Re-Reading the Great Commission (Again)

There's always another layer

Sometimes Bible verses contain a whole lot more than they seem to at first glance.

My book Church Reset was driven in large part by a rereading of the Great Commission that saw Matthew 28:18-20 as far more than its standard interpretation as the call to evangelize.

The command+the participles (make disciples+going, baptizing, teaching) means evangelism is covered in the first two participles, but the third goes beyond evangelism. After we've evangelized and someone has been converted to Christ, we must teach them all He has commanded. 

Without that act the work can't be complete. The point of the Great Commission, then, is to make "Little Christs" of every Christian, to borrow a term.

But in the time since, further reading of the same three verses has revealed truths I missed on first and second examination.

Let's take a brief look at the Commission again and make three more observations about what Jesus said.

"And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, 'All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.'” (NASB95)

First, look at the conditions around the command.

It's not uncommon to rush past v.18 and start in with "Go therefore" and sometimes to end with "all that I commanded you," but that's not where Jesus chose to begin and end.

"All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth" and "Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." There's comfort in those words, but also expectation. Before He told them what to do, He told them why it was going to work.

Interestingly, Jesus' words closely resemble those of Cyrus in 2 Chronicles 36:23, coincidentally the final words of the Hebrew arrangement of the Old Testament:

“Thus says Cyrus king of Persia, ‘The LORD, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and He has appointed me to build Him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah.

Whoever there is among you of all His people, may the Lord his God be with him, and let him go up!’”

In other words, "All authority has been given to me on earth. Now go build God's temple." And, of course, they did so thanks in large part to support from the most powerful man on earth.

Similarly, Jesus pointed to His authority and gave an order which He expected to be accomplished. To doubly ensure its success, He promised they would have His full accompaniment in their mission.

While it feels we're fighting an enormous uphill battle even today, after 2,000 years of the church's growth, we have to always remember the success of our mission has been guaranteed by He who cannot be stopped. He rules the world—what do we have to fear?

And, its this rule which we are spreading. We aren't going out begging people to like us. We're going out either educating them or reminding them that He is the King Who demands their obedience.

Second, consider the object of the command.

It says "make disciples," yes, but in the Greek those words are one verb. The object of that verb is "the nations." So, what it actually says is "disciple the nations." That, obviously, raises a couple of questions.

What is even meant by "nations?"

Nations are simply people groups. Up until recently our countries correlated closely enough to bear a roughly equivalent meaning. Some still do: Japan is full of Japanese folks, Egypt full of Egyptians, Hungary Hungarians.

Reading the text as it was written indicates a far bigger aim than what we typically read into the Commission. Jesus did not send His disciples out to try and pick off a few individual converts. He sent them out to infiltrate nations and Christianize them from within.

It would be a long, slow process, but eventually the fingerprints of Christ's rule would be found in every nation in which the mission had success. And guess what - basically all of the Western nations bear those fingerprints, even if it is in a state of rebellion and decline right now.

How are nations discipled?

Pretty simply, by Christians baptizing and teaching enough people that cultural influence grows and a national identity begins to transform. A government ends up adopting principles which honor Christ. Businesses close on Sunday. Entertainment choices are kept clean.

So we start by evangelizing and baptizing people, but always with an eye toward a far grander conquest downstream. Modern Christianity views a conversion as the completion of the mission when it's really just the beginning.

Third, consider the intent of the command.

There is a vast difference between "teaching them all I have commanded you" and "teaching them to observe all I have commanded you."

It's the difference between telling my kids to clean their room and hoping it gets done, and exercising either the supervision or discipline (as the situation calls for) to make sure they end up with a clean room. It's the difference between preaching on the importance of attendance and following up with the people who weren't there to hear about it.

This is the church "enforcement" I've written on before. I realize that's a highly uncomfortable term for some, but until I come up with a better one I'm using it because it gets the point across.

We aren't just telling our members what the Bible says. We're making sure they start acting on it. If you're going to be a kingdom citizen, you need to live like one. This is actual disciple-making. If you make a disciple who doesn't live by the Word, you haven't made a disciple.

And why can we do this? Because all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Jesus. Seeing to it that people don't buck His authority on a whim is how we teach His authority.

I know some readers who have been with me since Church Reset’s release have been a little bewildered at my shift in emphasis from family-like church toward authority and culture. That's only because my further reading of the Great Commission has made one thing clear to me: family-like church is not possible without authoritative teaching aimed at culture-building.

I still want a church that is more, and now it's becoming more clear all the time how we get there: it's by disciple-makers who submit to Jesus’ authority, teach observance of His commandments, and who bring their people along on a world-changing mission.