What is the Great Commission?

Question 11023.

The Great Commission is the standing order Jesus gave His followers between the resurrection and the ascension, recorded most fully at the end of Matthew’s Gospel. It is quoted constantly and examined rather less often.

So let me take it apart slowly. What is actually commanded, to whom was it given, what authority stands behind it, and what does it require of a congregation in Britain two thousand years later?

The text itself

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age (Matthew 28:18-20).

Parallel statements appear elsewhere. Mark records preaching the gospel to the whole creation, Luke records repentance and forgiveness proclaimed to all nations beginning from Jerusalem, John records the sending, and Acts records the promise of power and the widening circle from Jerusalem to the end of the earth (Acts 1:8).

Taken together they form a single charge with different emphases, and the name Great Commission is our label rather than Scripture’s. It came into common use through the modern missionary movement, which does not make it wrong, only worth remembering.

Authority comes first

The command begins with a claim rather than an instruction. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Only then does the ‘therefore’ arrive.

That order matters enormously. The Great Commission is not a request for volunteers to attempt something difficult on Christ’s behalf; it is an order issued by someone who already holds authority over every place He is sending us into. The outcome does not depend on our resources.

It also settles the question of legitimacy. A church has no authority of its own to impose anything on anyone, and it needs none. It carries a message from the One to whom authority has been given, and that is a different posture from either arrogance or apology.

What is actually commanded

One imperative: make disciples. Everything else in the sentence describes how. Going, baptising and teaching are participles serving the main verb, which is why the Great Commission is not fulfilled by geographical movement or by evangelistic events on their own.

Baptising places the new disciple publicly and visibly into the community of Christ’s people. Teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you sets the content and the aim together: everything Jesus taught, and obedience rather than acquaintance.

And the scope is all nations, which in the Greek is ethne, peoples rather than modern states. The target is every people group on earth, which is why the task has never been simply a matter of covering territory. I have written about the groups still without a witness in what about unreached peoples.

Baptism deserves a further word, since the Great Commission ties it to the making of disciples rather than leaving it optional. Believers in the New Testament were baptised on profession of faith, quickly and publicly, and it functioned as the visible line between the old life and the new. A congregation that quietly lets converts drift for years without it has adjusted the commission rather than obeyed it.

Who was it given to?

It was spoken to the eleven on a mountain in Galilee. The question is whether it stops there, and the answer is plainly no, since the command includes teaching new disciples to observe all that Jesus commanded, and this is one of the things He commanded.

The promise settles it as well. I am with you always, to the end of the age. The apostles did not live to the end of the age, so the promise, and therefore the command it accompanies, reaches beyond them to the whole period in which the church exists.

I read the Great Commission as addressed to the Church in the present administration, which began at Pentecost, and I keep it distinct from the commission given to Israel and from what Scripture says of the kingdom age still to come. Israel and the Church are not the same body with the same programme, and I have written about that distinction elsewhere.

The promise at the end

The last clause is the one most often left off the poster, and it is the one that makes the rest possible. Behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.

Consider who was standing there. Men who had run away days earlier, one of whom had denied Him three times, and Matthew notes that some doubted even at that moment. To that group He entrusted the Great Commission and attached a promise of His presence.

That is the pattern still. The people asked to do this are not selected for their competence, and the promise is not that we will do it well but that He will be present while we do it.

What the Great Commission does not mean

It does not mean the world will be gradually Christianised until the kingdom arrives through our efforts. Jesus said the gospel would be proclaimed as a testimony to all nations, and He also spoke plainly of opposition, deception and endurance. Our task is faithful witness rather than the construction of the kingdom.

It does not mean every believer should move abroad. The Great Commission is a corporate charge to the whole church, within which some go, some send, and all bear witness where they are.

And it does not license coercion, manipulation or cultural imposition. Making disciples of Jesus and making people like us are entirely different projects, and the church has repeatedly confused them to its shame.

Why the church has so often ignored it

For long stretches of church history the Great Commission was assumed to have been discharged by the apostles. When William Carey argued in the 1790s that the command still bound the church, he was told by an older minister that if God intended to convert the heathen He would do it without Carey’s help. That objection has not entirely died out; it has simply changed its vocabulary.

The modern versions are quieter. We are busy at home. The culture here is hard enough. Somebody else is better placed. Each of these contains some truth, and together they have kept a great many congregations comfortable while the command sat unopened.

There is also a theological version worth naming. If a person believes that God will save whom He will regardless of our involvement, the urgency drains out of the Great Commission whatever the doctrine’s defenders may say about means. I hold that God has genuinely bound the message to messengers, and that the ordinary way people come to faith is by hearing (Romans 10:17).

None of this means the church has failed entirely. The last two centuries saw the gospel carried further than in the previous eighteen, largely by unremarkable people who gave up comfortable lives. The point is that obedience has never been automatic, and it will not be in our generation either.

How a congregation obeys it

By making disciples locally, which is unglamorous and constant. Teaching, baptising, forming believers who obey, and helping them do the same for others. I have written practically on how to make disciples week by week.

By sending. A church that never loses anyone to another field has probably not taken the ‘all nations’ clause seriously, and the willingness to give away your best people is one of the surest signs that a congregation believes this command applies to it.

And by teaching obedience rather than settling for attendance. A church can be busy, full and orthodox and still be failing the Great Commission if the people in it are not being formed into obedient followers of Jesus.

So, now what?

Read Matthew 28:18-20 slowly and notice which words you have been skipping. Most of us hear ‘go’ and miss ‘teaching them to observe’, which is where the actual work lies.

Then ask what your obedience to it looks like in practice this month. One person you are helping to follow Jesus, one worker you are supporting, one honest conversation you have been avoiding.

And if you lead a church, audit it honestly. Where does the money go, what proportion of the year’s teaching touches the Great Commission, and would a stranger watching your congregation for twelve months conclude that you believed the nations mattered? The answer is usually visible in the budget before it is visible in the preaching.

The command is bracketed by authority at the front and presence at the end. Given both of those, what exactly is stopping you?

And Jesus came and said to them, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.

Matthew 28:18-19, ESV