The Great Commission: Disciples; Baptism – Part 2, Matthew 28:18-20

We are looking at the last three verses known as the great commission, Matthew 28:18-20, and working through what Jesus says here verse by verse. One of the things that I have pointed out in the passage that that this word disciple has become a buzzword, something that is been distorted a little bit in modern American evangelicalism. In fact, if you go to some segments of evangelicalism, especially over the last 60 or 70 years, the reason the church is a failure, according to some, is because we have failed to make disciples. But what they mean by that is that we've failed to do it a certain way. They focus on methodology, and it's not a methodological term. It is a term that focuses on training, on equipping, on making students of the Word of God. And Jesus experienced in His ministry that as He taught more and more deeply what the Word of God said there were many disciples who left Him. They just weren't committed, weren't truly passionate about the Word of God. They wanted to be saved but they didn't necessarily want to live a spiritually focused, God centered life; and yet that's the mission that Christ is emphasizing here when He says to make disciples. That's the focal point.

One of the things I've observed in the last week, and some of you may have seen an article that came up on Fox News yesterday about a pastor, I think from Georgia, who basically was telling Christians to quit coming to church, go do something else. His whole point was that eighty per cent or more of Christians who were darkening the doors of the church on Sunday morning are not involved, or not studying the Word, are not reading the Word. They are not involved in applying the Word in their own lives, they are not learning, they are not applying, they are not giving, they are not serving, they are not committed; they just basically take up space. And he's right. You've heard it from this pulpit; you've heard from other pulpits.

If you think that you can counter what the world is doing in reprogramming you and brainwashing you according to its system; if you think you can counter that in an hour on Sunday morning and that's the extent of your biblical focus during the week, then your fooling yourself; you are in self-deception (that's arrogance).

You are trying to fool God. But He is omniscient so He is not buying it. You are just trying to somehow placate your own guilt feelings because you can say: "Well see, I go to church every Sunday". But you're not fooling anybody that's significant. You're not fooling me or anybody else and you might as well go play golf and have good time. Go do something that is going to be somewhat joyful for you in this life, because you're basically going to be a failure in the spiritual life when it comes to the judgment seat of Christ.

The focus of the church is not on the babies. It doesn't mean you leave them behind. If you listen to what has been written about the purpose and function of the local church by many pop writers and influential pastors in the last 50 or 60 years, it targets the people who are simply curious. They just want to get the seekers. Now some of them granted have an evangelistic interest and maybe some of these pastors have the gift of evangelism, but the Scripture emphasizes that we are to make disciples, and that has to do with creating learners and those who are growing to maturity in the spiritual life. The target is maturity.

I believe, and have always believed, that in any system of education if you raise the bar of expectation people will rise to it. People who really want to learn, really want to grow, really want to advance in life, will rise to the level expected of them. But if you go to the lowest common denominator then even those who have a desire for more will compromise and never rise above the level of elementary teaching that is being provided. And that's why we have such a weak, impotent diluted church in America today, because we are don't understand this concept very well, we don't understand how to do it—pastors don't.

Almost 30 years ago now I heard a Dr Earl Rodmacher speaking at a pastors conference in Phoenix. He made in brilliant observation. He said the church is the largest nursery in the world, it is filled with spiritual babies, and the nursery workers (the pastors) don't have a clue how to get them out of diapers. That's making disciples. It's not a methodology, it's a vision; it's understanding what is necessary to teach people. And as Ephesians 4:10 and 11 says, the purpose of the gift of evangelism and pastor teacher in this dispensation is to equip the saints to do the work of ministry. Pastors have to understand that you equip people by the Word of God.

The 2 Timothy passage that we quote all the time (2 Timothy 3:16, 17) that Scripture is breathed out by God and is profitable for doctrine, for proof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be thoroughly furnished". That was the old King James translation, but it's a form of the word that is used there in Ephesians 4:10, 11, that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped. How are we equipped? We are equipped by studying the Word of God because the Word of God is what God the Holy Spirit uses to transform us internally; and that's really the focal point.

So when we come to looking at this passage it's critical for the health of the church, and something we all need to be reminded of week in and week out: what our priority as believers is supposed to be and what we are supposed to be engaged in.

