Introduction
Jesus’ Great Commission
for the Church’s mission in Matthew’s Gospel alludes to Isaiah 66.18-23. In Luke’s Gospel (and Acts), the Old
Testament text alluded to is Isaiah 49.6,
In John’s Gospel, the Old Testament text is Genesis 2.7, with the
related Ezekiel 37.9, 14 likely in view as well. Having already considered the Great
Commission texts in Matthew’s and Luke’s writings, we now turn to consider the
Gospel of John.[1]
The Great Commission
(usually a phrase reserved for Matthew 28.18-20) in John’s Gospel involves, as
in the other Gospels, the risen Jesus’
commission of his disciples in ministry.
The mission is given to the disciples, but they represent the Church,
and so the commission is not limited to the first disciples. Jesus’ commission of the disciples and the
Church extends the mission already undertaken by Jesus:
John 20:21-23 Jesus said to them again,
"Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending
you." 22 And when he had
said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy
Spirit. 23 If you forgive the
sins of anyone, they are forgiven; if you withhold forgiveness from anyone, it
is withheld."[2]
The passage highlights three
things about the Church’s mission:
- The Church’s mission is based on Jesus’ mission, which was completed after his death and resurrection.
- The Church’s mission begins with receiving the Holy Spirit.
- The Church’s mission involves extending (or not extending) forgiveness.
‘As
the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you’
Jesus’ mission in John’s
Gospel is understood as a representation of God’s presence before others. Jesus says, ‘Whoever has seen me has seen the Father’ (John 14.9). Anticipating this statement at the beginning
of the Gospel, we have several key verses that establish the idea that Jesus is
sent to the world to represent the Father:
John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and what God is the Word was (my translation).
John 1:14 And
the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as
of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
John 1:18 No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father's
side,2 he has made him known.
John 1:51 And he said to him, "Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven
opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man."
The
point is that Jesus’ mission is to represent the Father, and this is
fundamental to John’s Gospel. It is why
Jesus is said to be the only, beloved Son of the Father (monogenēs, Jn. 1.14, 18; 3.16, 18).
It is why God’s very nature of ‘grace and truth’ is found in Jesus (Jn.
1.16-17). And, most profoundly, it is
why Jesus’ death, his being lifted up
on the cross, is presented in John as a revelation
of God’s glory, his divine
identity—in other words, that he is the I AM.
(Note the double meaning of ‘lifted up’—set upon the raised cross and
glorified.) Jesus said,
John 8:28 When you lift up the Son of Man, you will then know that
I AM…. (my translation)
Thus,
one way to explore the Church’s mission is through John’s understanding of what
it means to represent the Father in the world.
We are not to take this idea that Jesus represents the Father in the
world and then explore on our own what it might mean for the Church to do so as
well. Rather, we are to study John’s
Gospel to learn what it meant for Jesus to represent God to the people. This will be a very full study—more than can
be presented here—of John’s Gospel. We
need to read John’s Gospel while asking, ‘How does Jesus represent the Father
in the world?’ and then asking, ‘How does this determine ways in which the
Church might extend this mission in the world through its own mission?’ By doing so, we will understand what Jesus
meant by, ‘As the Father sent me, I am sending you.’
‘Receive
the Holy Spirit’
Secondly, Jesus ‘breathes
on’ (enephysēsen) the disciples so
that they receive the Holy Spirit. This exact word is used in Genesis 2’s
description of creation:
Genesis 2:7 then the LORD
God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into (enephysēsen) his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a
living creature.
The same Greek word (in a different form) is used when Ezekiel reports God’s
restoring life to the dead in the Valley of Dry Bones—representing the
Israelites who had been exiled due to their sins:
Ezekiel 37:9 Then he said
to me, "Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to the
breath, Thus says the Lord GOD: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe
on [emphysēson] these slain, that
they may live."
Both Old Testament passages (Gen. 2.7 and Ezek. 37.9) envision the ‘breath’
of God giving life (and in Greek and Hebrew the word ‘breath’ is the same as ‘Spirit’
and ‘wind’). In John’s Gospel, one way
to describe Jesus’ mission is in terms of life.
The disciples receive life from God, the Spirit, so as to offer life to
others.
