The Correctives of Intentional Discipleship, Part III
The most well-known statement of the Great Commission is the one given in Matthew’s Gospel:
Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age (Matt 28:19–20).
Implicit in Jesus’s words is the necessary role of the church in his mission. As we will see, the church’s implicit role becomes explicit when we look at the other statements of the Great Commission, and as the apostles begin to carry out the Great Commission in the Book of Acts.
A Biblical Theology of the Great Commission
While Matthew’s version of the Great Commission is the most well-known, it is not the only one. Luke also records Jesus’s final instructions to his followers:
[Jesus] told them, “This is what is written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.” (Luke 24:46–49)
Luke offers some additional details of the commission: (1) the content of the preaching will be “repentance” and “forgiveness of sins,” (2) it will begin at Jerusalem, and (3) the apostles are to wait in Jerusalem until they receive the power to inaugurate the mission. Did the apostles receive the promised power and indeed begin the mission from Jerusalem? Luke’s sequel in the book of Acts provides the answer. He begins by offering yet a third account of Jesus’s commission:
In my former book [the Gospel of Luke] Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. … [Jesus} said to them: … “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:1–2, 7–8)
The Pentecost Connection
Luke then recounts the events that transpired during the feast of Pentecost in the city of Jerusalem. After recording the baptism of the Holy Spirit (the promised “power” of Luke 24:49 and Acts 1:8) in 2:1–13, Luke details the results of Peter’s sermon (2:14–36):
When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins” (Acts 2:37–38).
Here Peter issues an appeal that is based directly on Jesus’s command just a few weeks earlier. Note the elements of the Great Commission provided by both Matthew and Luke: “baptism” (cf. Matt 28:19), as well as “repentance” and “forgiveness of sins” (Luke 24:47) are all present. Note as well that, coordinate with the beginning of the Great Commission, is the beginning of the church. We can hardly overstate the significance of Acts 2:38 for an understanding of the centrality of the church. It provides the bridge from the risen Lord’s mandate to the apostles’ establishment and extension of the church in obedience to his command.
Pentecost Was Only the Beginning
We see the identification of the advance of the Great Commission with the progress of the church in the structure of the book of Acts. Luke’s account makes it clear that the apostles understood the Great Commission as centered on the church. Toussaint has correctly outlined the book according to this understanding:
The outline of this study is the result of using two keys in Acts. The first and most obvious one is the theme verse, Acts 1:8, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
The second key is the use Luke makes of “progress reports” which are sprinkled throughout the book (cf. 2:47; 6:7; 9:31; 12:24; 16:5; 19:20; 28:30–31). …
The beautiful correlation of these two factors—the key verse of Acts 1:8 and the seven progress reports—form the basis of the … outline [of Acts].1
We see Luke’s intention to chronicle the expansion of the Great Commission at the outset (Acts 1:8). The “progress reports” make it clear that the advance of the commission is co-extensive with the progress of the church. For instance, the report in 9:31 says, “Then the church throughout Judea, Galilee and Samaria enjoyed a time of peace. It was strengthened; and encouraged by the Holy Spirit, it grew in numbers, living in the fear of the Lord.” Likewise, 16:5 states, “So the churches were strengthened in the faith and grew daily in numbers.” Again, 19:20 informs us that, “In this way [Paul’s missionary journeys] the word of the Lord spread widely and grew in power.”
Paul’s Resume
Of course, the central figure God used to carry the gospel to “the ends of the earth” was Paul. At his spectacular conversion found in Acts 9:15, the Lord says of Paul, “This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles.” In Eph 3:9 Paul tells us that his job description included another important component: “to make plain to everyone the administration of this mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God.” Paul identified the “mystery” a few verses earlier in 3:6: “This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body [the church], and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus.” (cf. also Col 1:24–26).
The Greek word translated “administration” in Eph 3:9 has the sense of an “arrangement” or “plan”2 and thus can speak of the “management of a household.”3 Paul has been given the task of making known God’s plan of including Gentiles within God’s household. In Eph 3:2 Paul refers to this age as “the administration of God’s grace.” This signifies that God has now arranged his plan around the church. In the words of Paul in Eph 3:10, “[God’s] intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known.”
Paul’s Strategy
What was Paul’s strategy for fulfilling his assignment to “carry my name before the Gentiles?”4 From Luke’s account of Paul’s activities in Acts, as well as Paul’s letters to the churches, it is clear that the multiplication and strengthening of local churches was at the heart of his ministry. A careful study of Paul’s ministry pattern as given in Acts 13–20 reveals that he developed an intentional strategy that centered upon the establishment of a church in a population center which, in turn, could reach out to other communities. For instance, during their first missionary journey (see Acts 13–14), Paul and Barnabas followed a clear plan after commissioning by their home church in Antioch of Syria, they planted a new church in Antioch of Pisidia, from which they were able to reach out to neighboring cities to establish other churches in Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe. Paul followed the same pattern during his next missionary journey (Acts 16–18). On this occasion he planted the “mother church” in Ephesus which commissioned a trained disciple (e.g., Epaphras, see Col 1:7) to establish churches in Colossae, Laodicea, and Hierapolis. In each of these examples, Paul or a trained fellow worker (1) communicated the gospel, (2) organized congregations, (3) taught them doctrine, (4) helped them appoint pastors, and (5) checked back on their progress. The result was always an autonomous local church.
May the Lord help us to intentionally “make disciples,” initiating them into His church via baptism, teaching them to obey everything He has commanded, so the Lord can use them to establish still more churches doing likewise.
Ken Brown is the pastor of Community Bible Church in Trenton, MI. We republish his article by permission.
Photo by Andrew McQuaid on Unsplash
- Stanley D. Toussaint, “Acts,” in The Bible Knowledge Commentary, ed. John F. Walvoord and Roy B. Zuck (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1983), 2:352. [↩]
- “οἰκονομία,” BDAG, 697. [↩]
- “οἰκονομία,” NIDNTTE, 3:465. [↩]
- What follows is indebted to David Hesselgrave’s “Pauline Cycle” of missions. See his Planting Churches Cross-Culturally: A Guide for Home and Foreign Missions (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1988), 58. [↩]