MISSION, AS WE TRIED to demonstrate in the previous chapter, is not everything we do in Jesus’s name, nor everything we do in obedience to Christ. Mission is the task we are given to fulfill. It’s what Jesus sends us into the world to do. And if we want to figure out what Jesus sends disciples into the world to do, we think the best place to look is the Great Commission.
Before we state our reasons for focusing on the Great Commission, and before we get to the Great Commission texts themselves and how they support our thesis above, it might be helpful to examine a few other passages that are sometimes pushed forward as offering a different and fuller mission identity for the church. As you’ll see, our problem is not with applying these texts to our contemporary context, or even with using them to shape our missional identity. Every passage of Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for us (2 Tim. 3:16). But—and here’s the rub—every passage is profitable only if understood and applied in the right way.
Genesis 12:1–3
We begin with Yahweh’s call to Abram:
Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Gen. 12:1–3)
Everyone agrees that this is a pivotal text not just in Genesis but also in God’s grand plan of redemptive history. After a host of curses (Gen. 3:14, 17; 4:11; 5:29; 9:25) and lots of sin run amok, Genesis 12 bursts onto the scene with the promise of universal blessing. At last, here’s a spot of good news and a beautiful revelation both of God’s mission and of marching orders for Abraham.
But whereas everyone recognizes Genesis 12 as a key passage in the unfolding of God’s plan of salvation, others also see it “as one of the most important places in a missiological reading of the Bible.”1 What they mean is that Genesis 12 reveals the heart of God’s mission and ours—namely, to be a blessing. Reggie McNeal argues that in this “simple but far-reaching covenant . . . the people of God are charged with the responsibility and enjoy the privilege to bless everyone.”2 Likewise, Christopher Wright maintains that “it would be entirely appropriate, and no bad thing, if we took this text as ‘the Great Commission’. . . .There could be worse ways of summing up what mission is supposed to be all about than ‘Go . . . and be a blessing.’ ”3 Later he concludes, “The Abrahamic covenant is a moral agenda for God’s people as well as a mission statement by God.”4 In missional thinking, Genesis 12 is more than a promise. It’s more than a revelation of God’s ultimate mission in redemptive history. It is a command for the children of Abraham to help the nations experience all the good gifts that God longs for them to enjoy.5
At first, a closer look at the grammar of Genesis 12 seems to support a “missional” understanding of the text. There are two imperative verbs: “go” in verse 1 and “be a blessing” at the end of verse 2. So, contrary to the ESV translation, it looks as though Abraham has two commands: go and bless. Wright makes much of the grammar, arguing that “both [verbs] therefore have the nature of a charge or a mission laid on Abraham. . . . ‘Be a blessing’ thus entails a purpose and goal that stretches into the future. It is, in short, missional.”6 But it’s curious that Wright builds so much on this foundation when earlier he acknowledges that “it is a feature of Hebrew (as indeed it is in English) that when two imperatives occur together the second imperative may sometimes express either the expected result or the intended purpose of carrying out the first imperative.”7 In other words, the second grammatical imperative may not have the force of an imperative, but rather of a purpose or a result of obeying the first imperative. In fact, our English translations8 all render the end of verse 2 “you shall be a blessing” or “so that you shall be a blessing” or something similar. There are several other places in the Old Testament where an imperative verb should be translated as a result clause, rather than a command. Take Genesis 42:18 for example, where Joseph says, “Do this and you will live.” Both “do this” and “live” are imperative in form, but “live” is also clearly to be understood as the result of “doing this.” It’s not another command. We think this is how the second imperative in Genesis 12:1–2 should be translated—as a result clause, rather than as a command.9 This means, to quote Eckhard Schnabel, “Abraham does not receive an assignment to carry YHWH’s blessings to the nations; rather, the nations are promised divine blessing if and when they see Abraham’s faith in YHWH and if and when they establish contact with his descendants.”10
In talking about Hebrew grammar we quickly realize two things: (1) most people reading this book are ready for us to stop talking about Hebrew grammar, and (2) we are not experts in Hebrew grammar. Some (but not all) Hebrew scholars may disagree with the last paragraph. But even if the verb should be translated as a command, or even if it has that force no matter how you slice it, we still think the “missional” reading of the text says too much. Even if Abraham is told, “Go be a blessing,” the entire story of the patriarchs demonstrates that God is the one doing the blessing, quite apart from any blessing strategy on the part of Abraham. True, God’s blessing may be dependent (in a proximate way) on Abraham going. And true, Abraham’s obedience to God results in blessings on the nations. True, Abraham and his kin are interacting with Gentiles all throughout Genesis as the chosen family is the means of blessing for some peoples and cursing for others. But Abraham does not leave Ur intent on blessing the Canaanites. After Genesis 12, the narrative follows different individuals and nations whose plusses and minuses prove the promise of God that whoever blesses Abraham will be blessed, and whoever curses him will be cursed. God blesses Abraham’s family despite themselves, and he blesses those who treat Abraham well despite Abraham’s failures. This is not to suggest that Abraham’s obedience is irrelevant for God’s promised blessing. He has to go in order to be a blessing. Our point is simply that the obedient going is not going out to serve Amalekites and help them grow crops and learn to read. There is plenty of blessing to go around, but there is no evidence Abraham ever takes his call in chapter 12 as a commission to go find ways to bless the nations.
This doesn’t in any way mean it’s wrong for Christians to bless others, but it does mean we should not take Genesis 12:1–3 as a moral agenda or as another Great Commission. The call of Abram is not about a community blessing program. It’s about God’s unilateral promise to bless fumbling Abraham and bless the nations through faith in the promised Seed that will come from his family tree. Even when the blessing is connected to obedience, it is not the obedience of missional engagement but Abraham’s obedience in leaving his land, in circumcising his offspring (Gen. 17:10–14), and in being willing to sacrifice his son (Gen. 22:16–18). The emphasis in Genesis is on the chosen family as recipients of God’s blessing, not as the immediate purveyors of it.
Most crucially, the New Testament does not understand the call of Abram as a missional charge. Clearly, it is a glorious mission text announcing God’s plans to bless the whole world. But the blessing is not something we bestow on others as we work for human flourishing. Rather the Abrahamic blessing comes to those who trust in Abraham’s Offspring. This is Paul’s understanding in Galatians 3:9 when, after quoting Genesis 12:3 (“In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed”), he concludes, “So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.” If there are missiological implications from Genesis, their emphasis is not “go and bless everyone” but rather “go and call the nations to put their faith in Christ.”
