If we believe in the absolute sovereignty of God (and I certainly do), we have to accept that God does not need us to do any evangelism. Let me put it this way: God can save whomever he wants however he wants and he is certainly powerful and able enough to save people supernaturally without any reference to us. Which is a more verbose way of saying, God doesn’t need us to do any evangelism for him; he is perfectly capable of doing all the saving of all the people he wants to save entirely on his own.

So why does Jesus command us – his people who he doesn’t need in order to save anyone – to go into all the world and make disciples? If he doesn’t need us to do it, why does he ask any of us to do it?

Some might answer by saying something like: God works through ordinary means. Whilst he can save whomever he wants without us, he generally doesn’t work that way. Which is certainly true. God has chosen to work through ordinary means and to send his people out to do the disciple-making. But the answer doesn’t get us very far. All it tells us is what God does (which we know already) and nothing about why he chooses to do it. It’s like somebody asking why schools ask pupils to do homework and somebody answers by saying the school expects you to do homework because it is part of your learning. It is true, but it doesn’t answer the question. It tells you what the school will do as part of your learning but doesn’t explain why they choose to teach you that way and not any number of other ways they might do it.

The other problem here is not just that God could do it another way; it’s that there seems to be a clearly better way to do it. We all know it is a fools errand to teach God to suck eggs (cf. Rom 9:20). But it does seem evident that God could save everyone he wants to save with far less hassle and much less mess if he just did it without asking us to do anything. Knowing the power of God and the absolute ability to do it far better than us, it does beg the question why he asks us to do any of it. Why not just do it faster, better, more effectively and less messily without including us?

But this little thought helps us push towards an answer. If God can do it all without making as much mess, if he could do it more effectively without us – and taking as read that God is not an idiot but knows exactly what he is doing – he must have some greater purpose in including us in the work. Which begs the obvious question: what is it? Given that God doesn’t need us to do anything for him, and he’s be more effective without us, it follows that he must be including us for our own good.

It is, interestingly, for the same reason that schools do expect their pupils to do homework and the teacher doesn’t just answer all the maths problems themselves. After all, the teacher knows the answers, they set the assignment, they could just answer all the questions themselves for us. It would be less messy, less time consuming and we get the right answers in the end. But, as we all know, they aren’t setting the assignments because they don’t know the answers. They aren’t setting the assignment because they couldn’t answer the questions themselves. They are setting the assignment so the students have to work through the questions so that the students will grow in their knowledge and understanding. If the goal is just to get the answer, then yes, the teacher should just answer it. But the goal is not simply to get the answer; it is to get the students to learn and grow!

So, why does God ask us to do evangelism and disciple-making when he could just get on with it more effectively entirely by himself? Because the goal is not exclusively to get new people over the line, but to get his people to grow. He sends us out, despite it being less effectively, slower, messier and altogether harder than if he just did it because he wants us to grow through our service. We increase in our knowledge and love for God as we set about serving him. He tells his people to go out – despite being far more able to just do it himself more quickly and easily – because through our going, we will learn and grow. He sends us out not for his benefit, but for ours.

In practice, this means that if you have no interest in going out and making disciples, it is you who is missing out. You miss out on the blessing of seeing souls saved. But you also miss out on one of the key opportunities for growth in the Christian life. Jesus doesn’t send us out for the good of his health; but for the good of our spiritual health! To not go is the equivalent of just asking the teacher to do your homework for you every time. Sure, you might get the right answer in the end, but you won’t actually learn anything, you won’t actually grow, you won’t actually develop in any of the skills and abilities it was designed to teach you. In the same way, if we don’t want to make disciples, people will still come to faith – God can get on perfectly well without us. But we won’t gain any of the spiritual benefits, we won’t grow in Christian character, we won’t learn anything and it is ultimately we who will miss out. The kingdom will continue to grow, but we’ll have missed out on the opportunity to grow ourselves right along with it.