28:20 Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you {g} alway, [even] unto the end of the world. Amen.
(g) Forever: and this refers to the manner of the presence of his Spirit, by means of which he makes us partakers both of himself and of all his benefits, even though he is absent from us in body.
28:20 Teaching them. The second part of the commission is next given. The first part commands the making of disciples, and tells how they must be made. The second part provides for the instruction of the disciples in righteousness. This is to be done by teaching them.
To observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. What must be taught by the faithful Christian teacher is prescribed. It will at once be seen that this cuts off much that is often taught. We are not to teach untaught questions (2Ti 2:23), oppositions of science, so called (1Ti 6:20), dogmatic speculations, isms or human creeds. Christ has never commanded these. On the other hand, we are to teach all things he has commanded. Some of these things we have recorded in the Gospels; others we have in the Acts and in the Epistles. They embrace the various duties of Christian life.
I am with you alway. It was an arduous work he had commanded his disciples to undertake; a few uninfluential and unlettered laboring men to undertake the moral and religious conquest of a world that had just crucified their Master. There was, however, an assurance that they should be equal to the task, for (1) All power, or authority, in heaven and earth was in the hands of their crucified Lord. (2) He now declares, I am with you always. He who has all power will be present with them, a help in time of need. He is a mighty, present and helping Savior.
[Even] unto the end of the world. Until the close of the Christian dispensation, coming of the Lord, and the day of judgment.
28:16-20 This evangelist passes over other appearances of Christ, recorded by Luke and John, and hastens to the most solemn; one appointed before his death, and after his resurrection. All that see the Lord Jesus with an eye of faith, will worship him. Yet the faith of the sincere may be very weak and wavering. But Christ gave such convincing proofs of his resurrection, as made their faith to triumph over doubts. He now solemnly commissioned the apostles and his ministers to go forth among all nations. The salvation they were to preach, is a common salvation; whoever will, let him come, and take the benefit; all are welcome to Christ Jesus. Christianity is the religion of a sinner who applies for salvation from deserved wrath and from sin; he applies to the mercy of the Father, through the atonement of the incarnate Son, and by the sanctification of the Holy Spirit, and gives up himself to be the worshipper and servant of God, as the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, three Persons but one God, in all his ordinances and commandments. Baptism is an outward sign of that inward washing, or sanctification of the Spirit, which seals and evidences the believer's justification. Let us examine ourselves, whether we really possess the inward and spiritual grace of a death unto sin, and a new birth unto righteousness, by which those who were the children of wrath become the children of God. Believers shall have the constant presence of their Lord always; all days, every day. There is no day, no hour of the day, in which our Lord Jesus is not present with his churches and with his ministers; if there were, in that day, that hour, they would be undone. The God of Israel, the Saviour, is sometimes a God that hideth himself, but never a God at a distance. To these precious words Amen is added. Even so, Lord Jesus, be thou with us and all thy people; cause thy face to shine upon us, that thy way may be known upon earth, thy saving health among all nations.