Exodus 19:5–6
We now turn to the well-known passage where God prepares Israel for his presence at Mount Sinai:
Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel. (Ex. 19:5–6)
Some argue that the language of “kingdom of priests” indicates that we are intermediaries for the presence of God in the world. The logic usually works like this: “The Bible says we are priests. And what do priests do? They mediate God’s presence. So what is our mission? We are supposed to be a kingdom of priests mediating God’s blessing to the world.” Reggie McNeal, commenting on Exodus 19, puts it like this: God “created a people to serve as his ongoing incarnational presence on the earth.”11 Christopher Wright puts it this way: “It is thus richly significant that God confers on Israel as a whole people the role of being his priesthood in the midst of the nations. . . . Just as it was the role of the priests to bless the Israelites, so it would be the role of Israel as a whole ultimately to be a blessing to the nations.”12
While it is attractive to think Israel is meant to mediate God’s blessings to the nations as a kind of incarnational presence, this is not the best way to understand Exodus 19 or the phrase “kingdom of priests.” Here are five reasons why:
1. The Levitical priesthood serves a mediatorial role not in terms of incarnating God’s presence (his presence is in the glory cloud over the ark of the covenant) but in terms of placating his anger. The primary function of the priests in the Old Testament is to mediate between God and man by administering sacrifices. The book of Hebrews understands the priestly office of Christ in largely the same way (4:14–5:10; 7:1–28; 10:1–18).
2. “Kingdom of priests” is best understood as a designation for Israel’s call to be set apart from the world and belong to God. “Kingdom of priests” is an overlapping term with (though not identical with) “holy nation.” This is why the Lord tells the people at the mountain to consecrate themselves (Ex. 19:10); they are to be holy as he is holy. Likewise, when the Exodus passage is referenced in 1 Peter 2:9, the focus once again is on holiness—abstaining from the passions of the flesh (1 Pet. 2:11–12). The image of a royal priesthood in the Old Testament and in the New Testament suggests holiness and privilege, not incarnational presence.
3. If God were giving the Israelites a missionary task to bless the non-Israelites, we might expect to see this task specified and elaborated in the Mosaic Law. Yet the rules and regulations of Sinai say nothing about a mission to the Gentiles. There are commands for Israel to express care for sojourners and foreigners in its midst, but not explicit instructions for Israel to go into the world and meet the needs of the nations.
4. The Israelites conquer the surrounding nations by military force, not by any kind of incarnational mission. The nations are more often threats to Israel’s religion than they are opportunities for service, even if God’s design all along is to save more than ethnic Jews (see Isa. 42:6; 49:6; 60:3). If Israel is supposed to mediate God’s blessing to the nations, it has a strange way of fulfilling the task.
5. The prophets never fault Israel for neglecting its missionary or international blessing mandate. God certainly cares about how his chosen people will be an attraction or a byword among the nations. But the direction is “come and see” not “go and tell.” If missional engagement were a covenant obligation, surely the Israelites would be rebuked for failing to keep this aspect of the law.13
Luke 4:16–21
A final popular missional text comes at the start of Jesus’s public ministry:
And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written,
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” [Isa. 61:1–2]
And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:16–21)
No doubt, this text is one of the clearest statements of Jesus’s mission and the goals of his ministry. It is also one of the most misunderstood. In popular explanations, Luke 4 underscores that Jesus’s mission focused on the materially destitute and the downtrodden. In this interpretation, Jesus was both Messiah and social liberator. He came to bring the Year of Jubilee to the oppressed. He came to transform social structures and bring God’s creation back to shalom. Therefore, our mission, in keeping with Christ’s mission, is at least in part—if not in its central expression—“to extend the kingdom by infiltrating all segments of society, with preference given to the poor, and allowing no dichotomy between evangelism and social transformation (Luke 4:18–19).”14 Above all else, Luke 4 (it is argued) shows that Jesus’s mission was to serve the poor. So shouldn’t that be our mission too?
This common approach to Luke 4 is not entirely off base, but it misses two critical observations.
Missing the Trees for the Forest
First, this approach overlooks the actual verbs Jesus read from the Isaiah scroll. The Spirit of the Lord, resting upon Jesus as the long-awaited Messiah, would anoint him to proclaim good news to the poor, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. With the exception of “to set at liberty the oppressed” (which we’ll come back to in a moment), these are all words that point to speaking. While it’s certainly true that Jesus healed the sick and gave sight to the blind (as pointers to his deity, signs of the kingdom’s in-breaking, and expressions of his compassion), the messianic mission statement in Luke 4 highlights the announcement of good news. If Luke 4 sets the tone for the mission of the church, then the center of the church’s mission should be the preaching of the gospel.
The Humble Poor
Second, the “missions as social transformation” reading of Luke 4 assumes too much about the economic aspect of “the poor” (Gk., ptōchos). While ptōchos in verse 18 is probably not without some reference to material poverty, the word has broader connotations and significance. Here are four things that lead us to that conclusion:
1. The quotation is from Isaiah 61:1–2, where the poor are lumped in with the “brokenhearted” and “all who mourn.” The poor in Isaiah are not just materially poor; they are the humble poor, the mournful ones who trust in the Lord and wait for their promised “oil of gladness” and their “garment of praise” (Isa. 61:3). The Hebrew anaoim in verse 1 can be translated “poor” (ESV, NIV) or “meek” (KJV) or “afflicted” (NASB, ESV footnote). All are possible because clearly something more than material poverty is in mind.
2. Likewise, the Greek word ptōchos can speak of literal or figurative poverty. Of the ten uses of ptōchos in Luke, seven should be taken as literal poverty (14:13, 21; 16:20, 22; 18:22; 19:8; 21:3), while three may be figurative (4:18; 6:20; 7:22). Elsewhere in the New Testament, Revelation 3:17 is a clear instance where ptōchos should be taken figuratively. The church in Laodicea thought themselves rich (and they were, materially), but on a deeper spiritual level they were “wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.” As in English, the Greek word for “poor” carries different shades of meaning, both literal and figurative.
