The risen Jesus gives his Great Commission to the disciples (28:18–20). As Matthew comes to the final three verses of his Gospel, he encapsulates the primary thrust of the whole book. Otto Michel perhaps overstates the significance of these verses, but he catches their importance to Matthew’s purpose for writing his Gospel:

It is sufficient to say that the whole Gospel was written under this theological premise of Matt 28:18–20 (cf. 28:19 wit. 10:5ff.; 15:24; v. 20 wit. 1:23; also the return to baptism, cf. 3:1). In a way the conclusion goes back to the start and teaches us to understand the whole Gospel, the story of Jesus, “from behind”. Matt 28:18–20 is the key to the understanding of the whole book [his emphasis].

Hagner likewise states that these verses are “the hallmark of the gospel of Matthew. For these words, perhaps more than any others, distill the outlook and various emphases of the gospel.” In this famous “Great Commission,” Jesus declares that his disciples are to make more of what he has made of them. In that sense, the Commission encapsulates Jesus’ purpose for coming to earth, and its placement at the conclusion of this Gospel indicates Matthew’s overall purpose for writing. Jesus has come to inaugurate the kingdom of God on earth by bringing men and women into a saving relationship with himself, which heretofore is called “discipleship to Jesus.”

All authority in heaven and on earth. In the mixed state of worship, hesitation, bewilderment, and astonishment found among the broader group of disciples, Jesus comes close to them and addresses them to bring strength and calm. He was and is and always will be their Master, whose presence and words are what bring meaning and guidance to their daily lives. His first words are an essential foundation for the disciples’ personal security, but also for the commission to follow. The all-inclusiveness of the Great Commission for the present age is indicated by the repetition of the adjective pas (“all”): “all authority,” “all nations,” “all things” (niv “everything”), “all the days” (niv “always”). Several points flow from Jesus’ declaration of his all-inclusive authority.

(1) Jesus now possesses all authority. In his earthly ministry Jesus declared his authority as the Son of Man to forgive sin (9:6) and to reveal the Father (11:27). Now as the risen Messiah he clearly alludes to his fulfillment of Daniel’s prophecy of the Son of Man who has been given all authority, glory, and power, who is rightly worshiped by all nations, and whose dominion and kingdom last forever (Dan. 7:13–14). Jesus can make this claim only if he is fully God, because the entire universe is contained in the authority delegated to him. During his earthly ministry he had absolute authority, but his exercise of it was restricted to his incarnate consciousness. In his risen state he exercises his absolute supremacy throughout all heaven and earth.

(2) This authority, as emphasized by the (divine) passive voice, “has been given” to him by the Father. The Son of God is the mediatorial King through whom all of God’s authority is mediated. The resurrected Jesus appears before the disciples to initiate a new order of existence that anticipates his future glorious exaltation and enthronement at God’s right hand (Luke 24:51; Acts 1:9; Phil. 2:9–11).

(3) As the One with all authority, Jesus rules the plan of establishing God’s kingdom throughout the earth. The particularism of the gospel message restricted to Israel during his earthly mission is fulfilled and lifted, as he now authoritatively directs his disciples to a universal mission. A. T. Robertson states:

It is the sublimist of all spectacles to see the Risen Christ without money or army or state charging this band of five hundred men and women with world conquest and bringing them to believe it possible and to undertake it with serious passion and power. Pentecost is still to come, but dynamic faith rules on this mountain in Galilee.

The structure of the Great Commission. The Great Commission contains one primary, central command, the imperative “make disciples,” with three subordinate participles, “go,” baptizing,” and “teaching.” The imperative explains the central thrust of the commission while the participles describe aspects of the process. These subordinate participles take on imperatival force because of the imperative main verb and so characterize the ongoing mandatory process of discipleship to Jesus.

Jesus’ Great Commission implies more than securing salvation as his disciple. Implied in the imperative “make disciples” is both the call to and the process of becoming a disciple. Jesus spent a great deal of time guiding and instructing the disciples in their growth. He now sends them out to do the same. The process will not be exactly the same as what Jesus did, for the circumstances after Pentecost change the process. However, the process will be similar in many ways. As a person responds to the invitation to come out of the nations to start life as a disciple, she or he begins the life of discipleship through baptism and obedience to Jesus’ teaching.

