By Fr. Luke Childs

Article 9

“We gladly accept the Great Commission of the risen Lord to make disciples of all nations, to seek those who do not know Christ and to baptise, teach and bring new believers to maturity.”

All Authority in Heaven And On Earth

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, 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 28:19-20)

The Gospel of Matthew concludes with these words of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. In the wake of his Resurrection from and triumph over Death, the eleven remaining Apostles (less the betraying Judas) gather in Galilee as directed by the Risen Lord. Some worshiped him at his subsequent appearance amongst them, but others (we read) “doubted.”

What did they doubt? Perhaps their doubt is not so different from the doubt we see today. The Muslim asks, did Christ really die? The atheist objects, should we really believe in things like resurrection? The skeptic asks, can we even know what is true? The liberal asks, isn’t the beauty of the Christian myth that we can make it true ourselves? The conquistador asks, shouldn’t we be vying for more earthly power to ensure we are in control of the future? The excitable asks, when can I get my next fix of an emotional experience? The nominal asks, isn’t it enough that I say these things are true so I can get on with my own agenda?

This doubt is not confined to the 1st century disciples. We in the 21st century live in the midst of great doubt about both the truth and the power of the Christian faith. Social, cultural, liturgical, and theological revolutions of the past half-century have commonly culminated in a lowest-common-denominator style of ecumenism: the modern-day Church has often become little more than an effete philanthropic social club, or a mere museum of a distant past, since which mankind has (purportedly) “seen the light” and progressed beyond the need for Christian belief, or praxis flowing therefrom.

The Christian life is centered first on Christ, second on his Church, and third on those who have yet to be baptized into his Body. The outward, selfless focus of the Great Commission to, “Go” and make “make disciples”, seeking the other who does not yet know Christ and his salvation, morphs as a result of such doubt into an inward curve focused upon self-centered self-preservation and self-satisfaction.¹

The sickness of shallowness has infected many within our pews, shallowness insofar as we are devoted to self rather than to Christ and shallowness in doctrinal and practical conviction. Rather than give ourselves fully to Christ, we often take what we can from him and spend it on our passions (James 4:3). Rather than fully confess who we are, who he is, and commit to devote ourselves to him, we often choose shallow commitments of acknowledging truth just enough to both justify myself in the eyes of the world and justify my inaction to soothe my conscience. It is therefore seen as sufficiently “bare-basics” Christian to mentally assent to a historical fact that a figure called Christ once existed, and to live life attempting one’s ferventest to be as nice as possible to oneself and others. The Creed of our day is to be true to one’s perception of a “best self” rather than accepting the self-sacrificial and truly freeing call to be true to Christ and one’s real, eternal purpose redeemed by him and living under his Lordship.

How is this doubt and shallowness contrasted by the Eleven? Joy! The Apostles were “glad when they saw the Lord” (John 20:20) who had risen from the dead with the scars of his glorious salvation wrought for us. Where so many see the Gospel as interruption, invasion, and interception of their own agendas, aims, and desires, the Apostles were elated to have Jesus disabuse them of their doubt, drown their depression with his joy, and disrupt their disillusionment with his design. So too does the Jerusalem Declaration call all Christians “gladly” to accept the “Great Commission of the Risen Lord.” Having received with joy all that Christ has won for us—forgiveness, deliverance from Death, restoration to that “life, and life… in abundance” for which we were created (John 10:10)—Christians find themselves inspired and empowered with divine joy to live out life in the Kingdom of God and invite others joyfully into that same life.

The truth of this vocation of joy is seen in the very words of Christ and the Apostles recorded in the Scriptures—the living testimony of eyewitnesses to his Risen Glory. The power of this vocation is seen in the Great Commission itself² and in the ministry of the Apostles that we see immediately following in the Book of Acts. This Apostolic joy is then passed on through the events of Pentecost and beyond to our day, reaching billions upon billions of men and women of faith in Jesus Christ. It continues to manifest in miracles both internal; change of heart, forgiveness, renewal of the whole self, and miracles external; healing, tongues, deliverance from demons. It is given to us each Lord’s Day as we receive Christ anew from his altar that we might be empowered to go out into the world and infect it with his joy.

Inreach And Outreach

The Great Commission as presented in the Gospel of Matthew and referenced in the Jerusalem Declaration gives Christians a singular mission: to make disciples of all nations. Not merely to make assenters, nor admirers, nor acknowledgers, nor attendees seeking yet another emotional experience. We have been commanded to make disciples³: lifelong⁴ devotees of the Savior Jesus Christ, learning to trace his steps as faithful followers, even as the Apostles did.