3. A strictly literal understanding of “the poor” in the immediate context would not make sense. If “the poor” are the literally financially poor, then “the captives,” “the blind,” and “the oppressed” should be taken literally as well. And yet there is no instance in the Gospels of Jesus setting a literal prisoner free (something that confused John the Baptist in Luke 7:18–23). Quite naturally we understand captivity and oppression to include spiritual bondage. It is not inappropriate, then, to see a fundamental spiritual aspect to “the poor” in Luke 4.
4. The slightly wider context makes the same point. In Luke 4:25–27 Jesus mentions two examples of the type of person who experienced the Lord’s favor in the Old Testament. One is the widow of Zarephath. She was materially poor. But the other example is Naaman, the important Syrian general who humbled himself by dipping seven times in the Jordan River. If these are the examples of good news being proclaimed to the poor, then “the poor” has more to do with poverty of spirit than material destitution.
Summary
For all these reasons we agree with Andreas Köstenberger and Peter O’Brien that “the ‘poor’ to whom the good news is announced are not to be understood narrowly of the economically destitute, as most recent scholars have suggested; rather the term refers more generally to ‘the dispossessed, the excluded’ who were forced to depend upon God.”15 We agree with David Bosch when he concludes:
Therefore, in Luke’s gospel, the rich are tested on the ground of their wealth, whereas others are tested on loyalty toward their family, their people, their culture, and their work (Lk. 9:59–61). This means the poor are sinners like everybody else, because ultimately sinfulness is rooted in the human heart. Just as the materially rich can be spiritually poor, the materially poor can be spiritually poor.16
This does not rule out an economic component to ptōchos in Luke 4. The poor are often the economic poor because material hardship rather than material plenty tends to be a means of cultivating spiritual sensitivity, humility, and the desperation needed to hear God’s voice. There’s a reason Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor,” instead of, “Blessed are the rich.” The poor are more apt to see their need for help than the rich. The Greek word ptōchos, to quote Darrell Bock, is best described as a “soteriological generalization.”17 It refers to those who are open to God, responsive to him, and who see their dependence upon him. It is to these that Jesus proclaims the year of the Lord’s favor.
Therefore, Jesus’s mission laid out in Luke 4 is not a mission of structural change and social transformation, but a mission to announce the good news of his saving power and merciful reign to all those brokenhearted—that is, poor—enough to believe.
Having examined several common “missional” texts and come to the conclusion that these passages are often misappropriated and misunderstood, we are now in a position to turn our attention to the Great Commission, or more precisely, the Great Commissions (Matt. 28:16–20; Mark 13:10; 14:9; Luke 24:44–49; Acts 1:8).
Before we get to Jesus’s parting words, though, we must face an honest question: Why should our theology of mission focus so intently on this cluster of postresurrection, preascension commands? After all, there’s no inspired section heading that says Matthew 28:16–20 should be called “The Great Commission” (and it hasn’t always been known by this illustrious title).18 Furthermore, many Christians throughout history have believed that the apostles have already fulfilled Jesus’s parting instructions and therefore they are not a direct command for the church today. More recently, missional thinkers have been reticent to ground the missionary task in specific imperatives (like we find toward the end of each Gospel). The whole Bible, they argue, is about the mission of God, not just a few isolated passages. So maybe the Great Commission isn’t so great after all. Maybe John Stott was right when he said that “we give the Great Commission too prominent a place in our Christian thinking.”19
So why should we emphasize these so-called Great Commission texts in determining the mission of the church? That’s a fair question, and there are several good ways to answer it.
First, even if the entire Bible is essentially a missional book (and on one level, who would want to disagree with this assertion?), we would still do well to ground what we must do in mission on Scripture’s explicit commands. One of the biggest missteps in much of the newer mission literature is an assumption that whatever God is doing in the world, this too is our task. So if the missio Dei (mission of God) is ultimately to restore shalom and renew the whole cosmos, then we, as his partners, should work to the same ends. Christopher Wright, for example, states that “everything a Christian and a Christian church is, says and does should be missional in its conscious participation in the mission of God in God’s world.”20 But what if we are not called to partner with God in all he undertakes? What if the work of salvation, restoration, and re-creation are divine gifts to which we bear witness, rather than works in which we collaborate? What if our mission is not identical with God’s mission? What if we carry on Jesus’s mission but not in the same way he carried it out? Isn’t it better to locate our responsibility in the tasks we are given rather than in the work we see God accomplishing? In fact, there are certain things that God intends to do one day that we are to have no part in, and certainly not in this age. The slaying of the wicked comes to mind! Not only so, but there were certain elements of Jesus’s mission during his first coming that were unique to him. We have no part, for example, in dying for the sins of the world. None of this is to suggest that a story or a poem or a proposition cannot carry an imperatival force, but it is to argue that it is better (surer and more straightforward) to find the church’s mission in specific commands rather than in employing a hermeneutic that assumes a priori that we are partners with God in every particular of his redemptive purposes for the world.
Second, it makes sense that we would look to the New Testament more than the Old for a theology of mission. Now obviously, the Old Testament also shows God’s heart for the nations. God has always been intent on blessing the whole world through his people, and the Old Testament anticipates a future ingathering of the nations. We see this plan unveiled and unfolded at numerous points in the Old Testament. But it’s also obvious that the Old Testament is concerned mainly with the nation of Israel. Even in Jesus’s ministry a full-fledged mission to the Gentiles lies in the future (Matt. 15:24). God’s old covenant people are never exhorted to engage in intentional cross-cultural mission. Their mission light shines by attraction, not by active invitation. For all these reasons the New Testament is a better place to look for a strong missionary impulse. Indeed, as Eckhard Schnabel concludes in his magisterial Early Christian Mission, “The missionary work of the first Christians cannot be explained with prototypes in the Old Testament or with models of an early Jewish mission.”21 Missions, in the sense of God’s people being actively sent out to other peoples with a task to accomplish, is as new as the New Testament.
Third, it makes sense that we would look to Jesus for our missiological directive. As we’ll see later, the mission in the Bible is the mission of the Father sending the Son. As the messianic king and the Lord of the church, Jesus claims the right to send the church, even as the Father had the right to send him (John 20:21). Therefore we would do well to pay close attention to what the Son explicitly tells his disciples to do in his absence.
