CHAPTER 18
Steven C. Hawthorne
Steven C. Hawthorne leads a mission and prayer mobilization ministry called WayMakers. After co-editing the Perspectives course and book in 1981, he launched a series of research expeditions among unreached peoples in Asia and the Middle East.
And the angel answered and said to the women, “. . . Go quickly and tell His disciples that . . . ‘He is going before you into Galilee, there you will see Him.’” (Matt 28:5–7)
Go and take word to My brethren to leave for Galilee, and there they shall see Me. (Matt 28:10)
But the eleven disciples proceeded to Galilee, to the mountain which Jesus had designated. And when they saw Him, they worshiped Him; but some were doubtful. (Matt 28:16–17)
They waited on the mountain, one of the highest hills overlooking the Sea of Galilee. There wasn’t any question of being in the right place. They had met with Jesus there before. Jesus had sometimes prayed there.1 In fact, James, John, and Peter took them to the very spot where Jesus had appeared in blazing white glory.
They stared at the lake below, breaking the silence to remember out loud some of the things that happened around the lake, called the Sea of Galilee. There were only eleven of them now. To a man, each of them wondered privately what would happen when Jesus came. Expectations ran high and wild. Time passed slowly. They waited and wondered.
He had never been predictable, even in the early Galilee days. What would happen now that He had died? Or was He alive? Each of them had already seen Him again, or what seemed to be Him. None of the encounters had been routine. He had walked through locked doors. Or He had managed to walk for miles at the side of close friends while remaining incognito, then vanishing when they recognized Him. Or He had appeared to be a gardener doing morning routines. Or just another guy on the beach. You could be staring at Him and not know it was Him, and then look again and nearly die of shock when you suddenly recognized Him. Ever since His death, and what certainly looked like His resurrection, He had met them unannounced, by surprise, apparently at random moments. But now there was an appointed place to meet Him. What would He say? It’s hard to imagine how Jesus could have arranged an encounter that would have gotten their attention any more than He did.
Even though they were each looking out for Him, when He finally appeared, He startled them all as He slowly walked up the hill toward them from a distance. Who was this person? Was He really alive? Or was He a ghost? Some doubted, but every single one of them bowed down and worshiped Him. That must have surprised them too. This was the first time they had worshiped Him in fullblown honor of who He was.2 They would never forget it. And they would not forget what He said.
When He spoke, His voice wasn’t loud, but the words were so direct that it felt like He was speaking right through them. As if there were a crowd of people behind them. Later they would realize that He had been speaking to everyone that would ever follow Him.
Four times in His statement, Jesus used the word “all” to declare the destiny of all of history. Looking at each of the four “alls” may be the simplest way for us to understand what He said: all authority, all peoples, all that He commanded, and all the days.
Some doubted, but every single one of them bowed down and worshiped Him.
All Authority
There was something different about Jesus as they watched Him stride closer to them. Yes, He was alive from the dead. That was enough to addle their minds; but there was something else about Him, as if He was supercharged with an awesome power. He had exerted confident authority as long as they had known Him. He had always been open about His authority: He had simply done whatever His Father had given Him to do with heaven-bestowed authority. But He was greater now. He was not wearing a crown or swinging a scepter. He was their friend Jesus, with the same deep smile and patient grace. But He was somehow immense before them. He was regal and global and dangerous. He was king of all the earth. They knew it before He even said a word.
“All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.” It didn’t surprise them at all that Jesus spoke about Himself. It made sense as He spoke. God Almighty, the Ancient of Days, had bestowed upon Jesus unsurpassed authority. They would ponder it for years and never fathom the depths of it all, but it made sense: Christ had triumphed over evil at the cross. Because of that victory the Father had exalted and honored His Son as the head of all humankind. He now held dominion over angelic entities that inhabit unseen heavenly realms. He had been empowered to push history in any direction that suited Him. He had been entrusted with the full power and authority to bring forth the fullness of the kingdom of God.
