Making Disciples: as easy as One and Two, and living in Three

Some call it The Great Commission.  Others say it is Jesus’ Famous Last Words, which is strange considering Acts 1. Regardless of what people call the passage, the final verses in the Gospel of Matthew are ones of which we should pay close attention.

Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go.  When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.  Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.  And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”  - Matthew 28:16-20.

This is a relatively popular passage, especially in evangelical circles.  We love to put parts of it on t-shirts and coffee mugs and bumper stickers and use it as a slogan for our upcoming mission trips and outreach events.  But how many times do we stop and meditate and marinate on the concepts Jesus is saying?  I mean, there is so much going on in this passage, not to mention that these are some of Jesus’ last words before leaving earth.  Let’s dive into this text and reflect on some things Jesus says.[i]

So everyone goes through the awful death of Jesus.  Three days later, the stone was rolled away.  The women had already seen Jesus and told the guys that he’s going to meet them up on the mountain.  There is a rumor circulating that Jesus’ body was stolen by his disciples, which they knew was entirely untrue,

and they are wondering what exactly they are going to see on top of this mountain.

They make the journey to Galilee, climb the mountain, and there he is.

When they saw him, they stopped in their tracks and worshiped him.

What did that look like?  I honestly have no idea.  I don’t know if it they counted to three and sang a song together, or prayed, or if they bowed down, or raised their hands, or if they only raised one hand because they thought two hands would be too distracting to others.  All the same, the bottom line is they worshiped.  It would be incredible to know what that looked like but the fact remains, we don’t know. 

But some doubted.

Some of the guys simply could not wrap their minds around Jesus resurrecting from the dead.  Did they lose their ‘disciple’ status for that?  NO.  They just didn’t think this thing that was happening in front of them was possible – something just wasn’t right about a guy coming back from the dead.

Then Jesus says, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”[ii]

The word, “authority,” is the Greek word, exousia.  Everything on heaven and on earth – which is, in the Jewish mindset, everything, everywhere, all places both in this world and in the heavenly realms – Jesus has control.  His power to control all of this was with him throughout his entire life, through he chose not to rule by force.

“The one who comes from above is above all; the one who is from the earth belongs to the earth.  The one who comes from heaven is above all.  The Father loves the Son and has placed everything in his hands.”[iii]

Everything is in Jesus’ hands.

Jesus has a way of turning things upside down.  In his day, there was this superpower that ruled a good chunk of the world called the Roman Empire.  They held the authority everywhere they went.  Their way of authority was coercion.  They simply forced people do what they wanted them to do because if they didn’t, that person or group of people, would get the living daylights beat out of them…literally.  Death was a completely reasonable option for dealing with people who wouldn’t do what the Roman Government wanted them to do. 

So Jesus comes along and says, “I have all authority.”  Jesus’ way of authority was not coercion; it was not force.  He did not come with a sword and an army, but with a towel.  He did not come on a chariot and a white horse, but on a donkey.  He did not come triumphantly into the world in a shiny castle, but with humility was laid in a manger inside a stable.  Jesus’ way of authority, or exousia, is through servanthood, not coercion.

Jesus even said, “My kingdom is not of this world.  If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews.  But now my kingdom is from another place.”[iv]

His kingdom is not of this world.  The word world is the word kosmos in Greek.  It is this earthly world we live in. 

Coercion forces people to live a certain way.  Most of the time, that way is unnatural and uncomfortable for those people.  Jesus said, “My way is from a different place.  It is not of this kosmos.  My way is not to push people around, but to find those who are being pushed around and help them back to their feet.

Then Jesus says perhaps his most famous post-resurrection words; “Therefore go and make disciples.”[v]

The word, “Go,” here is an imperative verb in the aorist tense.  This means a few things for us.  The fact that it is an imperative means that it is a command, not a suggestion. Jesus commands us to go.  The same is true for the word, “make disciples.”  In the Greek, there is also this idea that we are already going. So literally, it could be translated, “having gone keep making disciples.”

All of us are already moving in certain directions.  We all have circles of friends with whom we interact and experience life together.  It is not like we stand still in an ever-moving world.  Jesus knows that we are already going so he says, “As you go make disciples.”

