Asking for volunteers yields mixed results.
In the corporate world, there is always a danger when giving a group of employees an option to work overtime to meet production numbers. When the supervisor says, “We’ll take any volunteers,” there will inevitably be a few who agree enthusiastically because they believe in their work. Then, there are the few who will sign up because money is tight. But there are many who will never volunteer. Whatever the reason, there are simply not enough workers for the task. What follows is the unenviable task for the supervisor: assigning mandatory overtime. The employees groan and postpone another weekend of projects, family time, and leisure.
This can be how it feels to Christians when discussions about Jesus’ Great Commission arise, if you will humor me with a workplace illustration applied to the local church. The local pastor is responsible to lead, counsel, preach, teach, and guide his flock to greater maturity in Christ and faithfulness to the Lord’s commission—captured most succinctly in Matthew 28. But is the Great Commission intended for those who choose to volunteer—for the enthusiasts, the Christians struggling to spiritually “make ends meet,” or any others who want to join—or is it for all of us? Phrased another way, is the Great Commission such that our local shepherds need to mandate participation from all believers?
I want to address this by raising a couple foundational questions which, if answered correctly, render the question above unnecessary—or, at most, a diagnostic indicator of misinterpretations that should be corrected through ongoing discipleship.
1. What does it mean to follow Jesus?
First, what does it mean to be a baptized follower of Jesus? The Great Commission of Matthew 28 does not start by describing how believers must live or how they must observe all that Jesus commanded. It begins with the imperative “Go” (πορευθέντες). Its placement at the beginning of the sentence indicates the importance of Jesus’ expectation. Since Jesus has received all authority from the Father to make the nations obedient to him (v. 18), he, in turn, is implying—and ensuring—that he will fulfill this commission as his followers go.
What are the implications of such logic? To begin with, Jesus possesses the authority, meaning the pressure is off us (whew!). However, this also implies that his commission is only going to be accomplished as his followers obey the first command: “go.” Therefore, if Jesus issued this command to a group of 11 men (plus, for the sake of argument, a handful of other followers), was it Jesus’ intention that this small group of disciples would, by themselves, take the message of salvation to all the nations? Were his few disciples to trace the edges of the known world—and fill the entire Roman Empire with the gospel? The answer is embedded in the next few verses.
As his disciples were going along, some would believe—who they would then baptize and teach to observe all that Jesus had commanded them. This process implies multiplication, not mere replication.
When individuals repeat a task by themselves, it inherently limits the number of times they can accomplish it. In a factory setting, when one machinist teaches an apprentice, the factory has one more machinist than it had previously. However, if a machinist trains one or two apprentices, and those new workers, in turn, teach others, the workforce in the factory multiplies. Or, if you were offered one penny a day for a month, you would receive $0.30, but if you had the option to double your pennies each day for a month, you would gain $10,737,418.24. This is the kind of multiplication that Jesus intended for his disciples—and it is how Christianity has spread and become a global religion of over 1 billion adherents.
Returning to the question, “What does it mean to be a baptized follower of Jesus?” we can infer that when we accept the message of Jesus, we are expected to share what we have received with others—not of guilt but out of gratitude. Jesus’ statements about the nations believing and his commission to his disciples lead to this conclusion. Furthermore, have you ever considered what it means to be baptized into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? For all the riches we gain as believers, I submit that, at minimum, this means that as the Father sent Jesus (John 20:21), so too he sends you and me.
[W]hen we accept the message of Jesus, we are expected to share what we have received with others—not of guilt but out of gratitude.
2. Who is sent?
The second question digs deeper into the question of who Christ is referring to: Who is he sending? Some may argue, and have argued, that Jesus was commissioning the original 11 disciples (soon to be 12 again; see Acts 1:15-26). If my argument above is not sufficiently persuasive that the who refers to all who become part of Jesus’ movement (i.e., all who are baptized believers), then consider with me the backgrounds of the original 12 disciples. They included fishermen (blue collar workers), a tax collector (white collar worker), a zealot (political activist), a scholar, and Judas (potentially an entrepreneur)—not to mention other early believers who were cultural outsiders. Do you see yourself in any of these backgrounds? What about your congregants? Notice who Jesus did not call: the religious professionals of his day (though, like Nicodemus, even they could not stay away). What are the implications of this for the early church and for us today?
Now, I do not want to leave the impression that I am advocating for some sort of uniformity of roles in the Great Commission. On the contrary, Acts 2:42 makes plain that the early disciples “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching[.]” I believe a sound argument can be made that the office of elder/pastor/bishop continues in that line today. There are church leaders devoted to the work of multiplication in a full-time capacity, and they are worthy of “double-honors” (see 1 Timothy 5:17). Their role is to “equip the saints for ministry” (Ephesians 4:12).
As the early church developed, Acts 8:4 mentions, “Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word.” What follows in Acts and in church tradition is the story of how Spirit-filled believers shared the message concerning Jesus—and the mission multiplied across the Mediterranean and the known world (Romans 1:8, 1Thessalonians 1:8). The apostle Paul regularly commended those believers who were responsible for sounding forth the message to many people in many places.
So, returning to our original consideration: Is “going,” or disciple-making, an expectation only for the enthusiast, the professional, or the one who wants to repay a spiritual debt (the “guilty gospelizer”)? Far from it being a commissioning of the “few and the proud” (not to intimate ingratitude to the Marines), it is a clarion call for all believers in Jesus to participate.
Multiplication is the aim, and “going” is the strategy. Christ’s Great Commission has taken, and always will take, all types of believers to complete, but he guarantees the result: “the nations will be my inheritance” (Psalm 2:8). Therefore, go!