I think John, one of the eleven who was there on the mountain, much later in his life was shown this very transfer of authority from Father to the Son from heaven’s timealtered viewpoint (Rev 5:1–14). John was shown God Almighty, seated on His throne, holding a seven-sealed scroll in His hand. All of heaven yearned to see what was in this document, virtually the deed of Earth’s destiny. God’s answer to every injustice and grief appeared to be bound in it, ready for implementation. The scroll contained the fates and glories of the final generation of every nation. The highest hopes ever imagined are all surpassed in it: Every evil would be vanquished. Every worthy person would be honored. The scroll contained the missing final chapter to the human story, a wondrous finale under the headship of a Messiah.
Why did John weep when he heard that no one would open the scroll? Without a worthy person, God’s purposes would be left unfulfilled. There was no executor. Could this be? Was there no one in heaven with the authority and ability to carry out His will? “Stop weeping” John is told. A worthy one was found: “Behold, the Lion that is from the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has overcome so as to open the book and its seven seals” (Rev 5:5). The person of God’s choice is fully human, from the lineage of David, but He is altogether divine, the Lamb that comes from the very center of the throne. The Father grants to this glorious man Jesus, the ultimate authority to carry out all of His will. The Ancient of Days has awarded all things to the Son of Man. Who will ever withstand His wisdom? Who can daunt His determination to heal the nations? What demonic power might ever intimidate Him in the slightest way? Who can deflect His desire to gather all peoples to Himself? Never has there been such power in the hands of any person. He will never be surpassed. He will never abdicate His kingship. He will never stop until He has finished the fullness of the Father’s purpose.
RETURN TO LESSON 4: Mandate for the Nations
All the Peoples
This glorious man now stood before His eleven followers. He paused after speaking of His authority, letting His purpose virtually crackle in the air. He could authorize anything. What would He call for?
Therefore . . . go and disciple all the peoples.
They understood then what later readers of translations may miss, that the primary action word was “disciple.” The other action words “go . . . baptizing . . . and teaching” were all commanded actions, but they each filled out part of what Jesus meant by the primary command: “Disciple all the peoples.”
A Goal, Not a Process
Jesus spoke as if they could see every single nation from the hill on which He stood. To disciple each one of the nations meant that there would be a once-for-all change among every one of the tribes, languages, and peoples.
The word Jesus used also required an object for the discipling action. To express the Greek word translated, “make disciples,” we would need a new word in English: “. . . disciplize all the peoples.”3 The scope of that object (in this case “all the peoples”) would define the extent of the discipling action. The mandate should never be abbreviated as merely “make disciples,” as if Jesus simply wanted the process of disciple-making to happen.4 The expression must stand as a whole: “disciple all the peoples.” Jesus was setting out a super-goal. A discipling movement was in the destiny of every people on earth. He was giving His followers the task of starting those movements.
Jesus did not emphasize the process of communicating the gospel at this point. In fact, He said nothing about conveying the gospel itself. They were not mandated merely to expose people to the gospel. They were commissioned to bring about a result, a response, a global following of Jesus from every people. It was a task to be accomplished. And it would be completed. No doubts crossed their minds about that. Jesus always finished everything He set out to do.
The Peoples
Most translations today read “all nations.” When modern ears hear the word “nation” we immediately think of the idea of a “country” or a “nationstate.” But the Greek word is ethne, from which we get our word “ethnic.” Although the term sometimes was used to refer to all non-Jews or to all non-Christians, when it is used with the Greek word meaning “all,” it should be given its most common meaning: an ethnic or cultural people group.
For clarity we use the term “people group.” Today, as it was in the days of those disciples, people still group together and live in enduring ethnic identities. There are several aspects to the ways that people groups can be identified: Linguistic, cultural, social, economic, geographic, religious, and political factors can each be part of what gives formation to the peoples of the earth. From the viewpoint of evangelization, a “people group” is the largest possible group within which the gospel can spread as a discipling, or a church-planting movement without encountering barriers of understanding or acceptance.
The disciples would not have for a moment mistaken the mandate to refer to the political nationstates of the world. They would never have been confused that Jesus was sending them to non-Jewish people in general. Each of the eleven was from a region called “Galilee of the Gentiles” (the Greek word translated as “Gentiles” in Matt 4:15 is the identical word ethne which means “peoples” or “nations” in Matt 24:14 and 28:20). Galilee in that day was known for a multiplicity of diverse peoples living with different languages and customs (John 12:20–21; Matt 8:28; and others).
