The Twofold Great Commission

The more I read Scripture, the more I realize that there are two primary tasks for the Church, both encapsulated in Christ’s great commission in Matthew 28:19-20.

The first tends to get most of the hype, and we are right to be concerned with it: “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the son, and the Holy Spirit.” Loving and being loved by God our Savior should be something we shout from the housetops, but our faith has to go deeper than that to be effectively proclaimed.

The second task, which tends to be somewhat glossed over, provides that depth and balance. “Teaching them to observe all that I commanded you,” doesn’t have the same fascination as missionary work, but is just as crucial to the Church. Without the follow-up work of “training in righteousness” (2 Tim. 3:16) through faithful exposition of Scripture, the work of missions and evangelism loses its way and devolves into a social gospel that is no gospel at all. The work of the Church is founded on both of those tasks, and neither can be accomplished when divorced from the other.

As Kevin DeYoung points out in The Good News We Almost Forgot, his new book on the Heidelberg Catechism, “The only thing more difficult than finding the truth is not losing it. What starts out as new and precious becomes plain and old. What begins as a thrilling discovery becomes a rote exercise. What provokes one generation to sacrifice and passion becomes in the next generation a cause for rebellion and apathy.”

The Church has to cling to both responsibilities handed to us by Christ in this passage to truly fulfill the commission. Evangelism without training results in shallow believers who are prone to syncretism and may not hold firm in the face of persecution. When we overemphasize training, we can become so insular that we lose touch with the world we have been called to reach. That’s why Christ called us to mathēteuō, “make disciples,” unifying the two tasks. 

Making disciples is not hit-and-run witnessing that moves on to the next target as soon as someone has a conversion experience; it is a process. Jesus “made disciples” of the Peter, James, John, and the rest of the 12 over the course of three years of constant interaction! The Greek term means “to enroll as a pupil,” and puts the emphasis of the action on teaching and learning–to make disciples of the nations is to continually teach the truth so that it does not become stale and lifeless to those long acquainted with it. God’s Word is never dull, it is our senses that become dull from our failure to open, explore, engage, and obey it.

Expositing this two-fold nature of Christ’s commission and exhorting churches and individuals to wholly embrace both aspects of it is the aim of our content at Disciple. You’ll find a lot of material that fits both sides of our call, and we hope that this mission and message is coming through loud and clear in each issue.

Justin Lonas is the editor of Disciple Magazine