Rooted in Love: Living the Christian Life to the FullSample

Go and Make Disciples

The call to follow Jesus is a call not just for us alone. As he calls us, he sends us to help others to follow him too. If you think about it, someone helped you to follow Christ – whether it was your parents, a relative or a friend, or perhaps as you read the Bible for yourself. And what we have received, we are encouraged to pass on to others. 

The last words of Jesus that Matthew records in his Gospel are a commission to his disciples. A commission is an instruction, command or role given to a person or a group. But this commission is one that is a recommission in each generation because Jesus says, ‘[teach] them to obey everything that I have commanded you’. It is in essence a multiplying commission. We are the recipients of this commission and we in turn are commissioned to play our part in it too. Jesus tells the disciples to: ‘Go’: we are not to hold back our faith from others but to go to those around us, anywhere that God leads us. ‘Make disciples’: we are not just to be disciples ourselves, but we are encouraged by Jesus to make disciples. 

That means asking ourselves the question ‘Who can I disciple?’ It may mean helping someone in the Church to grow as a disciple. Or it may mean helping someone who is not yet a Christian to come to know Jesus for themselves. The disciples spent years with Jesus, and so this isn’t a quick-fix plan. It means walking alongside people from day to day and helping them in every part of their lives to see things with the eyes of God. If we took Jesus at his word and began to discover how we might do this ourselves, it would transform the Church as we know it. ‘All nations’: the word translated ‘nations’ is ethne, meaning tribes or groups of people. We are to go to people who are different from ourselves and enable them to hear the good news too. This means welcoming those who may be different from us to our churches and going to places in our parishes and neighbourhoods where there isn’t a Christian presence. ‘Baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit’: disciple-making is not just for people inside the Church but also for those who are far from God, so that they might discover who he is and become Christians. Then they can be baptized and welcomed into the Church. ‘Teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you’: the call is for us to pass on what we have received. There are expert teachers, but all of us can be involved as teaching assistants. 

Questions for Reflection

1. Reflect on who helped you grow as a disciple of Jesus. 

2. Ask yourself, ‘Who am I discipling?’. If you are helping someone, ask them, ‘Who are you discipling?’

3. How can you better help and encourage people that you meet to accept the Lord and become a disciple of Jesus?