Making disciples, or mathetes, carries the idea of Talmudim, in the Hebrew Scriptures.  A Talmid was life long students who followed everything that his teacher did.  His whole life was dedicated to learning the ways of his teacher—learning how to live a certain way of life. 

Humility is a main factor in this.  You know what a good disciple would never say?  He would never say, “I know all the answers.”  That would put him above his teacher and would be the ultimate offence.  It is so contrary to the western way of learning in which a student must know all the right answers and fill in all the blanks in order to be in good standing with the teacher.  The first century, Middle-Eastern way of thinking is exactly the opposite, encouraging students to ask more questions, have less answers, and to not even worry about the blacks. Central to understanding discipleship is this idea of saying, “I don’t have the answers. I don’t know.”

Many times in sharing our faith, our greatest fear is what?  Not having the answers.  We think we are suppose to know it all and wonder what will happen if we don’t know all the answers that someone asks us?  We think we need to know everything there is to know before we can tell people about Jesus.  There is a great statement that every Christian needs to memorize.  It’s complex and deeply theological.  It is, “I don’t know.”  You can’t be a disciple if you have everything together and you know all the answers. 

So Jesus says to go (or having gone) and make disciples of all the nations.  The word nations is the word, ethnos. People many times take this verse and slap it on a t-shirt and go on a mission trip to the other side of the world.  There is nothing wrong with doing that but I think there is something way deeper here that we can get from this.

Ethnos means people not like you.  People who live differently, look different, and are different than you.

So what is Jesus saying?  Go and make disciples of the people who aren’t like you.

Jesus assumes that in our going, we come across people who are not like us.  He reasons that we are in circles and have connections with people not like us.  He’s saying, here, to the people of the first century, “You have it completely backwards.”  They believed the savior would come to save them and them alone.  It was this idea of, “Rescue us.  Save us.  Redeem us.”  The religious people of that day even had a slang word for the nations that they often used.  They called the other nations that were not like them, “dogs.”

Jesus turned that idea upside down.  It wasn’t, “Hey guys, avoid those people with everything you have because they are unclean and are pretty much equal to dogs!”  It was, “Alright guys, go and hang out with those people who are not like you.  Don’t avoid them.  Engage them!  Talk to them.  Don’t walk away from them, but try to get closer to them.”

If you spend all of your time with people who are just like you, you never engage the ethnos. If all you do is hang out in the Christian circles and go to Christian clubs and only participate in Christian events, you cannot get closer to the ethnos.  If you never get away from people just like you, then you cannot make disciples.

Jesus even prays that we not disengage from the ethnos.  He says, “My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one.”[vi]

Jesus prays for his disciples.  He does not ask God to take them out of the world, but that God would protect them from the evil one.  The intention was never, “I’ll take all of you and put you over here so that you will never have to deal with anything and you wont be infested by the heathens of the world and you’ll never ever deal with sin or sinful people again.”  It was always, “Hey, I am going to put you into this heathen crowd and let you show them what I look like.”

This might come as a shock to some, but it is perfectly okay to be in the presence of “the bad people.”  It is alright to be around someone who is smoking a cigarette, or someone drinking an alcoholic beverage, or someone who uses inappropriate adjectives.  It is even okay to be at a place where those smoking, drinking, descriptive-word-using people hang out with no intention of distributing religious tracks or shouting turn-or-burn fraises from a loud speaker.  We are to engage people not like us.  And yes, other people will talk about us.  We will risk damage to our religious reputations.  We will be the point of interest during gossip sessions at the prayer meetings and people will question our morality and ethics and even our backsliden hearts.  And all of that is perfectly okay.

There is an interesting concept I noticed in the fifteenth chapter of Luke.  The first few verses say, “Now the tax collectors and ‘sinners’ were all gathering around to hear [Jesus].  But the Pharisees and teachers of the law muttered…”[vii]

Notice the different people in these few verses.  Jesus is with the public outcasts.  The-people-who-must-not-be-named.  These people are completely opposite of those whom Christians would expect Jesus to be around.  And yet, “these people” are the ones gathered around Jesus.

And the Pharisees and teachers of the law muttered.

