Understanding the Great Commission

Jonathan Leeman, Mark Dever

• Publisher: B&H Books
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781433688942
• eBook ISBN: 9781433689055
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

God means to fulfill the Great Commission through local churches. How did the apostles and the churches of the New Testament obey the Great Commission? By gathering Christians together in churches. The church is God's plan for evangelism, discipleship, and the Great Commission. This connection between the Great Commission and the church dramatically impacts how both leaders and members should think about their work of making disciples. We do it together.

Chapter 1

The Great Commission, You, and the Local Church

One way to describe the goal of this book is to help you understand the Great Commission and what it means in your individual Christian life.

The Bible does not use the words “Great Commission,” but Christians have long used this phrase to describe the final glorious command that Jesus gave before ascending into heaven. Do you remember it? Here it is:

Then Jesus came near and said to them, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. 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, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matt. 28:18–20)

During his ministry before the crucifixion, Jesus had said that his mission was only to the lost sheep of Israel (Matt. 15:24). But now, after the resurrection, he is the exalted judge of all the earth. He rose with the authority of the Almighty, like the Son of Man mentioned in Daniel 7. Jesus’ rule extends beyond Israel to all nations. He has all authority in heaven and earth.

After asserting this authority, Jesus tells his disciples to make disciples. Grammatically, this is the one imperative verb in the original Greek: make disciples. And that command is surrounded by three participles, so that we could translate the verbal phrases like this:

Going, make disciples, baptizing and teaching.

The first participle—going—is usually translated “go.” This is not a bad thing because it is the first word in the sentence and it occurs before “make disciples.” Greek readers would have understood that it should receive special emphasis. It’s fine then for us to translate it as “go.”

But if making disciples depends on going, baptizing, and teaching, who is sending the goers? And who is doing the baptizing and teaching? Is this work accomplished primarily through individual evangelizing and discipling? Or some other way?

Churches Fulfilling the Great Commission Through Planting Churches

When I look at books on the Great Commission, I find they often focus on evangelism or missions. They emphasize what we as Christians do individually. And I wrote one such book. It’s called The Gospel and Personal Evangelism. I hope you will read it! Certainly the Great Commission cannot be fulfilled without individuals sharing the gospel and teaching others. But is that all there is to the Great Commission—individual Christians holding plane tickets and gospel tracts in their hands? Or do Jesus’ words imply anything else?

That brings us to the second way to describe the purpose of this book: I hope to help you see that the Great Commission is normally fulfilled through planting and growing local churches. Churches fulfill the Great Commission through planting more churches. So the Great Commission involves you, the individual Christian. But the Great Commission also involves you through your local church. That is the normal way God means for us to go, make disciples, baptize, and teach.

God’s Promise to Abraham and to Us

Do you remember what God promised to Isaiah about the Messiah centuries before Jesus gave this commission? God said, “It is not enough for you to be My Servant raising up the tribes of Jacob and restoring the protected ones of Israel. I will also make you a light for the nations, to be My salvation to the ends of the earth” (Isa. 49:6).

The very first verse of Matthew’s Gospel invokes this ancient promise to Isaiah by going back further still—to Abraham. Matthew 1:1 calls Jesus the “Son of Abraham,” reminding us of God’s original promise to Abraham: “I will make you into a great nation” and “all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (Gen. 12:2–3).

In other words, the Bible’s testimony is consistent: God has always had a plan to bring his salvation to the ends of the earth—to all nations and all peoples.

Now, in the last verses of Matthew’s Gospel, we find these gathered disciples standing on a mountain with Jesus, learning that God’s promise of international blessing to Abraham culminated here. Here is how God would fulfill his promise to Abraham. Here is how all nations on earth would be blessed. All the disciples would be responsible to ensure that the message of the gospel would go to all nations, and all disciples of Jesus Christ would be called to obey all the commandments of Jesus. For this great enterprise, Jesus promised them that he, who now possessed all authority, would be with them all their days, until he returns.

Was this just a promise for the first apostles? No. Jesus knew that the apostles’ lives would end long before his return.

Rather, Jesus promised that he would be with them until the end of the age so that we would know that this promise is for us, too. Jesus knew he would continue working generation after generation long after this first group was gone. We, too, receive the promise of Christ’s presence.

This commission is for us!

What Is a Church?

And it’s not just for us as individual Christians. It is for us as churches and church members.

What is a church? It is a body of Christians who are in regular and accountable fellowship, where the Word is rightly preached, and baptism and the Lord’s Supper are rightly administered.

Let me unpack that. First, a church is a place where God’s Word is rightly preached. After all, we are saved by the preaching of God’s Word. God creates his people through his Word: “So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the message about Christ” (Rom. 10:17). It is as if the whole world is walking along. Then someone speaks God’s promises, a group of people look up, turn, and start walking in the direction of those promises. They hear them and believe them. The preached Word is foundational to a church.

But second, a church is a place where the ordinances are rightly practiced. After all, the ordinances mark off a church. The ordinances don’t save us. They are signs of the gospel and what we use to affirm one another as belonging to the gospel. They are how the fellowship of the church exercises its accountability among one another. (See Bobby Jamieson’s two books in the Church Basics series: Understanding Baptism and Understanding the Lord’s Supper.)

People sometimes say that the church is a people, not a place. In fact, a kind of place is necessary: you need a gathering of believers. And then you need the preaching of the Word and the administering of the ordinances in that gathering to make it a church as opposed to any other gathering of Christians. The Word creates us as Christ’s people, and the ordinances mark us off.

So think once more of the four commands of the Great Commission: go, make disciples, baptize, and teach. Who does all this? Who sends out the going Christians to make disciples? The local church. And who names them as disciples by baptizing them, and then helps them to grow by teaching them? The local church does.

The local church is the normal means God has given us to fulfill the Great Commission. That’s the message of this book.

Is This Book for You?

Who then is the intended audience for this book? It is for every believer, maybe especially the young believer. I will walk you through the Bible, especially in the early chapters, and try to provide you with some basic building blocks for how you understand your Christianity in relation to the Great Commission and your church.

Some of the lessons, particularly in the later chapters, might feel more relevant to church leaders. But even if it’s the leaders who have a firmer hand on the programmatic levers in a church’s life, ultimately it is the saints who need to understand what Jesus means when he says go, make disciples, baptize, and teach. He gives the commission to all of us. To you. You need to share Jesus’ vision. Do you?

Chapter 2

God’s Word, God’s People

Many people claim to love God, and even ...

Table of contents

• Church Basics Series Preface
• 1. The Great Commission, You, and the Local Church
• 2. God’s Word, God’s People
• 3. Heaven’s Love, Heaven’s Truth, Heaven’s People
• 4. Preach the Gospel, Gather a Church
• 5. Teaching with Correction and Oversight
• 6. Membership and a Self-Conscious Commitment
• 7. Four Practices of a Great Commission Church
• 8. One More Practice of a Great Commission Church
• 9. Should You Stay or Go?
• 10. The Grand Goal of the Great Commission
• Notes