You Are Already Carrying the Torch: The Everyday Commission for Every Believer

Every four years, the summer Olympics opens with a moment that captures the imagination of the world. A relay runner enters the stadium carrying a flame that has traveled by foot, bicycle, boat, and airplane - sometimes across thousands of miles. Imagine being that runner. Your fingers close around the forged torch. Fatigue vanishes as adrenaline floods every muscle. Your grandchildren would show the photograph to their friends and say, “That is my grandfather. He carried the Olympic torch.”

As Christians, we carry a far greater torch. The Olympic flame is a symbol. The flame we carry is the light of God, desperately needed by a dark and dying world. The spectacle of the Olympics pales against the eternal significance of the ministry Christ has entrusted to us.

But do we know what that ministry actually is?

Last Words, Lasting Weight

To understand our mission, we must return to the moment Jesus first passed the torch. Matthew 28:18-20 records what we call the Great Commission - among Jesus’s very last words to His disciples. Spader remembers his own father’s last words, carefully chosen, words he needed to hear and remember. Jesus did the same.

The word “great” can be intimidating. It can make you think this commission belongs to “great” Christians or “great” missionaries. But the Great Commission was never meant for an elite few. Jesus spoke these words not only to the Eleven, but likely to a gathering of over 500 believers (1 Corinthians 15:6). Matthew 28:16 says the eleven went to Galilee - but there were already disciples in Galilee who did not need to travel. This was the everyday commission, given to every believer, for every moment of life.

Two Commands and Three Verbs

The structure of the Great Commission is remarkably simple. It contains two commands and three action verbs.

The first command is to “make disciples” (Greek: mathēteusate). This was the driving focus of Jesus’s life. Seventeen times we find Jesus with the masses. Forty-six times we find Him with His disciples. He poured Himself into a few who could reproduce what they received. And within two years of Pentecost, they “filled Jerusalem” with His teaching (Acts 5:28). Within four and a half years, multiplying churches spread across Judea, Galilee, and Samaria (Acts 9:31). Within eighteen years, they “turned the world upside down” (Acts 17:6). Within twenty-eight years, “the gospel is bearing fruit and growing throughout the whole world” (Colossians 1:6). Jesus’s strategy works.

Then come three verbs that shape how we make disciples:

“Going” (poreuthentes) - better translated “as you go.” This is not a call to a special mission trip. It is a call to make disciples as you go to work, as you go to the market, as you go to the rice field, as you go to your neighbor’s house. Your everyday going IS your mission field.

“Baptizing” (baptizontes) - public identification with Christ. An external expression of an internal transformation. When someone believes, they step into the water and the whole community sees that something has changed.

“Teaching to obey everything I commanded” (didaskontes) - not a curriculum to complete, but a lifetime of following. Jesus gave over 400 commands in the Gospels. More than half of them are disciple-making commands. Becoming a disciple is not about finishing a course. It is about becoming like Jesus in every area of life.

The second command is one most people miss. It is the little Greek word idou, often translated “surely” or “lo.” But in Greek it is an imperative - a command. The New Living Translation captures it: “And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). Jesus is commanding us to keep our eyes on His active, manifest presence. As you make disciples, keep focused on Me. I will show you how. I will be with you.

Your Everyday Going Is Your Mission

Here is where the Great Commission lands in the soil of real life. A young lay leader planting a church in a remote village in Central Java does not need a mission-sending organization. He does not need a plane ticket to a foreign country. He is already “going” - going to the rice field at dawn, going to the market to buy vegetables, going to the neighbor’s house for tea, going to the posyandu (community health post) with his children.

Every one of those “goings” is a mission field. Every person he encounters is someone the Father may be drawing to Himself (John 6:44). His job is not to create a program. His job is to be ready - to discern who the seekers are, to offer the gift of time, to show the love of Christ, and to be prepared to give an answer for the hope within him (1 Peter 3:15).

Spader notes that before Jesus commands His disciples to make disciples, He wraps the entire commission in a promise: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matthew 28:18). And after the commission: “I am with you always” (Matthew 28:20). The authority and the presence of Christ surround the task like bookends. This is not a burden placed on our shoulders alone. It is a shared mission, carried in the strength of the One who has all authority and who promises never to leave us.

What If We Actually Believed This?

What if every believer truly understood that the Great Commission is an everyday commission for every moment? What if the church-planter in the village saw his trip to the market not as a chore but as a divine appointment? What if the farmer saw his conversations at the water pump not as small talk but as the front line of eternal ministry?

Jesus spent four years making disciples who could make disciples. Then He handed the torch to ordinary men and women - fishermen, tax collectors, homemakers - and said, “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you” (John 20:21). They carried that torch across the Roman Empire, and the flame has never gone out.

Now it is in your hands. The question is not whether you are qualified. The question is whether you recognize that you are already carrying the torch - wherever you go today.