continued from yesterday
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The Great Commission is directed at the eleven disciples. Did Jesus in Matthew mean it to apply to more than just these eleven? After all, Jesus specifically directs his instructions to the eleven in Matthew 28. He does not direct it to the other Jews who followed him around, listening to his teaching. He does not direct it to those who will later believe in him like you and me.
I think there is good reason to think that Matthew wanted his audience to see themselves as part of the Great Commission as well. For one, I suspect that most of the disciples were already dead by the time Matthew was written. If Matthew dates to the time after Jerusalem's destruction, as most experts think, then Peter and James were certainly dead already. Yet Matthew 28:20 says that Jesus will be with the disciples to the end of the age. The implication is that Jesus was still with the audience of Matthew, even if the disciples were passing.
The way that Matthew seems to blur the time before Jesus' death and after his resurrection gives us another reason to believe that Matthew was not written simply to record what Jesus did while he was on earth. It is not simply a history book written out of antiquarian interest but was meant to speak directly to an audience some forty to fifty years later. [1]The "mission sermon" of Matthew 10 seems to address not only the mission of the disciples while Jesus was on earth but the one they would conduct after his death. The way the Pharisees are treated probably speaks not only to Jesus' own interaction with them but to the period in the 70s when they were the primary authority left within Israel.
So if Matthew spoke so strongly to the Jewish Christians of its day, then presumably its climactic mission was also for them as well. Perhaps Matthew still has traces of the expectation that the end would come very soon (e.g., 10:23; 24:34). But it draws an arrow that points beyond the first mission to an ongoing mission that continues today, because it already points beyond the lives of the first disciples.
On the one hand, we have good reason to think that some early Christians saw the mission to all the nations largely finished in the first century. Sometimes Christians have pushed for taking the gospel to unreached people of the earth because of verses like Matthew 24:14: "this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come." The problem is that we are defining "whole world" on our terms rather than those when Matthew was written. Colossians 1:23 says that the gospel had already been preached "to every creature under heaven" way back in the first century. The "whole world" of that day was largely restricted to the lands surrounding the Mediterranean. [2]
Yet surely the spirit of these statements continues on, not least because the Christians of the first few centuries understood Matthew to be Christian Scripture. When the early Christians came to see Matthew as part of a new canon, a "New Testament," the church was saying through the continued inspiration of the Spirit that these words were not just words for the first century. They were not just words for the time when Jesus was on earth. They were not just historical record. But these words in some way continued to speak to Christians one hundred, two hundred, now two thousand years later.
So without even thinking about it, most of us today understand that we are included in that commission to the eleven disciples. We understand that the Spirit of Christ and the heavenly authority of Christ continue with us today. We understand that we are also in the business today of making disciples of all the nations and teaching them Christ's commandments. [3] We still baptize.
Our world is much bigger than theirs was. We are aware of many more nations to reach with the good news. So while Matthew and Paul may not have had New Guinea in mind, the way we have come to read these passages about the mission fits perfectly with the Spirit of their mission.
What was the good news of the kingdom again? ...
[1] This is an ironic by-product of viewing Matthew in modern historical terms. If we insist on viewing Matthew's primary goal as telling us only about what Jesus did and said for three years while he was on earth, then we have to justify applying it to the church that came afterwards. On the other hand, if Matthew writes a version of Jesus' life that "translates" him for Matthew's audience, then Jesus' words in Matthew transcended his earthly situation from the very start and applied directly to the church that followed.
[2] We are often rather unsophisticated in our ability to handle figurative language in our reading of the Bible. Human language is full of figures of speech, metaphors, hyperbole, and all sorts of idiomatic expressions. What a phrase like "every creature" means depends on how the person using the phrase means it, not on how it strikes me in my "dictionary."
[3] The phrase, "all nations" could also be translated as "all Gentiles." While it is hard to believe that Matthew 28 only has a Gentile mission in mind (surely the eleven were also meant to continue their mission to the Jews), the Great Commission probably did originally have a strong connotation of the mission to Gentiles after Jesus' earthly focus on the Jews.
Showing posts with label Great Commission. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Great Commission. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
5.5 The Great Commission
continued from last week
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... Unfortunately, the final memory of the mission in Galilee is one in which these villages ultimately rejected Jesus as king.
The ultimate mission for the disciples in Matthew comes of course in the Great Commission in Matthew 28. This is the climax of Matthew's presentation and it points to the continuation of Jesus' mission after he has departed from the earth after his resurrection. We call it a commission because the eleven remaining disciples are sent into all the nations to continue what Jesus has started while he was on earth.
