Disciple what? - 12 March 2009 |
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The Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20) is often read (rightly) as a charge to get on with evangelism. But there’s more to it than that. Here’s what it says:
And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations (matheteusate panta ta ethne), baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’ (Matthew 28:18-20)
The Greek text of Matthew 28:19 (matheteusate panta ta ethne) should be translated, ‘disciple all the nations’, with ‘all the nations’ as the object of the verb. And it means exactly what it says.
Think about that for a moment.
If our Lord had wanted his followers merely to disciple people from every nation, there would have been at least three different ways of saying it, but Jesus chose none of them.
(FWIW, they are ek with the genitive [cf. Galatians 2:15; Revelation 5:9; 7:9; 11:9], en with the dative [cf. Acts 10:35], or apo with the genitive [cf. Acts 2:5; 15:19]).
As it stands, however, Matthew 28:19 is quite clear: the nations are to be discipled, as anticipated by the Abrahamic covenant (cf. Genesis 22:18).
This obviously entails that people within the nations are to be discipled, but it envisages more than this. Nations, as nations, will learn to conduct themselves in all their affairs (legal, political, economic, social, etc.) in obedience to the Lord.
John Owen got the hang of it:
The great promise of Christ is, that in these latter days of the world he will lay the nations in a subserviency to him, the kingdoms of the world shall become his; that is, act as kingdoms and governments no longer against him, but for him. (Owen, ‘Christ’s Kingdom and the Magistrate’s Power’, Works 8:390)
That is what is meant, properly speaking, by ‘A Christian Nation’.
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Posted by Steve Jeffery · Topics: Bible, Eschatology, Minister's Blog, Theology