They knew the Scriptures spoke of peoples. They knew themselves as descendants of Abraham, destined to bless the clans and extended “families” of the world (Gen 12:3; 22:18; 28:14). They knew the prophecy of the messianic Son of Man, whose kingdom reign would extend over “all peoples, nations, and people of every language” (Dan 7:14).
Going to the Nations
Christ told them to be ready to change locations in order to do this task.5 The “going” was not an incidental matter, as if He was saying, “Whenever you happen to go on a trip, try to make a few disciples wherever you are.” For years they had traveled with Him, watching and helping as He systematically covered entire regions (Mark 1:38; Matt 4:23–25). He had sent them more than once to specific peoples and places, always directing them to enter into significant relationships in order to stimulate lasting movements of hope in Christ’s kingdom. The gospel was not to be announced without actually going to the places where people lived (Matt 10:5–6, 11–13; Luke 10:1–3, 6–9). Now He was sending them to distant lands to do more of the same in order to leave behind household-based movements of discipleship and prayer.
RETURN TO LESSON 4: Mandate for the Nations
The Great Commission and the Great Commandment Steven C. Hawthorne
The “Great Commission” of Matthew 28 has been seen as a counterpart to the so-called “great commandment,” in which Jesus points to the most important of all commandments of Scripture. In the familiar passage (Matt 22:25–37, with parallel accounts in Mark 12:28–34, and Luke 10:25–37), Jesus says that the “greatest” of all biblical commandments is love for God and love for neighbor. Many significant evangelical voices have put the two imperatives side by side as a way of expressing the full responsibility of Christians in the world.
How does the great commandment relate to the Great Commission? They are sometimes presented as balancing equals, corresponding to different dimensions of human need. The Great Commission is thought to focus on spiritual issues, while the great commandment is considered to address physical and social matters. But when they are held side by side as responses to human need, there can be confusion about how to integrate them as Christian mission.
Different: Historic Achievement and Constant Imperative
We may better see how the two commands work together if we respect how they are different. Comparing them as though they were equal may result in us failing to pursue either fully.
Loving God and our neighbors with devotion and service is not something which can ever be completed. Love is something that can only grow over time and must be pursued at all times. But the Great Commission is a global, historic achievement, a task to be completed. In spite of popular understanding, the Great Commission is not a command to do evangelism as often as one finds possible. It is a mandate entrusted to all of Christ’s followers to accomplish a work that requires many generations of labor that will be finished at the end of history.
Same Focus: Both Are for God
Trying to balance or compare the great commandment and the Great Commission may be missing the point of either one. In neither of them is the preeminent focus on human need, spiritual or otherwise. The primary end of both is a relational reality directed toward God. Though we often pay more attention to “love your neighbor” in the great commandment, the main point of Jesus’s words is that God would be loved with heart, soul, mind, and strength. And the essential outcome of the Great Commission is equally for God, that He would be lovingly served by obedient disciples in every people.
The point is not just to love God, but to labor that He will be loved. The greatest way of loving our Lord is to see that He is worshiped, followed, and loved in every people. Further-more, we have been given something greater than merely extending our own love to neighbors. We have a mandate to transform entire neighborhoods by multiplying those who love one another as Christ commanded.
How They Work Together
Neither can be prioritized above or below the other. Ultimately, neither can happen without the other. We cannot evangelize the peoples without excelling in love. And we cannot consider our work of evangelization to be complete unless people are growing in love for God and obeying Him by loving their neighbors.
[after sidebar] RETURN TO LESSON 4: Mandate for the Nations
All That I Commanded
Jesus gave them two simple specifics about discipling the peoples: baptizing and teaching. Before we interpose our much later understanding of what baptism was all about, or what makes for ideal topics for teaching, consider what those first followers of Jesus must have heard when those words were first spoken.
A People for His Name
Jesus phrased the directive, “baptizing them into the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” They had met Jesus while John was baptizing people. That baptism marked a repentance from former life, a cleansing, and a participation in the people of God ready for the fullness of the kingdom of God.
