Sin Isn’t Your Boss Anymore: The Union That Powers The Great Commission

Sometimes, certain words and phrases sound intimidating. Take the words ‘great’ and ‘commission’….put them together and the phrase sounds so big that it should only be approached with a theological forklift…….....and then only by professional Christians.            

But let’s look at what Jesus actually said in Matthew 28:18 - 20

And Jesus came and said to them,

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Let’s pause there.

Jesus says He has all authority. Not some, All                                                          

He’s Lord over heaven, earth, and yes, He’s Lord over us, His people.

Which means that if we call Him Lord but treat His commands like “helpful suggestions,” we might be practising a spiritual version of selective hearing.

Jesus also says, “You are my friends if you do what I command.” John 15:14

Notice, He didn’t say, “You’re my friends if you can copy everything I do.”

If that were the criterion, we’d all be in trouble. He simply calls us to obey Him. Friendship with Jesus is shown in faithful obedience, not superhero performance.

But then we hear that phrase ‘make disciples’… and suddenly our inner voices start screaming: “I can’t do that! I can’t talk like Jesus! I can’t talk like the disciples! I can’t even talk like Gloria from home group!”

Relax, He was basically saying:

“What I did with you - go do that with others.”

What did Jesus do? He lived life with people. He chatted, He ate meals, He walked places, He answered questions….... But he asked better ones!

No programs. No Ticketmaster events. Just life-on-life discipleship - with a few miracles and yes, a lot of meals. It sounds like a cliché, but life really is the program and today is the event.

Influencers Aren’t New

Some people think “influencers” are all Generation Z, complete with perfect eyebrows and ring lights. But Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were influencing before way before social media existed…. and I’m guessing their eyebrows probably weren’t that great. And whether we admit it or not, we’ve all been influencing people since we could toddle across a room and make another child copy us.

We influence everywhere—families, workplaces, coffee shops, worship rehearsals, and especially the supermarket queue. Sometimes we do it intentionally, sometimes unintentionally, usually when we wish we hadn’t said the thing we said. But the Holy Spirit has a wonderful way of nudging our conscience, not to condemn, but to lovingly redirect.

We’re Not All Called to Be Teachers… But We All Teach 

Paul clearly says so.

Romans 15:14 “I myself am satisfied about you, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able to instruct one another.”

Colossians 3:16 “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.”

So, the real question becomes:

If someone followed us around for a week, what would they learn about Jesus?

What was that command from Jesus again?

“Go and teach them to obey everything that I have commanded.”

The list of tasks: go, teach, baptise, repeat, can seem overwhelming. However, before Jesus instructed us to "go," He reassured us with the words, “I am with you”.

Earlier on in Matthew 18:20, He had said, "I am with you." 

Here, He was summing up His previous words, saying that if ministers preach Christ faithfully and lead and govern the church according to his ways, they can be confident that he will support and stand with them.  

“For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.”

In Hebrews 13:5, the author says that Jesus is always with us

“I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

And again, here in the verses we are looking at, He promises his presence, now extending it to the disciples and our witness Matthew 28:20.

“And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

That’s not just a comforting phrase  - it’s a theological anchor. The call to make disciples flows directly out of Jesus being with us; it flows from our union with Christ.

Union With Christ

What is union with Christ? Galatians 2:20 summarises it beautifully but in a somewhat back - front - way.

“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

Grammar fans, tune in….. rest of you turn away for a moment while we arc this statement from Paul.

Okay, you can look back now……here is Paul’s statement, grammatically straightened out, and here we can see:

1.        - the Son of God loved us and gave Himself for us,

2.        - knowing, understanding and believing this, we put our faith in the Son of God.

3.        - the consequence of this faith was our coming into union with Christ, we have been crucified with Christ, and yet we still live, but

4.        - and here is the important bit, Christ lives in us

This means our life is not powered by caffeine, good intentions, or guilt—it’s powered by

Christ Himself.

From Adam to Christ

We used to be united to Adam, our old “family line.”         

When he fell, we all fell. Before Christ saved us, we belonged to Adam’s family (yes, I know…I hummed the tune as well)  - a long and tragic list of people who fell over spiritually, morally, and occasionally literally.

But Christ came, took on our humanity, lived the life we couldn’t live, died the death we deserved……and then sent the Holy Spirit so that we could be bonded to Him.

We get a new identity, a new family, a new destiny.

So, How Does This Help Us Witness?

My pastor often says that our lives are “the fifth gospel.” Which would mean we are in effect a “living epistle,” so in that case, our everyday behaviour becomes part of our evangelism. As we go about our ordinary routines, we are always influencing someone. People notice more than we think: they watch our patience at traffic lights, our gentleness in conflict, our steadiness when life presses and pinches.

