The Church and the Gospel — Part II

A History of Christian Social Action, Social Justice, and Political Power

The Great Commission Was Never Limited to Evangelism

The command to make disciples reaches beyond conversion to the personal, communal, economic, and public life of those who follow Jesus.

By Ed Gaskin

Many Christians can quote the Great Commission from memory. Churches print it on mission statements, missionaries preach from it, and evangelistic movements build their identities around it. Yet the familiar words are often shortened in practice. The command to make disciples becomes a command to secure decisions, increase church attendance, or expand Christianity’s geographic reach.

The question is not whether evangelism belongs to the Great Commission. It plainly does. The question is whether Jesus commissioned the church merely to gain converts. Matthew 28:18–20 says considerably more. Evangelism announces the gospel; discipleship teaches people to live the gospel; and social justice is one necessary dimension of that obedient life. Justice must not replace proclamation, but proclamation cannot be separated from justice without reducing the mission Jesus gave the church.

By social justice, I mean the public and institutional expression of neighbor-love: the effort to correct relationships, practices, laws, and systems that consistently injure people, deny their dignity, or distribute power and opportunity unjustly. Social justice is not a substitute for personal morality. It asks how our shared institutions treat the neighbors whom Christ commands us to love.

In Matthew 28:18–20, Jesus does not simply command the apostles to preach, secure professions of faith, or increase the number of believers. The central command is “make disciples of all nations.” Jesus then explains how disciples are made: baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything he commanded.¹

The phrase “teaching them to obey” is decisive. The commission does not end when someone believes a message or joins a congregation. It continues as that person is formed into a follower whose life reflects the teachings of Jesus.

What did Jesus command? He commanded his disciples to love God and neighbor, love enemies, practice mercy, forgive, reconcile, reject domination, give generously, welcome strangers, care for people who are hungry, sick, imprisoned, and poorly clothed, seek first God’s kingdom and righteousness, become servants, make peace, confront hypocrisy, and practice justice, mercy, and faithfulness.

Teaching obedience to everything Jesus commanded therefore includes how Christians use money, treat workers, exercise power, respond to poverty, welcome outsiders, pursue reconciliation, and confront injustice. A version of the Great Commission that produces church members but not people committed to love, justice, mercy, and truth has not fulfilled the commission.

The Great Commission cannot be separated from the Great Commandment. Jesus taught that the law and the prophets depend upon love of God and love of neighbor. The Great Commission tells the church to make disciples. The Great Commandment tells the church what kind of disciples it must make.

A disciple is not simply a person who accepts doctrines about Jesus. A disciple is being formed to love as Jesus loved. That love has personal dimensions, but it also has social consequences. Personal love asks, “How am I treating my neighbor?” Social justice asks, “How are the institutions in which I participate treating my neighbor?” Both questions arise from the same command to love.

Jesus did not invent this union of worship and justice. He stood within Israel’s scriptural tradition, which commands the pursuit of justice, condemns the exploitation of workers and vulnerable people, and refuses to separate religious observance from righteous public conduct. The Torah commands, “Justice, and only justice, you shall pursue.” Isaiah condemns worship that coexists with oppression and calls God’s people to “loose the bonds of injustice.” Amos rejects religious celebrations divorced from righteousness and demands that justice roll down like waters. Micah joins faithfulness, mercy, and justice in a single vision of life before God.²

The Great Commission must therefore be understood within this larger biblical story. Jesus commissions his followers to teach obedience to a way of life rooted in the Torah, proclaimed by the prophets, embodied in his ministry, and entrusted to the church.

Matthew’s Gospel makes justice part of discipleship. Jesus blesses those who hunger and thirst for righteousness and those who make peace. He instructs his followers to seek first God’s kingdom and righteousness, to do for others what they would want others to do for them, and to become servants rather than rulers who dominate. He identifies justice, mercy, and faithfulness as the weightier matters of the law. In Matthew 25, he identifies himself with those who are hungry, thirsty, estranged, poorly clothed, sick, and imprisoned.

When Jesus tells the apostles to teach everything he commanded, all of this is included. The Great Commission is not a detached evangelistic slogan placed at the end of Matthew. It commissions the church to reproduce the entire pattern of life Jesus taught and embodied.

Acts confirms this broader mission. Acts 1:8 promises that the Holy Spirit will empower the disciples to become witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. The apostles proclaim Jesus’ death, resurrection, lordship, and forgiveness. Evangelism is unquestionably central. Yet Acts does not present witness as words alone. The Spirit creates a community whose social life verifies its message.³

Acts 2 and 4 describe believers sharing resources so that human needs could be met. Acts 4 makes the extraordinary claim that “there was not a needy person among them.” This was not a modern government program, and it should not be forced into any contemporary ideological category. It was, however, an economic consequence of the gospel. Possessions could no longer be treated as though they had no relationship to the needs of other people.

