“And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, ‘All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore 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 all things that I have commanded you, and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” -Matthew 28:18-20
We are pretty familiar, I think, with this passage that is often called “The Great Commission.” In it, the risen Christ gave his disciples instructions concerning their role during this present age of gospel proclamation. Since we have already established that the glory of God is the primary goal of missions, it follows that we can glorify God most by obeying his will as expressed in this and other commission passages in the NT. Dave Doran, in his book For the Sake of His Name, discusses the meaning of the Great Commission over the span of several chapters, so we will follow his argument as he considers the task, the target, and the territory of the Great Commission.
The Task of the Great Commission
What exactly is it that Christ expected his apostles, and those of us who follow in their footsteps until the end of the age, to do? He told them to “make disciples of all the nations.” This is the only command found in this passage. As Doran explains, “The disciples are to do what He did–make disciples.” But what does that involve? Well, according to Christ, we must intentionally go into the world so that disciples can be made of all the nations, we must baptize those who believe, signifying that these new disciples are indeed followers of Christ, and teach them to obey Christ in all things. Anything short of this is not fulfilling the Great Commission.
To describe our commission another way, we could say that it is an offensive action (not offensive as in causing anger or resentment, but offensive as opposed to defensive action). We might even say that making disciples is true spiritual warfare. As Doran puts it, “today the church must actively wage war against Satan’s attacks. While we wait for the final defeat of Satan we must remember that the task of making disciples calls us to raid the kingdom of darkness to deliver the god of this world’s captives.” This process is more than just evangelism, as it involves both the public identification with Christ and the ongoing training in obedience to him. And this last is a lifelong process that is completed only when the disciple reaches his eternal home.
If this is indeed what disciple-making is, then it follows that certain activities are necessary to accomplish this goal, or we might even say that there is really only one necessary activity, proclaiming the gospel. The examples in the book of Acts and the NT Epistles repeatedly demonstrate that the call to missions is a call to preach the word of God. It is by God’s word that disciples are made and by God’s word that they are trained, encouraged, strengthened, and led. This is the essential missionary activity, if we are going to fulfill the commission we have received from Christ.
And yet there are many today who suggest that the commission demands social action alongside evangelism. They typically base their argument on a particular view of the ministry of Christ himself, that he entered into the world to identify himself with sinful men in order to redeem them. It is generally argued that we, too, must practice an “incarnational ministry,” by entering into the world of those we would seek to reach and identifying with them where they are. However, this approach must be rejected, and here are two good reasons. First, the truth must be proclaimed in order for disciples to be made. It is possible to make disciples without engaging in social action, but it is not possible to make disciples without telling people about Jesus Christ. Second, the incarnation of Christ was a unique and unrepeatable event which resulted in Christ’s atoning death for sinners, therefore it is impossible for us to imitate Christ’s incarnation in any meaningful way. In fact, Doran argues that to reduce the incarnation of Christ down to simply identifying with the people you minister to is “to cheapen the incredible miracle of the incarnation that is presented to us in Scripture.” Instead of an incarnational ministry, we need to renew our commitment to proclaiming the gospel, baptizing disciples, and training them to follow the Lord.