When I was in Albuquerque yesterday and the day before with Charlie and Andy we were talking about sharing ideas and observations about what's going on across the country and across the world in terms of Christianity, and especially the great challenges of communicating the gospel to the younger generation, commonly known as "millennials". And one of the things that came out at this conference—and sadly wasn't well attended, and that's for a number of reasons, but it made me quite sad watching because it was a microcosm of what's going on in Christianity in America. And everybody there was over the age of 50, most of them were over the age of 60 or even 70. Forty years ago when I was in my 20s and there was a conference on marriage and family, what does the Bible say? I'd have been there. Anybody's been married less than 10 or 15 years and really needs to be learning some things about what the Bible says about marriage and family. People who are in their 70s and 80s need to be reminded but they're not in the that timeframe where they are having babies or where they are building families or even seeking someone at as a life partner in marriage. So it was an older crowd and we heard the same thing in conversations during the breaks from one family after another: "We've reared our children in the Scriptures, we took them to church and went to Bible class; they are not actively negative to the Word but they can't figure out what their priorities are. There are so many distractions in our lives that they can't get past all the clutter to realize what they need to grab hold of. As a result they find it difficult even to show up in church once a week, much less get into the Word three or four times a week. And that is sad; it is self-destructive, but that's the reality.

That's what we saw at this rather large church. They run about 800 on Sunday morning and they had about 30 show up for a weekend Bible conference.

I remember a time in this country when you did had a church in that size you would have at least 1/3, maybe half of the congregation show up for something like this on a Friday night and a Saturday morning. We need to be in prayer for this nation. There is so much distraction that people in their 20s, 30s, 40s, even older, but primarily that generation that desperately needs to focus on the Word, can't figure out how to get rid of the distractions in their lives, and that's tragic.

But to be a disciple, to be what Jesus calls a disciple, a learner, student of the Word, someone who is pursuing spiritual maturity, that's one of the first things you have to figure out; it's fundamental to time management. How do you spend your time? Get rid of the stuff that distracts you from the one thing is going to count for eternity and focus on that.

The first time anybody ever gave me encouragement in the area of time management. I had learned this and that about time management, but this was something that I really wanted to do well, and that was do well in my studies in seminary. I went up to visit Randy Price who had gone straight from University of Texas to Dallas Seminary. I went up there just to look at the campus and talk and find out what was required, things like that, and he said, "The guys who get accepted here are all smart. Every one of them have high IQs, they've done well academically and are intellectually prepared. Every one of them could make straight A's. The difference between those who do and those who don't is their management of time, and you have to figure out why you are here what you need to not be doing while you're here so that you can excel in the purpose or you're here for".

And that applies to all of life. There are a lot of good and wonderful things in life that distract us, but that's the problem. That's what makes them wrong; it is that distract us from the focus on God's Word, and why we are really here is to glorify Him.

Jesus is focusing on that. That's the mission for the church; that is the mission for every believer, but I think, especially for those who are gifted in the area of leadership.

Just a reminder: "Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth". And because that authority is being given to Him, that authority is what backs the authority of the leaders of the church, the apostles, in the New Testament the temporary gift of apostle and prophet, and the permanent gifts for the church age of evangelist and pastor teacher. His authority as the head of the church is what is delegated to those leaders.

“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.”

He mentions the authority that has been given to Him and delegated to the leaders of the church. We look at the phrase, "go therefore". That is not an imperative but a participle and will be the focal point of just an innumerable number of sermons to try to get people to commit to the mission field. It is not an imperative. However, it does pick up something of an imperitival force from the main verb. Any participle of this type that precedes a command will attract to it grammatically a sense of that. But that's not the focal point of this passage. It's not a "go" passage; it is a "make disciples" passage.

We have "make disciples of all nations", and then concept of "baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit", and then Jesus last statement, "I am with you always, even to the end of the age".

We look at the context where these disciples have met Jesus in Galilee. They have gone to a mountain, we don't know which one, and He tells them that they are to make disciples. That's the imperative here: the "go" is simply a participle of time, "as you go, while you go, as you're living your life"—you are to make disciples, an aorist imperative, which means it is a priority. It's a second person plural, which means He is addressing all of them.

And I believe that he is addressing the church, those who will be who will come to Christ and be leaders in the church through them. That's always a major interpretive issue. Is Jesus just talking to the twelve, or is he talking to the twelve as representatives of the church and the church age.

The verb is rather restricted in its use. It's only used four times—three times in Matthew and one time in the book of Acts, which is instructive. It means to make people learners, to develop learners, to develop students of the Word. It is not a synonym for being a believer.