The term ‘life’ appears 47 times in John’s Gospel. Jesus is the source of life for he has divine
life in himself:
John 1:4 In him was life, and the life was the light
of men.
Those who receive Jesus’ words and believe in him will receive the eternal
life that he offers:
John 3:16 For God so[3]
loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in
him should not perish but have eternal life.
John 3:36 Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son
shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.
And, in a passage in John’s Gospel reflecting Ezekiel 37’s vision of life
being restored to the dry bones, Jesus says,
John 5:24-26 Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent
me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death
to life. 25 "Truly,
truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will
hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. 26 For as the Father has life in
himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.
Thus,
when Jesus breathes on his disciples the life-giving Spirit of God, he further
reveals his divine identity as the one who has life in himself and gives
life. As Ezekiel 37 says,
Ezekiel 37:14 And I will put my Spirit within
you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall
know that I am the LORD; I have spoken, and I will do it, declares the
LORD."
Moreover,
having received the Spirit and come to know Jesus as God (cf. John 20.28), the
one who gives life, the disciples are sent out to offer this life to others.
‘If you forgive the sins
of anyone, they are forgiven’
This
final statement related to the Johannine Great Commission seem awkward for
Protestants, as it seemed to Jews in Jesus’ day as well. Is it not God alone who forgives sins? (Mark
2.7). Is the Church really in a position
to forgive sins? The answer to this
question lies in distinguishing Jesus’ mission and the Church’s mission, even
as the two missions are related.
First,
Jesus alone provides the sacrifice for sins through his shed blood on the
cross. John the Baptists testifies about
Jesus’ unique role in providing forgiveness of sins:
John 1:29 The next day he saw Jesus coming
toward him, and said, "Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of
the world!
Jesus
says,
John 8:24b … if you do not believe that I AM, you will die in your
sins (my translation)
Second, however,
Jesus’ offer of life is a ministry
into which the Church enters as well, and such is the Church’s mission. The Church offers to the world eternal life in Jesus Christ, the very
one who took away the sins of the world through his shed blood on the
cross. As the Church is sent by Jesus
with this offer, it has the role of extending forgiveness of sins in the world.
When the Church
fails to offer a message of forgiveness of sins but tries to curry favour from
the culture by presenting an accommodating message, it fails to present a
life-giving message. The Church has the
role to clarify for the world what is sinful.
It plays a serious role in telling people that what they do is, in God’s
eyes, sinful or not sinful. Second, the
Church has a role of offering forgiveness through
belief in Jesus Christ to the world.
When the Church suggests that there are other paths to God, it fails to
offer a life-giving message in its mission.
Certain mainline churches in our day are failing precisely in these two
areas of mission: claiming that certain sins are not sins and claiming that
there are other ways to God than belief in Jesus.
Conclusion
John presents the
Church’s mission as a life-giving mission,
with Genesis 2.7 and Ezekiel 37.9, 14 as background texts for this point. Just as God breathed life into Adam and into
the dry bones of the Israelites who had ‘died’ by being exiled because of their
sins, so too Jesus, risen from the dead,
gives life to those who are dead in their sins through his own sacrificial
death on the cross. In so doing, he
reveals the Father in his love, grace, and mercy, as well as in his judgement
of sin, and this is a mission that the Church, too, has. The Church is to represent God in a similar
mission in the world, and it is especially to point people to Jesus, that they
might believe in him and receive eternal life.
The Church is also to declare to the world what is sinful, that they
world may repent and believe in the one who forgives sins. The Church is not to shirk this
responsibility by softening sin in order to ingratiate itself to the
world. Nor should the Church suggest
that salvation might be found in other religions or simply through God’s grace
towards everyone no matter whether they receive Jesus or not. The Church, in other words, has the mission of
offering life and death to the world—forgiveness of sins—in light of Jesus’
dying for the sins of the world.
[1] Note: the Great Commission in Mark’s
Gospel is only found in the verses that were added to Mark at a later time in
Church history [Mark 16.9-20], and therefore it will not be considered.
[2] The English Standard Version (ESV)
will be used unless otherwise noted.
[3] The Greek actually conveys the
idea that ‘God loved the world in this way’ rather than that ‘God so loved the
world’ in the sense of how intense his love for the world was.
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