We need to live a life that eventually causes people to want know what’s under our bonnet, enough that they want to lift the hood and look at the engine that drives our actions, our attitudes, our belief, our peace……what really is this life we live in union with Christ….so that they get to the point where they want to experience for themselves this Christ, this engine that’s driving our actions.

It should be a life where they get to see the love we have for Christ; the love He has for us and the love He has for them…and that opens the door wide for us to explain the Gospel, the whole Gospel, to them.

Question: How do we do this? How do we live out in reality this life in union with Christ?

Answer: We live out a life that has been set free from sin, a life free from the reign of sin in our lives, a life that pleases God.

How we live a life set free from the reign of sin and a life united to Christ can be found in Romans chapter 6:1-14

You can read those verses for yourselves, but it is here in Romans 6 that Paul tells us that he understands that he is a Christian believer who has been baptised into Jesus Christ. He has a new identity - he has been given a new name. He understands that he belongs to a new family, and therefore, it follows logically that he lives out the new family lifestyle. He is no longer in Adam - he is now in Jesus Christ.

So how does all of this actually work?

Paul isn’t saying that he got a new brain or became smarter; he has the same faculties he’s always had, he’s still Paul. But the orientation of his heart has been changed.

The Holy Spirit is now at work in him, bringing his mind, emotions, and actions, his “members” as he calls them, under Christ’s rule.

And that’s true for us as well. In union with Christ, we’ve died and been raised with Him.

That means:

1. The old self, the old man, the he or she who we once were in Adam, was crucified with Christ.

2. This happened so that the body of sin might be destroyed. By body of sin, Paul means every aspect of a person, body, mind, spirit, and emotions, that were previously dominated by sin because of our union with Adam. This was so the whole “body of sin” (the entire person once shaped by sin) might no longer be fruitful soil for sin but now come under the lordship of Jesus.

3. The result of that was that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.

If we belong to Christ, sin’s dominion over us is broken. We’ve changed families. We’ve changed kingdoms. We’ve changed employers, and the old boss has no authority to bark orders at us anymore.

Paul reminds us that we are free from sin’s guilt and reign, though not yet from sin’s presence.   

We really need to know this, don’t we, because we still sin and it is easy for us, when we do sin to listen to the evil one who in effect whispers in our ear- “you’re not really free from sin are you…perhaps you’re not really a Christian…you might as well carry on doing more sin.”

But Paul says the opposite: Our freedom from sin’s reign is the very reason we can fight it now. If we’re not free from its reign, then we have no other choice than to sin –

In Ephesians 2:1-3 we are told we were, by our very nature, children of wrath, like all mankind, we lived in the passions of our flesh and carried out the desires of the body and the mind…that was our family lifestyle in Adam.

But we have been liberated from this family, this lifestyle, and it is knowing this that gives us victory over sin. We have been baptised out of the family, the world of Adam, out of the reign of sin and into the world of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

That’s why Paul tells us to “consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God.” He doesn’t mean, “Try very hard to feel this.” He means it’s true. We live in a new realm now. Feelings will catch up with truth, not establish it.

What Paul is saying is that you need to learn to think this way because you don’t naturally think this way. This is why, throughout Scripture, Paul and others keep asking, “Do you not know…?” because you can’t live by what you don’t know. It is what we know that shapes how we live. First, we learn the truth, then we reckon it, then we act on it. And once we grasp the sheer grace of what God has done, we find ourselves able - and willing - to obey the commands that flow from it.

So, Paul can now say in Romans 6:12–14:

“Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.”

Or “Sin isn’t your boss anymore, so stop letting it bark orders at you. Don’t let it pull you around by your desires. Don’t let your mind, your words, your actions become its tools. It no longer has the right to rule you. You’re not under law—you’re under grace.”

So Christian… Do You Know You’re Free?

You’re not who you were in Adam. You’re baptised into Christ, marked by His name, filled with His Spirit, and living under grace.

We began with the authority of Jesus:

“All authority is given to Me.”

Meaning:

He has authority over you and me as we go,

and authority over those we’re sent to.

Now this changes everything, because if Jesus is the one with all the authority, then He’s the one who is doing all the heavy lifting; He is the one who, through the working of the Holy Spirit, is preparing hearts. Preparing good soil for the seed…... He even brings the fruit.

All we do is plant the seed - sometimes with shaky hands, sometimes with stammering words, sometimes over tea and biscuits.

This isn’t about becoming something you’re not - it’s about learning to live out who you already are in Him.

That’s what discipleship is.

That’s what the Great Commission really means.

Not just “go,” but live—live as people in whom Christ dwells.

Because:

His authority sends us,

His grace sustains us,

His presence never leaves us.

Now that doesn’t sound too intimidating, does it?