There are those within read the reformed theological circles, those who are in what is called Lordship salvation, who have made the error of thinking that a disciple is a synonym for being a Christian, for being a believer. But being a believer is receiving a gift. When we study the discipleship passages there are commitments, there are demands, there are responsibilities that are emphasized in discipleship passages. You can be a believer without being a disciple, and in some cases you can be or appear to be a disciple without being a believer. The classic example of course is Judas Iscariot but there were others at that time.

The application of this rather by the apostles is clearly seen in Acts. It is not following the methodology Jesus used. Jesus called the twelve to Himself. He is not setting an eternal methodological paradigm here. This is not the pattern to have small groups, despite navigators and campus Crusade for Christ and innumerable other organizations. Jesus isn't teaching small group dynamics. He is doing something significant, unique, one-of-a-kind with those twelve—basically the eleven but still referred to as the twelve. They are the foundation of the church. You get into Ephesians 2:20. The apostles and prophets are the foundation of the church, so He is building them as the future leaders, the foundation stones for what will be accomplished in the church. But when we watch what they do in Acts they are teaching to any size group. Sometimes small, sometimes it's large, but the focal point is teaching. They devoted themselves to the apostles teaching. This is describing the early church. That's their priority; that's their passion. It's the study of the Word, it is the study of what the Word teaches—DIDACHE; that's the emphasis.

We saw this again also in Acts 5:25, that that this is what the apostles were prohibited from doing by the Sanhedrin. Of course they didn't obey that. They were teaching, that was the focal point and that that described everything from their evangelism, their announcement of who Jesus was, to instruction.

The object of the verb is all nations. We are to make disciples of all nations. This is the marching order of the church. This indeed does include the worldwide missions, the whole idea of taking the word of God to all the nations. So the extent of the mandate is, to all the world, to all the nations. However, like many other passages of Scripture this is controversial and there are some who translated a different way. It is the phrase PANTA TA ETHNE—PANTA is from PAS and means all. The phrase is important here because it informs us of the meaning, more so than just looking at the individual words.

There been those who have said Jesus is getting ready to give the marching orders for the church, the church is distinct from Israel, so this should be translated by taking the gospel to all the Gentiles; its foreshadowing the focus on the Gentiles. But this had certain replacement theology overtones to it and it doesn't fit the usage that we find in Matthew. When we look at Matthew, we see that eight times ETHNE, the word, refers to Jews and Gentiles instead of Jews in Matthew. It refers to the non-Jews, to the pagans as opposed to the Jews. In contrast the full phrase PANTAS TA ETHNE is used four times in Matthew to refer to all the people, all the tribes all the nations in contrast to a Jewish versus Gentile contrast. When Jesus phrases it this way He is bringing to the mind of his disciples the promise to Abraham and the Abraham it covenant in Genesis 12:3.

One of the things that I have come to learn in studies of the Jewish backgrounds to the Gospels, and studying the nature of Judaism and the training in the Scriptures that they received, even though it led to legalism, is that at that time there was probably a ninety-nine per cent literacy rate among the Jews, and might have been more. When any young man was growing up as a child he would be drilled in the Scripture. He would be expected to have memorized much of the Torah. By the time he was six or seven years old he could recite from Genesis through Deuteronomy from memory. By the time he was bar mitzvahed he would have memorized all of the Old Testament in Hebrew. He knew it. So that often in the teaching of Jesus He simply refers through a phrase or a word to a passage in Scripture and immediately the whole story, the whole episode, everything would come to his listeners minds.

There are times in history when the church has been like this. In the Massachusetts Bay colony in the 1670s no town in Massachusetts had a literacy rate of under ninety-five per cent, and the reason was that people knew that the most important thing a Christian can do is to be able to read and understand the Word of God, so everybody had to be literate.

Studies have suggested that ancient Israel had the highest literacy rate of any people in the ancient world. And so when Jesus makes statements where He is saying, take the gospel to all the nations, what would come to mind in the in the disciples mind is Genesis 12:3. As part of the Abrahamic covenant God said to Abraham, I will bless those who bless you and I will curse him who curses you and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed. So what they are hearing in this great commission to them is that there is a shift taking place: that whereas Israel has been the primary vehicle for worldwide blessing in the past, because of discipline that is going to come on them, as will our Lord announced in Matthew 24, now there's going to be a shift and the secondary means by which God is going to advance the Abraham blessing is going to be through the church in this church age. So we are to take the Word of God to all the nations.

