What Is the Great Commission and How Is GFA World Fulfilling It?

People have asked, “What is the Great Commission?” for centuries. Christians want to understand and follow this injunction, but there has been some debate about what the Great Commission means and how it applies. The most well-known iteration of the Commission is in Matthew 28:18–20. Before Christ ascended into heaven, He told His followers, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” (NKJV).

Does the Great Commission apply to all believers? Some would say that Christ’s words in Matthew 28 were only directed at the people present. Other places in the Bible where the Commission is mentioned, like Acts 1:8, specifically include the words “Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria,” which are specific locations to the time and place of the Bible. Christians in many places in the world are not close to Jerusalem or Judea, so they cannot be expected to obey these verses literally. While it is true that there is an audience-specific aspect of the Great Commission, each time it is written in the Bible it also includes words to indicate the need to preach the gospel to the whole world:
  1. Matthew 28:19 says to “make disciples of all nations.”
  2. Mark 16:15 says, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.”
  3. In Luke 24:47, Jesus said that “repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in [the Messiah’s] name to all nations.”
  4. In Acts 1:8, the list of places to be witnesses ends with “the ends of the earth.”
With so many reminders to preach to all nations and to the ends of the earth, it becomes clear that the original hearers of the Great Commission could not have accomplished this strictly on their own. They did not know about some nations on the other side of the globe, and traveling to them was impossible. Even now, there are many people groups that have never heard the Gospel all over the world, so the Commission has not been fully accomplished yet. God’s name has not been preached in all nations, so believers are still responsible for asking, understanding and obeying the question, “What is the Great Commission?”


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