Theopedia

Great Commission

As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.

— John 20:21

Definition

The Great Commission is Jesus’s command, given to his disciples after his resurrection, to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything he commanded (Matt. 28:18-20). Christ grounds the command in his own universal authority over all nations, so the church’s mission rests on his authority rather than on human initiative.1 The commission is recorded, with varying emphasis, in all four Gospels and Acts (Mark 16:15-16; Luke 24:44-49; John 20:21-22; Acts 1:8).

Confessional Witness

Neither the Second London Baptist Confession nor the Westminster Confession devotes a chapter to missions as such. Their nearest confessional witness is ecclesiological: both confessions describe the church, under the gospel, as no longer confined to one nation as it was under the Mosaic economy. The 1689 confesses that “all persons throughout the world, professing the faith of the gospel, and obedience unto God by Christ according unto it… are and may be called visible saints; and of such ought all particular congregations to be constituted.”2 The Westminster Confession states the same universality even more pointedly, tying it explicitly to the transition the commission inaugurates: the visible church is “catholic or universal under the gospel (not confined to one nation as before under the law).”3

The confession also addresses why the gospel’s actual reach among the nations remains a matter of God’s sovereign disposal rather than a guaranteed outcome of the church’s obedience: “the preaching of the gospel has been granted unto persons and nations, as to the extent or straitening of it, in great variety, according to the counsel of the will of God.”4 The commission obligates the church to go and preach; it does not by itself determine where or how widely that preaching will succeed.

Biblical Basis

Matthew’s version of the commission, the fullest of the five accounts, contains four distinct elements. First, Christ prefaces the command with his own authority: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matt. 28:18), so that “go therefore” follows because all nations have already been made subject to him.1 Second, the disciples are sent to “make disciples of all nations” (Matt. 28:19a), which Mark’s parallel states as a command to “go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation” (Mark 16:15).1 Third, converts are to be baptized “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 28:19b), marking entrance into the new covenant.1 Fourth, disciples are to be taught “to observe all that I have commanded,” so that the commission’s goal is ongoing obedience, not a single decision.5 Christ closes the commission with a promise of his own abiding presence “to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:20).

Luke’s Gospel records the same commission in terms of what must be “proclaimed in his name to all nations”: repentance and forgiveness of sins, beginning from Jerusalem, with the disciples as witnesses (Luke 24:47-48). Acts 1:8 restates it geographically, as a widening circle from Jerusalem, to Judea and Samaria, and to “the end of the earth.” John’s Gospel frames the same sending Christologically rather than geographically: “As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you… Receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20:21-22).6

Doctrinal Significance

The commission’s authority does not originate with the church’s own initiative. Christ’s words to his disciples in John, “as the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you,” place the church’s sending inside the same pattern of divine sending that Scripture uses for the Son and the Spirit themselves: the Father sends the Son (Gal. 4:4; John 3:16) and sends the Spirit of the Son (Gal. 4:6), and Christ, in turn, sends his own disciples “following the same pattern.”6 The church’s evangelistic task is patterned after, and grounded in, the Trinity’s own mission, rather than being a program the church initiates on its own.7

The commission’s placement in Matthew’s Gospel makes a further, canonical point. It falls at the very close of the Gospel (Matt. 28:18-20), which G. K. Beale has argued deliberately echoes the end of 2 Chronicles, the final book of the Hebrew canon on some ancient orderings, where Cyrus commissions the exiles to go up and rebuild (2 Chron. 36:23).8 Matthew’s Gospel thus closes, as the Hebrew Scriptures once did, with a divine commission sending God’s people outward, continuing rather than replacing that earlier pattern.