Even though this passage grammatically isn't emphasizing that as a command it is emphasized as a command in some of the parallel passages. Those same parallel passages that Jesus utters in this spirit post-resurrection also focus on taking the word to all the nations. In Luke 24:45-47 we have an explanation of what Jesus did after He has walked His way with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, and we are told that after they arrived He revealed who He was to them. Then it says He opened the understanding that they might comprehend the Scriptures. He said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead the third day, and that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed [announced] in His name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem".

What that implies is it is going to start in Jerusalem and then it's going to go forward to all the nations. There is a purpose because there that this is what they should be doing, so that implies that imperatival sense that they are sent. In John 20:21 He uses that word in talking to the disciples: "As the Father sent me, I also send you." So we are sent; we are to take the gospel to the whole world. In Acts 1:8 it becomes very clear. He tells the disciples, "You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit is come upon you, and you shall be witnesses to me in Jerusalem and then in Judea and Samaria and then to the end of the earth".

This is the Magna Carta of the mission movement: we are to evangelize, but not simply evangelize but to train and equip those who are saved so that they can serve God.

Now how do we do that? The command is to make disciples and then we have these two phrases that are used in verses 19 and 20: "baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit." Then the next verse, "teaching them to do all that I have commanded you". Why does He say, "baptizing them and teaching them"? What is really going on here with this word baptism? Why does Jesus state it this way? It is very important. Very few people understand this and consequently there's a lot of misunderstanding this passage. They just ignore it. How are we to understand baptism?

There are three questions here that I think are important. First of all, why is He using the word baptism? Is God a Baptist? Why is He putting it that way? Why doesn't He say something like evangelizing the world, or getting people saved? Why is He using this phraseology here instead of something else?

Second, what baptism is meant here? What is He talking about? Is He talking about spirit spiritual baptism, the baptism of the Holy Spirit? Is He talking about water baptism, baptism by immersion for someone who has trusted in Christ as Savior?

The third question we need to address is what is the meaning or significance of baptism. We have to understand those three things; we can't just assume that we know what this passage is talking about. I think the best thing to do is to take the questions in reverse order. What is the meaning or significance of baptism? Why is baptism emphasized in this passage, and in other passages in the New Testament?

First of all we have to understand what the word baptism means. It's from the Greek word BAPTIZO, and it has just been sort of transliterated in over into English. It's been adopted from the Greek word. Why did they do that? Why didn't they translate it? Why did they just transliterated bring it over? The reason they did is because the basic meaning of the word in Greek was to dip, to plunge, or to immerse. In the early church by the fourth or fifth century there had become an identification of Christianity with the state. This began with the edict of tolerance by Constantine, and I think it was around 415, 416 AD that the Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. If you weren't a Christian then everything else was illegal.

Alongside of that developed the idea of baptism as a sign that you were a Christian. If you waited until you were until you were saved when this concept of membership in the church is being merged with the concept of being a citizen of the state, then baptism becomes a legal political function as well as a spiritual function. If you weren't baptized, then you weren't being loyal to the state, and so throughout the Middle Ages being baptized as an infant was a sign that you were also going to be reared as a productive citizen of the state. These two ideas merged together when we get to the period of the Protestant Reformation.

There was a group that developed known as Anabaptist, a word that means to be baptized a second time, because nearly everybody was baptized as an infant. These guys came along and said what the Bible teaches is believer's baptism, it's immersion and it comes as a result of a profession of faith. When a person believes in Christ as Savior, that's when there to be baptized. But when you are in an environment where baptism is a mark of entry into the state as a citizen of the state, to say that infant baptism, which has profound political overtones, is wrong, you are making a statement that is viewed as a threat to the state; it's a traitorous statement. When you say that that no one should be baptized until they become a Christian, you are making a political statement viewed as treason. This is why those early Anabaptists were so persecuted by the state. It viewed that as a threat to the unity and the foundation of the state.

