The First Great Commission

If you've been in church for any time at all you've heard about the Great Commission. It's an important text (though not necessarily for the reasons it's often cited) in Matthew 28:19-20. I won't quote it here. It's the passage that says when you go out into all of creation, make disciples by baptizing people in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and to teach people to adhere to all of Jesus' teachings. Then, Jesus adds the promise He'll be with us until the end of the age.

 

But this isn't the first Great Commission. I'd argue it's not even the second. And the first one was never reversed. God never said, "that first one, it was a long time ago, don't worry about it." It's still in force.

 

And it's in the very first chapter of the Bible.

 

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Gen 1:28).

Now, this "great commission" is often misunderstood, too. But it's really the first commission God gave mankind. It has to do with our telos, our reason for being. God made us to be His representatives (this follows immediately from v. 27 about how mankind was created in God's image) to care for all of creation, to be co-creators with God.

 

That's what the "image of God" is all about. In the ancient world, if you carried the "image" of a king or an emperor, you carried his authority. Anyone who encountered you was supposed to recognize you as an extension of his rule.

 

As God's image-bearers, we are the extension of the Creator's will to the entire world. Words like "subdue" and "dominion" are often misconstrued in the sinful world to mean "oppress" or "abuse," or to give people the idea that we can exploit the world for whatever purpose we want.

 

That's actually the opposite of what the text says. To exercise "dominion" is to exercise the character of the dominus, the Lord. It means to care for everything, to care for the world, to extend God's loving provision to the rest of creation.

 

It's a really big deal. Because one of the biggest flaws in a lot of Christian theology is that they focus entirely on redemption, without understanding how it relates to creation. Sometimes, when salvation is talked about purely in terms of "forgiveness" (e.g. you sinned, Jesus paid the penalty, so now you're forgiven) we miss the big picture. All of that is true, of course, but redemption is so much more than that.

 

It's captured in Revelation 21:1, "Look, I am making all things new." It's a part of what Jesus is touching on when he talks about the final judgment and how whoever serves and loves the "least of these" does a genuine service to God (Matt 225:45-46).

 

You see, the point here is that we don't really serve God by doing things for God directly. God doesn't need our service. He doesn't need anything, because He lacks nothing.

 

God doesn't need your good works. Your neighbor does.

 

The rest of the world does.

 

That's what Jesus is getting at when He says if we serve others, we actually serve Him. When we think we're serving God, but we're not doing anything to help others, or to care for creation, we're not really serving God in any meaningful way. God wants us to serve Him by being the creatures He made us to be, by bearing His image, and exercising His dominion/care as we channel HIs love to the rest of the world.

 

That's why a lot of the imagery in Israel's temple actually harkened back to Eden! It's also how some of the earliest Christians understood their role as the Church. They were to be one-in-flesh with Christ, His image-bearers, all representatives of the Second Adam (and Eve) as we extend His love and care to the rest of creation, each new church not being just a building where we worship, but each church being a "new Eden," a place where all things are being made new.

 

When you see this stuff in the Bible, you'll see it all over the place. Redemption isn't just about dealing with the guilt of sin--that's just a part of it--it's about a redemption of Creation, a reversal of the fall, a making of all things new.

 

For instance, Romans 8:19 says that the "creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed." Why is that? Because the creation isn't the same without mankind fulfilling it's commission from Genesis 1:28 as God intended. We are supposed to take care of the world, to nurture the world, to care for other people, and all of God's creatures.

 

See also 2 Corinthians 5:17: "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!"

 

Now, I mentioned earlier that the Great Commission in Matthew isn't the first, and probably not the second. The second one also comes in Genesis, in the call of Abraham:

 

Genesis 12:1-3 (ESV):

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your land and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and 1 I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

The Hebrew actually uses an imperative form where it says, "you will be a blessing." A better translation would be, "Be a blessing!" It's like God's saying, I'm blessing you in order to be a blessing to the rest of the world! That's why God says in Abraham's offspring, "all the families of the earth shall be blessed!" It's not a different commission than Gen. 1:28, but not it's wrapped up in God's plan of redemption that will come through the offspring of Abraham, who we know (eventually) was Christ.

 

Now that we have all that down. Let's look again at the passage that we usually call "The Great Commission" and see what it's really all about:

 

Matthew 28:18-20 (ESV)

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples 1 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, 2 to the end of the age.”

Now, you don't get all authority in heaven and earth apart from anyone but the Creator. That's because Jesus is the creator, the word through whom All things were made. So when He tells the disciples to "make disciples" when they go, he's sending them with re-creation authority.

 

Then notice the means, here. In Greek, these are participles, "by means of baptizing" and "by means of teaching." What's baptism have to do with it? Well, look at all the imagery. It's really driven home if we look at Jesus' baptism by John in the Jordan.

 

In the Creation of Genesis we have the Father making all things, through the Word spoken, as the Holy Spirit hovers over the waters (that's Gen. 1:1). The Father declares everything "good." In Jesus' baptism, we have the word-made-flesh in the water, the Holy Spirit descends over the waters like a dove, and again, the Father declares this new creation Good, "this is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased."

 

Then we get baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. All three persons of the Trinity, brought back to the scene, just like in Genesis 1:1, and in Jesus' baptism, because we are being put back into our vocation as God's creatures, we are being set back into a commission to be the image-bearers of God, the channels of His love and care for the rest of creation! It's all connected, it's one big story... and if you try to pull it all apart, you'll probably get it wrong. It all goes together, it's God's plan in creation for redemption of creation, of you and me, into our God-given roles as His caretakers, as His co-creators in the world.

 

You see, you have a far more important job to do than whatever you might get paid to do from 9-5. You are here for a purpose, to be God's representative to the rest of a broken world, to be a part of God's means of putting everything back together again, of making all things new. You get to spread the Kingdom of God, the New Eden, through the kind of love that Jesus demonstrates for us. We do it through self-sacrifice, through loving others as God loved us, and for caring for everything God made, everyone whom God made, as infinitely valuable in His sight.

 

So the next time you're tempted to think you're insignificant, that you don't matter, or to think that you're just biding your time until you can escape the third rock from the sun and get into heaven... remember, this is why God made you. Be a little Jesus, an image-bearer of God, everywhere you go. The simplest act of kindness, of love, of genuine care for others, isn't insignificant. It's a part of making all things new.

 

In Jesus' name,

Judah