Go and make disciples of all nations: Messianic Congregation Shema Yisrael Article Boise Idaho

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Go and Make Disciples of All Nations

by James Pyles

I'm sure you are very familiar with this quote from Matthew that is commonly referred to as "the Great Commission" but it's important to be complete, so let's take a look at the entire passage.

Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."
-Matthew 28:18-20 (NIV)

Go and make what? Disciples? Of who? All nations? What's all that about? You may think that I'm making a big deal about nothing. After all, aren't the Messiah's instructions to his disciples plain? Perhaps. It depends on whether or not you really understand what a disciple is and why it's significant that Jesus told his Jewish disciples to make disciples out of non-Jews (the term "nations" or "peoples" refers to everyone outside of the Jewish people).

Let's backtrack a step or two. A number of years ago I heard a visitor at our congregation ask how many people we had saved. The question wasn't directed at me but as I pondered it, I felt baffled and at a loss for an answer. Our congregation didn't have a strong outreach or evangelical element so we rarely reached out to the larger community in Southwestern Idaho to "convert" people to Messianic Judaism. In fact, everyone who has ever joined our congregation was already a believer in Jesus (Yeshua) the Messiah, regardless of whether they were Jew or Gentile.

I've revisited this thought again and wondered if we might not be falling down on the job. After all, I see billboards on the freeway with Bible Quotes and marquees in front of churches telling when their Sunday services are going to be. Right before Easter every year, the newspapers are full of ads advertising their special Easter services and I even get notices in the mail from the surrounding churches (so do all my neighbors) inviting me and my family to attend.

Sometimes people will come to my door with a Bible asking what I believe and once I saw a gentleman on the local university campus with a copy of the New Testament asking students if they knew about the saving grace of Jesus. I've been approached at local parks and in private conversations, had the topic turn to the question, "If you died tonight, do you know where your soul would go?" Yes, the church is very good about being active in evangelizing and working to bring non-believers into belief and into the church.

Please don't get me wrong. I think that's a good thing. My first step on the road to faith was that question, "If you died tonight, do you know where your soul would go?" so of course, I don't think it was a bad thing. Quite the opposite. Whether it's at a revival or during an alter call, many, many people first accept the free gift of salvation and take their first "baby steps" onto the road of faith and belief. So why am I stating the obvious?

It has to do with that one little word: "discipleship". Jesus said, "Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations..." not converts. What's the difference? After all, the first step for anyone on the road to faith is knowledge and acceptance of Jesus as L-rd and Savior and the truth of the Gospels and the Bible. Once that job is done, it's clear sailing, right? Right?

Perhaps a little foundation laying is in order. Let's take a look at the definitions of two words.

Convert: (noun) A person converted, as to a religion.
(verb) To cause to change as from one religion, doctrine, or course to another.

Disciple: A pupil or follower of any teacher or school of religion, learning, art, etc.

Someone who believes and helps to spread the doctrine of another.
A pupil or follower of a religion, a person, or a movement. As Christians we are to be disciples of Jesus (Luke 14:26,27). We follow in the teaching and example of what He said and did. A disciple is a convert but not all converts are disciples.

I don't find those definitions terribly satisfying but let's examine them.

To convert (verb) someone is to cause them to change from one belief system to another (I'm adding my own understanding of the definition here), say from atheism to Christianity. A convert (noun) is someone who has changed or allowed themselves to change from one belief system to another.

A disciple is a student or follower of a teacher who believes and helps to spread the beliefs of their teacher to others (sound accurate?). A disciple follows the teachings and examples of what their teacher said and did. (Sounds like what Jesus said, "Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you").

I find one part of the definition of a disciple particularly interesting:

"A disciple is a convert but not all converts are disciples".

Really? I guess it makes sense. A person who is a convert is someone who has changed their belief system and for example's sake, let's say they've become a believer of the Jesus of the Bible and have come to faith. That's the entire definition of a convert. There are no other qualifications except that you've changed your belief. To be a disciple however, takes more.

