Matthew’s Missionary Mandate:
Evangelism in the Fullest Sense
July 2023
As we explore the objectives from the first of five Great Commission passages, we begin with the Gospel of Matthew. We see in it an evangelistic accounting of the life of Christ for “the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (10:6, 15:24). Matthew teaches (or disciples) them to acknowledge and accept that Jesus is their Messiah who came to “save his people from their sins” (1:21). That Jesus has the power to save sinners is the preface upon which the Gospel is established. It is also the reason behind recounting 27 miracles found in Matthew’s Gospel. For example, when He healed the paralytic in Capernaum, he declared the reason was “that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins,” a miracle found in all the synoptic Gospels After the resurrection, when Matthew records Jesus’ final words, he prefaces the Great Commission with the fact that Jesus has all power in all the earth… power to save sinners from their sin. And upon this power, He mandated his disciples to go and “teach all [the lost] nations” (28:18). The verb “to teach” literally means “to make disciples of.” So, we see that Matthew presents the missionary mandate as this: those who are discipled to receive Christ and set free from sin, they are to make disciples of other nations in like manner. It is the same power by which they were set free that they were then sent forth to other nations that they also may be set free.
In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus uses the Greek word “ethnos.” This word translated as “nations” expresses three meanings. First, OTHER peoples. Not that they were to ignore their own countrymen, but the term “nations” always refers to the GENTILES (12:17-21 & Is.42:1-4). Second, GROUPS of people. There are nations who have within their borders many distinct and indigenous people groups. These are those groups who identify traditionally by a common lineage, land, law, and language apart from the nation itself. Third, UNREACHED peoples. Those who have never heard the Gospel. We are mandated to go to the extent which Christ’s power to save sin reaches—to all the earth (28:18). Since the Gospel was centralized in Jerusalem alone since Pentecost, there was a whole world that was yet unreached by the Gospel having no knowledge of the life of Jesus Christ. Much of the world remains in that same ignorance. Therefore, when we hear the missionary mandate of Matthew’s Gospel, we must ourselves take heed to target the unreached peoples of other nations who remain in ignorance to this day. We must do so, not merely by preaching the good news of Jesus Christ, but by fully presenting a system of teaching or discipling that leads the unreached to be saved from their sin, and thus in turn be sent forth in like manner to disciple other unreached people groups.
The great Bible scholar, A. T Robertson, said it this way: “This program [mission mandate] includes making disciples or learners such as they were themselves. That means evangelism in the fullest sense and not merely revival meetings.”
We are left with the looming question as to what kind of commitment we are called to fulfill when undertaking the demands of the mission mandate found within the Great Commission–one that is mere or one that is the fullest? I trust that we will commit to that which is the fullest!
Pleading & Plodding!
GFF General Director