Examining Matthew 28: The So-Called “Great Commission”
Discipleship as Story Participation—Pt. 2
Last time we introduced the idea that the church struggles to make mature disciples because they do not possess a clear definition and process based on the true metanarrative of the drama of redemption. Before I provide my definition in a future post, I want to investigate the biblical passage from which all of this derives—Matthew 28.18-20. This will help us more clearly define discipleship.
Matthew 28.18-20 states,
“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, baptizing 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.”
Before we dive into this verse, I have two questions:
(1) Why is this passage so central to the life of the church? I often wonder if we did not possess the "Great Commission," would the American church even know what it should be doing? Based on how foundational this verse is for the church (see my last post for examples), it seems that if the church did not have this, they would be rudderless without it. The "Great Commission" has taken on a life of its own, separated from the rest of the Scriptural storyline.
It is not that this passage is unimportant; it is critical. Just not as crucial as the church has made it to be. Yet, it has become a "canon within a canon" because the church does not possess a comprehensive understanding of the metanarrative of Scripture. Even if this section were not in the Bible, if the church knew the story of God, they would know what to do. In other words, Jesus' command to make disciples should be what anyone would come away with if they understood the story Jesus is fulfilling.
(2) Why is this section called “The Great Commission?” To state the obvious, Jesus never called this the “Great Commission.” It is a term that the church has coined to describe this last section in Matthew. What is often unknown is how relatively new this term is within church history. It is unknown where the phrase first originated, but it did not take on a life of its own until after the Reformation. Robbie F. Castleman states, “It turns out this passage may have got its summary label from a Dutch missionary Justinian von Welz (1621-88), but it was Hudson Taylor, nearly 200 years later, who popularized the use of “The Great Commission.”1 Thus, for its first 1600 years, the church did not derive its missionary impulse from this text. Instead, they understood Matthew 28.18-20 to be about the Trinitarian foundation of the church, not necessarily laying down the ‘marching orders’ of the church. This is not to say this text regarding the church’s mission is insignificant. It is just the opposite. When this text is understood within the metanarrative and does not become an isolated mandate, it inherently becomes a significant text depicting the church’s mission.2
EXEGETICAL ANALYSIS OF MATTHEW 28:19-20
Understanding the Great Commission requires two aspects: (1) One must comprehend how the four verbals (go, make disciples, baptize, and teach) relate to one another. (2) Secondly, one must define the verbals.
(1) The Relationship Between the Verbals
Of the four verbals in this text (going, make disciples, baptizing, and teaching), only one is a command; the rest are participles. Jesus does not give four orders; his only command is to “make disciples.” The three remaining participles flesh out and inform how to make disciples. Therefore, going, baptizing, and teaching describes how to fulfill the command.
The chart below visually helps one see the relationship between the four verbs.
(2) Defining the Verbals
Now that the relationship between the four verbals has been established, defining and unpacking what the four terms mean is necessary. This post will deal with the first, and the next will address the final three.
VERBAL 1: GO(ING)
What does “Go” mean? This participle has been subject to at least three interpretations, and the debate is not trivial. How one interprets this participle significantly impacts their understanding of what Jesus asks the church to do.
“Geographical” Interpretation
The first interpretation, popularized by William Carey, is geographical in nature. In this first view, the church is called to go and cross geographical boundaries with the message of the Gospel. This interpretation also understands “going” to have an imperatival function; thus, the church must cross geographical boundaries and make disciples. Eckhard Schnabel is a missiologist who understands this participle to have an imperatival sense. He writes,
“The participle “going” serves not simply to emphasize the ensuing finite verb—“make disciples”: it is the prerequisite of winning disciples… The disciples are directed to go to people who have not heard of Jesus or the message that he proclaimed, and announce to them the good news of salvation that Jesus had preached procured.”3
Further, this “going,” for Schnabel, is crossing geographical boundaries since the phrase “all nations” is used in GC passage and because Acts 1.8 speaks of the geographical movement from the center to the periphery. Further, this view understands “going” and “make disciples” as forming two separate actions—Go across geographical boundaries and make disciples. Because ideas have consequences, this interpretation spawns the idea that everyone is commanded to go unless the Lord calls him to stay. Maybe you have heard that phrase along somewhere in your Christian journey?
“As You Are Going” Interpretation
The second interpretation understands “going” to be an iterative (iterative is a fancy word that means continuing or repeating) participle. This interpretation generally says, “Make disciples as you are going about your life.” There is no need to go across the seas; just be about disciple-making as you live out your everyday life.
Robbie Castleman supports this interpretation. He states, “Jesus is saying, as you “go along your way” (a good translation of the usual “Go ye”), with the power of my very Spirit, be heralds of this good news.”4 Thus, “going” does not imply crossing geographical boundaries as much as it implies that one is to make disciples as they go about the regular rhythms of their lives.