Make disciples. Even as the Son of Man exercises dominion over all nations in Daniel’s prophecy (Dan. 7:13–14), so Jesus demonstrates his messianic authority to call people of all the nations to be his disciples. Jesus committed his earthly ministry to “making disciples” within Israel (cf. John 4:1), and he commissions his disciples to “make disciples” among the nations.

This is the third time in Matthew’s Gospel that he uses the verb matheteuo (“to make disciples”; cf. 13:52; 27:57). In the first two uses, matheteuo has a passive flavor: “has become a disciple, has been made a disciple.” Here the verb takes on a distinctively transitive sense, “make a disciple,” in which the focus is on calling individuals to absolute commitment to the person of Jesus as one’s sole Master and Lord. This command finds remarkable verbal fulfillment in the fourth and final occurrence of this verb in the New Testament as the early Christians proclaim the message of Jesus and “make disciples” (Acts 14:21; niv “won … disciples”). The injunction of the Great Commission is given both to the Eleven and to the broader circle of disciples.

To become a disciple was a common phenomenon in the ancient world, but throughout his ministry Jesus developed a unique form of discipleship for those who followed him. He broke through a variety of barriers—gender, ethnic, religious, social, economic, and so on—by calling all peoples into a personal discipleship relationship with himself. Being a disciple of Jesus was primarily not an academic endeavor like the Pharisees (e.g., 22:16), nor even commitment to a great prophet like John the Baptist (e.g., 9:14). A disciple of Jesus comes to him and him alone for eternal life and will always be only a disciple of Jesus (cf. 19:16, 25–30; 23:8–12; John 6:66–71). The expression is virtually synonymous with the title “Christian.”

All the nations. The object of making disciples is“all the nations.” People of every nation are to receive the opportunity to become Jesus’ disciples. When we read the Commission here in the light of Luke’s Gospel, that “repentance and forgiveness of sins … be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem” (Luke 24:47), we understand that Jesus’ ministry in Israel was the beginning point of a universal offer of salvation to all the peoples of the earth.

Some suggest that “all the nations” means only “Gentiles,” not “Jews,” since Matthew normally refers to Gentiles by this title. Many often appeal to this view because of Jesus’ harsh statements about the rejection of the Jewish nation (e.g., 21:43). Most scholars, however, recognize that Jesus’ overall intention is to include Jews in his commission, and Matthew intends his readers to understand their inclusion. The Jewish leaders of Jesus’ day experienced punishment for their failed leadership and for their culpable role in conspiring to bring Jesus to the Romans for execution (see comments on 27:25). However, God continues to love the whole world, for whom Christ died, which includes Jews (cf. John 3:16; Rom. 5:8).

The rest of the New Testament clearly presents the evangelism of Jews as part of missionary strategy (e.g., Acts 2:22; 13:38–39; Rom. 1:16; Eph. 2:11–16). Although Israel has been rejected for the present time as the instrument and witness of the outworking of the kingdom of God, individual Jews are still invited to participate in the salvation brought by Jesus. Matthew uses the full expression “all nations” in settings that most naturally include all peoples, including Jews (cf. 24:9, 14; 25:32). Most important, Matthew here returns to the universal theme of 1:1, where the blessings promised to Abraham, and through him to all people on earth (Gen. 12:3), are now being fulfilled in Jesus the Messiah. Matthew’s theme of universal salvation through Jesus (e.g., 1:1; 2:1–12; 4:15–16; 8:5–13; 10:18; 13:38; 24:14) thus climaxes this Gospel in the command to “make disciples of all the nations.”Therefore go. The first participle that modifies the command to make disciples is “go.” Because Jesus now exercises universal authority, “therefore” his disciples must go out and engage in the universal mission to make disciples of all nations. And because of that authority, they have the utmost confidence that he is sovereignly in control of all universal forces.

