Proper evangelism, proper missionary work, proper Christian activity is to go out with the Gospel, win men and women to Christ, and bring them into the fellowship of the church where they are then taught the things that are found in the Scripture. Christianity is a full-orbed doctrine and approach to life which we grow into increasingly as we share and study Christ’s Word.
Now finally, in verse 20 we come to the very last words of this gospel. There’s a promise, and the promise is this, “Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” And you think back to the first chapter of Matthew’s gospel, in verse 23. The child Jesus is named, and the name given to the child is Emmanuel, which means “God with us.” And that’s Jesus—God with us.
And here in the last chapter of Matthew you have in some ways even a greater truth proclaimed. Great as the incarnation is, the promise we find in chapter 28 is even better because that incarnate God died and rose again and now is with us, not just at one point of history or in one particular geographic location, but with us, each one, wherever we may go with this great message of the Gospel.
This means there’s no separation from Jesus Christ for those who truly know Him. We disobey Him, we hold back, we’re reluctant disciples sometimes, but nothing can sever that tie. Paul writes about it at the end of Romans 8, in verses 35-39:
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
If we take this command of Jesus seriously, the first thing that will happen is that you will have problems. We speak about something historical. We speak about a fact which demands a life-changing response in the lives of the people to whom we go. And men and women do not want to change. Certainly they do not want to submit to the authority of somebody else, even if that is the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s not a question of merely talking about immortality. Nobody minds talking about that. There are popular books today on life after death. But if you go to people, not with theoretical possibilities, but with a Gospel which is a proclamation of a person who died and rose again and now on the basis of that exercises His authority over the individual, that is unpopular. And if it is not unpopular, it is not understood.
On the other hand, we do not have the difficulty only. We also have the promise of Christ’s authority and blessing as we go.
There is a fourfold repetition of the word “all” in these verses: “all authority” (v. 18); “all nations” (v. 19); “all things I have commanded” (v. 20); and “always,” that is, “all the days” (v. 20). Jesus commands us to go, and as we go He gives us this great promise: He will be with us all our days as we take this message to an unbelieving world.