And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18-20)
In our first study, we noted the Lord Jesus began His commission with the words, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.” With the first two words Jesus declares His authority unequivocal and unrestricted. It is this declaration of absolute authority that sets the context for Jesus’ following commands given to the Eleven.
Why “the Eleven?”
Jesus had more followers than the Eleven and this larger group of followers were also called His “disciples.” But after a night of prayer, at the beginning of His public ministry Jesus gave a special call to the Twelve, and their names are documented in three of the Gospels.1
Matthew lists them:
- Simon, who is called Peter
- Andrew his brother
- James the son of Zebedee
- John his brother
- Philip
- Bartholomew
- Thomas
- Matthew the tax collector
- James the son of Alphaeus
- Thaddaeus;
- Simon the Zealot
- Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed Him
But if this inner circle of men chosen by Jesus was the “Twelve,” why is the Great Commission given to the “Eleven?”
They’re now “the Eleven” because one of them named Judas Iscariot had betrayed Jesus with a kiss in the Garden of Gethsemane; and afterward, consumed by remorse, Judas hung himself. It was the remaining Eleven Jesus commissioned:
[T]he eleven disciples proceeded to Galilee, to the mountain which Jesus had designated. When they saw Him, they worshiped Him; but some were doubtful. And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me…” (Matthew 28:15-18).
Why call attention to the number of men Jesus commissioned to be His Apostles?
Just as the Sons of Israel living in the Promised Land took on the sins of the neighboring Canaanites, the Church today also takes on the errors and sins of our godless neighbors. One particularly destructive sin of those we live among across the Western democratic world is egalitarianism, the pagan ideology that any society is rightly judged fair or just by the degree to which it has enforced an equality of radical non-distinction among its citizens. In the Western world today, equality is the highest good and nothing must stand in its way.
The world hates every distinction God Himself has decreed for us. After creating our race, He named us—both male and female—”adam” (Hebrew), or “man” (English). Rebellious egalitarians that we are, though, we refuse the distinction He has placed on the male of our race as our federal head, and we rename ourselves the neutered “humanity” or “human beings.” In the same way, individual men and women reject God’s sexual distinction assigned each of us when He created us male and female. Seeking to deny and eviscerate this fundamental distinction He assigned us at the moment of our conception, we claim we’re not man or woman, but “gay,” “queer,” “bi,” and so on. Then we act in ways that defy and deface our manhood or womanhood.
Believing we have successfully destroyed the sex-specific authority of the male of our species God decreed in the Garden of Eden demonstrated by His calling Adam alone to account for the Fall, we now move on seeking to destroy all other human authority. Nothing must be allowed to obstruct our great levelling work enforcing our egalitarian ideology.
A political movement has been assembling periodically in cities across America for the purpose of expressing its opposition to President Trump. This movement’s motto is “No Kings,” and a couple days ago the egalitarianism at the heart of this movement was filled out by this meme distributed by “a queer/female/disabled.”
All people are equal. All people are the same and there are no authorities. This error has become pervasive across Western societies, and is now firmly established within the church, also. This error is egalitarianism which is most clear and destructive in its denial of authority.
Christians have embraced egalitarian ideology so that, within the church, those to whom God delegates authority as church officers are shown some degree of feigned honor, but no obedience. Having pastors, elders, and deacons is useful to keep up appearances, but even the sacraments no longer are administered by church officers. Rather, teenage women distribute communion to congregations, fathers administer the sacraments to their families, retreat leaders to high schoolers, and university students to their roommates. (All of these my fellow elders and I have dealt with personally.)
“We’re all equal.” “Nobody’s superior to anyone else,” we declare, and even pastors don’t oppose it. Many pastors promote this rebellion, particularly with respect to civil authorities.