Fourth, the placement of the Great Commissions suggests their strategic importance. They record Jesus’s final words on earth, after his death and resurrection and just prior to his ascension. Common sense and biblical precedence tell us that a man’s last words carry special weight,22 especially when some form of these words is preserved in three of the Gospels (and in Mark in a slightly different form) and again at the beginning of Acts. The biblical authors and the early church understood Jesus’s final words to be among the most important sentences he ever uttered, and the most significant instructions he gave for shaping their missional identity.
Fifth, the Great Commissions seem to sum up many of the major themes of the Gospels. Take Matthew, for example. More than any other Gospel, Matthew focuses on discipleship. What do disciples believe about Jesus? How do they behave? What must they be willing to give up? It’s no surprise, therefore, that Matthew’s Great Commission stresses discipleship. Similarly, from the opening genealogy to his baptism in the Jordan, to his temptation in the wilderness, to the frequent references to Old Testament fulfillment, Matthew presents Jesus as a new Israel, as the Messiah to whom the Law and Prophets were pointing. So, again, it’s no surprise that Jesus’s closing words in Matthew emphasize his authority. We could go on and note the long Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, which forms the backbone of Jesus’s teaching, or the presence of the magi in the second chapter, which hints at Jesus’s universal kingship. These elements too find their climax in the Great Commission, with its emphasis on going to the nations and teaching them to observe all that Jesus commanded. The Great Commission, it turns out, sums up Matthew’s most important themes. As Bosch puts it, “Today scholars agree that the entire gospel points to these final verses: all the threads woven into the fabric of Matthew, from chapter 1 onward, draw together here.”23
If everything in Matthew culminates in the Great Commission, everything in Acts flows from it. Jesus tells his followers gathered in Jerusalem that they will be his witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8). And that’s exactly what the book of Acts records. First, Christ is preached in Jerusalem (Acts 2–7), then in Judea and Samaria (Acts 8), and finally, with the conversion of Paul and Peter’s rooftop vision, the gospel makes headway among the Gentiles. The book even concludes with Paul under house arrest, yet “proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance” (Acts 28:31). From beginning to end, the story of Acts is of the proclamation of the gospel from Judea to Samaria to the ends of the earth, just as Jesus commanded.
The Great Commissions, therefore, whether at the close or the outset of the narrative, are more than random parting words from Jesus. They actually shape the whole story, either as the climax to which everything points or as the fountain from which everything flows.
With all that as necessary introduction, we can now turn to examining briefly the Great Commission texts themselves.
Matthew 28:16–20
We start with the most famous commission:
Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matt. 28:16–20)
As if there were any doubt that this is a significant pronouncement, Matthew tells us that Jesus directed the disciples to “the mountain” (v. 16). From Sinai to the Mount of Transfiguration to the Sermon on the Mount, mountains are places where the most important instruction or revelation is given. This scene is no different. Jesus has brought his disciples together one last time for something truly significant.
Before Jesus calls the disciples to mission, he reassures them of the good news: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (v. 18). The mission Jesus is about to give is based exclusively and entirely on his authority. There can only be a mission imperative because there is first this glorious indicative. God does not send out his church to conquer. He sends us out in the name of the One who has already conquered. We go only because he reigns.
Then we come to the four verbs in verses 19–20—one main verb and three supporting participles. The main verb is the imperative “make disciples.” Jesus’s followers are to make disciples of the nations (ta ethnē). As is now widely known, this is the word not for political nation-states but for people groups.24 Jesus envisions worshipers and followers present among every cultural-linguistic group on the planet.
The remaining participles, which can have the force of imperatives, flesh out what is entailed in the disciple-making process. We go, we baptize, and we teach. “Going” implies being sent (see Rom. 10:15). “Baptizing” implies repentance and forgiveness as well as inclusion in God’s family (Acts 2:38, 41). “Teaching” makes clear that Jesus has more in mind than initial evangelism and response. He wants obedient, mature disciples, not just immediate decisions.25
Finally, this discipling task is possible, Jesus reassures his audience, because “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:20b). Such a far-reaching guarantee would not have been necessary if Jesus envisioned the apostles fulfilling the Great Commission. But a promise to the end of the age makes perfect sense if the work of mission also continues to the end of this age. Jesus’s promise extends to the end of the age just as his commission does.
Mark 13:10; 14:9
Mark does not include a postresurrection Great Commission in his Gospel. Although Mark 16:15 has Jesus saying “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation,” the vast majority of modern commentators now think Mark’s Gospel ends at 16:8. This explicit Great Commission then is not original to Mark, though it does represent the missionary impulse of the early church, which added this longer ending between AD 100 and 150.
Even without a traditional Great Commission, however, Mark still has two explicit references to the same missionary task.
We see in these texts not only a prediction that the gospel will be proclaimed in the whole world, but a summons that it must. As Jesus approaches the cross, he is already laying the groundwork for the universal proclamation of his gospel.
Luke 24:44–49
We now turn to Luke’s complementary account of the Great Commission:
Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.” (Luke 24:44–49)
Luke, like Matthew, bases the command in divine authority. But whereas the authority in Matthew 28 was Jesus’s authority given to him, here the authority is rooted in the Scriptures. The disciples go forth into the world because Christ has all authority and because the events they will proclaim are the fulfillment of scriptural prophecy and foreshadowing. In both Matthew and Luke, the authority of the disciples comes from God.
Moreover, the command to “go and make disciples” in Matthew is stated here in terms of the disciples’ own role in that task: “You are witnesses of these things” (Luke 24:48). The task set before them by their Lord is to bear witness to Jesus, that is, to proclaim the good news about him. Once again, of course, the disciples do not bear witness by their own power. The Spirit will clothe them with power from on high.
Finally, we see that Jesus makes explicit that this proclamation includes the good news concerning repentance and forgiveness of sin. All this was implied in “baptizing them” in Matthew 28:19, but now it is brought to the forefront.
In summary, the Great Commission in Luke’s Gospel consists in bearing Spirit-empowered witness to the events of Christ’s death and resurrection and calling all nations to repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
Acts 1:8
The same Luke who wrote the Gospel according to Luke wrote the book of Acts (see Acts 1:1). So we’ll look at Jesus’s last words in Acts before returning to the Gospels and looking at the Great Commission in John.