Acts 6 offers an especially important example. Greek-speaking widows were being neglected in the daily distribution of food. The apostles did not respond that preaching was spiritual while food distribution was secondary. They changed the church’s leadership structure so that the injustice could be corrected. A vulnerable group identified unequal treatment; the church listened, reorganized, appointed accountable leaders, and addressed the disparity. This is an early example of institutional justice.

Acts also depicts the gospel crossing ethnic, cultural, and religious boundaries. Samaritans, an Ethiopian official, and the household of Cornelius are welcomed into the expanding community. In Acts 15, the Jerusalem Council confronts whether cultural conformity should be required for full belonging and refuses to make Gentile believers adopt the complete cultural identity of Jewish Christians.

The expansion “to the ends of the earth” is therefore not only territorial. It challenges systems of exclusion concerning who may belong to the people of God.

Luke 4 supplies the program for Luke and Acts. Jesus announces good news to the poor, release to captives, sight to the blind, freedom for the oppressed, and the year of the Lord’s favor. In Acts, the same Spirit empowers the church’s witness. The church does not repeat Jesus’ unique saving work, but it continues his mission as a proclaiming, healing, reconciling, and justice-seeking community.

This broader reading changes how a congregation measures success. Baptisms, professions of faith, attendance, and giving matter, but they do not exhaust the evidence of disciple-making. A church must also ask whether its members are becoming more truthful and generous, whether racial and economic barriers are being crossed, whether vulnerable people are being protected, and whether Christians are learning to use institutional, economic, and civic power without domination.

The commission’s global language also resists cultural conquest. “All nations” does not authorize one nation to reproduce itself throughout the world. Christian mission has often confused the gospel with European civilization, Western economics, or American political assumptions. Acts 15 offers another model: the gospel crosses boundaries without requiring every community to adopt the culture of those who first carried the message. Faithfulness can be shared without making one culture the universal measure of discipleship.

Evangelism and justice are distinguishable, but they are inseparable within the full mission of the church. Evangelism announces Jesus Christ, calls people to repentance and faith, and invites them into the life of God’s kingdom. Social justice addresses unjust relationships, laws, institutions, practices, and distributions of power. Feeding someone is not automatically evangelism, and preaching a sermon is not automatically social justice. Yet the mission includes both because the gospel concerns reconciliation with God and the formation of a new humanity.⁴

Baptism also gives the commission a social form. People are baptized not into private spirituality but into the name of the triune God and the fellowship of a new people. That community assumes responsibility for teaching, correction, material care, reconciliation, and shared witness. Conversion creates obligations, not only convictions.

Some expressions of the Social Gospel risked reducing salvation to social improvement. Some expressions of conservative evangelicalism reduced salvation to individual forgiveness and the promise of a future heaven. A fuller gospel includes forgiveness, reconciliation with God, new birth, incorporation into a new community, liberation from the powers of sin, personal holiness, economic responsibility, racial reconciliation, care for vulnerable people, resistance to injustice, and hope for the renewal of creation.⁵

Saying that justice belongs to the Great Commission does not authorize the church to baptize a partisan platform. The church must distinguish between binding moral principles and prudential policy judgments. Christians may agree that poverty, discrimination, exploitation, or unequal treatment must be addressed while disagreeing about which legislation, program, or institution will address them most effectively.

The church must bring Scripture, theological tradition, historical knowledge, credible evidence, and the voices of affected communities into disciplined discernment. Its task is not to declare one political party the kingdom of God. Its task is to form people capable of judging every party, ideology, government, and institution by the standards of God’s kingdom.

We are not commissioned merely to make believers. We are commissioned to make disciples—people whose worship, relationships, economic practices, public conduct, mercy, and pursuit of justice make the gospel visible.

The Great Commission is wider than evangelism and more demanding than church growth. It asks the church not only to announce Christ, but also to form communities that obey what Christ taught.

Citations and Sources

1. The Holy Bible, New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition, Matthew 5–7; 22:34–40; 23:23; 25:31–46; 28:18–20.
2. The Holy Bible, New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition, Deuteronomy 16:20; Isaiah 1:10–17; 58:1–12; Amos 5:21–24; Micah 6:8.
3. The Holy Bible, New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition, Luke 4:16–21; Acts 1–6; 8; 10; 15.
4. Lausanne Movement, “The Lausanne Covenant” (1974), paragraph 5, “Christian Social Responsibility.”
5. Lausanne Movement, “Evangelism and Social Responsibility,” Lausanne Occasional Paper No. 21 (1982).