The Great Commission Reviewed

Scripture: Matt 28:18-20

Matthew 28:18–20 ESV

18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Nobody asked me what’s new, so that I can say to them, “something old actually”. Something like what? What we call, The Great Commission. Pat and I happen to part to be part of a bible class where we basically picked apart Matt 28:18-20. This was more than exciting for me because I attended a Bible software course and this scripture was used as an example to show something called propositional outlines(a modified sentence parsing) and morphology filters; don’t worry, I’m not going there. What those two things identified was that the main imperative verb or command was “make disciples”; baptizing and teaching were called expansions of the main command and “go” is a participle not a verb, representing background action. Go was best translated, “as you go” or “in going”

Here’s what came out at me. Before Christ We were led by what the world taught; Viz.

Don’t take anything from anybody;

Live by the golden rule, who have the gold makes the rule;

Do whatever it takes to get ahead or rather do what everybody else is doing to get ahead; get your children in the best schools; get a government job; get that house, car

Not only that but give thanks when you think you have been blessed or maybe sometimes, give thanks so you could be blessed.

I said that to say

Before Christ it was all about me and though that depended on who me is, the cycle was the same; for the teenager that meant basically get through school and I don’t necessarily mean get good grades, but get school behind you, get a “good” job and maybe a house, car and the likes and to some extension but more so to complete the outlook, get some decency in life, by that I mean, go to church.

But, For some of us going to church meant a lot of different things. Meeting Jesus Christ and understanding that life was not about “me” anymore but about Him. I think I can safely say that I am right about that.

Yet others understood that it was about Him, but I still have to achieve the same things on my own (or not on my own) the basic necessities like house, car, job or lets say general living.

But in re-examining the the great commission, I realized that When we came to Christ we were given a new and common purpose and it was common because it was commanded to all Christians, in fact to all who have been converted and I’ll explain that later. That command was to make disciples.

That should have made us realize that there is no exception because the apostles were to teach us everything that he taught them including the great commission.

But you know what happened, and maybe not immediately we started responding to that in the wrong way. In our minds “make disciples” got translated to; save souls, baptize people, evangelize. I really started to focus on this when I realized some folks were saying that they don’t like evangelizing or they don’t know how to evangelize and they would rather do something else. I figured this was not to be , this is not what Christ meant and in any case people were choosing on their own accord to ignore or alter the commission.

It’s not completely anyone’s fault, I realized to some depth, But when the glory days of door knocking and crusades we’re gone, are gone or maybe were over or seem to be over, meaning that, realizing that making disciples was not a church thing or the ministers thing or the leaders thing, we started asking ourselves the wrong questions or rather questions in the wrong way.

In re-examining the great commission I’ve come to the conclusion that the scripture is complete, concise and needs no attachments.

Does that mean, the great Commission is not possible, the answer is a resounding no.

Unless of course, as I said earlier we had the wrong view of the great commission and asked the wrong questions. It came to me that two things had to be cleared up. One as you know is the proper translation of the word “go” and secondly the proper placement of the phrase, “teach all nations” since when I listen to people they say “Go into all the world”. the thing about that is I am yet to see the word “world” anywhere in that sentence. So the real meaning gets lost in translation. As I have come to understand, as I said, go is a participle and is best translated, “as you go” or “in going.” Then the sentence should read, In going therefore, make disciples of all nations or As you go therefore, make disciples of all nations.

The next critical thing is to question, As you go, where or in going, where. My suspicions are, so that the commissions omits no one, is as you go about your business, school, work, at the grocery, on a bus , a plane, a boat or train.

Sometimes, we don’t have to “go” anywhere; and that is because we are who we are when no-one is looking; conducting ourselves like children of God in our normal daily lives. Our co-workers, our school-mates, our neighbours are observing us, even random people on cameras, wherever we go are observing us and this is could be our best credentials of formulating relations with a goal to make disciples.

You see we must understand our one command which is our one purpose in life; make disciples. And our questions should really be framed around that one purpose.

You know that the times are you just can’t walk up to someone......

continue with the personality of some people and their disposition on certain religions

Certainly I don’t expect to walk up to strangers and ask them if they know Jesus or want to hear about Jesus. My experience with the word of God is that God prepares the place and time and the person doing the discipling. In fact there are some place where you just can’t go and evangelize. So what do we do .

Give illustrations of some evangelism gone mad.

We use what Jesus gave us; he made us royal priest with our own temples. So that. As we go or in going our spiritual life make opportunities to make disciples i.e. develop relationships and leave it up to God, who already knows whose names are in the book of life. Don’t feel guilty about missed opportunities or what you consider to be a missed opportunity, God is in charge of time and space.

My suspicions tell me also that there are those who would rather leave the great commission with “go” as a command because it suits their missionary or evangelizing agenda. I can’t tell you how many stories I’ve read where the missionary didn’t or barely made it off the boat or wagon train because of illness or where they were instantly killed or hounded or where , in a short time they died of exhaustion. That doesn’t sound as if they were prepared. I’ve read also of one or two conversions after years, Jerusalem was one such place. It tells me that God did not prepare the people or their hearts to receive the good news of Jesus.

In any case, in following Paul, God did not send him to baptize but to preach the good news of His son.

How many times we have heard that God did not make robots? So then it is enough that we speak the good news about Jesus to people; forcing then to convert in my eyes is like making the good news of Jesus, powerless. And what do churches, preachers, preach to you all your life; “the word has power” regardless of how much time has passed, the word has power.

When a person who has heard the good news and after years for some reason, comes up to you to be baptized, it is because the word has power. A person on his deathbed calls you and tells you he wants to be baptized (those specific words), its because he has heard the word before and the word has power. The sad thing about that is that not much Christians live up to that even though they preach it.

Let’s sum up

Don’t twist the words to mean evangelize, leave it as make disciples.

Use the words that are written in the Bible

Be careful not to mix up the words

You see Jesus didn’t just say make disciples but he said first and last 1) All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me 2) when you are baptized it will be in the entire Godhead and 3) and I am with you always to the end of the age.

That means, we will never be alone while carrying out the great commission and Jesus will be there with all His power as given by the father, always.

I almost forgot, I’ve never gone to preaching school or formal Bible school but everyone who did that I have spoken to, agrees that “go” is a participle and is best translated as “as you go” or “in going”, so why it is I have never heard it taught that way.

Only God Knows.