The precise wording of the Great Commission is significant. Even though, at least for those who only read it in English translation, it would be tempting to think the ‘command’ component of what Jesus says is to ‘Go!’, the imperative in this clause is actually to ‘make disciples’. The ‘going’ is presented in a present continuous tense. Jesus simply assumes that the church will always be in ‘going mode’ as it brings the gospel to the world.

Last words are important and often intriguing and none more so than the last words of Jesus. They are best remembered as expressed by Matthew at the end of his Gospel where Jesus tells the Eleven,

“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” (Mt 28.18-20).

They are familiar words and, even though they are almost certainly not Jesus ‘last words’ in a chronological sense, they linger in a way those recorded at the start of Acts do not. The last words the disciples heard from Christ would galvanise the significance of the first words he spoke to them in a way that would change them forever. Their formal relationship with Christ began with the words, ‘Come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men’ (Mt 4.19). Now that relationship came of age, as he prepared to leave them, saying, ‘Go…!’

There are numerous angles from which we can view this parting mandate from Christ, but one that is perhaps not often considered is its relationship to another mandate found at another defining moment in the history of the world and of the human race. That is, the so-called ‘Creation Mandate’ recorded at the end of the opening chapter of Genesis.

Immediately after the description of God’s creating Adam and Eve, having blessed the newly created pair and declared, ‘let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground’, God says,

“Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground” (Ge 1.28).

As Greg Beale points out, the fact that this command is introduced with words that relate to procreation provides a significant link between God’s words in Eden and his words through the risen Christ on the Mount of Olives.

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