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The Great Commission (Is Not What You Think)

by James Barringer  
4/21/2011 / Christian Living

How many times have you been guilted to "Evangelize more!" by overeager people who come quoting the Great Commission of Matthew 28? The verse is so well-known that some of you could probably recite it from memory: "Go into all the world and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And I will be with you always, even to the end of the age."

There's just one problem. The Great Commission isn't a call to personal evangelism.

This finally began to bother me recently while reading a book about how everyone should evangelize more. Let me start by saying that I agree with that principle. I want the Kingdom to grow. But what bothered me about this book is that the fellow seemed to notice no problem with the fact that he would lead a person to Christ and then never talk to them again. Thirty pages or so into the book, after he told glowing story after glowing story about his successes in evangelism, I wanted to write him a letter and say, "You're not singlehandedly fulfilling the Great Commission! You're not creating disciples; you're creating converts."

The fact of the matter is that anyone who is living a Christian life is fulfilling the Great Commission. I help create disciples by teaching at my church and helping to lead the youth group. My friend Richie creates disciples by witnessing to strangers. "But I'm not good at any of those things," you say. Good, because you don't have to be. If you hold your friends accountable for their life choices, you're helping create disciples. If you spend time with a believer younger than you and try to help them along, you're creating disciples. There are a hundred million things you can do to help create disciples, and there's something for every single personality type, skill set, and spiritual gift that God has created.

And that's why I think it's abominable that we've allowed evangelists to capture the Great Commission and twist it according to their own ends. Like I said, I'm glad for those people who are relentless evangelists, but if everyone was a relentless evangelist, who would be the Bible scholar? Who would be the preacher? Who would be the counselor? Always resist the pull of those people who want to re-create you in their own image. God has already created you in his own image, with gifts and abilities that you can use to make disciples. As long as you're employing that talent - whether it's evangelism or not - then you're fulfilling the Great Commission.

A proper understanding of the Great Commission involves the analogy, employed by Paul, of the body of Christ as, well, a body. Not everyone is a hand, writes Paul, or a foot or an eye or a mouth. Creating disciples is a process that involves every part of the body of Christ, which is why God bothered to create people with gifts other than evangelism in the first place. Someone brings the converts into the body, and he does it better than I can. Then I disciple the new convert, and I do it better than the evangelist can. We need each other. Without me, the evangelist creates converts who don't know anything, not disciples. Without the evangelist, I have no new converts to disciple. We're a body, and we only function when all our parts are doing what they're supposed to.

The life of Paul is a great example, because the book of Acts tells many stories of his evangelistic missionary journeys. Passages like that are ammunition for those who think that all of us should be as bold as Paul. But again, I find a problem. Paul was a vagabond. He would plant a church and then leave. Who pastored the church when he was gone? Not all of us are called to be Paul. Not even all the Christians of Paul's day were called to be Paul. He needed Timothy and Titus and the other pastors to take care of his churches while he spent his time evangelizing. He knew as well as anybody that it takes dozens of parts to make an effective body, which is the reason you don't see Paul commanding us in his letters to spend large amounts of time evangelizing.

That's the essence of my interpretation of Matthew 28. There's more to the Great Commission, to creating disciples, than simple evangelism, and we should reject anyone who wants to claim the verse in that way. A holistic understanding of the whole counsel of Scripture reminds us that we all have abilities, and the question in God's eyes is not what our particular abilities happen to be, but how well we use what is given to us (see the parable of the talents found just a few chapters before the Great Commission in Matthew 25). That's why I say the Great Commission is not what you think. Maybe it's time to rethink what we've been told about that verse and compare it with what the rest of Scripture says.

Jim Barringer is a 38-year-old writer, musician, and teacher. More of his work can be found at facebook.com/jmbarringer. This work may be reprinted for any purpose so long as this bio and statement of copyright is included.

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