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth. (Acts 1:8)
Given the common authorship of Luke-Acts, it’s no surprise that the theme of Spirit-empowered witness is as central to this Great Commission as it was in Luke. Nor is it surprising that the mission described in Acts is overwhelmingly focused on proclaiming the Word of God and bearing witness to Christ.
The book of Acts is especially important because in it we can actually see the scope and nature of the earliest Christian mission. If you are looking for a picture of the early church giving itself to creation care, plans for societal renewal, and strategies to serve the community in Jesus’s name, you won’t find them in Acts. But if you are looking for preaching, teaching, and the centrality of the Word, this is your book. The story of Acts is the story of the earliest Christians’ efforts to carry out the commission given them in Acts 1:8.
This does not mean that the church in Acts is one big evangelistic rally or inductive Bible study. We see the church devoted to the fellowship, the breaking of bread, and prayer, as well as the apostles’ teaching (Acts 2:42). We see examples of believers sharing with each other (Acts 2:44–46; 4:32–37) and hear of many signs and wonders (Acts 2:43; 5:12–16). Truly the kingdom has broken in as Jesus continues to “do” miracles through the apostles and sometimes others (Acts 1:1; Heb. 2:3–4). But there is no doubt that the book of Acts is a record first and foremost of apostolic witness expanding from Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria to the ends of the earth. As Darrell Bock puts it:
This commission [Acts 1:8] describes the church’s key assignment of what to do until the Lord returns. The priority for the church until Jesus returns, a mission of which the community must never lose sight, is to witness to Jesus to the end of the earth. The church exists, in major part, to extend the apostolic witness to Jesus everywhere.26
Even a cursory overview of Acts bears this out. In Acts 1 Matthias is chosen to replace Judas, that he might become a witness to Christ’s resurrection (v. 22). In Acts 2 Peter preaches at Pentecost, expounding the Scriptures, bearing witness to Christ, calling people to faith and repentance. Many received the Word, and about three thousand souls were added to the church that day (v. 41). In Acts 3 Peter heals a lame beggar in Jesus’s name and then uses the occasion to bear witness to Christ and call people to repentance (see especially vv. 15, 19). As they proclaim the resurrection, many more hear the Word, and five thousand men believe (Acts 4:2, 4). In Acts 4 Peter and John testify before the council to the crucifixion, and when they are released from custody, the believers pray that they might continue to speak the Word with boldness (vv. 29, 31). While in prison again in Acts 5, an angel of the Lord sets the apostles free and commands them to “go and stand in the temple and speak to the people all the words of this Life” (v. 20). And when they heard this, Luke records, “they entered the temple at daybreak and began to teach” (v. 21).
Every chapter of Acts is like this. In Acts 6 the apostles appoint protodeacons so that they (the apostles) can stay devoted to the Word of God and prayer (v. 4). The result was that “the word of God continued to increase, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith” (v. 7). In Acts 7 Stephen bears witness to Christ by walking through the Old Testament and refuting those who have charged him with blaspheming Moses. In Acts 8 Philip proclaims Christ in Samaria, Samaria receives the Word of God (v. 14), and the disciples preach the gospel to many villages of the Samaritans (v. 25). Later Philip expounds the Scriptures to the Ethiopian eunuch, after which he “preached the gospel to all the towns until he came to Caesarea” (v. 40).
Over and over Luke makes clear that the point of this book of Acts is to show the mission of Jesus being fulfilled as the Word of God increases and multiplies (Acts 12:24). Everywhere the Word goes there is opposition, but everywhere the Word goes, some believe. So Paul and Barnabas proclaim the Word in Cyprus and at Antioch in Pisidia, at Iconium and Lystra. Along the way Paul not only preaches the gospel in new frontiers, but also strengthens the disciples, encourages them in the faith, and appoints elders (Acts 14:21–23). His mission is not just evangelism, but deeper discipleship. He wins converts, plants churches, builds up existing congregations. Bearing witness to Christ and teaching the Word of God is the singular apostolic mission, but it takes on many different forms.27
At this point we’re only halfway through the book. In the second half we see the same theme: Spirit-empowered witness—in Derbe, in Philippi, in Thessalonica, in Berea, in Athens, in Corinth, and in Ephesus, and finally in Jerusalem. Then Paul bears witness before the council, before Felix, before Festus, before Agrippa and Bernice, then on Crete and Malta, and lastly in Rome. The book ends much as it started, with the apostles (in this case Paul) “proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance” (Acts 28:31). A witness has gone out to the ends of the earth, all the way to Rome itself and from there it will ring out, we are led to believe, with great success. The mission Christ gave to the disciples in Acts 1:8 is well under way.
John 20:21
John’s is the shortest of the postresurrection commissions, but as Schnabel notes, it “is perhaps the most striking directive from a theological point of view.” It is also the most controversial.
Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” (John 20:21)
We want to highlight three significant theological points.
A Peace That Passes Understanding
First, Jesus gives the disciples his peace. Jesus’s peace is the basis for their ministry and, we can imagine, shapes the content of their message. So what is this peace? Some are quick to point out that the Hebrew word for peace is shalom and biblical shalom entails the right ordering of all things, the way the world is supposed to be. This is no doubt true, but we must always remember (1) that biblical shalom is much deeper than societal harmony and (2) that true shalom comes only to those who have union and communion with the shalom giver. John Stott is right:
The biblical categories of shalom, the new humanity and the kingdom of God are not to be identified with social renewal. . . . So according to the apostles the peace which Jesus preaches and gives is something deeper and richer, namely reconciliation and fellowship with God and with each other (e.g. Ephesians 2.13–22). Moreover, he does not bestow it on all men but on those who belong to him, to his redeemed community. So shalom is the blessing the Messiah brings to his people.28
We see this clearly in the way “peace” is used in John’s Gospel. The peace Jesus gives is better than anything the world can offer. His peace provides the assurance that he, by his Spirit, will always be with them (John 14:26–27). This peace, Jesus says, can be found only “in me” (John 16:33). It is the peace that comes to Jesus’s followers by virtue of his resurrection from the dead (John 20:19, 21, 26). In prefacing his commission with “Peace be with you” Jesus is saying nothing about the renewal of social structures and everything about the assurance and forgiveness they can have and can offer in his name (Acts 10:36; Rom. 5:1; Phil. 4:7).29
The Sending That Matters Most
Second, Jesus’s being sent is prior to Jesus’s sending. In other words, the sending of Jesus happened first and is more central. As we said earlier, Christian mission is first of all Christ’s mission in the world. As we will argue shortly, our mission is not identical with Christ’s earthly work. Even less do we think we must complete what the Son somehow failed to accomplish. Nevertheless, in a real way the Son is continuing to do through us what he began to say and do in his earthly ministry (Acts 1:1). The mission of Jesus is the focal point of human history. His is the fundamental, foundational, essential mission—not the mission of his disciples. But in a wonderful act of condescension, the mission of the exalted Jesus, John 20:21 tells us, will be carried out through his followers.30
Jesus’s Mission as a Model
The third point follows from the second: Jesus’s mission is in some ways a model for our mission. But this invites the question, in what ways? How does the exalted Christ carry out his mission through us? Is it by empowering us to do what he did and to continue his incarnational presence on the earth? Or is it by empowering us to bear witness to all that he taught and accomplished?
