The Great Confusion of the Great Commission

Introduction

What if we have misunderstood the Great Commission? Many evangelicals today, myself included, were raised to believe that evangelism is the primary, if not exclusive, mission of the Christian life. If that’s true, then why is the foundational passage- Matthew 28: 18-20 - never directly referenced again in the New Testament? If the Great Commission is obviously the mission of the Christian life, or of the Church, how come the phrase wasn’t invented until the 19th century?

Inspiration and Disclaimer 

This essay was inspired by the recent message given by Pastor Kevin DeYoung at the CrossCon24 event a few weeks ago. As will be clear, I fundamentally reject many of the points he made from a Biblical and historical perspective, but I will restrain myself from dissecting his quotes too much. Rather, the larger point of this work is to critique the impulse which drives thought paradigms like this. DISCLAIMER: I am not saying the Great Commission, evangelism, or Gospel-centric thinking are not important; they are of the utmost importance. I will double down on this at the end of the article. Anyway, Here’s some of his message:

“My message is to make sure that when we talk about God’s mission in the world, and the mission of the church, that we have our story straight. Increasingly you hear some christians tell a story of God’s work in the world that is less about saving sinners, bringing them into the church- the church as a witnessing community, the church as an outpost of the Kingdom-less about that, less energy, enthusiasm, toward that and more about a call to transform culture, save civilization, and even create, build, or restore Christian nations…15 years ago if well meaning churches starting drifting in their God given mission it was because their energy was around the arts, justice, shalom, human flourishing, all good things– but not mainly, the story the Bible is telling…I want to remind you that the story of God’s work in the world is church centric and soteriological, rather than nation-centric and civilizational…[they believe] the church [merely] plays a supportive role…the vision in this impulse of God’s work in the world is nation centric rather than church centric, so that the energy of the church is directed toward the building of Christendom and the establishment of a Christian civil society…”

Great takes on these comments can be found here from Jon Harris and here from Stephen Wolfe, who was clearly in Kevin’s mind when he made these remarks. Some quick critiques right off the bat: I doubt that Kevin intends to imply that the cultural aspects of the Gospel, evangelism, and their effect on civilization, are not important. I know he cares about these things too, but unfortunately these ideas have out ran him in the last several years. This rhetoric echoes the “we just need to focus on the gospel” call that many at The Gospel Coalition have been making for the last twenty years. 

Unfortunately for them, we now have a historical record from which to judge these emphases. Have more people been saved, has the church grown, or has the nation transformed through individuals in this time? Clearly not, and it's not because congregations were not being told to focus on the gospel and evangelism. As a proud southerner I can tell you first hand, that’s practically all we talked about on Sundays, as we included the sacrament of the invitation at the end of each service. Funny enough, now my friends 20 years later only know Christianity in terms of the Gospel and evangelism, not Church history, the study of doctrine, or what the Bible might have to say about their taxes, after school programs, or their neighborhoods. 

There are two larger errors with respect to his remarks here. 1) Conflation of meanings for particular terms, namely “Church” and “soteriological.” In his rebuttal, Stephen Wolfe agreed that it is not the primary function of the Church to regulate local commerce, recreation sports leagues, music conservatories, and other aspects of culture as DeYoung seems to imply. They are able to agree on this because they are speaking with respect to the Institutional Church. But should the church have involvement in all the things previously described? Absolutely. Is this a contradiction? Not at all. We should not conflate the meaning of the term “Church” with “church,” that is, the Body of Christ; disciples of the Lord Jesus. This allows us to agree with Kevin; yes, God’s mission is church-centric, that is, believer-centric. Because our usage of the term includes more than just the institution, we can have a better understanding as to the aim of the Great Commission. 

Comments like DeYoung’s would imply that the “soteriological” aspect of the Church’s mission is almost exclusively about justification. Of course Kevin would not say that, he would include the sanctification of Christians as a part of their redeemed life. Interestingly that brings us to a fun syllogism explaining the dilemma at hand:

• The Great Commission is the mission of the Church.

• The Great Commission includes more than merely the conversion of individuals.

• Therefore, the mission of the Church is about more than merely evangelism and justification. 

Disciples must be taught to obey all that Christ has commanded, and He commanded many things that are not immediately related to how to be saved, but rather how to live once you are saved, and these things play out into all of life. This is the real disagreement: the Great Commission is in fact about civilization transformation, because Christ has inherited the nations, not merely an institutional church, lest we be Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox.

“The Lord has said to Me,

‘You are My Son,

Today I have begotten You.

