 

The commission is full of participles. The Greek participle is an action word, a verbal adjective, taking its significance from the main verb. It is always relative. Present participles show action at the same time as the main verb, whenever that may be; other time and personal relationships are indicated by other usages.

 

 

 

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The only verb in the command of the commission is mathaetusate, the first "teach" of our KJV. A literal translation might be "make disciples," or "discipline all nations." (The related noun is "disciple," one who follows to learn, an enrolled student.) Thus the main verb, determining the significance of all the participles, is "evangelize.'' This should remind us that no other task can be central for a New Testament church. The teaching of the gospel, which is the power of God unto salvation, is primary; all else is relative to it. The New Testament theory of relativity is simple: E=MC2, where E is Evangelism, M is the Message, and C is Christ and Him multiplied! When we magnify Christ, and present His message under His authority and in His power, we have His exousia, His eternal, legitimate, authoritative power, and no longer our own. 

The participles in this passage are all relative to the one main word, "Evangelize.'' The first is the simple aorist, which is the normal Greek tense and has little to do with time. The idea may be translated: "Going, then...''.

Simply. Jesus said, "On your everyday rounds, evangelize!'' The emphasis is not on the going, but on the witnessing. One pastor lamented that he could not get his church members to go out into the world. His wiser friend replied, "That's no problem; it's what they do when they get there that matters!" We are going, all of us, all the time. The going is not primary; it is what we do as we shop, as we work, as we relax. Discipling is primary. 

Again, "baptizing" is relative to "discipling." The object, "them," is a bit confusing in English. There is no real question among Greek scholars as to the original meaning of baptidzo; it refers to a dipping, a plunging, a burial (immersion-emersion). We use the transliterated word, brought into English letter for letter, for convenience, but it is a "plastic'' sort of word. It has been twisted into a number of contortions, but the idea is a pictorial representation of Calvary and of the believer's experience. It follows evangelism and precedes Christian fellowship in our Lord's order of priorities. 

But whom are we to baptize? State religions, with their "national church" idea, assume that the antecedent of the pronoun "them'' is "nations." But Greek is a bit more explicit than English, and we can establish our Lord's meaning easily by examining the language in which it came to us. 

In Greek, the language in which the Holy Spirit inspired the New Testament, a pronoun must agree with its antecedent (the noun to which it refers) in two grammatical areas: number, singular or plural; and gender, masculine, feminine, or neuter. Gender is more a matter of grammatical form than of actual fact. Both the nouns and the pronouns have forms, which indicate number and gender. 

The pronoun translated "them" is masculine, which does not mean that we are only to baptize males; it means that the noun to which the word refers must be a masculine noun. But the Greek noun for ''nations'' is not masculine in form; it is neuter. Therefore Jesus did not instruct us to baptize the nations; His meaning was something other than the "national church" 

 

 

 

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concept. As one searches the context for an antecedent, it becomes clear that none is expressed, but one is strongly implied. We are to "evangelize all nation," or "make disciples all nation," and the noun "disciples'' (implied in the command) is masculine in form. (Again, this does not mean that we are only to win males to Christ; the reference is to grammatical form.) It does mean that we are to baptize disciples, not nations.

Thus. Jesus was instructing us to "Make disciples all nations (people in all of them), immersing them (the disciples) in the triune Name.'' A good dose of Greek grammar will cure a multitude of heresies, and make us more than ever appreciative of our God-breathed Book! 

But, someone objects, should we not baptize the way the Apostles did in the book of Acts? We agree; but how did the Apostles baptize? 

And the answer is given, "In the Name of Jesus Only!'' 

The only trouble with that answer is, it just isn't so. It is not in the Bible; it is exactly contrary to what is in the Bible; and it betrays a major lack of Bible study. 

Let's examine the passages commonly supposed to teach "Jesus Only'' baptism. There are four: Acts 2:38, 8:16, 10:48, and 19:5. To study them carefully, we place the four in a parallel column structure.

Now any English reader, with the most limited education, can see at once the term “baptized in the name of Jesus Only” is not in any of these passages. Further, there are in the four verses three separate expressions: “in the Name of Jesus Christ;” “in the Name of the Lord Jesus;” and “in the Name of the Lord.” If we are to use only the name of Jesus in baptizing, which formula shall we follow? Shall we say “in the Name of Jesus Christ, in the Name of the Lord Jesus, in the Name of the Lord”? That is a triune formula in itself!

It should be clear from this comparison that the terms are not baptismal formulas, to used aloud, at all. The word “name” may mean “authority!” If I place my name on a check for a million dollars, and try to circulate it, I would either be laughed out of town or thrown in jail, depending on how

 

 

 

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seriously I pressed my claim. But if someone with a billion dollars were to write such a check, and place their name on it, that would authorize its payment. The name is the authority for payment.

And all authorized power, all powerful authority, has been invested in Jesus by the Father, both in Heaven and in earth. Thus the early churches baptized in the AUTHORITY of Jesus, their Lord, the Christ, and if they did so, they did not reject the  formula He left them in His last will and testament. If they really were baptizing in the Name, that is, under the authority, of Christ, they certainly baptized "in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit," as He commanded them. 

Finally, "teaching them to observe all things'' is also relative to evangelism. The order is: evangelize--baptize--stabilize. We are to admit to church privileges only those who have heard, responded too, and followed through the call of the gospel. We need not try to teach complex matters to the lost; the order is that of Mark 4:28-- "first the blade, then the ear, after that the full grain in the ear." And it is to that kind of an obedient and growing fellowship that Jesus made the promise, "I am with you all the way, even to the end of the age."

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