The disciples had begun to baptize people too, eventually baptizing even more than John the Baptizer (John 4:1–2). By that baptism people had declared their repentance and readiness to follow the soon-to-come Messiah. Baptism marked a loyalty change. The baptized person was pledging themselves to live under the governance of the Messiah.
Now Jesus was again sending them to baptize. They could not have fully comprehended at that moment, but they would later see what Jesus meant by the result: A new community would be formed by this baptism. The threefold name was not a formula to chant emptily while performing the ritual. Those who were baptized were introduced to God personally as He had fully revealed Himself. They were no longer waiting for a mystery Messiah. Every baptized disciple could relationally encounter the Father who had given His Son, and who would bestow on them the Holy Spirit of God.
World over, by this baptism, God would gain for Himself a people who would know personally what God wanted to be declared globally. The baptized people would wear His name publicly in every people group. They would later recognize that God was forming, from all the peoples, “a people for His name” (Acts 15:14).
Living under His Lordship
When Jesus said “teaching” they would not have had the slightest impression that they were to transfer mere knowledge to newcomers.
They heard Him say, “teaching them to obey.” They were not sent to round up students for classes in Hebrew ways and thought, or special seminary-level instruction. They were supposed to train people to know and follow Jesus in the fullest way that He could be known. To know Jesus was, and is, to obey Him. Their evangelism was to be primarily a matter of life obedience rather than pressing for conformity of beliefs. It was all about faith, but aimed, as Paul described it later, for “the obedience of faith among all the peoples” (Rom 1:5).
Obeying Jesus had never been a vague, personal affair, with every devotee of Jesus fabricating their own sense of discipline. Jesus had taught them very few and very clear commands. None of these commands had anything to do with the legalistic merit-making of religious systems. The primary command is a simple and universal command, addressed to all of His followers: “Love one another.” It’s impossible to love “one another” on one’s own. It takes two or more to fulfill this reciprocal command in a conscious way. Jesus was forming a community of life-giving joy under His lordship.
They were amazed by the rightness of it all. How fitting, how proper, how calmly urgent it was to summon people to follow Him from every people. Jesus wasn’t expressing runaway ambitions. The Ancient of Days had exalted Him as the only redeemer and the final judge of every man, woman, and child who had ever lived. Only He could ful-fill the destiny of every clan and tribe of earth’s peoples.
All the Days
“And lo, I am with you . . .” The final command was actually “Behold!” which meant “Watch for Me. Keep utterly focused on Me. Lean upon Me and look to Me.”6 He had just commissioned them to go to the most distant places on the planet. But He was not sending them away from Him. He was actually beckoning them to come nearer to Him than they ever had been. He was not merely passing on some of His power. That might have been the case if He was announcing His departure. Instead, He declared that He was on the planet to stay, wielding every ounce of His authority until the end of days. He Himself would be with them every single day until the end of the age.7
Not long after, from another mountain near Jerusalem, they would watch Him as He was lifted into the sky (Acts 1:9–12). From that city “they went out and preached every-where.” As they went, they were convinced that Jesus had not just disappeared. He had been enthroned in heaven. But they remembered what He had said about being with them.8 And He was with them! As the Gospel of Mark records it, at the same time that Jesus sat “at the right hand of God,” He also “worked with them” as they departed to the four corners of the planet to evangelize distant lands (Mark 16:19–20).
The age of which Jesus spoke has not yet ended. Every day since that meeting, Jesus has been coworking “with” those who are fulfilling His mandate.
As you read this, today is also one of those days. Jesus knew this very day would come when He spoke on the mountain. He knew about you. And He knew about the peoples that would follow Him during the days of your life. Can you imagine yourself on the mountain, knees to the ground, eleven men at your side, hushed to hear Him say these words? You have every right to imagine yourself being there, because Jesus actually spoke these words. And when
He spoke these words, He spoke with deliberate clarity to every person who would ever follow Him. That includes me and you. What shall we do in response to Him? He has given to each of His people a mandate to labor with His full authority to bring about obedience to “all” that He commanded among “all” the peoples. How can we do other than give Him all that we are?
RETURN TO LESSON 4: Mandate for the Nations
I Am With You Steven C. Hawthorne
When Jesus said, “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matt 28:20 NASB), He was not stating that He would merely be present. Jesus was not attempting to comfort His followers or leave them with a cheerful farewell. Most of the eleven disciples who were there would have immediately connected Jesus’s words with what God had declared many times when He was sending His people to accomplish a task or a mission.