"A disciple is a student or follower of a teacher who believes and helps to spread the beliefs of their teacher to others".

A disciple then is someone who is a convert, that is they've changed their beliefs from one system to another, but on top of that, they are a student who studies under a teacher, imitating their teacher's example and spreading what they've learned to other people (and to understand what Jesus said), teaching those other people to be disciples, too.

Ok, we've got a problem if all we think our mandate under "the Great Commission" is to help people become converts. Getting a person to change their beliefs isn't sufficient to fulfill the command of the Messiah to his disciples. After all, I don't see Jesus saying two things; to make all people converts and some disciples. He is saying to "make disciples of all nations...". Is that what the church does? Is that what Messianic congregations do? The best I can say is "not all the time".

Consider this quote from a teaching I attended a few years back.

Discipleship is the art of imitation where the students are trained to learn by imitating their Master or Teacher. The Teacher in ancient Judaism was thought to be of a higher status than a father. This was because the teacher brings the student to the world to come while the father brings the child to the present world. Traditionally, students were almost obsessive about their Masters, trying to imitate them in every little detail.

This quote describes the relationship between a student at a traditional Yeshiva (school of Rabbinical study) and his teacher or master. Learning was more than a matter of book study; it was the study of the teacher himself. Students learned to be disciples by learning about their master in every possible detail. The closer you could become to looking like, dressing like, sounding like, understanding like, and eventually teaching like your master, the better disciple you were, the better obedient student you were, and the better master you would one day become.

Let's apply that to what Jesus said in Matthew 28:18-20

First off, who was Jesus talking to? Matthew 28:16-17 (NIV) has the answer.

"Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, the worshiped him; but some doubted".

Jesus was talking to his disciples...his students. He was their teacher and master and therefore, based on the definitions we are working with, they learned from him not only by listening to his teachings but by imitating his example as closely as possible. So Jesus was telling his disciples to make more disciples, not just of their Jewish brothers and sisters, but of all the nations of the earth; all of the non-Jews. As part of the mandate to make the nations into disciples, they were to baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and to teach those new disciples to "obey everything I have commanded you".

Ok, the original eleven were to make more disciples (not converts) from the pagan nations around them, baptize them, and teach them to obey everything that Jesus had commanded the original eleven. Do we do that today?

We baptize in the Name. Our congregation recently conducted a baptism or immersion of one of our members in the Boise River. We did this to obey our Messiah so in that sense, we obeyed two things; to baptize and to obey what we were commanded. Christian churches also do this all over the world (although the nature of the baptism varies widely depending on denomination) so we can say that those portions of the "Matthew 28" directive are being consistently applied in the community of faith. What else?

Making our "converts" students of the master (Jesus) which means helping them not only learn his teachings but to become good imitators of him. Also, teaching them to obey all that Jesus commanded the eleven. Let's take the second point first.

What were all the things Jesus commanded his disciples to do? The answer in detail would take a great deal of reading and produce a long list, but maybe there's a way to get down to the root of the matter. Consider the Messiah's own understanding of the greatest commandment.

One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, "Of all the commandments, which is the most important?" "The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: Hear, O Israel, the L-rd our G-d, the L-rd is one. Love the L-rd your G-d with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these." "Well said, teacher," the man replied. "You are right in saying that G-d is one and there is no other but him. To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all the burnt offering and sacrifices".
-Mark 12:28-33 (NIV)

One of the Torah-teachers came up and heard them engaged in this discussion. Seeing that Yeshua answered them well, he asked him, "Which is the most important mitzvah of them all?" Yeshua answered, "The most important is, Sh'ma Yisra'el, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai echad, and you are to love Adonai your G-d with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your understanding, and with all your strength. The second one is this: You are to love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other mitzvah greater than these". The Torah-teacher said to him, "Well said, Rabbi; you speak the truth when you say that he is one, and that there is no other besides him; and that loving him with all one's heart, understanding, and strength, and loving one's neighbor as oneself, mean more than all the burnt offerings and sacrifices".
-Mark 12:28-33 (CJB)

What many people miss is that Jesus is actually quoting portions of the Torah, specifically Deuteronomy 6:4-5 and Leviticus 19:18 when he is defining the two greatest commandments. In fact, those two commandments are considered to be the embodiment of all the others since, if you take a look at the Ten Commandments, you'll see that about half of them define our relationship with G-d and the other half define our relationship with our neighbors. A careful analysis of the entire Torah will reveal that all of the commandments of G-d fall into these two general categories.

