The Great Commission: What Jesus Commanded in Matthew 28:18–20

The Great Commission is the charge the risen Jesus gave his disciples. In Matthew 28:18–20 he tells the eleven to make disciples of all nations, baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and teach them to keep everything he had commanded. He promises to be with them to the end of the world.

And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.

Matthew 28:18–20

It is a large command for a small company. Eleven men on a mountain in Galilee are sent to every nation on earth, and what carries them is the sentence that comes first: “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.” The going is theirs, and ours. The power is his.

The name “Great Commission” does not appear in the Bible. It is a later title for this passage. Spanish speakers call it la Gran Comisión, Portuguese speakers a Grande Comissão, and German Bibles such as the Lutherbibel print the heading Der Missionsbefehl, “the mission command,” above Matthew 28:16–20.

Where is the Great Commission in the Bible?

Matthew gives the best-known form, but all four Gospels and the Book of Acts record a charge from the risen Jesus to his disciples. They differ in place, time and wording.

The five passages describe different occasions. Matthew sets his account on a mountain in Galilee and ends the Gospel there, without describing the ascension. Luke places his in Jerusalem and John his in a room with the doors shut, both on the evening of the resurrection day. Acts, the second book addressed to Theophilus after Luke (Luke 1:3; Acts 1:1), says Jesus appeared to the apostles over “forty days” (Acts 1:3) and gives Acts 1:8 as his last words before “he was taken up.” The common description of the Great Commission as Jesus’s final words before the ascension fits Acts 1:8 and the end of Luke, where Jesus leads the disciples to Bethany and is “carried up into heaven” (Luke 24:50–51). It does not fit Matthew’s account, which says nothing about the ascension.

What does “make disciples of all nations” mean?

In the Greek of Matthew 28:19, the King James words “teach all nations” translate mathēteusate, a verb meaning “make disciples.” It is the only command in the sentence. “Go,” “baptizing” and “teaching” are participles attached to it. The King James Version uses “teach” for two different Greek verbs in these verses: mathēteusate in verse 19 and didaskontes, “teaching,” in verse 20. Most modern translations, including the one quoted in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, read “make disciples of all nations.”

The word for “nations” is ethnē. In the New Testament it means a people or nation, and it is also the usual word for Gentiles, the non-Jewish peoples. Matthew uses it in both senses. When Jesus first sent out the twelve, he told them, “Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not: But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matthew 10:5–6). After the resurrection he sends them to all the nations.

The command rests on the sentence before it: “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth” (Matthew 28:18). The “therefore” of verse 19 ties the sending to that authority. The passage ends with a promise, “lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.”

Baptism is to be “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,” the three persons of the Holy Trinity. The early church used these words when it baptized. The Didache, which Encyclopaedia Britannica describes as the oldest surviving Christian church order, probably written in Egypt or Syria in the second century, instructs: “baptize into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, in living water.”

Teaching is “to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.” The aim is obedience. In John’s Gospel Jesus puts it this way: “If ye love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15).

Why is baptism part of the Great Commission?

Matthew and Mark both name baptism. In Matthew it is part of making disciples. In Mark it is joined to salvation: “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned” (Mark 16:16). The second half of the verse names unbelief, not the lack of baptism, as the ground of condemnation. Luke, John and Acts 1 do not mention water baptism in their commissioning scenes, although Acts 1:5 promises that the disciples “shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence.”

Churches read these verses differently. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1257, says: “The Lord himself affirms that Baptism is necessary for salvation. He also commands his disciples to proclaim the Gospel to all nations and to baptize them.” It adds that baptism is necessary “for those to whom the Gospel has been proclaimed and who have had the possibility of asking for this sacrament,” and that “God has bound salvation to the sacrament of Baptism, but he himself is not bound by his sacraments.” The Baptist Faith and Message (2000), the statement of faith of the Southern Baptist Convention, calls baptism “the immersion of a believer in water in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit” and “an act of obedience symbolizing the believer’s faith in a crucified, buried, and risen Saviour.”

How is the Great Commission told in Luke and Acts?

Luke’s account centers on Scripture and witness. Jesus reminds the disciples that “all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me,” and then “opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures” (Luke 24:44–45). The message they are to carry is that Christ would “suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day: And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. And ye are witnesses of these things” (Luke 24:46–48).

Luke adds an order to wait: “tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high” (Luke 24:49). Acts repeats it. The disciples are not to leave Jerusalem but to “wait for the promise of the Father” (Acts 1:4), and “ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you” (Acts 1:8). That promise is fulfilled at Pentecost in Acts 2. Acts 1:8 also gives the order in which the mission would spread: Jerusalem, then Judaea, then Samaria, then “the uttermost part of the earth.”