It is very popular to assume that missions is always incarnational. And of course on one level it is. We go and live among the people. We try to emulate the humility and sacrifice of Christ (Phil. 2:5–11).31 But incarnationalism in missions often means more than this.32 It means that we model our ministry on Jesus’s ministry. For Stott, and many others after him, this means the mission of the church is service. “Therefore,” says Stott, “our mission, like his, is to be one of service.”33 Evangelism and social action, therefore, are full partners in Christian mission.34 Since the most crucial form of the Great Commission is the one we see in John (argues Stott), the simplest way to sum up the missionary enterprise is this: “We are sent into the world, like Jesus, to serve.”35
Stott’s reading of John 20:31 has been very influential. There are, however, two problems.
First, it can be misleading to summarize Jesus’s mission as one of service. There’s no problem with this formulation if we mean “serve” in the Mark 10:45 sense of the word, that Jesus “came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” But Stott means more than this. He means that Jesus’s mission was to meet human need, whether spiritual or physical.36 Again, no one can deny, nor would we want to deny, that Jesus showed compassion to countless multitudes in extraordinary ways. Nor do we want to suggest that meeting physical needs has no place in the church’s work. On the contrary, let us be zealous for good works (Titus 2:14) and walk in the good deeds prepared for us (Eph. 2:10).
But it is misleading to contend that Jesus’s ministry focused on serving, and even more so to claim, as one recent book does, that “every moment of his ministry is spent with the poor, sick, helpless, and hurting.”37 Sometimes Jesus was alone and wanted to be away from people (Mark 1:35, 45). Other times he was with rich men like Zacchaeus (Luke 19:5). Often he was with the disciples, who were not destitute and were in fact supported by wealthy women (Luke 8:1–3).
We know this sounds heartless, but it’s true: it simply was not Jesus’s driving ambition to heal the sick and meet the needs of the poor, as much as he cared for them. He was sent into the world to save people from condemnation (John 3:17), that he might be lifted up so believers could have eternal life (3:14–15). He was sent by the Father so that whoever feeds on him might live forever (6:57–58). In his important work on the missions of Jesus and the disciples, Andreas Köstenberger concludes that John’s Gospel portrays Jesus’s mission as the Son sent from the Father, as the one who came into the world and returned to the Father, and as the shepherd-teacher who called others to follow him in order to help gather a final harvest.38 If Köstenberger is right, this is a long way from saying that Jesus’s fundamental mission was to meet temporal needs.
But that’s John, someone may object. His Gospel is always something of an outlier. What do the other three Gospels say? Well, let’s take a look at Mark as an example. No doubt, Jesus often healed the sick and cast out demons in Mark’s Gospel. Teaching, healing, and exorcism were the three prongs of his ministry (see, for instance his quintessential first day of ministry in Capernaum in Mark 1:21–34). And yet what drove his ministry was the proclamation of the gospel, the announcement of the kingdom, and the call to repent and believe (1:15). Jesus healed and exorcised demons out of compassion for the afflicted (1:41; 9:22), but the bigger reason for the miracles was that they testified to his authority and pointed to his unique identity (e.g., 2:1–12).
Don’t miss this fact: there is not a single example of Jesus going into a town with the stated purpose of healing or casting out demons. He never ventured out on a healing and exorcism tour. He certainly did a lot of this along the way. He was moved with pity at human need (Mark 8:2). But the reason he “came out” was “that [he] may preach” (1:38). If anything, the clamor for meeting physical needs sometimes became a distraction to Jesus. That’s why he frequently commanded silence of those he helped (1:44; 7:36), and why he would not do many works in a town rife with unbelief (6:5–6).
In Mark, as in the other Gospels, there are plenty of miracles and acts of service to celebrate, but they are far from the main point. The first half of the Gospel drives toward Peter’s confession in chapter 8, where Jesus’s identity is revealed. The second half of the Gospel drives toward the cross, where Jesus’s work is completed (three predictions of death and resurrection in chapters 9–10, and a detailed description of Holy Week in chapters 12–16). Mark’s Gospel does not focus on Jesus meeting physical needs. Mark’s Gospel is about who Jesus was and what he did to save sinners.
It’s no wonder, then, that Jesus’s first action in Mark, after preaching, is to call men to follow him and promise to make them fishers of men (1:17). Jesus’s purpose statements in Mark are revealing. He came to preach (1:38). He came to call sinners (2:17). He came to give his life as a ransom for many (10:45). Or as we read elsewhere, Jesus came to seek and save the lost (Luke 19:10). The focus of his ministry is on teaching. The heart of his teaching centers on who he is. And the good news of who he is culminates in where he is going—to the cross. The mission of Jesus is not service broadly conceived, but the proclamation of the gospel through teaching, the corroboration of the gospel through signs and wonders, and the accomplishment of the gospel in death and resurrection.
Second, it is unwise to assume that because we are sent as Jesus was sent, we have the exact same mission he had. We must protect the absolute uniqueness of what Jesus came to do. D. A. Carson, commenting on John 17:18, concludes that when it comes to the mission of the disciples, “there is no necessary overtone of incarnation or of invasion from another world.” Instead, we come face-to-face with “the ontological gap that forever distances the origins of Jesus’ mission from the origins of the disciples’ missions.”39 We cannot re-embody Christ’s incarnational ministry any more than we can repeat his atonement. Our role is to bear witness to what Christ has already done. We are not new incarnations of Christ but his representatives offering life in his name, proclaiming his gospel, imploring others to be reconciled to God (2 Cor. 5:20). This is how the exalted Christ carries out his mission through us.
