Matthew 28:19

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

From Background Notes [BN] for March 16^th & 17^th written by Pastor Bob Brown:

What does Jesus mean? Within Judaism, the idea of a rabbi taking disciples into his care was well-known. They spent time with him, watched him live, listened to his teaching and…

 …imagined themselves one day doing what he is doing now. Similarly, when Jesus called his disciples, they knew that they would live on close terms in close quarters with Jesus. We get a glimpse of this from John’s Gospel, where two would-be disciples of Jesus start to walk behind him. When he turns and sees them, he asks, “What do you want?” Then they ask him, “Rabbi, where are you staying?” (1:38b), followed by his reply, “Come, and you will see” (1:39). That threefold exchange effectively initiated the rabbi-disciple relationship. Rabbis collectively called their disciples, in the Hebrew language, talmidim. According to Jewish custom, a man as young as fifteen might become a talmid, and then become a rabbi by age thirty.

What startles a Jewish reader in 28:19 is the command to make talmidim of all nations. That sounds like an exclusive mission of making only proselytes — Gentile converts — into rabbis! The word “nations” would be goyim in Hebrew, and certainly has shock value for Matthew’s potential readership. Disciple the goy, Jesus tells his disciples. No wonder he began his commission with words of authorization! The disciples would need special authorization to engage in a mission like that! What Jesus does here is to move his followers from local (Jewish) to global (nations). But is this move really so different from the ancient biblical message?  [BN, 6]

 

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