Sometimes you hear people point out that the word "go" is actually a participle in the original Greek: "Having gone" (Matt. 28:19). The emphasis is thus not on going but on making disciples, which is the main verb. Some then argue that going is an assumption rather than a command--in other words, there is no question that they would go. Probably, we shouldn't try make any major point from the word at all. Matthew uses a similar construction elsewhere where there is no emphasis on going (e.g., Matt. 11:4). [1]
So the focus here is not on going but on the eleven "making disciples." The eleven go under the authority of Jesus (28:18). Jesus certainly had authority before his resurrection (e.g., 9:6), but quite possibly Matthew thinks of Jesus now gaining all authority and not only on earth but in heaven now as well. He has been enthroned as cosmic king and thus all must now "bow the knee" and worship him (28:16). They carry his authority with them in part because he will be with them to the end of the age (28:20).
How are they to make further disciples? First, they are to baptize wherever they go. This is presumably a baptism associated with repentance, a physical cleansing that represented the spiritual cleansing and forgiveness of sins. Interestingly, Matthew speaks of baptism "in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." This may reflect the extent to which Christian understanding had developed by the time of Matthew's writing, probably after the destruction of Jerusalem in AD70. [2] Acts (e.g., 2:38) and probably Paul (1 Cor. 1:13) baptized in the name of Jesus and probably reflect the earliest sense of baptism.
The second element of discipling that the Great Commission mentions is teaching future Jesus followers to do the things that Jesus commanded. Jesus' love commandment in Matthew 22:37-40 is of course the very heart of what Jesus commanded while he was on earth. He boiled all his teaching down to love of God and love of neighbor. In the next chapter, we'll also look at the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7, arguably the central presentation of Jesus' teaching in Matthew.
The Great Commission is directed at the eleven disciples. Did Jesus in Matthew mean it to apply to more than just these eleven? ...
[1] Probably, "go and make disciples" is the best translation, since a participle can be used as a light command when associated with another central command.
[2] The reason Matthew probably dates to the time after the destruction of Jerusalem is at least two-fold. First, there is the likelihood that Matthew used Mark, which would place it later. But more centrally, there is the way Matthew may have edited the parable about a banquet. Compare Matthew 22:7 with Luke 14:15-23.
__________
... Unfortunately, the final memory of the mission in Galilee is one in which these villages ultimately rejected Jesus as king.
The ultimate mission for the disciples in Matthew comes of course in the Great Commission in Matthew 28. This is the climax of Matthew's presentation and it points to the continuation of Jesus' mission after he has departed from the earth after his resurrection. We call it a commission because the eleven remaining disciples are sent into all the nations to continue what Jesus has started while he was on earth.
Sometimes you hear people point out that the word "go" is actually a participle in the original Greek: "Having gone" (Matt. 28:19). The emphasis is thus not on going but on making disciples, which is the main verb. Some then argue that going is an assumption rather than a command--in other words, there is no question that they would go. Probably, we shouldn't try make any major point from the word at all. Matthew uses a similar construction elsewhere where there is no emphasis on going (e.g., Matt. 11:4). [1]
So the focus here is not on going but on the eleven "making disciples." The eleven go under the authority of Jesus (28:18). Jesus certainly had authority before his resurrection (e.g., 9:6), but quite possibly Matthew thinks of Jesus now gaining all authority and not only on earth but in heaven now as well. He has been enthroned as cosmic king and thus all must now "bow the knee" and worship him (28:16). They carry his authority with them in part because he will be with them to the end of the age (28:20).
How are they to make further disciples? First, they are to baptize wherever they go. This is presumably a baptism associated with repentance, a physical cleansing that represented the spiritual cleansing and forgiveness of sins. Interestingly, Matthew speaks of baptism "in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." This may reflect the extent to which Christian understanding had developed by the time of Matthew's writing, probably after the destruction of Jerusalem in AD70. [2] Acts (e.g., 2:38) and probably Paul (1 Cor. 1:13) baptized in the name of Jesus and probably reflect the earliest sense of baptism.
The second element of discipling that the Great Commission mentions is teaching future Jesus followers to do the things that Jesus commanded. Jesus' love commandment in Matthew 22:37-40 is of course the very heart of what Jesus commanded while he was on earth. He boiled all his teaching down to love of God and love of neighbor. In the next chapter, we'll also look at the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7, arguably the central presentation of Jesus' teaching in Matthew.
The Great Commission is directed at the eleven disciples. Did Jesus in Matthew mean it to apply to more than just these eleven? ...
[1] Probably, "go and make disciples" is the best translation, since a participle can be used as a light command when associated with another central command.
[2] The reason Matthew probably dates to the time after the destruction of Jerusalem is at least two-fold. First, there is the likelihood that Matthew used Mark, which would place it later. But more centrally, there is the way Matthew may have edited the parable about a banquet. Compare Matthew 22:7 with Luke 14:15-23.
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