Matthew 28:19
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.
Scripture Insights
The Great Commission is the prevailing purpose to which Jesus calls all his followers. It is the call for disciples to make disciples.
A disciple is a learner who becomes so relationally connected to the teacher that the teacher’s character and conduct become the learner’s very own. In the command to baptize, Jesus is not prescribing the logistics of proper sacramen- tal order; rather, he is describing the process of continually immersing new disciples into the presence of the triune God, until God’s character and conduct become the disciples’ very own.
The core of the Great Commission is the radical inclusion into God’s family of all ethnicities, languages, sociopolitical tribes, and people who are in any way different from the first disciples. More than inclusion, the disciples are called to go to them wherever they may be—across the ideological aisle, across the room, across the street, or across the ocean.
The Great Commission articulates Jesus’s preferred future for humanity: people immersed in God’s presence taking on God’s character as their own and inviting others into the same relational process of transformation into the likeness of Jesus.
Today’s Prayer
Lord, may we be what you desire all of us to become—disciples who are inseparably connected to and thoroughly immersed in your presence, until your character and conduct become our very own. By the power of your Holy Spirit, enable us today to be the visible expression of Jesus to someone who is different than we are.
—Ryan Green
Lead Pastor, City First Church