Ask of Me, and I will give You

The nations for Your inheritance,

And the ends of the earth for Your possession.

You shall [h]break them with a rod of iron;

You shall dash them to pieces like a potter’s vessel.” Psalm 2: 7-9

“He will judge Your people with righteousness,

And Your poor with justice…He shall have dominion also from sea to sea,

And from the River to the ends of the earth.

Those who dwell in the wilderness will bow before Him,

And His enemies will lick the dust.” Psalm 72: 2, 8-9

I’ll spare you all the other numerous passages mentioning Messianic prophecies fulfilled in Christ which appear to be about far more than DeYoung’s emphasis on “saving sinners..” Of course the Messiah has saved sinners and will continue to save them until the eschaton, but He is also accomplishing far more than that in history, a point we will return to when we explain the Greatness of the Great Commission. 

But yes Kevin, God’s mission IS church-centric and soteriological, if by that we mean His mission is driven by the Body of Believers for the justification AND sanctification of the nations. 

History of the Phrase

The ngram viewer above certainly surprised me. Surely it cannot be that the phrase “Great Commission” was not used until the 1800’s, right? Well as far as I can find, this is the case, including a peer-reviewed journal article from The Gospel Coalition’s Themelios publication (I remind you that Kevin DeYoung was once a Council member for TGC, funny enough). Really, I’ll keep this section short just by quoting that article:

“It turns out that this passage may have got its summary label from a Dutch missionary Justinian von Welz (1621–88), but it was Hudson Taylor, nearly 200 years later, who popularized the use of ‘The Great Commission’. So, it seems like Welz or some other Post-Reformation missionary probably coined the term ‘The Great Commission’ and since that time, the passage has been the theme for countless mission talks and conferences. (It may be of some comfort to Web-sceptics to know that I ended up finding this bit of history in a hard-bound book on the history of world missions belonging to a colleague here at John Brown University.) What I realized both from my exegetical work, and somewhat confirmed by this historical find, was that for the first 1600 years of the greatest exponential mission-driven expansion of the life of church, this passage was read and understood as the trinitarian foundation of ecclesiology, not as fanfare for missiology….”

Thanks TGC, I could not have said it better. In light of this and DeYoung’s comments, it appears that the Great Confusion of the Great Commission to be about the methods of its application, which we get to in the end of this piece. 

Biblical Witness

The Greatness of the Great Commission is emphasized in the New Testament, but not in the way you may think. Do we regularly see the Great Commission quoted by the authors of the epistles? No, not really. Do we regularly find Paul, Peter, John, James, Jude, or others telling congregations, “every member of missionary,” or “that the story of God’s work in the world is church centric and soteriological, rather than nation-centric and civilizational” No, not really. What we do find, in copious amounts, may be summarized in two guiding principles: Worship the Triune God in Spirit and Truth, and love one another as Christ has loved you. 

In these two principles the church, the body of Christ, can fulfill the Great Commission as the nations are discipled. Further developing the sanctification idea, I would posit this: the emphasis on justification over sanctification in the application of the Great Commission settles only one problem in the Adamic dilemma. Christ has restored us from the sin of Adam, yes and amen. But now He has also restored us to the original task Adam was given, which believe it or not was not about eating certain fruit. Adam’s first task was about taking dominion of the Earth, which now - in Christ- we are implored to take in hand again, having our fellowship resorted with the Father. Make disciples, take dominion. This is the Great Commission.  We in fact can agree that the mission of the church is the Great Commission, so long as we know what that means.

“Then to Him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom,

That all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him.

His dominion is an everlasting dominion,

Which shall not pass away,

And His kingdom the one

Which shall not be destroyed.” Daniel 7:14

Historical Witness

Clearly evangelism has always played a pivotal role in the Church, otherwise it would have never left the Roman province of Syria-Judea. Evangelism and missions blessed the Church, spreading the good news of the King of Kings across the known world in a matter of decades. As Rome fell and Christendom emerged, evangelism continued to expand the dominion of Christ across disparate and diverse peoples, be they in Europe, Asia, or Africa. All these things being said, and praise be to God and those saints for such grace, the modern mind would expect to find exhortations through the centuries calling parishioners to make the Great Commission the chief end of their lives, but alas, this is not the case. 

We do find Augustine’s call to see the City of God triumph over the City of Man. We find that call carried on by the medievals, even in the most remote monasteries like Iona that preserved the culture of the West against all odds. We find the civilization of Christ protected from barbarous Muslims, whom soft evangelicals today allegedly would have evangelized instead. In every place we look in the history of the church we indeed see sinners saved through evangelization, but we also see civilization itself built and maintained. 