The disciples had been focused on assisting Jesus in establishing the kingdom on earth, but now that he is crucified and raised, they do not know what they should be doing. According to Acts 1:6, they are still expecting Jesus to restore the kingdom to Israel, even after the resurrection. So Jesus now gives them their marching orders for the present age. The entire earth is to be their mission field “as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (24:14).

To obey Jesus’ commission may require some to leave homeland and go to other parts of the world, but the imperatival nature of the entire commission requires all believers to be involved in it. The completion of the commission is not simply evangelism. Rather, it means calling unbelievers to be converted and embark on the process of being transformed into the image of Jesus in lifelong discipleship.

Baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Even as one is called from among the nations to begin life as a disciple, one must in turn follow the Lord through baptism and through obedience to Jesus’ teaching. As a person responds to the invitation to believe in Jesus, she or he is regenerated to start life as a disciple. The participle “baptizing” describes the activity by which a new disciple identifies with Jesus and his community, and the participle “teaching” introduces the activities by which the new disciple grows in discipleship.

Purity washings were common among the various sects in Israel, either for entrance to the temple or for daily rituals. Proselyte baptism increasingly indicated conversion from paganism to Judaism. At first Jesus and John the Baptist carried out baptism side by side, marking the arrival of the kingdom of God (cf. John 3:22–4:3). But with the initiation of the new covenant through Jesus’ death and resurrection and the arrival of the Spirit, Jesus’ form of baptism is unique. It is the symbol of conversion, indicating a union and new identity with Jesus Messiah who has died and been raised to new life (cf. Rom. 6:1–4).

In the act of baptism, the new disciple identifies with Jesus and his community of faith and gives public declaration that she or he has become a lifelong adherent to Jesus. The earliest converts on Pentecost in Jerusalem would quite likely have undertaken baptism in the public mikveh baths surrounding the temple, a powerful, public testimony of their newfound commitment to Jesus Messiah (cf. Acts 2:41).

The uniqueness of Jesus’ form of baptism is emphasized in that new disciples are to be baptized “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (28:19). The use of “name” is common in Scripture for God’s power and authority. Jews were not baptized in the name of a person. Baptism in the “name” (note the singular) of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit associates the three as personal distinctions, an early indication of the Trinitarian Godhead and an overt proclamation of Jesus’ deity.

This is the clearest Trinitarian language in the Gospels and is often accused of being a later theological “formula” inserted by Matthew, because it is purported to be too theologically developed to have been used by Jesus at this stage. However, this is not the earliest such Trinitarian expression in the New Testament (cf. Gal. 4:4–7; 1 Cor. 12:4–6; 2 Cor. 13:14), and even in Jesus’ earlier ministry and teaching we catch beginning hints of the plurality of the nature of the Godhead (e.g., Matt. 3:17; 11:27; 12:28).

We have noted regularly how difficult it was for Jesus’ followers to move from strict theological monotheism to recognize the plurality of the Godhead in the person of Jesus in relation to his heavenly Father. Now in his risen state, however, the cognitive dissonance is so profound that the shock has enabled a more complete paradigm shift to occur. This alone explains the ability of the strictly monotheistic Pharisee Paul, after being confronted by the risen Lord Jesus, to grasp the plurality in the nature of the Godhead. As God’s Messiah, now revealed to be divine, Jesus wields all authority given him by the Father, and the mode by which that authority is exercised is through the Spirit.

Jesus’ commission regarding baptism is also congruent with what we find in the rest of the New Testament. In the book of Acts baptism is normally “in” the name of Jesus (e.g., Acts 2:38; 8:16; 10:48; 19:3–5) and in Paul’s writings “in” Christ (e.g., Rom. 6:3; Gal. 3:27). The risen Jesus is at the heart of the Christian life and the tangible picture of the living God. He is not so much giving a formula as he is emphasizing a theological truth symbolized with baptism. Baptism is a ceremony of entry into the family of God, the family of the new covenant, so what one does in the name of Jesus one does in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Paul explicitly links baptism to what the living God has accomplished in Jesus’ resurrection. Baptism marks the profound truth that with the new covenant, all new disciples are brought into a new existence that is fundamentally determined by God.