Then, when we read the Great Commission, we carefully avoid Matthew’s statement that Jesus was not speaking to all His followers when He gave these commands, but only the Eleven. It sounds so democratic and affirming of our individual gifts to promote the lie that all Christians equally have the responsibility to exercise the authority of Jesus by making Him disciples, baptizing them, and teaching them to obey everything He commanded. What’s wrong with teenage girls administering communion? With fathers serving communion to their wife and children? With fathers baptizing their kids in the bathtub? With college women baptizing their Cru roommates in the campus fountain?
Forget the commissioning authority Jesus delegated to the Eleven men recorded in the New Testament. “What’s that got to do with us? They were ancients who grew up in a patriarchal world, but we’ve evolved, haven’t we?”
Over the course of the past few decades, we’ve been feverishly attempting to carry out what we might call the Great Levelling of the Church of Jesus Christ. But is He still the Head, the Lord of His Bride?
Not if His lordship over His Bride, the Church, is proven by our submission to Him in all the particularities He commanded, and that He inspired a record of to be left for us in His New Testament.
College students witness to their roommates and then, after they pray to “receive Jesus,” the students take them over to the campus fountain and baptize them. Fathers talk about Scripture in their living rooms, then pass out grape juice and pieces of bread to their wife and children claiming it’s “communion” or “the Lord’s supper.” Parents baptize their children in the bathtub or a neighbor’s swimming pool, never stopping even to consider the fact that Jesus did not command Christians to baptize, but His Eleven disciples be commissioned to be His Apostles.
People used to say “cleanliness is next to Godliness,” but now it’s “equality is Godliness.” “We’re all sinners” has been replaced by “We’re all equal. Nobody’s better than anyone else.”
Egalitarianism is a terrible error in many, many ways for many, many reasons. But here we stop with pointing out one of its worst fruits: it feeds anticlericalism, which is the denial and rebellion against God’s command that His people submit to His authorities in the church variously called “pastors,” “elders,” “deacons,” and “bishops.”
Scripture teaches and demonstrates the necessity of God’s people honoring and obeying those men to whom God has delegated His authority in His Church, but let us simply give one example:
Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account. (Hebrews 13:17)
When our Lord delegated His authority to the Eleven commissioning them His Apostles, we defy His authority by assuming ourselves the authority He delegated those Eleven. Down across two millennia of Church history, each church has set apart men by the laying on of hands and prayer to be our “leaders,” keeping “watch over our souls as those who will give an account.”
The Great Commission was not given to all Jesus’ disciples, but only the Eleven. Since all Scripture is “profitable,” this means something, and it is submission to our Lord for us to recognize the men we have set over us as our pastors, elders, and deacons exercise the authority of the Lord of the Church. Through the centuries, these officers have exercised His authority, and when they rebel against Him, the Church has denied their authority. That is what the Reformation was all about and Protestants continue to deny the Roman Catholic priests, bishops, archbishops, cardinals, and their popes any legitimate succession to the Eleven’s apostolic authority.
Today, we submit to Jesus’ delegation of authority to the Eleven by submitting to the authority of our own church officers who Biblically and faithfully shepherd us in their continuing fulfillment of that Commission given to the Apostles.
This does not mean all Christians are barred from making disciples of all the nations, teaching those disciples to observe all that Jesus commanded. Many parts of the New Testament teach and demonstrate this work is also the witness and confession of every believer. But acknowledging this is no contradiction of the apostolic authority of the Eleven and their successors right down to our own day and churches.
Christians are known by honoring and submitting to the authority God has delegated to masters, kings, and pastors.
In this matter of church authority, unsurprisingly, the rubber meets the road in the administration of the Sacraments. In our egalitarian day as many fathers work for a return of Biblical authority over the household, pastors need to remind their flocks that the Sacraments are not given to the households of man, but to the household of God which is the Church. Thus the Sacraments of Christ’s Church are to be administered by the fathers of that household, those “leaders” our Lord commands us to “obey” and “submit to.”
(Fifth in a series.)
| ↑1 | Matthew 10:2-4, Mark 3:14-19, and Luke 6:13-16. |
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