Like leaven in the loaf, the Kingdom of God spread organically over the centuries, quality over time. whereas the modern approach appears to have the Amazon Prime mindset of inserting the gospel anywhere, by any means, at this moment or else.  Church Fathers through the ages seem to align with two principles articulated by the New Testament, knowing that evangelism would be a natural product of the faithfulness of the Church. 

Comparing this with our more modern notions of the Great Charge, it's funny how the collapse of the West runs parallel to our “Gospel-Centeredness” running rampant under the Banner of the Great Commission. Turns out when you tell believers their sole focus as Christians should be evangelism, everything else in politics, education, labor, healthcare, etc. goes downhill. Further, the enemies of God appear to capitalize on our well-intended but misguided theology. “Those Christians will blindly place their kids in our anti-Christ school system , because they believe their kids are missionaries,” they remark, “they’ll let us flood their nation with millions upon millions from the third world because it's an opportunity to evangelize,” they say. Don’t worry about the poison in your food, you’re not focusing on the gospel and evangelism. Don’t worry that you're buying a house at 300 times the cost as your grandparents, you’re not focusing on the gospel and evangelism. Don’t worry that you have essentially become the bond-slave to major corporations and government bureaucrats, you’re not focusing on the gospel and evangelism. We uphold evangelism while undermining Christendom and we don’t even notice what we’re doing.  I would argue that all of these things undermine the Greatness of the Great Commission. 

 The Greatness of the Great Commission

The greatness of the Great Commission is rooted in the authority of Jesus Christ, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me…”(Matt. 28:18)  He said, which we might expand with the words of Kuyper, “there is not one square inch in the whole domain of human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!” He has authority over everything: art, media, literature, car horns, squirrels, court rooms, sanctuaries, rows of corn and cotton, music, cartoons, t-shirts, and more. “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations…teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you…” Contrary to the previously neglected ideas, we must teach the education system what Christ has commanded. We must teach our governments what Christ has commanded. We must run our housing markets, as Christ has commanded. Our food industry, labor regulations, and culture as a whole must be in the spirit of what Christ has commanded. Funny enough, this is a bit more than merely evangelism. 

And, to make more folks mad, sometimes these things can sometimes be done without a proof-text. I am not going to find an explicit passage of Scripture which will teach me how to change a light bulb, but I will certainly find all of the principles necessary to make me a productive, efficient, and effective man in all things, including the changing of a light bulb. Those statements could be a separate article in themselves, but I include them to drive home the point that every realm of life is to be taken for Christ, that is the thrust of the Great Commission, as it is a fulfillment of the Dominion mandate (Gen. 1:26-18).  We do not get to hide behind lack of proof-texts for the situations we find ourselves in, we - like Solomon- are to pray for Godly wisdom to discern such circumstances. 

Anyway, the Great Commission involves nothing less than evangelism and missions, but it also includes far more. The Great Commission involves nothing less than the institutional Church, but it also includes far more. The Great Commission involves nothing less than the clergy, but it also includes the common man, and not every man is Phillip the Evangelist. The Great Commission is great because it spreads the Greatness of Christ into every realm of life, not just the ecclesiastical.

The Point

My point is not that we abandon evangelism, that is not at all what I am saying. My point is that we acknowledge the biblical, historical, and natural reality that not every member of the body of Christ is called to make the primary focus of their lives evangelism- this simply has not historically been taught or practiced in the last 2000 years. My point is that laymen  should not be chastised or guilt tripped into thinking that their concerns for the utilization of their gifts is somehow lesser if it is not in submission to evangelism. Pastors indeed should exhort their congregations to evangelize, but also to take dominion in every walk of life. All believers should be ready at any time to evangelize, and further, to give a defense of the faith, but they should also be encouraged that they too are participating in the Great Commission without necessarily evangelizing. The ordinary man catechizing his ordinary family is participating in the Great Commission. The ordinary homemaker whom the world will never know, but whose actions keep the world running, is participating in the Great Commission. The craftsmen who is more excellent than every mainstream manufacturer, exemplifying Christian virtue, is participating in  the Great Commission. Those common activities of common Christians within the commonwealth, who further Chrsitian dominion in all things, are participating in the Great Commission, not just when they evangelize. Until we recognize our misunderstanding of these most sacred marching orders of the last century or so, we will continue to see Christendom crumble- dying the death of thousands of gospel pamphlets, while common Christians are not employed to take dominion for Christ in all things. No need to be confused brother or sister in Christ, the Commission really is Great, and there are plenty of ways for you to participate in it.