Getting Serious about Sharing Christ

Matt 28:18-20

Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

This is flu season. Many people I know are staying in, because they don’t want to catch the flu.

let’s play a little imagination game.  What if catching the flu were a good thing?  What if you really wanted to pass it around?  How would we go do it?

First, you'd have to make sure you yourself had a really bad infection.  Hang around at the doctor’s office till a really sick person came in, and go sit next to them.  Then, when we knew we had it you’d want to encourage that flu bug to multiply inside you. Get out in the cold air.  Then no sniffling into handkerchiefs--practice unprotected sneezing and coughing!  No staying home, either—get up and go to  work, movies and restaurants and ride on busses and airplanes. Don’t wash your hands! Give lots of hugs.  Soon, we’d have everyone around us blowing their noses, too! 

As crazy as that sounds, that’s exactly what we’ve been called to do! We’ve been commanded to spread a virus called Christianity.

 Christianity  spreads from person to person, place to place, with the power of the Spirit.  Jesus actually compares His message to a microbe in Matt 13:33   "The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough."    Yeast is a good microbe. It  provides a special flavor to any bread that contains it. You know bread has yeast when you taste it.  When someone has Christ inside, you can tell it, too.  They will be different from others.  This difference is contagious.

In Matthew 28: 18-20 Jesus presents a plan to His disciples on how  to spread His message over the whole world.  It is a viral campaign spread from one person to the next. We catch it, and pass it on. 

Christianity and Islam have one both seek to spread to everyone in the world.  Islam seeks to take over the world by conquest and domination. Christianity seeks to change the world though the viral infection of the love of God. God’s love invades us, changing us from the inside into better people. The Christian witness is invasive, but it is not abusive. If every Christian wholly dedicated themselves to the viral spreading of Christianity, no homes would be burned, no one would be killed, no unbeliever would ever have anything taken from them by force, or have their lifestyles threatened in any way. But instead, every believer would love their neighbor, even if their unbelieving neighbor does not love them back. 

Here is God's plan for having that happen in Matthew  28.  

First He said “go”—Get out among the lost.  This is infusion. Christians are often afraid to mingle with non-Christians. If we are going to spread the infection, we can’t do it by staying at home. We have to in as close a relationship with unbelievers as we dare. 

But isn't this dangerous to Christians.  Can't we catch things from unbelievers—bad habits, bad language, bad ideas, etc?  Three is always that chance. That is why the force of our faith has to be greater than the force of pressure coming from the world.  

The real reason we stay away from unbelievers is that we don’t like them and they don’t like us.  God loves them, but we don’t.  They don’t agree with us, say ugly things about us, and make us uncomfortable. So we just avoid the unbeliever; even though God commanded us to love them. 

Second, we are to "make disciples."  This is infection.  If we’re going to be out there spreading Christianity like the flu, we must make sure that we exhibit all the symptoms, and that the people we contact exhibit the symptoms, too.  We don’t merely to know about Christ—we must have a full-blown care of Christ! 

A disciple is a person who imitates a master.  To be a Christian is more than being “saved”--it is adopting the lifestyle of Christ.  Christianity can only change the world if Christians act like Christians.  A person who simply comes to church is not converted, only one who adopts Christ’s lifestyle can be truly said to be converted. 

The early church believed this process could take up to three years.  It was not an instantaneous salvation but a slow process of living in the shadow of Christ. Once people have accepted Jesus into their lives, then Jesus will change them. It is not our job to get people to listen to us, but to get them infected with a living strain of Christ, revealed in the Holy Spirit.

Third we “baptize”—this is inclusion. Baptism was a rite of inclusion into a community--similar to adoption into a family. When we bring a new person to Jesus, we must nurture that infection in Christian community, making them part of our lives.

Back in high school a new a boy named Terry. Terry ran with a gang in our school called the Warlords.  The summer after I graduated Terry became a believer and worked with me at a Christian camp.  By the end of the summer he was an active, outspoken believer.

The next year, I went back and visited my old high school.  I asked my Christian friends about Terry.  “Oh yeah, he used to come to our meetings regularly.  Then he stopped coming.  We never knew what happened, but he just faded away.”  I knew what happened.  Terry had not deserted the Christian clique.  The Christian clique deserted Terry.  They did not include him, and so he eventually left. 

Churches can be Christian cliques, only accepting people like themselves.  But Christians who are serious about sharing the faith will embrace the stranger as one of their own.

Fourth, we “teach” this is instruction. This is the process of spiritual formation, where our lives take on the greater picture of Him.  We have to teach them what it means to be like Jesus, so we can change the world.

So how do we start spreading the Christian flu?  First,  we begin praying for our unbelieving friends and neighbors,  We ask the Holy Spirit for the opportunities to be demonstrably Christian around them, to introduce them to the Christ who changed our lives. Then we seek ways to share Christ with them. Then, when they catch Him, they will pass it on. 

When Christ is truly evident in our lives, witnessing is as easy as sneezing.  Changing the world is the byproduct of demonstrating the life of Christ in a Godless world.