“Jesus came and told his disciples, ‘I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.’” –Matthew 28:18-20 NLT
The passage above is commonly known as the “Great Commission”. It was the final command that Jesus gave to His disciples before He ascended back into Heaven. Note that Jesus did not merely command His disciples to go and baptize people…anybody can be dunked or sprinkled or what have you, but His command is that they make disciples. Furthermore He elaborates that they are to teach those disciples to obey all the commandments of Jesus. It’s interesting that He commands the disciples to teach the new disciples, because to be a disciple means to be a student, and it follows that if you are a student, then you are being taught. But Jesus specifies, lest there be any doubt, that these students that they are to teach are to be taught what Jesus taught. They are not to make disciples of Peter, or disciples of John, they are to go out any make disciples of Jesus, teaching them the same things that they learned from Him.
What did Jesus teach? Well, a good place to start is with Jesus’ answer to a question posed in Matthew 22:
“’Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?’ Jesus replied, ‘”You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.” This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.’” (Matthew 22:36-40)
Jesus taught that God, and the love of God, was supreme, and that our second goal was to love others with the same care and concern that we show for ourselves. Notice also that these two items are not put up in opposition to the rest of the commandments of scripture; no, Jesus says that these two commandments are most important because they are the foundation of all scripture. The scriptures are good and profitable and important, as the Apostle Paul points out for us in 2 Timothy 3:16 when he says, “All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right.”
Jesus did not come to earth to establish a new religion. Christianity itself is not a new religion, but is the fulfillment of Old Testament Judaism; it is the unfurling of God’s plan which He set in motion from the beginning of time, a plan he offered glimpses of throughout the Old Testament, even as far back as the book of Genesis when he pronounced a curse on the Serpent (that is, Satan) who had deceived our mother Eve, and told him that there would be hostility between the Serpent and the woman’s offspring, that “He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.” (Genesis 3:15). This was not a pronouncement of aman crushing the head of a mere snake, but a prophetic foreshadowing of Satan, who had taken on the guise of a serpent, being crushed and defeated by the woman’s most significant offspring, Jesus Christ, who at some point in the distant future would be born into the world.
Throughout the Old Testament, God revealed to His people more prophesies concerning the coming of Jesus, perhaps most clearly in Isaiah 7:14 where we read “Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel (which means ‘God is with us’).” So it should be clear that when Jesus came into the world, when He died and rose again and commanded His disciples to go and make disciples themselves, teaching them to obey His commandments, He was not telling them to establish a new religion, but to teach the same religion that had been taught throughout the scriptures and now had found its ultimate fulfillment in the person of Jesus: that there is a holy God, that He is worthy of all of our love and our praise, and that we, fallen mankind, stand condemned before Him, but that He would make a way through sacrifice for us to be reconciled to Him. Now, all sacrifice in the Old Testament, sacrifices of bulls and rams and goats, was but a foreshadowing of God’s ultimate plan in Jesus, the one sacrifice that would provide permanent and lasting satisfaction of God’s justice and open the door of fellowship to His chosen people of all tribes and all nations.
Thus it is critical, if we are to make disciples, that we teach them as Jesus taught them. It is critical that we lay out the scriptures before them, from the Old Testament to the New, explaining and pointing out the truth of God’s Word, showing the work, the love, the justice, and the grace of God from the beginning of creation to the present day. Indeed, there is a tendency today for many in the church to look upon the Old Testament as though its importance were diminished now that Jesus has shown up on the scene, but it is this very same Old Testament that taught who Jesus was, and which Jesus Himself used when explaining about His coming and resurrection to some of His followers who, on account of His death, had begun to doubt. Jesus’ response to them was “’You foolish people! You find it so hard to believe all that the prophets wrote in the Scriptures. Wasn’t it clearly predicted that the Messiah would have to suffer all these things before entering his glory?’ Then Jesus took them through the writings of Moses and all the prophets, explaining from all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.” (Luke 24:25-27)
These is a great need in this world for people to be taught the scriptures, to be taught the commandments of God and all His history and plan as He has revealed these things to us in the scriptures. Sadly, many churches and ministries are wandering away from the faithful teaching of scripture. I am sorry to say that I have heard churches referred to as “teaching churches”, as though these churches were more academic, more prone to digging into the Word of God, than other, more progressive churches. Yet the sad part is that this was not being offered as praise of one style of church over another, but just as a point of distinction between what is apparently considered two perfectly acceptable forms of church ministry: teaching and…well, not teaching, I suppose. In many cases I would say, simply from observation, that those churches that are not “teaching” churches are often what you might think of as “power” churches; churches with lively services where supposedly God’s power continuously flows in miraculous ways, yet often leaves little time for the traditional, somewhat drier practice of sermonizing and expounding on the many words of an old book called the Bible.
The problem with that is that a church or ministry that is not primarily concerned with teaching the plain truths of scripture, faithfully, carefully and with integrity, truly has no power at all. I don’t care how many miracles are performed, how many signs or wonders take place or how many “decision cards” are filled out; that ministry is failing to uphold the commandment of Jesus, and because they are not upholding His commandment, they cannot be considered a legitimate ministry. They may be made up of people with the best of intentions, but they are nevertheless spiritually immature and show a shocking lack of understanding, and they themselves need to be taught the fundamentals of the faith they claim to represent.
It is worth saying that one man, in one small corner of the world, who is faithfully teaching the scriptures to others, will do more to promote the Gospel in the world at large than ten thousand men and women who travel the globe performing signs and wonders. The latter may stir up a lot of excitement, may boast of quite a collection of “converts”, but the lone man in his quiet corner is fulfilling the commandment of Jesus, whereas the others, who lay claim to signs and wonders as the hallmark of their ministry, indeed have little to stand on, for these things do not in themselves show favor or approval from God. Remember that Jesus Himself told His disciples:
“On judgment day many will say to me, ‘Lord! Lord! We prophesied in your name and cast out demons in your name and performed many miracles in your name.’ But I will reply, ‘I never knew you. Get away from me, you who break God’s laws.’” (Matthew 7:22,23)
It is critical if we, as believers, desire to draw closer to God, desire to fulfill His commandments and desire to make disciples and spread the Gospel, that we dig more and more into His Word; that we study it, meditate on it, and make it our primary goal to teach it to others. In so doing we will truly fulfill the Great Commission by making genuine disciples, disciples who have been taught the commandments of Jesus and who are themselves equipped to teach others. We will find as we study the scriptures, as we are taught and as we ourselves teach, that they are not dead, that they are not lifeless, and that they do not require embellishment to be relevant to the world around us, for indeed they are already supremely relevant to all people in all walks of life. If we feel that this is not the case, it is only because we have grown so cold and distant from them that we no longer understand them or know them as true disciples of Jesus should. Indeed, within the smallest, quietest church that you can conceive, if the scriptures are taught in truth, taught with integrity and held up as God’s revealed Word to mankind, there is true spiritual power, and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it.
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