The idea of baptism is that which occurs only after a person has trusted Christ as Savior is basically recovered in that Anabaptist movement. I did my pastoral internship at a Baptist Church, and one time I asked the pastor what makes a Baptist a Baptist? He said, "Well evangelism, believe in Christ …" I said that nothing like that makes you a Baptist. I asked other Baptists, seminary professors and others, but nobody ever knew. I asked an unsaved Jewish friend of mine what made a Baptist a Baptist. We were standing on of the first Baptist churches in Mystic, Connecticut, and he said, "Well two things make a Baptist a Baptist. One, they believe in baptism by immersion, and two, they believe in separation of church and state". It has nothing to do with the gospel. I was floored. Most Baptists don't understand that, Baptist preachers don't understand that, but here's this unsaved Jew who understood. That was the key because they understood that this was a public profession of faith and it had nothing to do with one's civic duty or civic responsibility.

Though, the word literally means to dip or to plunge or to immerse it has a symbolic significance, and that is of identification: that when somebody is baptized they are identified with something. John the Baptist came along. There was water baptism with John the Baptist and his message was repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Those who were baptized were being identified with John's message and the coming and preparation for the coming kingdom. Then Jesus came along and wanted to be baptized by John, but that was not John's baptism because He doesn't have anything to repent of because he is sinless. It was a distinct baptism, and it was a baptism because He was being identified with the message of the kingdom because He is the King who was offering the same message, that of the kingdom.

With believers' baptism in the church age there is a different identification, and it is the identification with Christ in His death, burial and resurrection. The he purpose for believers' baptism, water baptism by immersion in the church age, is to teach through a symbol a very abstract doctrine known as positional truth. As soon as you use those words a lot of people just glaze over, they have no idea what that means. That according to Romans 6:3ff means that we are identified with Christ in His death, burial and resurrection so that the power, the sin nature is broken. Nobody ever teaches that when they do a baptism; nobody understands that in baptism. They just think that somehow this is what you do, that it has something somehow to do with your salvation, or it's just a public witness. They don't understand that these Christian symbols that are in the ordinances of the Lord's Table and baptism are designed to teach something, to help the person, the individual Christian understand a spiritual truth that is foundational to their Christian life.

Believers' baptism is designed to teach the abstract biblical teaching of our new position in Christ. We are in Him. We have a sin nature that is broken, we have a new identity, we have a new destiny, and we have a new mission in this life; all of which needs to be understood when you are baptized as a believer.

Romans 6:3 says, "Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?"

We are identified. It's that that's the picture of being taken and immersed in the water. Coming out of the water is a recognition of resurrection. We now have new life. The water itself is a symbol of cleansing and the complete forgiveness of sin that we have in Christ. So it is a proclamation of the gospel, but it is designed to teach the new identity of every believer in Jesus Christ.

Paul goes on to say in Romans 6:5, "For if we have become united with {Him} in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be {in the likeness} of His resurrection". Into the water is death; out of the water is resurrection.

Why is this significant? Romans 6:6, "knowing this, that our old self was crucified with {Him,} in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin". Our old self [old man] is everything that we were before we were saved. It was crucified with Him. That the sin nature might be done away with doesn't mean that the sin nature is removed, it's that the sin nature's power is now broken. Before you were saved the only thing you could do were the wishes the will, the lust the desire, of the sin nature. After you were saved you had options to serve the Lord or to serve the sin nature. That's what Romans six is all about—so that we should no longer be slaves of sin.

Diagramming it, at the instant of faith we are placed into Christ, identified with Him, and this is our new positional reality: we are a new creature in Christ.

There are eight baptisms in the New Testament. The first three are ritual; they involve water. There is also water in the baptism of Moses and the baptism of Noah, but the people who get wet die. The three ritual water baptisms are the baptism of Jesus. It is unique because it's identifying Him with the message of the kingdom, and He is the coming King. The baptism of John the Baptist was a baptism to repentance, to prepare for the coming of the kingdom. The third is the baptism of believers.

Acts 2:38, talking about the baptism that was accomplished on the day of Pentecost. This year we went to a new archaeological dig that is south of the southern gates of the temple. You've seen some pictures of the mikvah that were on there on the seven steps. A mikvah was the ritual bath that any Jew going into the temple would go through. They would walk down one side of the stairs, immersed in the water come out the other side, and now they are ritually prepared to enter into the temple compound.

We read in him we read in the Old Testament passages that when the city of David was developed and the temple was built that they had to fill in the Ophel. That area has now been excavated. It's between where David's palace was and the seven steps of the temple. And what they have uncovered there is close to 200 ritual baths. Before we only had 35. Now we have over 200 ritual baths. So when Peter preaches on the day of Pentecost and has 5000 converts he has a lot of places to do baptism right there on the spot with all these baths.

