The Bottom Line

Our text is Matthew’s post-resurrection account. It differs widely from Mark, Luke-Acts and John who differ from each other. Some have tried to create a chronology that harmonizes all four, but all attempts to do so seem somewhat stilted and ineffective to me. Rather than trying to harmonize the four, perhaps it is better to hear what each writer was trying to say to us.

Having said that, we focus on what Matthew, the writer of what is regarded as the Jewish Gospel, is saying to us. Contained within these verses is what is called the Great Commission, or Great Omission as one of my pastors used to call it.

As a young Southern Baptist RA, it was the topic of my first state speech contest speech. In his introduction to The Divine Conspiracy (TDC), Dallas Willard identifies this as what I call the bottom line of what it means to be a Jesus-Follower. He maintains it is our failure to heed these words as a large part of the reason the church has become largely irrelevant in today’s world, the Western world at least. As a result, political or social action, while legitimate and necessary expressions of the faith, have become ends instead of the means they were intended to be.

Let us now examine these words of Jesus that were the last Matthew recorded him saying.

Matthew 28:16–20 (LEB)

So the eleven disciples proceeded to Galilee, to the mountain which Jesus had designated for them. And when they saw him, they worshiped him, but some doubted. And Jesus approached and spoke to them, saying, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you, and behold, I am with you all the days until the end of the age.”

An important prelude

Most people begin the Great Commission at v 19 with the therefore.

The problem is in the Bible “therefore” is a transition word.

It means what follows is true because what preceded is true.

So let’s see what preceded.

According to Matthew, the angel told the women to tell the eleven to go to Galilee where he would meet them.

We find the disciples doing as they were told, no small thing.

While they worshipped him when they saw him (a first?), they still had some questions.

Now we get to the truth that is the foundation for the therefor in v 19.

Some translations say power, some authority.

The idea seems to be the power to do something AND the right to do it.

Daniel 7:13–14 (LEB)

“I continued watching in the visions of the night, and look, with the clouds of heaven one like a son of man was coming, and he came to the Ancient of Days, and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and kingship that all the peoples, the nations, and languages would serve him; his dominion is a dominion without end that will not cease, and his kingdom is one that will not be destroyed.

Now the prelude is over and the singing starts.

Therefore: because the above is true.

Going is a better translation than go because it places the imperative within normal activity as opposed to making it a separate activity.

Make disciples

Not win converts, not add church members, not achieve some nationalist/religious agenda, but make disciples.

Our misunderstanding of Jesus’ words can be seen in the fact we think of becoming a Christian and being a follower of Jesus as separate things.

A disciple is someone who follows a discipline set down by a Master, the content of which Jesus will define later.

Of (in) all nations

The word is εθνος (ethnos) from which we get the word ethnic.

People-group is a better translation because the focus is demographic, not geographic.

Baptizing

There is some debate as to whether this phrase was inserted later either whole or in part.

We would be better off understanding baptism as a symbol of leaving one reality behind to enter a new one.

2 Corinthians 5:17 (LEB)

Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come.

Galatians 3:27 (LEB)

for as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.

Now the how and what

We make disciples by teaching.

We teach them everything Jesus said, the red letters.

(The words of Jesus) are essentially subversive of established arrangements and ways of thinking…They invade our ‘real’ world with a reality more real than it is, which explains why human beings then and now have to protect themselves against them. (Willard, TDC)

Political/cultural Christianity has so pervaded the church, the words of Christ are being lost to a generation or more!

How else can you explain the church endorsing partisan agendas that are far from “everything I have commanded you”?

Every good song has a chorus.

We have the promise of a Presence come what may.

And this one we should repeat several times at the end.