Doctrinal Implications

Because the gospel is to be preached to all without the preacher knowing in advance who is elect, the commission requires the indiscriminate preaching that constitutes the external or general call, distinct from effectual calling itself: “The words of Jesus here demonstrate that the gospel is to be preached to all, without hesitation or reservation. We do not know who will believe and who will not. We do not know who the elect are. We are to preach the gospel to all, desiring to see all come to repentance and faith.”9

The commission also binds the ordinary Christian, not only those sent to distant fields: “He is also the Author of the Great Commission. He still intends for each of His followers to find ways to share the gospel with unbelievers.”10 And it binds the local congregation’s own priorities, not only individual believers: “The Great Commission of Matthew 28 needs to be in the DNA of every local congregation.”11

Historical Development

Sustained Protestant reflection on the church’s own missionary task, distinct from exegesis of the commission’s text, developed later than the Reformation confessions themselves. Gisbertus Voetius (1589-1676), a Dutch Reformed theologian, wrote what is credited as the first comprehensive Protestant theology of mission, distinguishing God’s own activity in mission from the church’s subordinate role in it.7

The commission’s binding force on the church after the apostolic age received renewed emphasis during the 18th and 19th centuries, the era of the modern Protestant missionary movement. Reformed and Calvinistic churches produced many of that movement’s leading figures, among them William Carey and Henry Martyn in India, David Livingstone and Robert Moffat in Africa, Robert Morrison in China, and John G. Paton in the South Seas.12 Writing in 1932, Presbyterian churchman F. W. Loetscher credited “our venerated fathers” with having “made so good a beginning in establishing missions all over the world.”12

Opposing Views

Some 19th- and 20th-century critics argued that the trinitarian baptismal formula of Matthew 28:19 could not go back to Jesus himself, appealing to passages in Acts that describe baptism “in the name of Jesus” rather than in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38; 8:16; 10:48; 19:5).1 On this view, the apostles knew no trinitarian formula, so Matthew’s wording reflects later church practice read back into Jesus’s own words.

Objections and Responses

The apostles’ use of “in the name of Jesus” for baptism shows they did not know or use a trinitarian formula. The Greek prepositions in these passages differ from one another and from Matthew 28:19’s own wording: Acts 2:38 uses a phrase best read as baptism on the confession of Jesus as the Messiah, and Acts 10:48 uses a different phrase indicating baptism on Jesus’s own authority, while several other passages use a third construction stressing the convert’s new relationship to Christ specifically.1 None of these need mean the apostles rejected or were ignorant of Christ’s trinitarian instruction; they may simply stress a particular aspect of that baptism relevant to the immediate context. Jesus’s own words need not be read as prescribing a fixed liturgical formula to be recited, only as describing the baptism he instituted.1

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1969), 629-30. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7

  2. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (London, 1677), chap. 26, “Of the Church,” para. 2. ↩

  3. Westminster Confession of Faith (London, 1647), chap. 25, para. 2. ↩

  4. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith, chap. 20, “Of the Gospel, and of the Extent of the Grace Thereof,” para. 3. ↩

  5. Ken Magnuson, “5. Aspects of Biblical Ethics: New Testament,” in Invitation to Christian Ethics: Moral Reasoning and Contemporary Issues (Grand Rapids: Kregel Academic, 2020). ↩

  6. Brian A. DeVries, “Missio Trinitatis: Theological Reflections on the Origin, Plan, and Purpose of God’s Mission,” Themelios 50, no. 3 (2025): 566. ↩ ↩2

  7. DeVries, “Missio Trinitatis,” 565. ↩ ↩2

  8. Michael J. Kruger, The Question of Canon: Challenging the Status Quo in the New Testament Debate (Nottingham: Apollos, 2013), chap. 4, “The Authors of Canon,” 146, quoting G. K. Beale: “Matthew constructs his Gospel partly to reflect the beginning and ending of Chronicles.” ↩

  9. Matthew Michael Barrett, “The Scriptural Affirmation of Effectual Calling,” in “Reclaiming Monergism: The Case for Sovereign Grace in Effectual Calling and Regeneration” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2011), 124. ↩

  10. Donald S. Whitney, “Chapter 6: Evangelism … for the Purpose of Godliness,” in Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life, anniversary ed. (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2024). ↩

  11. Alexander Strauch, Biblical Eldership: Restoring the Eldership to Its Rightful Place in the Local Church, 4th ed. (Littleton, CO: Lewis and Roth Publishers, 2017), 311. ↩

  12. Loraine Boettner, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1932), 306-7. ↩ ↩2