If we read the biblical record carefully, almost every time that God sent someone to do something difficult, He told them, “I will be with you.” Recall the stories of the people whom God sent: Moses, Joshua, Gideon, Samuel, David, Solomon, and many others. As they were sent, especially when the work given was difficult or dangerous, God told them, “I will be with you.”
Early in the unfolding story of the Bible, Moses heard these words spoken by God at the burning bush: “I will send you to Pharaoh, that you may bring My people . . . out of Egypt [and] I will be with you” (Exod 3:10–12 NASB).
We all know the amazing things God did to bring many thousands of people out of Egypt To bring the people into the land of promise, God chose Joshua, who heard the same words, that God would be with him:
Be strong and courageous, for you shall go with this people into the land which the LORD has sworn to their fathers to give them . . . . The LORD will be with you He will not fail you or forsake you Do not fear or be dismayed (Deut 31:7–8 NASB)
“You Are with Me”
These words were not spoken to offer a bit of encouragement God was telling Joshua, like Moses, that his task would not be impossible. By saying, “I am with you,” God announced that He would be the primary force, the wisdom, and the power throughout the entire operation. With these words, “I am with you,” God was really saying, “You will be with Me.” God was making it clear that He was the primary reality and power throughout the entire mission. The deliverance of the people from Egypt was God’s doing. The gift of a homeland was God’s doing. If it was God’s idea and the point was to accomplish His purpose, we are not wrong to say that this was God’s mission—a mission God accomplishes with human servants.
The Goal of God’s Mission: Worship
The goal of God’s mission went far beyond giving people a pleasant, fruitful homeland. Yes, the land was a long-promised gift, but God made it clear that He desired the twelve tribes of Israel to offer themselves to Him in worship. As soon as the people came out of Egypt, God directed them to build a tabernacle, a place of worship, where the people could come daily to fulfill God’s desire, that His people would be a kingdom of priests (Exod 19:6). God wanted His entire people to become priests, that is, servants of worship who would serve Him.
The tabernacle served well while God’s people were on the move, but David hoped to build a temple for this purpose. It would become a place where people from every people, not just Israel, would bring Him worship from all the peoples.
To build this temple, David declared that God would empower his son Solomon with the same words, “Now, my son, the LORD be with you that you may be successful, and build the house of the LORD your God” (1 Chr 22:11 NASB).
Solomon dedicated the temple to welcome people from all nations:
Also concerning the foreigner who is not of Your people Israel, when he comes from a far country hear in heaven Your dwelling place in order that all the peoples of the earth may know Your name, to fear You, as do Your people Israel. (1 Kgs 8:41–43 NASB)
If it was God’s idea and the point was to accomplish His purpose, we are not wrong to say that this was God’s mission.
Centuries later, God allowed the people to be sent into exile. As part of this devastation, the temple was destroyed. God promised that after seventy years, He would bring the people back into the land and continue to worship Him. One of the most important tasks was to rebuild the temple. The non-Jewish emperor of the day, Cyrus, knew that renewing the worship of Israel would require the living God to be with them:
Thus says Cyrus king of Persia, “The LORD, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and He has appointed me to build Him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever there is among you of all His people, may the LORD his God be with him, and let him go up!” (2 Chr 36:23 NASB)
The people who returned to the land from Babylon and Persia were slow to rebuild the temple. God sent the prophet Haggai to challenge the people with familiar words:
“All you people of the land take courage,” declares the LORD, “and work; for I am with you.” (Hag 2:4 NASB)
Many others have served God in their day, taking on impossible tasks because they heard the words that God would be with them. Those who advanced God’s mission in the New Testament could have talked about what they had done, but they preferred to speak of “all that God had done with them” (Acts 14:27; 15:4).
A few days after Jesus gave what we have come to call the Great Commission, He ascended to heaven. Mark’s Gospel describes it this way: “He was received up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God” (16:19 NASB). Not long after His ascension, His followers “went out and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them, and confirmed the word by the signs that followed” (16:20 NASB). The risen Lord is still working with His people.