Daniel B. Wallace, a noted Greek scholar, quickly discredits this interpretation:
“As for the Greek, it is true that the word translated ‘go’ is a participle. But it is not a present participle, which is the one that would be required if the meaning were ‘as you are going.’ It is an aorist participle—“going. As such, it hardly means ‘as you are going’ or ‘while you are going.’ The basic idea would be ‘after you have gone,’ and as such would presuppose that one would have gone forth before making disciples.”5
Notably, this interpretation has become the dominant view in the Evangelical church. It is no longer commonplace to hear that everyone must go unless called to stay home. Why? In my opinion, the cultural landscape forced the church to shift. As America has become one of the largest mission fields in the Western hemisphere, the church has begun to change our understanding from commanding everyone to go to now make disciples right where you live. We have a massive mission field right outside our doorstep. One positive aspect of this view is that it calls everyone to be involved in disciple-making. It is not just for the spiritual elite who give up their lives to go to another country; it is to be done by everyone, even those, dare I say, who are left behind. However, as good as this interpretation makes for a powerful sermon, I don’t think Matthew intended it to be understood this way. So what did Matthew intend to convey with his word “going?”
The “Urgent” Interpretation
The third primary option, which I prefer, functionally understands “going” as expressing urgency. Like the first interpretation, this option treats going as a command, but unlike the first option, it treats “going” and “make disciples” as a singular entity.
First, based on linguistics, it is best to see “going” as having an imperatival force. Wallace states, “When an aorist participle is followed by an aorist imperative in narrative literature, it almost invariably piggybacks on the force of the imperative. That is, it is translated like an imperative because the author is trying to communicate a command… The construction in which the participle and verb combine so that the participle borrows from the mood of the main verb is known as attendant circumstance.”6
Second, grasping that “going” and “make disciples” form a singular command is vital. Matthew creates a sense of urgency by adding “going” to the command. The immediate task of the followers of Jesus is now to make disciples. It is no longer to fish, to make money, or to have a family. All of these things are good things, even great things. But the urgent call is to make disciples above all else.
This construction of combining “go” with a command is typical in Matthew as he employs it six times within his book (Matt. 2.8; 9.13; 11.4; 17.27; 28.7, 19). In each of these usages, Matthew creates a sense of urgency.7
We use this construction all the time in English. If you tell your child that they need to go and clean their room, is there not a sense of urgency in your child cleaning their room? I know in my household, it is expressed in great urgency! Jesus informs his disciples that the new, urgent task to which they are to give their lives is disciple-making.
Summary:
So what does this all mean? It means that the mission to make disciples is not an “as you are going” laissez-faire approach nor is it a call to go to a foreign land. It is a call for the church to see what is most urgent. Now that Jesus has risen from the dead and possesses all authority over all the spiritual forces of darkness, the church must urgently give itself to making disciples of all nations.
The next post will discuss the remaining three verbals: baptizing, teaching, and making disciples.
Robbie F. Castleman, “The Great Commission: Ecclesiology,” Themelios 32, no. 3 (2007): 68.
Christopher Wright states, “The words of Jesus to his disciples in Matthew 28.19-20 … could be seen as a Christological mutation of the original Abrahamic commission—“Go… and be a blessing… and all nations on earth will be blessed through you.” Thus, the Great Commission account in Matthew, according to Wright, must be seen in light of how Christ fulfills the Abrahamic promises. In fact, the church through Jesus is fulfilling the Abrahamic promises of being a blessing to the nations. See The Mission of God, 213.
Eckhard J. Schnabel, Early Christian Mission: Jesus and the Twelve, Vol. 1 (Downers Grove: IVP, 2004), 357
Robbie F. Castleman, “The Great Commission: Ecclesiology,” 68.
Daniel B. Wallace, “The Great Commission or the Great Suggestion,” Daniel B. Wallace (blog), February 17, 2014, accessed November 23, 2014, http://danielbwallace.com/2014/02/17/the-great-commission-or-the-great-suggestion/.
Ibid.
Bosch states, “The “going” is not separate from the event expressed in the verb in the imperative mood. It does not necessarily suggest a traveling from one geographical point to another. However, this does not mean that “going” is redundant; rather, it serves to reinforce the action of the main verb and adds a note of urgency to it. This is clearly the case in Matthew 28.19. “Going” serves to underline the urgency and primacy of make disciples.” David J. Bosch, “The Structure of Mission: An Exposition of Matthew 28:16-20,” in The Study of Evangelism: Exploring a Missional Practice of the Church, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 77-78.
What do you mean by if the church knew the story of God, it would know what to do minus Matthew 28?