The Great Commission was the final demand of Jesus to his disciples before he returned to heaven: “Go and make disciples of all nations.” Many Christians see this directed at them and conclude that they too are obliged to actively get out and spread the Word.

Christians are often uncomfortable with the demand that they witness to strangers, but fortunately this isn’t their fight. In the first place, Jesus wasn’t talking to them. The Great Commission was given to the apostles, not ordinary Christians.

To see this, consider how Jesus commands the disciples to share the gospel. At one point, they are given “authority to drive out impure spirits and to heal every disease and sickness.” At another, Jesus sends the disciples on their way with a power you’d think would be reserved for God himself: “If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.” Ordinary Christians today are not given these godlike abilities.

Second, Christians today regularly ignore biblical norms that don’t fit with our modern society—the Old Testament’s support for slavery, polygamy, genocide, human sacrifice, and so on. God’s stance is clear on these topics, but loftier principles override the Bible, and Christians follow these when deciding moral issues today. If pushing your beliefs on others also seems wrong somehow, maybe that’s because it is.

And what’s the point of evangelizing anyway if the Holy Spirit does the work, not Christian evangelizing, “so that no one can boast”? Surely the omnipotent Holy Spirit can save souls as necessary regardless of what unreliable people do or don’t do.

Paul says we have different gifts, and yours may not include evangelism. Don’t take on the teaching role lightly: “Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.”

Third, consider the downside of not evangelizing. You might fear that your timidity to evangelize your neighbors or family would be a missed opportunity to save them from hell, but Paul makes clear that this fear is unfounded. Creating a parallel between Adam’s sin and Jesus’s sacrifice, Paul said, “For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.” In other words, you didn’t opt in to be burdened with Adam’s sin, and you don’t need to opt in to get Jesus’s salvation.

Christians, there’s work enough to set an example as a good Christian. If someone asks, you can give “the reason for the hope that you have.” If you want to follow the lead of Jesus, he spoke often about helping the disadvantaged. That’s a charge that makes a lot more sense.

A Christianity without the burden of the Great Commission would be a healthier Christianity, less likely to be the sanctimonious busybody that meddles in politics and society that we see too often in the West today.

Image credit: Carl Bloch, 1877 (public domain) via Wikimedia

Notes

“This generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened”: Matthew 24:34.

“Go and make disciples of all nations”: Matthew 28:19.

“authority to drive out impure spirits and to heal every disease and sickness”: Matthew 10:1.

“If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven”: John 20:23.

“so that no one can boast”: Ephesians 2:8–9.

Paul says that we have different gifts: 1 Corinthians 12:4–11.

“Not many of you should become teachers”: James 3:1.

“For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners”: Romans 5:19.

“the reason for the hope that you have”: 1 Peter 3:15.