Matthew’s Gospel ends with the risen Jesus giving his disciples a job to do. Not just a job, but the only job. First, he establishes that he is indeed the one to be assigning such a task. “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me,” Jesus tells them (Matthew 28:18). Yes, the world, the whole cosmos actually, is in his hands. The tempter had once offered him this prize, but only at the cost of worshipping that which is not God. Jesus knew better. He knew that ultimate authority comes only through death and resurrection. So, it would be in the disciples’ best interest to pay close attention to the task he gives them now.
We call this the “Great Commission” and it involves four verbs: go, make, baptize, and teach.
Go. Embed yourselves in the lives of the people around you. Don’t just sit and wait for them to come to you. Bring the love of Christ with you everywhere you go.
Make. Make disciples, more specifically. A disciple is a student, someone who has built their life around learning from Jesus what a good, wise, and Godly life looks like, learning from Jesus what it truly means to be human. Go and make people hungry to learn from Jesus. (Believe me, they already are.)
Baptize in the name of Father, Son, and Spirit. Immerse these newly Jesus-infatuated learners in the very being of God. Submerge them into his heavenly reality.
Teach what I have taught you. Go back to the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7; Jesus and the disciples are on a mountain as he’s saying this in Matthew 28). That Sermon details for us life as God designed us to live it. It is a life characterized by blessing, forgiveness, non-violence, humility, generosity, prayer, and being a non-anxious, non-judgmental presence. That’s who Jesus has taught you to be. Now go and teach someone else how to be that, too.
And so this is the Great Commission: go, make disciples, baptize, teach. But there is one more verb, and while it doesn’t feel quite as active as these other verbs, it is no less vibrant. The Great Commission’s final verb is: remember. “Remember that I am with you to the end of the age.”
Remember. Don’t forget. Don’t be asleep to it. Instead, be alert to it. Live in a constant awareness of the present of Jesus Christ through his Holy Spirit. All the way back in Matthew 1, Joseph is told that Mary’s baby will be nothing short of “Immanuel, God with us.” Now Matthew gives his story the perfect bookend with Jesus’ final words being, “I am with you.” Be comforted by that presence. Be activated by that presence.
The Great Commission is a series of directives sandwiched between two sweeping theological statements. All authority belongs to Jesus, and, he is with us always. Once we really become convinced these are true, what kind of things are possessed to do? What kind of life are we motivated to lived? When the truth of Christ’s presence and authority truly sinks into our hearts and minds, the ministry of going, making disciples, baptizing, and teaching will flow out of us naturally, even in the times we may not be aware we’re doing it.
All things in heaven and on earth are in the hands of the one who loves us, died for us, and is constantly present with us. Now, we will respond accordingly.