What is the Great Commission?

The common version translates "teach all nations," but puts "make disciples" in the margin. The revised more correctly puts the latter into the text. Strictly it is, not a verb with a noun following, but a simple verb, "disciple," and this has its importance: for in the former case, it would be disciples that would be to be baptized, while, as it really is, it is the nations who are to be discipled, by baptizing them.

When the Lord is risen from the dead, and the kingdom is ready to be proclaimed, He says, "All authority" — not power — "is given unto Me, in heaven and in earth: go ye, and disciple all nations." It is plain He would not say "Make children of God": this was within His own power only. "Disciple" was the suited word in reference to the kingdom; and this brings us to the commission.

The apostles of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ were specially charged to preach "repentance and remission of sins." Let us all remember this. We are prone to forget it, to the serious damaging of our preaching, and of the souls of our hearers. Some of us are apt to overlook the first part of the commission, in our eagerness, it may be, to get to the second.

They were no longer to speak of law but of "repentance and remission of sins … in His Name." Grace was to be their theme — forgiveness of sins through the Name and worth of Another — and the only necessity on the side of men is repentance — that honesty of heart which leads a man to take his true place as a sinner before God. This preaching of grace is to be "among all nations," and not confined to the Jews only, as was the giving of the law. Yet it was to begin at Jerusalem, for in that city man's wrongdoing had risen to its height in the crucifixion of the Saviour; and where sin had abounded, there the overflowing of grace was to be shown.

The commission is truly a great one, and would need a solid foundation on which to rest it; and such it has, blessed be God, in the atoning death of His Son. Nothing less than this could sustain such a magnificent structure; but the grace that planned the commission has also laid the foundation; so that a full remission of sins can be preached among all nations, because God has been glorified, in the death of Christ, as to the entire question of sin.

Our exalted Lord wields all power in both spheres, so that nothing is beyond His reach. If anything harmful happens to His servants it must be by His permission. All nations are to be the scope of their service, and not in the midst of Israel only as before. Those baptized from the nations are to be taught to observe all the Lord's commands and instructions, for the servants are to be marked by obedience, and to bring those that they reach into obedience also. Then all the days to the finish they can count on the support and spiritual presence of their Master.

The ways of God — His dealings through the ages — demanded a limited sphere for the twelve apostles sent out by the Messiah in the days of His life on earth. "The lost sheep of the house of Israel" were to be the special objects of their ministry.

They had to "wait" until they got the power. How could they go without it? Who but the Holy Spirit could speak adequately of the love of God, of the person, work and glory of Christ? Who but He could enable anyone to preach repentance and remission of sins? … In a word, the power of the Holy Spirit is absolutely essential in every branch of Christian service, and all who go to work without it will find it to be barrenness, misery, and desolation.

As we travel on into the Acts and pass through the letters we find coming to light developments which give us the full gospel commission of today, yet we do not lose the light and benefit of what the Lord says here. We still go to all nations, baptizing in the Name. We still have to teach all the Lord's word. All power is still His.