“The Great Promise”

Last Sunday (the Festival of Pentecost) we saw how God fulfilled the promise He made on the mountain with His disciples: to make disciples of all the nations through Holy Baptism and Gospel preaching. We saw how the Holy Spirit spoke miraculously through the first disciples of Jesus, telling the wonderful works of God in the language of all nations. We saw how Peter’s Gospel proclamation and Baptism began the New Testament.

Today, Trinity Sunday, as we celebrate the wonderful work of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we turn specifically to Christ’s great promise at the end of Matt. 28. And when we see this is, indeed, a promise and not a commission, we will see the real glory of the Blessed Trinity.

Matt. 28:19-20 are much quoted verses of Scripture in our day. Cited so often, they even go by the short hand reference of “The Great Commission”. But calling these verses a “Great Commission” reveals more about the prejudices of modern theology than it does about Christ Jesus and His promises.

And what, precisely, are those prejudices revealed by the term “Great Commission”? Simply these: the modern preference for Law over Gospel, and the modern judgment that Christ’s teaching finally centers on what we do for God (rather than on what He gives to us). This populist, modernist version of Christianity culminates in this: the works that most need doing, what God especially requires of all in His church today, is the work of proselytizing, converting the nations and making Christians out of all those pagans by our diligent efforts at “witnessing” and “converting the lost”. Now why do I call these convictions “prejudices”?

When we talk Matt. 28 it seems there is often more heat than light. The highly charged atmosphere whenever the so-called “Great Commission” is discussed in the modern church I think betrays a certain deep-seated uneasiness that we’ve based an awful lot of the Faith on just two verses of the Bible, and also that this hard-sell approach to Christianity might not have quite the support in Scripture (or the Lutheran tradition) that many would like it to have—might actually be something of a Naked Emperor, a notion without any biblical clothing. I’ll be blunt: I think that’s precisely what “Great Commission” talk is.

But it isn’t just my reading of these verses now that makes me think this. It was reading, way back in my divinity school days, what the church fathers like Augustine, Chrysostom and others have always said about these verses from Matthew and then reading, in seminary, what our Lutheran fathers always said about these verses that makes me suspicious that the modern church, since around the early 20^th century has gone off into its own weirdly legalistic area with this “Great Commission” stuff, and in so doing has missed the essential point not only of Matt. 28, but perhaps of Christianity itself.

Whenever the fathers of the first 4 centuries quote Matt 28:19-20 (and they do now and again, though not nearly so often as we do) they cite it as a Gospel promise. That is to say, they don’t hear Jesus commanding us to do something in Matt. 28, they rather hear Jesus promising that He will do something, Himself, by His grace and power alone: through His 12 apostles, by means of Holy Baptism and Gospel teaching, He will make disciples of all nations and be with us always through these Holy Means of grace, even to the end of this world.

Dr. Luther and the fathers of the Lutheran church in the 16^th and 17^th centuries took this traditional reading of Matt. 28 and made it their own. When they are asked what it is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are doing exactly, they turn to the Scripture and say the work of the Holy Trinity is salvation, that the Triune God has done all the work needed to save all, graciously, freely, efficaciously—in Holy Baptism and Gospel preaching, through the apostolic ministry of the Christian Church, God Himself makes disciples, makes us free of sins, free of the burden of works of the law, free of death, free of hell, free to bask in Christ’s gifts and delight in and with Him in His Kingdom forever.

This is the Gospel. In Luther’s day, the Gospel of Jesus Christ had long been buried deep under the rocks and rubbish of the medieval church’s legal (and fundraising) system. Few people heard that Christ Jesus had won salvation for all the world freely without works of our own or money from us, by His death and resurrection for us (even though that’s what Scripture and the apostles all teach!). Few people heard that we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, by Christ’s doing alone. Instead, most heard that Christianity is a tough thing. Jesus made it possible by His work, that maybe we could be saved, but only if we do the necessary works He has commanded and left to us as our responsibility.

In the middle ages, those works were penance, alms giving, fasting, praying, honoring the saints, contributing to building great cathedrals, and generally cleaning up your act morally speaking, and getting it in line with the 10 Commandments. Christianity was hard work. Jesus was a stern taskmaster and few would satisfy His demands.

Dr. Luther was a wrench in those crooked old works. By reading Augustine and the other old fathers, and most of all by reading Holy Scripture and hearing again the voice of the Shepherd calling us not to work for Him, but to come, all of us who are weary and heavy-laden and rest in Him forever, Dr. Luther’s wrench fixed the works and let the Gospel fill the Church once more.

 

Luther didn’t hear Jesus giving us a big job in Matt. 28, but a great promise. He didn’t find the point in the words “GO!” or “MAKE!” but rather in Christ’s promise: “I am with you always”. By Holy Baptism, Holy Preaching, Jesus is with the apostles, with us in His unique and saving way always—Himself to do and give all that we poor beggars require. So like Paul, we may labor, but it not really us, but the grace of God with us. Our hands may be on the wheel, but it’s God who does the driving…

But in the 20^th century, the old hankering for glory—for kingdom-building and coffer-filling took hold of the American Church as it had the medieval. Law took the place of Gospel again, only now it wasn’t keeping the 10 commandments ourselves, but instead, getting our neighbor in line. Sounds more altruistic, but it still makes Christianity a long slog, a big job we do for Jesus.

And neither Matthew 28, nor any other part of Scripture lays such tasks on us. Romans 4 says our works don’t work—only Jesus’ works work. Jesus didn’t say in John 8 that we are His disciples by working for Him, but by abiding in His word! And Ps. 49 says no one can save his brother anyway. It’s not what you do for Jesus, but only what He does for you that matters. Seriously. He says so! You are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, with no works of your own! Through the Church’s ministry, by Holy Baptism, Holy Preaching, Holy Absolution, Holy Supper, Jesus is with you always, and in such a way as to make disciples not only of you, but of all the nations. You have His word on it. Trust Him to keep it.

For the great and glad tidings of Christianity have always been these: all the work that needs to be done for your salvation (or your neighbor’s), the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the Blessed Holy Trinity has done! So what is there for you? There are only the gifts to receive, to delight in—the life which is His to live as your own, which fills you with His joy indescribable, and the Peace which surpasses understanding, keeping your heart and mind in Christ Jesus. Amen.