Which brings an interesting question: do outcasts, sinners, and people not like you flock to you?  Do people whom society runs away from want to hear the things you have to say?  Do the religious people and Sunday school teachers mutter about you?  If the answer is yes, you may look more like Jesus than many people think.

So Jesus says that as we are going, we are to make disciples of people not like us.  Then he says two things to do: baptize them in the name of the Father and of the son and of the Holy Spirit and teach them to obey everything he has commanded.[viii]

The word “baptize” is the word, baptitzo, and literally means to immerse or submerge. In evangelical circles we would define this verb, to dunk.  In many churches that practice baptism by immersion, the pastor or dunker says something about baptism being a tangible picture of Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection.  Water is like death, being immersed into it is like being buried, and we are raised up to walk in newness of life.  It is an illustration of the death of our old self and the resurrection of our new self.  And what are the words we use?  “I baptize you, _________, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” 

This passage could be a literal demonstration in which Jesus tells us what to do: “Say these words whilst dunking new believers.”  Nonetheless, I think there is something more here.

In John 17, the same prayer as mention earlier, Jesus prays for every believer that will ever exist.  He prays for unity between them.  He says, “Let them be one as I and the Father are one.”[ix]

There is this perfect unity that exists within the Trinity: Father-Son-Holy Spirit.

Three-in-one. 

The Holy Trinity.  

One God, yet three separate entities.

All different rolls, yet all the same One, Triune God. 

So there is this perfect relational flow that exists within the Trinity; three parts that are all in relation to another, all the same God. 

This brings up and interesting idea. 

We were created in whose image?[x]

God’s.

Our creator created us to be like him.  How many social networking tools do we use on a daily basis.  How many friends do we have on MySpace?  How many times a day do we check FaceBook?  We talk to people via Instant Messing, SMS text messaging, and video chat rooms.  Most everyone we know has a cell phone and many of us have unlimited texting.  We have blogs, Twitter, Bebo, and whatever else just came out in the last few minutes that you spent reading this.  The fact is that we are the most well connected generation ever to exist.  We can hardly exist outside relationships.  We can’t wait to get home to check our comments, posts, messages, or who wants us to be a pirate? Or a ninja?  We can’t stand it when we get a text in class or in a meeting and we are unable to check it.  We are close to death whenever our phone dies or, God forbid, is lost or broken.

The bottom line is we were created to be in relationship with each other.

We were created to be in relationship with our God.

When Jesus says to baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, maybe its not just a suggestion of what to say when you baptize someone.  Maybe it is an instruction to show the people around us what living relationally means.  Maybe it is an order to immerse these people in a Trinitarian community.  Maybe Jesus is saying to show them what it is like to like in a community of people that love God, love each other, and love other people.  A community who lives in this relational flow with each other, doing life together, embracing hardships as a group, crying when ones hurt, rejoicing when one is glad, and trudging through the most difficult situations life throws at a person.[xi] 

I have experienced this first hand.  Several years ago, Jade and I met a girl.  She had lived a life of drugs, sex, and running off chasing after everything under sun.  She met Jesus, began to experience life-changing grace and became one of our really close friends.  We took her into our community, which at that time was our small group of our friends trying to do life together, and loved her through a lot of tough times.  There were moments where she would slip up and fall back into some of the old things that use to drag her to the very bottom pits of despair, yet we still showed her love.  And there were times when I wanted to be completely done with her altogether.  But God, in relation with all of us, showed us how to love her as we loved each other.  We accepted her in her loneliness.  We accepted her when she slipped up.  We accepted her when she was completely out of life.  That was awfully difficult to do and I would argue that it is only through the grace of God that we are still close friends to this day.  We helped in her seeing life from a new perspective.  We lived life with her and helped her get back on her feet again.  And she helped us see life from a new perspective (and helped us learn patience, love, and Christ-centered understanding along the way).   That is immersing someone into a Trinitarian community—a relationally based family living out the things that Jesus said.

So Jesus says to make disciples, baptizing the ethnos in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything he has commanded.

Jesus uses the word, didoxo, which means to teach them how to live as one says to live.  In other words, don’t leave them hanging.  Don’t just introduce them into this community, but teach them how to be apart of this community so that they will be able to go and make more disciples.

