Mark 16:15-16 15And he said to them, “Going into all the world, preach the gospel to all creation. 16Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.
After rebuking the disciples for their unbelief, Jesus gave them their mission. Their worldview had been shaken up with all the events, stress, uncertainty, and now good news. Jesus now helped them develop a new focus. His commissioning comes as the culmination of his teaching to them. They had heard and watched him for three years, and now they needed to imitate him and continue on as his representatives. The kingdom of God had come in Jesus, and the disciples were part of that kingdom. These verses echo Matthew 28:19-20. If the longer ending of Mark is indeed late and not part of the original, these verses could have relied on Matthew’s ending. They express the mission Jesus had for his followers.
The first command is implied in the participle going. Going requires faith and obedience. The target is all the world. No one is to be left out and no corner of the earth to be neglected. The drive of the modern mission movement has been to take the gospel to every place and every people group. The world has become both complex with the grow in information and simple in the way to communicate this information. There are few areas in the world that do not have access to some form of technology and information.
The core command is given in the imperative verb preach (kēryxate), which is the common word in the New Testament for proclaiming the gospel. The aorist tense of this word gives it a sense of decisiveness. This proclamation was the key mission for the disciples. The message they preached was the gospel (euangelion), from which we get the word “evangelism.” The word is made of two parts that literally mean “good” “message.” Mark’s writing is called “the gospel of Jesus Christ” (1:1). The good news is that Jesus came, taught about God’s love and how to get to heaven, suffered and died to that the way would be opened, and rose from the dead to verify the truth all he said.
The message must be proclaimed to all creation. Two different words are used in this verse for the target audience. World gives the direction in the sense of the earth. Creation designates those who live on earth. Some people have interpreted this verse to mean that we should preach to other creatures in God’s creation, as Saint Francis of Assisi is said to have done. That interpretation does not fit well in the context of Jesus’ ministry because people were always the target of his message of salvation. The rest of creation is affected by the gospel as the hearts of people are changed as they become better stewards of creation in fulfillment of God’s command in Genesis 1:26-28.
Verse 16 gives the intended result of the preaching, that people will come to believe in the message about Jesus. Baptism would be the outward symbol of the inward faith. Another mistake in interpreting these verses is to see baptism as a requirement for salvation. The last phrase corrects this wrong understanding by indicating that the real issue is believing or not believing. Not believing will lead to condemnation while believing will lead to salvation. Baptism is only the physical act of obedience that represents that this decision has been made. Believing and baptism should go together. Once one has come to believe, that person should seek to be baptized in order to testify to that faith and witness to others of this decision. It becomes a form of testimony and witness to unbelievers and joins the new believer to the community of the church. Jesus was restoring the disciples through this commission. They had had a difficult time believing, but now, they had a solid experience that would confirm everything Jesus had taught them.
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