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DALLAS?Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee Chairman Roger Spradlin reminded the Criswell College homecoming audience of the priority of preaching that reflects the Great Commission.
“We as Baptists and evangelicals are Great Commission people. But even though that’s the underpinning of so much of what we believe and do, it’s easy to neglect preaching on the Great Commission,” said Spradlin, co-pastor of Valley Baptist Church in Bakersfield, Calif., and one of two featured speakers at the 40th anniversary of the school’s founding on Oct. 5.
Preaching from Matthew 28:18-20, Spradlin said: “Great Commission preaching emphasizes both evangelism and missions.” The Bible commands believers to “go therefore and make disciples of all the nations,” or literally, Spradlin added, to the 1.7 billion people from among “clans, tribes, ethnicities and people groups” without a gospel witness.
“Taking the gospel to the nations, to the people groups?that involves what we would call missions. But it also involves evangelism, because God doesn’t save people groups, he saves individuals.”
“There’s something of a generational divide in understanding the Great Commission,” Spradlin said. “In the past, some have talked about the Great Commission purely in terms of evangelism. It would seem the goal simply is to populate heaven with as many born-again people as we can. Yet, some now interpret the Great Commission solely in terms of missions?taking the gospel to various people groups. The fact is, it is both: Evangelism is reaching individuals with the gospel, and missions is taking the gospel to the people groups.”
“Great Commission preaching emphasizes all of the biblical revelation [because it] permeates the whole of the Word of God,” said Spradlin, who traced from Genesis to Revelation multiple verses that reveal the salvific intent of God and its results among the nations.
“We tend to dilute the Great Commission. We make the message simply about witnessing … but it’s more than that. It is also missions; it is God’s grand plan for his kingdom as seen throughout the Old and New Testaments.”
Also, Spradlin also said believers are “conditioned to think of salvation in terms of us. We say sometimes that if we were the only one on earth, then Jesus would have died for us.” Though true, Spradlin characterized the notion as “egocentric theology,” which he said “misses the big picture. What is the big picture? The big picture is what God is doing among the nations, the people groups of the earth.”
“Many in our churches, when they think of the Great Commission, they think the command is to go. Actually, the only imperative is to make disciples,” he said.
“The goal isn’t a participle; it’s as we go?plural?that puts responsibility on us,” he said. “God has the power but we have the responsibility.”
“Great Commission preaching also emphasizes the significance of baptism,” Spradlin said, noting that baptism is a means of identifying with Christ and the people of God. “Some want to devalue and deemphasize baptism. But we should not deemphasize what Christ has emphasized in the Great Commission.”
Finally, “Great Commission preaching emphasizes obedience as well as knowledge and discipleship,” Spradlin said.
“We’ve developed a kind of Gnostic Christianity. We’re so proud of theological knowledge that we think the one who knows the most Bible verses is the most spiritual. What we do in our churches is fill the room with people, and then we fill their heads with Bible facts and we call that discipleship. But true discipleship is obedience based,” he said. “Discipleship means a Christian is a learner of, and follower of Jesus.”
The responsibility to spread the gospel “creates a crisis in our thinking,” Spradlin continued. “Do we really believe that people without Jesus are lost and without hope? It’s so easy in our culture to think that faith is a matter of taste rather than truth.”
Spradlin related an anecdote about the famed missionary to China, Adonirum Judson, who was asked if the main requirement to be a missionary is it to love souls. According to Spradlin, Judson said, “No.” The main requirement “is to love God.”
“When you love God, you’ll love souls,” Spradlin said. “A heart for the nations is born in a heart that belongs to God.”
