The Chicken or the Egg?

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw Him they worshiped Him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Matthew 28:16-20

The Great Commission

What comes first, the chicken or the egg?

It’s a fun circular causation problem. Both seem to depend entirely on the other for their existence — the chicken comes from an egg, yet the egg comes from a chicken. The question gives us a loop that resists a clean, linear answer. There is a biological rebuttal that takes all the fun out of it, but the point is that there are limits to cause-and-effect thinking. The big questions of our lives this side of heaven are rarely black and white, if-this-then-that moments.

Jesus calls us in the Great Commission to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” Seems clear enough, right? We need to tell people about Christ and what He has done for us on the cross!

Yes. But so much more. The Great Commission, as Mark Davis has pointed out, is not a call only to evangelism. Notice that Jesus did not say, “Go therefore and make as many converts as you can.” The command of the Great Commission is to make disciples. But how do we make disciples without evangelism? Or how do we evangelize without disciples to do it? The Catch-22 of circular causation strikes again.

To understand the command, we must examine our own hearts and take the temperature of our own discipleship. A disciple is a follower of someone or something — in the case of a Christian, a follower of the risen Lord Jesus Christ. When we follow something, we aren’t passive. We are actively seeking to know about our cause, and in doing so, further our faith in it. If you are a disciple of the Dallas Cowboys (a different form of hoping for what you do not see…), you will probably never miss a game, you’ll follow the news about roster changes, and you'll hang on every word from Jerry Jones; then, you’d be prepared to evangelize America’s Team to anyone who’d listen. You would have been prepared for the task.

In our Reformed Theological tradition, becoming a disciple takes the form of the Ordo Salutis, or Order of Salvation (specifically, sanctification). Thankfully, we aren’t alone in this work. God has given us incredible gifts towards our discipleship: His Word, which we can study to know Him; His Church, where we can grow together in love with our brothers and sisters in Christ; and the Holy Spirit, by Whom we are sanctified to become more Christ-like. But importantly, being a disciple of Christ, just like one of the Cowboys or anything else, requires effort on our behalf. It’s an effort that wells in us with a compounding effect — the more we understand about Christ’s work on the cross, the more we desire to worship Him and know Him. But to be sure, our effort is necessary — the gospel is opposed to earning, but it is not opposed to effort; effort is required.

But back to our circular problem. What comes first, evangelism or discipleship? For our purposes, discipleship is the command. The Lord’s plan is beyond our means of comprehension. He is ordering all things for His glory and our good, and sometimes that will be both incredibly difficult to discern and yet simultaneously, more true than we could ever grasp. But here and now, our call, indeed, our command, is discipleship.

Mark Dever says it well: “Think of how the flight attendants on an airplane tell you to put the mask over your own face before placing it over the face of the person traveling with you. In the same way, it is okay for you to care for your own spiritual health first. You need to be able to breathe and grow spiritually if you want to help others.”¹ Our ability to make disciples is interdependent on our own spiritual formation — on being disciples ourselves.

By God’s grace, each of us has been brought to saving faith through His work in ordinary Christians who put in the effort. Men and women, sinners like us, who loved us enough to pour into us what was so dear to them: the good news of the gospel. Were they perfect and pure? Absolutely not. But they were disciples, understanding enough of their own sin and failings, and what Christ has done for them, that they were unable to resist sharing the gospel with us.

Brother, sister: the good news of Easter is that Jesus reigns — today and for eternity. If you are His follower, I pray you will love to learn more about Him through His Word and His Church. And I pray that the Holy Spirit will form you as a disciple in a way to heed the command to make disciples of those around you.

 

END NOTES:
1. Dever, Mark and Jonathan Leeman. Understanding the Great Commission. B&H Publishing Group, 2016, p. 50.