The great commission the Lord gave us is for us to disciple the nations and teach them the teachings of Christ (Matt. 28:19-20). I have been under this discipling for about seventy years, and I am still being discipled by the Lord.
In Mark 16:15 the Lord said, "Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to all the creation." Colossians 1:20 says that Christ reconciled all things to Himself through His death. All things, whether on earth or in the heavens, were reconciled to God, and the gospel should be proclaimed to all creation under heaven (Col. 1:23).
Christ commissioned us to proclaim repentance for forgiveness of sins (Luke 24:47). We must have the proper experience of this if we are going to proclaim it. Everyone who is seeking after the Lord needs to have a full repentance and make a thorough confession of his sins to the Lord. In 1935 Brother Nee was in my hometown holding a conference on living Christ as our victorious life. One day during that conference, I went to the meeting hall when no one was there to spend some time with the Lord. I had a thorough repentance and made a thorough confession of my sins to the Lord for more than two hours. After that confession, I felt that I was fully released and buoyant. If we do not confess our past sins to receive the cleansing of the Lord's blood with His forgiveness, we will be heavily burdened. The way to be released from this burden is to make a thorough confession of our sins to the Lord. When we experience such a repentance for the forgiveness of our sins, we will be able to effectively proclaim this to others.
The Lord has also charged us to witness a resurrected Christ appointed by God to be the Lord and Christ (Messiah), the anointed One of God, and to be the Ruler and Savior (Acts 2:32-36; 5:30-32).
To witness Christ is to magnify Christ, to display Christ (Acts 22:15). When people saw Paul, they saw Christ. Paul said that it was no longer he who lived, but it was Christ who lived in him (Gal. 2:20a). To him to live was Christ (Phil. 1:21a). When Paul lived, he was Christ. Our witnessing is to witness that we are the very Christ whom we minister to others. When we are living Christ, all the negative things are gone and all that people see is Christ. This is a life lived in humanity but expressing a divine Christ. This is to live Christ, to magnify Christ, to display Christ, to show people Christ.
The Lord commissioned the disciples to save and gather in all God's chosen people from Jerusalem through Judea and Samaria and unto the uttermost part of the earth—all the world, all the nations (Acts 1:8; Mark 16:15; Luke 24:47). Today's Jerusalem to us is all of our close acquaintances. We have to save them, gather them in, and reap them. Those who are laboring for the Lord's interests in Russia are Christ's witnesses at the uttermost part of the earth. The object of our commission is eventually to gain all the nations, the whole earth.
To carry out the great commission of Christ in resurrection, we must live the divine life in our human life. We live in the human life, but we do not live the human life. Instead, we live the divine life in the human life. Resurrection means that our natural life has been crucified, has been conformed to the death of Christ. Now we live in the human life, but we do not live the human life. We live the divine life, and this divine life is resurrection. Resurrection means that our natural life is crucified. We have to deny ourselves, to have our natural man, our human life, crucified with Christ. Then we let Christ live in us to be the divine life. Resurrection means not to live our natural life but to live the divine life. Our humanity is then uplifted to the divine life through and in resurrection.