So how then is the Son’s being sent a model for our being sent by the Son? Köstenberger explains:
The Fourth Gospel does therefore not appear to teach the kind of “incarnational model” advocated by Stott and others. Not the way in which Jesus came into the world (i.e., the incarnation), but the nature of Jesus’ relationship with his sender (i.e., one of obedience and utter dependence), is presented in the Fourth Gospel as the model for the disciples’ mission. Jesus’ followers are called to imitate Jesus’ selfless devotion in seeking his sender’s glory, to submit to their sender’s will, and to represent their sender accurately and know him intimately.40
Consequently, a focus on human service and on physical need was not, at least in John, a primary purpose of either Jesus’s mission or the disciples’ mission.41 If the context of John 20:21 tells us anything, the mission of the disciples was to wield the keys of the kingdom, to open and close the door marked “Forgiveness” (20:23; see also Matt. 16:19). John wrote his Gospel so that his audience might “believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing [they would] have life in his name” (John 20:31). This was John’s mission, as he understood it. And there’s every reason to think he saw this as the fulfillment of the mission he recorded from Jesus a few verses earlier. The Father sent the Son so that by believing in his name the children of God might have life (1:12). The Son sent the disciples, in the same spirit of complete surrender and obedience, so that they might go into the world to bear witness to the one who is the way, the truth, and the life (14:6).
So how should we pull all this together? Well, on the one hand, we’ve seen a fair amount of diversity among the Great Commissions. Matthew emphasizes discipleship, Luke-Acts stresses being witnesses, and John highlights the theological nature of our sending. The diversity, of course, is not owing to varying levels of truthfulness in the accounts, but to the unique aims of the Evangelists.
And yet the Great Commission accounts show more similarity than dissimilarity. Together they paint a complementary and fairly comprehensive picture of the mission of the first disciples. We can summarize this mission by answering seven questions:
We have been looking at Jesus’s postresurrection, preascension commissions. But a study of mission would seem incomplete without a glance at the missionary par excellence of the New Testament: Paul the apostle to the Gentiles. As Jesus confronts and converts Saul (later Paul) on the Damascus Road, he also commissions him with a new mission. Paul, as Jesus’s “chosen instrument” (Acts 9:15), must “go,” carrying Christ’s name and suffering much for his sake (vv. 15–16). In a different account of the same call Paul goes into more detail relaying precisely what Jesus sent him to do:
I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you as a servant and witness to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you, delivering you from your people and from the Gentiles—to whom I am sending you to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me. (Acts 26:16–18)
What did this look like in Paul’s life? Obviously he knew that evangelism and disciple making were not the only worthwhile activities or the only way to help others or please God. He was a tentmaker, after all (Acts 18:3), and eager to “remember the poor” (Gal. 2:10). He also taught that love fulfilled all the horizontal requirements of the law (Rom. 13:9; Gal. 5:14). But at the same time, he did not declare “I no longer have any room for work in these regions” because he had sufficiently loved the people in those regions, but because he had founded and nurtured fledgling churches by proclaiming the gospel (Rom. 15:23).
It is sometimes argued that although Paul’s ministry centered on word-based evangelism, there is little evidence he expected his congregations to pursue the same mission. In his book Paul’s Understanding of the Church’s Mission,42 Robert Plummer counters this claim and makes a convincing case that Paul’s congregations were evangelistic communities. Consider a few examples:
To summarize, then, we follow Paul’s example of following Christ and his Great Commission. We see in Acts that the responsibility of discipleship was given to more than the Twelve. We see the same thing in Paul’s epistles and in his own ministry. The Great Commission is for the whole church, of which Paul is the most significant model. A careful study of his life and teaching shows that Paul’s mission was threefold: (1) initial evangelism, (2) the nurture of existing churches by guarding them against error and grounding them in the faith, and (3) their firm establishment as healthy congregations through the full exposition of the gospel and the appointing of local leadership.44 We believe his mission models for us what we ought to be doing in the world insofar as Paul’s ambition ought to be our ambition (1 Cor. 10:33–11:1), and we should be partners in the same work he undertook (see Phil. 1:5, 14, 27, 30; 2:16).
There are still a number of theological bricks to lay in the foundation of our argument (so don’t close the pages just yet), but with the ground we’ve covered in this chapter we’re ready to offer a one-sentence answer to the question of this book. The mission of the church is to go into the world and make disciples by declaring the gospel of Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit and gathering these disciples into churches, that they might worship the Lord and obey his commands now and in eternity to the glory of God the Father. We believe this is the mission Jesus gave the disciples prior to his ascension, the mission we see in the New Testament, and the mission of the church today.
This mission is a specific set of things Jesus has sent his church into the world to accomplish and is significantly narrower than “everything God commands.” That’s not to say that our broader obligations aren’t important. They are! Jesus and the apostles command us to parent our children well, to be loving husbands and wives, to do good to all people, and many other things. Jesus even tells us in the Great Commission itself (as Matthew records it) to teach people “to observe all that I have commanded you.” But that doesn’t mean that everything we do in obedience to Christ should be understood as part of the church’s mission. The mission Jesus gave the church is more specific than that. And that, in turn, doesn’t mean that other commands Jesus gives us are unimportant. It means that the church has been given a specific mission by its Lord, and teaching people to obey Christ’s commands is a nonnegotiable part of that mission. We go, we proclaim, we baptize, and we teach—all to the end of making lifelong, die-hard disciples of Jesus Christ who obey everything he commanded.
So here it is again: the mission of the church—as seen in the Great Commissions, the early church in Acts, and the life of the apostle Paul—is to win people to Christ and build them up in Christ. Making disciples—that’s our task.
1Christopher J. H. Wright, The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible's Grand Narrative (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2006), 199.
2Reggie McNeal, Missional Renaissance: Changing the Scorecard for the Church (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2009), 27.
3Wright, The Mission of God, 214. Second ellipsis in original.
4Ibid., 221.
5This language is taken from ibid. This is Wright's exposition of blessing, and it seems that he understands the command to bless to entail these things.
6Ibid., 211.