RETURN TO LESSON 1: The Living God Is a Missionary God
Notes
1. Angels had directed them to Galilee “He is going before you into Galilee, there you will see Him” (Matt 28:7) and to a mountain “to the mountain which Jesus had designated” (Matt 28:16). It was probably the same mountain near the Sea of Galilee (Mark 9:9, 14, 30) where Jesus had appeared in glory, hearing the Father’s voice with Peter, James, and John present (Mark 9:1–9 = Matt 17:1–8 = Luke 9:28–36). This event is sometimes referred to as “the transfiguration.”
2. After Jesus had been seen walking on water, Matthew 14:33 mentions that those who were in the boat worshiped Him. Mark says that they were merely astonished with hardened hearts. Matthew 28:17 may be describing a similar occasion of bewildered fear, but in my view, Matthew 28 is the beginning point of sustained worship of Jesus for all that they knew Him to be. See also Luke 24:52–53.
3. The verb “mathētuesate” in this form is transitive, which means that it requires a direct object to make sense. The entire phrase must be taken together, “mathētuesate panta ta ethnē” as an integral verbal idea. Some languages, such English, describe the verb as a phrase, to “make disciples.” To translate the original Greek language into English, we would need to invent a word, “disciplize all the peoples.” If Jesus had wanted to simply say “make” or “manufacture” disciples, He would have said exactly that. Instead, the focus of the language that Jesus used falls on discipling every ethne, or each one of the peoples.
4. Some have recently interpreted the verb “mathētueo” as training a follower to become just like the master. But the verb is rarely used to refer to the completion of the process of training. Most of the occurrences of the verb in the NT and other literature at the time of Christ refer to the enlisting of people to become followers instead of referring to the completion of the process of training. The idea that a disciple is someone who has achieved an advanced level of maturity and spiritual formation is a recent idea, influenced by “followup” programs for evangelism developed in post–World War II America. If the idea of making disciples refers to enlisting followers, and not to training them fully, it has enormous significance when considering the object of discipling. Some have claimed that by using the idea of discipling, Jesus was mandating that nationstates would slowly be transformed to an ideal state of God’s kingdom. But there is little or no evidence that the first followers understood Jesus’s words as focused upon nationstates, cities, or any other corporate entity as the object of discipling.
5. Some have suggested that Jesus was not issuing a command to change location or to cross cultural barriers, but instead He was calling for disciple making to be done in whatever location or occupation people may find themselves. But the syntax of the Greek sentence cannot be taken this way. “The aorist aspect makes the command definite and urgent. It is not “if you happen to be going,” or “as you go,” or “whenever you might be present” but rather “go and perform an act” (Cleon Rogers, “The Great Commission,” Bibliotheca Sacra 130, no. 519 [1973]: 262). Matthew uses the same verb “to go” as a participle to describe Herod’s directive to the magi to “go and search out” to find the newborn Messiah. Later in Matthew, Jesus gave directions to “go and tell” John the Baptist in prison (Matt 11:4). Angels gave directions to “go and tell His disciples” (Matt 28:7). When a participle precedes an imperative, the imperative force of both is actually heightened.
6. Some translations use an interjection, “Surely” or “Lo”, instead of an imperative, “Behold.”
7. The expression translated “every day” uses the same Greek word translated as “all” three times earlier in the passage.
8. Regarding the expression “I am with you,” compare Genesis 26:3, 24; 28:15, 20; Exodus 3:12; Deuteronomy 31:7–8, 23; Joshua 1:5; and Judges 6:16. When God gave difficult endeavors to Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Joshua, and Gideon, He assured them by saying, “I am with you.” Building the temple for all peoples to worship was considered to be a difficult task. God assured the first temple builder, Solomon, that He would be with him (1 Chr 28:20; 1 Kgs 11:38). Later, when the temple was being rebuilt, the people working with Haggai were told to expect that God would be with them as He had been in earlier times (Hag 1:13; 2:4). God would be coworking with them as the primary power. By saying, “I will be with you,” God was really saying, “You will be with me.” Jesus was essentially quoting these ancient words in Matthew 28:20. As God had been with His people before, He would be working with them in discipling all the peoples.