So then, when Jesus is directing his disciples to make disciples of all nations and teach them to obey all that Jesus commanded, is he telling them to teach the nations to become disciples and to obey the Torah? Consider the Messiah's own role as a disciple (bet you didn't see that one coming).

Jesus gave him an answer: "I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.
-John 5:19 (NIV)

By myself I can do nothing; I judge only what I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me.
-John 5:30 (NIV)

My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father's hand. I and the Father are one.
-John 10:29-30 (NIV)

Do not believe me unless I do what my Father does. But if I do it, even though you do not believe me, believe the miracles, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father.
-John 10:37-38 (NIV)

This all sounds like the words of a disciple explaining his actions as being an imitator of his master or "Father" (remember the quote that stated the rabbinical principle that a teacher or master was considered greater than one's own (earthly) father).

What does all this mean then? It means that Jesus did nothing on his own but only what he saw his Father (and our Father) doing. What was the Father doing? Everything recorded about the Almighty in the Bible. Jesus wasn't creating a new teaching or Torah. He couldn't have been if he was doing nothing but what he saw his Father in Heaven doing (remember that G-d is the same, yesterday, today, and forever). That wasn't his role as Son, Messiah, and "disciple". His role was to be the "imitator" of the One True G-d; the G-d of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob. The commandments he taught his disciples were Torah as originally given. Just as Jesus "imitated his Father in everything", he commanded his disciples to imitate him in everything through learning, observing, and obedience. In turn, he commanded them to make disciples of all people, teaching them the same lessons that the Almighty showed to the Messiah and the Messiah passed down to his own disciples. This is what Jesus meant when he told the eleven to make disciples and to teach them what Jesus taught. This is also a lesson in what it is to make a disciple and be a disciple.

I know I'm stretching the concept of "disciple" just a bit by applying it to Jesus but the evidence is there; an unbroken chain from the Almighty, to his Son the Messiah, to the Messiah's students, and to the students of the original eleven. All subsequent students turn out to be anyone on earth who will listen, learn, and obey. They in turn pass their teachings on to the next generation and so on (and so on, and so on).

Some churches understand the concept of discipleship and even develop a program of classes around it but by and large, we don't really pay enough attention to obeying our own master and making disciples for him. To make good disciples, we must be good disciples. After all, if we expect others to accept us as examples of our master's actions and lifestyle, we have to be good imitators or the master ourselves. That's not easy. It wasn't easy for the eleven. We are all fully human and with that, we have our sin nature to deal with. Jesus lived a life that was sinless and so was the perfect "disciple" of his Father and a perfect example for us. On the other hand, we at our very best can only be imperfect examples of our master's perfect life.

Our master realized this when he gave the command in Matthew 28 and he expects us to carry it out anyway. It's not enough to bring others into the belief of the reality of Jesus and the Bible (making converts); we have to teach them what it really means, baptizing them, teaching the lessons, living the lifestyle so we can teach others to imitate the master and pass what we have learned down to the next generation (making disciples).

Maybe we can obey our master by creating programs in our churches and faith communities but it's more than that. Jesus didn't create a "program" in his synagogue or a class that met at the Temple every Wednesday night; he lived a lifestyle that everyone could see and follow. While I'm not saying that a formal discipleship program is a bad thing, I am saying that discipleship shouldn't be limited to a classroom experience held once a week. We must always strive to be better disciples (imitators) of our master every day so that we can be better examples to those who we are teaching to be disciples. We aren't the master teacher, he is. We are learners who are teaching other learners to listen to, imitate, and obey the master we have in common...Jesus...Yeshua the Messiah.

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