There are five dry baptisms. There is the baptism of Noah where those who are with Noah identified with him and in the ark, and they survived the flood. The baptism of Moses: Those who pass through the sea, and the cloud are identified with Moses. They don't get wet, but the Egyptians that followed get wet and are destroyed. There's the baptism of fire judgment in the future. There's the also the baptism of the cup related to Jesus substitutionary death on the cross. Those are the dry baptisms. And then the fifth one is the baptism by means of God the Holy Spirit.

Now the question comes up as to which baptism is Jesus talking about. Is He talking about believers' baptism? Some have said no, He's talking about the baptism by the Holy Spirit because they want to not have to perform believers' baptism in this dispensation. This is part of what's known as a hyper dispensationalism. There been some others who taught this. But Jesus can't be talking about the baptism of the Holy Spirit here for three reasons. First of all, baptism of the Holy Spirit has only been mentioned once when John the Baptist says the one who is coming after me will baptize by the Spirit and by fire. But there's no explanation by John of what that means, only that this is some future thing that will happen. So Jesus isn't going to be using this until there's some teaching on it, and that doesn't happen until later. The explanation and the understanding of baptism by the Holy Spirit isn't developmental until Paul comes along some 15 years later, so Jesus wouldn't be telling them to do something that is meaningless to them.

Then third, if we understand the grammar and context here the command is you all make disciples by baptizing. You can't separate the baptism action from the command to make disciples. And the ones he's telling to do this act or the disciples. The baptism by the Holy Spirit is performed by Jesus, using the Holy Spirit; so this cannot be a reference to the baptism of the Holy Spirit, it must be a reference to believers' baptism.

Finally the first question: Why is baptism mentioned instead of evangelism or witnessing?

How do we understand baptism? There is a figure speech called the metonymy; you never learned it in school. A metonymy is a figure of speech where one noun is used instead of another noun in order to communicate something. So it's a word substitution. We do this we do this all the time. It's a figure of speech that replaces the name of one thing with the name of something else with which it is closely associated. That association for simplified reasons can be cause-and-effect. The causes put for the effect, or can be affect put for the cause, which is what we have here. We come across examples of this in everyday life. For example, I could state that the crown of England pursued a policy of expulsion of the Jews from Edward I in 1290 until Cromwell in 1657. The crown is just a metal object. The crown can't do anything, but the crown is put for the authority of the government of England. That's a metonymy, where you put exchange one noun for another.

I have some other examples here. We might read the phrase we have heard, the pen is mightier than the sword. The pen is used as a substitute for what the pen produces, what it writes. So that's a figure of speech to emphasize something. We can say the oval office was busy work on some policy. Well the Oval Office can't work, it's just a place; but what happens in that place is something related to the president and the executive branch of government. So it's like using the crown instead of the British government, we would use the Oval Office as a metonymy for the president and executive power. You might say tell somebody, "Let me give you a hand". Well, you're not talking about giving them a literal hand, you're talking of putting hand in place of the idea of helping you. So we do this all the time.

English is filled with these kinds of metonymies, and two prominent ones are metonymy where you put the cause in place of the effect, or you put the result in place of the cause. And what we have here is, baptism is the result that's put for the cause, which is salvation. So when Jesus says this, that you are to make disciples by baptizing them, He's putting the result instead of the cause. Why would He do that? Why is this seemingly convoluted, using this kind of figure of speech? Because what He is talking about here isn't simply evangelism. He could have said you make disciples by evangelizing, but I evangelize all kinds of people that don't believe. So saying it that way, make disciples by witnessing. Well we witness to people all the time that don't respond. He's not talking about those who don't respond; He's not talking about the process of bringing people to salvation; He puts baptism there because the normative expected process is that you're going to witness to people. Those who believe will then be baptized as is commanded to give that exhibit of their identification with Christ in the baptism by the Holy Spirit. By putting it this way Jesus is talking about that whole initiation process that occurs at the beginning of our Christian life when it is expected that we believe in Christ and then get baptized in proclamation of that that spiritual death. That's the focal point here; that's why He says you make disciples by baptizing. That wraps up the whole process of evangelism through regeneration and the birth of a new believer as I proclaimed through baptism.

The next thing that happens is you have a new baby needs to be nourished and so it has to grow, and that's what we get into and will get into with the next participle, which means to teach. It's done by teaching them to observe all things.

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