The Lord’s Great Commission goes on to tell us precisely how to do this: To baptize and to teach “all that I have commanded you.” The Jerusalem Declaration further elucidates this by contextualizing it in terms of both inreach and outreach - ministry to non-believers and ministry to existing believers. God has ordained the orders of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons to “equip the saints for the work of ministry” (Ephesians 4:12). The role of ministers is to build up the body of Christ, nourishing the Baptized with the green pastures of God’s Word and refreshing them with the means of grace. The Church provides many sacramental pathways to renew our baptismal vows and calling: Confirmation, Confession of Sin, and the Holy Communion. Each of these rites place demands on the Baptized. Before Confirmation we are catechized in all that Jesus has commanded us, in Confession we admit to Christ and his minister the ways in which we have broken his commandments, and in Holy Communion we receive the very Blood of Jesus poured out for us sinners.⁵ Having put on Christ in Baptism, we receive Christ sacramentally anew by partaking of the Eucharist⁶, and are sent out in the power of the Holy Spirit.⁷

The inreach of the Great Commission leads to outreach. It demands that the Baptized recognize who they are in Christ: Heralds of his Gospel. It enjoins the Baptized to recognize their calling, not merely in the Church, but in the world. It answers the question, “What are you doing here?” It provides for the baptized a vocation, a meaning, a purpose. It calls upon all Christians to be engaged in living out, growing more deeply into, and propagating all that our Savior has commanded. To be equipped for this mission as the Gifts of the Spirit are apportioned for each individual Christian to be cultivated as a vital part of this mission of the whole Church. To take the greatest care of our spiritual selves that we may mature in faith, and to walk with others as they mature in faith, “so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes” (Ephesians 4:14).

The calling of Christ in the Great Commission is to “Go” and do this. To “seek” as the Jerusalem Declaration highlights. To go out into the world, living out and inviting into the saving power and truth of the Good News of Jesus Christ. This Declaration as a whole underlines that this is the basis of true, lasting Christian Unity: This common cause of receiving, growing into, and sharing Christ’s salvation unto eternal life in the Kingdom of God.⁸

In many cases, what once were great instruments of this mission in the Anglican Christian sphere–whether that be Oxford Movement Anglo-Catholics ministering to the slums of London, the enterprises of Evangelical missionaries into Africa and Asia, which nowadays constitute much of the bastion of Anglican orthodoxy, or anything in-between–have been reduced to a merely human project, “having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power” (2 Timothy 3:5). The Jerusalem Declaration calls us back to the person and work of Christ: The truth and power of the Gospel, through which we are promised that the same Spirit who drew scores to salvation at Pentecost will continue his work today in the hearts of men and women who do not yet know Jesus.

Conclusion

The scale of the task before us is great: To evangelize the world!

What is needed is, in our Savior’s own words, “all that I have commanded you”: “Full-fat, full-on, full-faith, full-throttle”⁹ catholic and evangelical discipleship. Not a decaffeinated appearance of godliness. Not a watered-down lowest-common-denominator. Instead to, “desire [eternal] life like water and yet drink death [to self] like wine.”¹⁰

Let us, to paraphrase St. Paul, wean ourselves and others from spiritual infancy and its inwardly-curved milk onto the meat of outward-focused Christian discipleship¹¹, simple in its accessibility and yet endlessly rich in its depth. It is time to put the “solid food” - this meat - back onto the bones. To “Taste and see that the Lord is good.”¹² To gladly accept, to make disciples, to seek, to baptize, to teach, to bring to maturity.

To “Go!”

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1. As we find in the narrative of Romans 1: “ Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.” (1:24 & 25) ↩︎

2. Jesus declares prior to the words of the Commission that, “all authority [exousia: a delegated power or privilege] in heaven and on earth has been given to me” ↩︎

3. Etymologically linked to ‘discipline’ - in-contrast to the Romans 1 inward curve to worship the self or “creature rather than Creator”, a disciple is one who submits to - listens to and repents in-response to! - the godly, corrective discipline of the soul. ↩︎

4. Including into eternity, as in the 1928 BCP Prayer for the Whole State of Christ’s Church, “beseeching thee to grant [all thy servants departed in thy faith and fear] continual growth in thy love and service.” ↩︎

5. Note how 1 John 1:5-2:3 walks through this process as does our liturgy. ↩︎

6. “that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, and our souls washed through his most precious blood” 2019 BCP Prayer of Humble Access ↩︎

7. “to do all the good works that you have prepared for us to walk in” 2019 BCP Anglican Standard Text Post-Communion Prayer ↩︎

8. “We express our loyalty as disciples to the King of kings, the Lord Jesus. We joyfully embrace his command to proclaim the reality of his kingdom which he first announced in this land. The gospel of the kingdom is the good news of salvation, liberation and transformation for all. In light of the above, we agree to chart a way forward together that promotes and protects the biblical gospel and mission to the world” - Preamble to the Jerusalem Declaration ↩︎

9. “Our response to the challenges we face is to rise to meet them of course, with a bold and reinvigorated confidence. We have nothing to fear – Jesus Christ is risen from the dead. Jesus Christ is Lord of all. Death and Hell are overthrown, and the gate of life is opened to those who believe. Now is the time to live our catholic life at its highest pitch and greatest intensity. Only by radical renewal can we meet the evangelistic task before us. Now is not the time for decaffeinated Catholicism: only full-fat, full-on, full-faith, full-throttle Catholicism will do.” Bishop Paul Thomas, SSC ↩︎

10. G.K. Chesteron, Orthodoxy ↩︎

11. “for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. 14 But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.” (Hebrews 5: 13 & 14) ↩︎

12. Psalm 34:8 ↩︎