As we continue our series, So Send I You, let’s actually take a look at these different versions of the great commission of Jesus’ disciples. Matthew’s gospel places the disciples’ commission in its last scene:
Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18-20)
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This is Part 2 of So Send I You
(Read this series from its beginning here.)
Luke’s gospel tells its version of the disciples’ commission in Luke 24 and Acts 1:
“You are witnesses of these things. I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.” When he had led them out to the vicinity of Bethany, he lifted up his hands and blessed them. While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven. (Luke 24:48-51)
You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. (Acts 1:8)
Again, in the Luke/Acts narrative story, the commission involves receiving of the Holy Spirit which takes place on the day of Pentecost in the upper Room.
In John’s version, Jesus commissions the disciples earlier and closer to Jesus’ crucifixion when the disciples are locked behind doors for fear of the same elites who crucified their leader.
In John, the commissioning of the disciples includes their authority to bind and release, to forgive or not forgive. Consider what John’s gospel actually says:
Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you. . . . If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”
This is a tremendous amount of authority that we have no other evidence of than simply the word of the very disciples who claim to have this level of authority. These disciples of Jesus would now be “Jesus” in the world, being sent just by Jesus, just as the Father had sent Jesus himself.
I love how Luke defines the purpose for which the spirit was poured out on Jesus as having to do with justice for the oppressed:
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18-19)
But we are not in Luke’s gospel in this week’s reading. We are in John’s, and John’s gospel has its own take on why Jesus was sent. We’ll pick up with in Part 3.
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