What did Jesus mean by “whose soever sins ye remit” in John 20?

John’s account ties the disciples’ mission to Jesus’s own: “as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.” Jesus then “breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost: Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained” (John 20:21–23).

Catholics and Protestants read the last sentence differently. The Council of Trent, in its fourteenth session (1551), taught that these words are to be understood “of the power of forgiving and of retaining sins in the Sacrament of penance,” and condemned anyone who reduces them “to the power of preaching the gospel.” The Lutheran Augsburg Confession (1530), Article 28, cites the same verses for “the power of the Keys,” which it defines as “a power or commandment of God, to preach the Gospel, to remit and retain sins, and to administer Sacraments.”

Is the ending of Mark part of the original Gospel?

Mark’s form of the Great Commission comes from Mark 16:9–20, and the oldest complete manuscripts of Mark do not contain those verses. The two earliest complete Greek manuscripts, Codex Sinaiticus (written in the middle of the fourth century) and Codex Vaticanus, both end the Gospel at 16:8, where the women flee the tomb “for they were afraid.” In the same century, as the scholar Peter Head points out, Eusebius of Caesarea reported that the Gospel ended at 16:8 “in nearly all the copies.” Modern Bibles say so in their notes. The English Standard Version’s reads “Some of the earliest manuscripts do not include 16:9–20,” and the New International Version’s says that “the earliest manuscripts and some other ancient witnesses do not have verses 9–20.”

The longer ending is still very old. Irenaeus, bishop of Lyon, quoted Mark 16:19 in Against Heresies, written about 180: “towards the conclusion of his Gospel, Mark says: So then, after the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, He was received up into heaven, and sits on the right hand of God.”

The churches treat the passage differently. The New American Bible, the translation of the U.S. Catholic bishops, notes that the longer ending “has traditionally been accepted as a canonical part of the gospel and was defined as such by the Council of Trent,” while adding that “vocabulary and style indicate that it was written by someone other than Mark.” Some Protestant scholars, Head among them, argue that the Gospel ends at 16:8 and that verses 9–20 are not part of inspired Scripture. Protestant translations such as the English Standard Version and the New International Version keep the verses and add a note; the King James Version prints them without one. Whatever view a reader takes of Mark 16, the command itself stands in Matthew, Luke, John and Acts.

Did the apostles carry out the Great Commission?

The Book of Acts records the mission moving outward in the order of Acts 1:8. At Pentecost in Jerusalem, Peter told the crowd, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins,” and “about three thousand souls” were added that day (Acts 2:38, 41). Philip then “went down to the city of Samaria, and preached Christ unto them,” and those who believed “were baptized, both men and women” (Acts 8:5, 12). In Caesarea the Holy Spirit fell on the Roman centurion Cornelius and his household, “on the Gentiles also,” and Peter “commanded them to be baptized in the name of the Lord” (Acts 10:45, 48). At Antioch “the disciples were called Christians first” (Acts 11:26), and the rest of Acts follows Paul’s journeys until he reaches Rome (Acts 28:16).

How do Christians fulfill the Great Commission today?

Catholic and Baptist statements of faith both read the command as given to the whole church, not only to the eleven. The Catechism of the Catholic Church calls it “the missionary mandate” and says the Church “strives to preach the Gospel to all men” “in obedience to the command of her founder” (paragraph 849), quoting Matthew 28:19–20. The Baptist Faith and Message says: “It is the duty and privilege of every follower of Christ and of every church of the Lord Jesus Christ to endeavor to make disciples of all nations,” and that every Christian should seek “to win the lost to Christ by verbal witness undergirded by a Christian lifestyle.”

The parts of the command show what it involves. Making disciples begins with evangelism: telling others about Christ, whether family, friends, coworkers and neighbors or, for missionaries, people in other countries. Baptizing brings new believers into the church. Teaching continues after baptism, in preaching, Bible studies, catechism classes and one-to-one instruction, so that new Christians learn “to observe all things” Jesus commanded. Churches also take part by supporting missionaries with money and prayer and by serving their own communities, which fits the Baptist statement’s pairing of “verbal witness” with “a Christian lifestyle.”

The word went out from Jerusalem to Samaria, to a centurion’s household in Caesarea and on to Rome, and in time it reached us. The promise has come with it the whole way: “lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.”

Related reading

• Bible verses about missionary work
• What does baptism represent in Christianity?
• Apostles vs disciples: what is the difference?