What does it look like for the Shalom of God, which is when everything is as it should be, to come into someone’s life?  What does it look like for the Shalom of God to rest on a community of believers?  Demonstrating to each other how to live the way Jesus taught us to live?  That is what Jesus is saying to do.  “Look, immerse these people who are not like you into a world that is focused entirely on me, and teach them how to live the way I taught you to live.  It’s a better way of life!  It is not about not breaking a lot of rules.  It is about living in a way that changes the whole entire point of living itself.”

When we go on our “mission trips” or try to build relationships with the lost, people tend to ask, “So when do we bring up Jesus?  When is the right time to bring the gospel to them?”

I started reaching out to these freshmen boys a few years ago.  I met them at school a when they were in seventh grade, and over time, something connected between us.  Gradually, I started hanging out with them, taking them out to eat after football games, and just sitting with them when I visited the high school.  I had no agenda for these boys.  I wasn’t trying to get them to come to my church, and I wasn’t trying to “save them.”  I was doing what I felt like Jesus clearly said to do: LOVE THEM.

Several months into this new relationship that had developed with these boys, I was asked the question, “So have you told them about Jesus?”  It was a question that I wrestled with for a few weeks.  I had not presented the gospel to them, and honestly, I didn’t want to.  I didn’t even feel like I should, which was a little disturbing, considering I am a youth pastor and that is pretty much my job.  After doing some study, and much dialogue with a few friends, I started to understand something.  In thinking about the question, “when do I share Jesus with these boys?” the answer I came up with was I already AM.  The truth is that I am sharing Jesus with these boys.  I give them food when they have no money.  I give them a ride home when their parents are doing something they think is more important.  I talk to them when their world comes crashing down.  I was telling these kids about Jesus in the things that I was doing. 

So the issue isn’t, when do we share Jesus with these people?  The issue is what are we saying about Jesus to these people?  What are we saying we believe about God?  If we are not hanging out with the ethnos, we are saying exactly what we believe about Jesus: that he cares about people like ME, but doesn’t have time for people like you.  Or maybe worse, Jesus looks at them with the same look we give them when we see them.

It isn’t when we tell them that is important, but what we are saying.  It is what we are communicating we believe about Jesus.  How are we communicating the gospel in the way we live?  What are we saying that we—as believers, followers, Christians, disciples—believe about Jesus in how we live and interact with the world, the nations, the ethnos?

When you hang out, study, lead a group, party, eat, reach out, engage, etc., what are you saying about Jesus?  What are you teaching about Jesus?

Jesus sums everything up by saying, “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”[xii]

EGO METH HUMON EIMI!  Which literally translates, “I with you am!”[xiii]

Central to being a disciple is that we do not have to fear.  Jesus says I am with you, always, even to the very end of the age.  In the Jewish world, forever isn’t even a concept that you would talk about because no one can understand forever.  A good Jew would never say anything about forever because it is uncertain.  Jesus says with certainty, I am with you now, and will be with you till the end of the present age.  In other words, as far as we can possibly see, I will be here with you.

We have nothing to fear because he is with us.

This is an interesting and brilliant way to end the Gospel of Matthew.  In the very first chapter, it is said, “‘The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel’—which means, ‘God with us.”[xiv]

Immanuel—God with us.  Matthew’s gospel has sort of this inclusion statement about Jesus.  He introduces Jesus as God with us, and brings us back to the same things at the very end.  “Surely I am with you always.”

***

THOUGHTS:

A disciple is someone who is done pretending.  They are done acting like everything is ok.  They are done pretending like they have it all together.  They are finished thinking that they have all the answers to all the questions. 

Making Disciples is asking other people to step into community with you so that both of you don’t have to go it alone.  A disciple is past trying to figure things out and desperately desires God to put back the broken pieces of your life.

In making disciples, who is your ethnos?

Are you in circles of people not like you? 

Are you immersing them in a Trinitarian community that longs to see the love of Jesus restore lives? 

Are you living in fear?  Or allowing the truth of the gospel to rest in you with no fear?

Remember, Jesus is with us always, to the very end of the age.