7Ibid., 201.
8Including the ESV, KJV, NKJV, NASB, NIV, NLT, RSV, and NRSV.
9Old Testament scholar Victor P. Hamilton explains the functions of the imperatives in Gen. 12:1–2: "Here the first imperative states the exhortation, and the second imperative touches on the results which are brought about by the implementation of the first imperative (e.g., Gen. 17:1; 1 Kings 22:6; 2 Kings 5:13; Isa. 36:16). Applied to Gen. 12:1–2, this construction means that the first imperative, go, is related as effect to cause to this second imperative, be. Abram cannot be a blessing if he stays in Haran. But if he leaves, then a blessing he will be." The Book of Genesis, The New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 373.
10Eckhard Schnabel, Early Christian Mission, vol. 1, Jesus and the Twelve (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2004), 63.
11McNeal, Missional Renaissance, 30.
12Wright, The Mission of God, 331. Likewise, N. T. Wright comments on Ex. 19:4–6 saying, "The royal and priestly vocation of all human beings, it seems, consists in this: to stand at the interface between God and his creation, bringing God's wise and generous order to the world and giving articulate voice to creation's glad and grateful praise to its maker" (After You Believe [New York: HarperOne, 2010], 80–81). Later, N. T. Wright argues that "royal priesthood" means "carrying forward the mission of God declaring God's powerful and rescuing acts, and beginning the work of implementing the messianic rule of Jesus in all the world" (86).
13These last three reasons, and a few more we haven't included, can be found in Schnabel, Early Christian Mission, 71–72.
14James F. Engel and William A. Dyrness, Changing the Mind of Missions: Where Have We Gone Wrong (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2000), 80.
15Andreas J. Köstenberger and Peter T. O'Brien, Salvation to the Ends of the Earth: A Biblical Theology of Mission (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2001), 117.
16David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1991), 104. For ease of reading, we dropped Bosch's parenthetical citations in these two sentences. They were: Nissen 1984: 175, 176; cf. Pobee 1987: 19, 53. Many other scholars past and present, including Eckhard Schnabel, David Hesselgrave, Robert Stein, Christopher Little, I. Howard Marshall, and Darrell Bock, have come to similar conclusions. See Schnabel, Early Christian Mission, 225. References to many of the other authors were found in David Hesselgrave, Paradigms in Conflict: 10 Key Questions in Christian Missions Today (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2005), 125–38.
17Darrell Bock, Luke 1:1–9:50, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994), 408.
18For history on the title see David F. Wright's essay, "The Great Commission and the Ministry of the Word: Reflections Historical and Contemporary on Relations and Priorities (Finlayson Memorial Lecture, 2007)," Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology 25 (2007): 132–57; http://netcommunity.rutherfordhouse.org.uk/publications /Document.Doc?id=69.
19John R. W. Stott, Christian Mission in the Modern World: What the Church Should Be Doing Now (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1975), 29.
20Christopher J. H. Wright, The Mission of God's People: A Biblical Theology of the Church's Mission (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010), 26
21Schnabel, Early Christian Mission, 173.
22One thinks of the famous last words of several biblical characters, including Jacob, Moses, Joshua, David, Elijah, Paul (at Ephesus in Acts 20 and to Timothy in 2 Timothy), and Peter (see 2 Pet. 1:12–15).
23Bosch, Transforming Mission, 57.
24See, for example, John Piper, Let the Nations Be Glad! The Supremacy of God in Missions, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2010), 155–200, and Timothy C. Tennent, Invitation to World Missions: A Trinitarian Missiology for the Twenty-first Century (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2010), 138.
25On this general theme of discipleship versus decisions, see M. David Sills, Reaching and Teaching: A Call to Great Commission Obedience (Chicago: Moody, 2010). Sills has a helpful discussion of Matt. 24:14 ("And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come"). He explains that in context the "world" may refer to the known world of the Roman Empire and that the "end" may be the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. Even if you don't accept this view, it is still important to note that Jesus is giving a prediction of what will happen before his return, not a formula to hasten his coming. The emphasis is on enduring persecution until the end, not on ushering in the kingdom. Matt. 24:14 highlights the centrality of proclamation, but it does not imply a "need for speed" in fulfilling the Great Commission (121–26).
26Darrell L. Bock, Acts, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007), 66.
27"Conversion to Christ meant incorporation into a Christian community" is how Köstenberger and O'Brien put it (Salvation to the Ends of the Earth, 268).
28Stott, Christian Mission in the Modern World, 18–19.
29Schnabel writes, "The message of the disciples is about peace: about the restoration of peace with God through Jesus' death on the cross, about the atonement and forgiveness of sins, about the reconciliation of rebellious humankind with God" (Early Christian Mission, 379).
30See Andreas Köstenberger, The Missions of Jesus and the Disciples according to the Fourth Gospel: With Implications for the Fourth Gospel's Purpose and the Mission of the Contemporary Church (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 207, 210; Köstenberger and O'Brien, Salvation to the Ends of the Earth, 264–66.
31A moving exposition of this theme is found at the end of B. B. Warfield's sermon, "Imitating the Incarnation," in The Savior of the World (repr., Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1991), 247–70.
32See Hesselgrave, Paradigms in Conflict, 141–65, for a helpful summary of the incarnationalism versus representationalism debate. Hesselgrave argues for the latter.
33Stott, Christian Mission in the Modern World, 23, 24.
34Ibid., 27.
35Ibid., 30.
36Ibid., 24.
37Gabe Lyons, The Next Christians: How a New Generation Is Restoring the Faith (New York: Doubleday, 2010), 55.
38Köstenberger, The Missions of Jesus and the Disciples, 199.
39D. A. Carson, The Gospel according to John, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 566.
40Köstenberger, The Missions of Jesus and the Disciples, 217.
41Ibid., 215.
42Robert L. Plummer, Paul's Understanding of the Church's Mission: Did the Apostle Paul Expect the Early Christian Communities to Evangelize? (Eugene, OR: Paternoster/Wipf and Stock, 2006).
43Ibid., 104–5. These bullet points are taken from Kevin's review of Plummer's book in the 9Marks eJournal. Used by permission.
44This summary owes its basic formulation to P. T. O'Brien, Gospel and Mission in the Writings of Paul: An Exegetical and Theological Analysis (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1993), 43, 64.