Right before Jesus left this earth, He gathered His followers on a mountain in Galilee and handed them the assignment that would shape the next 2,000 years. We call it the Great Commission. In Matthew 28:18-20, Jesus declares His authority over all heaven and on earth, then sends His disciples out to make disciples of all nations—baptizing them, teaching them to obey everything He commanded—with the promise that He will be with them always. These are the marching orders Jesus left for everyone who follows Him–the response to a harvest that is plentiful but short on laborers.
It Started at a Birthday Party
The first time I saw the Matthew 28 Great Commission in action, I was in seventh grade at an overnight birthday party. A kid my age decided to do something he had never done before. He started telling us about Jesus. He was so nervous he texted his mom in the middle of the night to ask for help. She sent him a prayer and then he looked around the room and said, “Does anybody want to receive Jesus?” I said yes.
That kid was living out the Matthew 28 Great Commission without even knowing the name for it.
If you have read Matthew 28 before, I want to invite you to read it again, this time slower, and let each phrase do what it was meant to do.
Here is what Jesus said, straight from the text:
“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 obey all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” — Matthew 28:18-20 ESV
The Scene Before the Words
Before we go deeper into what Jesus said, we need to see where He said it.
Jesus has just risen from the dead. The disciples just went through the worst few days of their lives, watching Him die. And now Jesus is alive, and everything is different. Through the women at the tomb, He sends word for the disciples to leave Jerusalem and go to Galilee, promising they will see Him there. So they go. And it is in Galilee, on a mountain Jesus chose, that He meets them and gives this commission.
That detail matters more than it might seem. Jesus is not giving this commission in Jerusalem, the religious center of the world. He is calling them all the way back to Galilee, the place where it all began—where He first found them and said, “Come, follow Me.” It is as if He is saying: remember where we started? Remember who you were when I first called you? That is where I want to send you out from.
Matthew is a master storyteller. He is showing us that the end of the story circles back to the beginning. The disciples were recruited in Galilee. Now they are commissioned in Galilee. The words Jesus speaks on that mountain are meant to carry them, and us, all the way to the end of the age. And every one of those words is important. So, let’s slow down and take the most important phrases one at a time.
5 Important Phrases from the Matthew 28 Great Commission
1. “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me.”
Jesus does not start with the command; He starts with the authority behind it.
Think about what has just happened. Jesus died on a cross. To everyone watching, it looked like defeat. But then He rose. And now He is standing in front of His disciples reminding them that there is no higher authority in the universe than the one speaking to them.
Throughout Scripture, we see that no one comes into a position of power without God allowing it. And here, Jesus Himself is claiming the top of that entire order. He is the Most High King. And everything that follows in this passage flows from that fact. The charge He is about to give carries the full weight of heaven behind it.
2. “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.”
The word “therefore” connects everything. Because of that authority, here is what I am asking you to do.
And what He asks is not simply to go and tell people about Him. The word “make disciples” carries a much bigger meaning than that. A disciple is someone who is learning to live the way their teacher lives. Like an apprentice learning a trade, walking alongside a master, watching, practicing, and growing over time. Jesus is asking His followers to invest in people at that level.
The phrase “all nations” is just as significant. It leaves no one out. Every people group, every language, every corner of the earth falls inside the scope of this commission. The Matthew 28 Great Commission was never meant to be a local project. It has always been a global one.
And here is the piece that catches people off guard. The disciples were told to go make disciples. Those disciples made more disciples. And that chain has continued for 2,000 years, all the way to us. We are the disciples now. This commission has been passed down like a baton, and it is in our hands.
3. “Baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”
Baptism is the moment someone steps publicly into the family of God. It is the outward sign of an inward change, the declaration that a person now belongs to Jesus.
What is easy to miss here is the Trinitarian language, meaning the way all three persons of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, are named together. This is one of the clearest pictures of the Trinity in all of Scripture. And it is not the only place Matthew shows us this. At the very beginning of his Gospel, when Jesus is baptized in the Jordan River, all three members of the Trinity show up at once. The Father speaks from heaven. The Spirit descends like a dove. The Son stands in the water. Matthew is drawing a deliberate line from the beginning of Jesus’ ministry to the end of it, and baptism is the thread connecting them.
4. “Teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you.”
Notice that Jesus does not say teaching them everything I have commanded. He says teaching them to obey everything I have commanded.
Our task as goers is to teach the commands of Jesus. We don’t have to save people, Jesus does that. We don’t have to pattern them after our image, Jesus is the one to be patterned after. Our role is to introduce them to Jesus and teach them His commands. We can leave the rest to God.
There is also something worth noticing about the act of teaching itself. When you teach something to someone else, you own it in a way you never did before. You think about it more carefully. You take it more seriously. You live it more consistently. The commission to teach others is, in a beautiful way, also a commission to go deeper yourself.
5. “And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
Matthew saves the most personal promise for last.
The disciples knew what it felt like to walk with Jesus in person. They had three years of that. And now He is about to leave. But He does not end with goodbye. He ends with a promise that His presence is not going anywhere.
This is not comforting language meant to soften the blow of His departure. Jesus has the authority and the power to back up everything He says. When He says “I am with you always,” He means it in the most literal sense. His presence is not something we feel on good days and lose on hard ones. It is a promise that holds whether we sense it or not, the way the sun is still there even when clouds cover it.
The disciples were about to face things that would have broken most people. Arrest. Persecution. Death. And through all of it, Jesus was present. He had not left. And He has not left us either.
If you want to explore what it looks like to step into this Matthew 28 Great Commission in the everyday moments of your life, here are eight practical ways to help finish the Great Commission.
Why This Passage Matters
The Matthew 28 Great Commission does not stand alone in Scripture. Mark, Luke, John, and Acts each carry their own version of this same moment. Mark sends the disciples into all the world (Mark 16:15). Luke points to repentance and forgiveness reaching every nation (Luke 24:46-49). John sends them the same way the Father sent Jesus (John 20:21). Acts promises the Holy Spirit as the power behind it all (Acts 1:8). Together, they form one unified call that has echoed across 2,000 years of church history.
And that call has landed here, with us.
Here is something we need to be clear about. This commission was never handed to a special few. It is easy to assume the work belongs to missionaries, pastors, and the kind of Christians who seem built for it. But Jesus did not say go and recruit some professionals. He said go, all of you. If you follow Jesus, you are part of how God plans to reach the world. You are His Plan A. There is no Plan B waiting in case ordinary people do not work out. Making disciples is not an advanced assignment for specialists. It is the everyday calling of every Kingdom Laborer, which is to say, every one of us.
So, what does going and living out the Matthew 28 Great Commission actually look like? For most of us, it does not start with a plane ticket. It starts with the people already in front of us: the coworker, the neighbor, or even the friend at a birthday party. Going means noticing the people God has already placed in your path, stopping long enough to really see them, spending real time with them, and sharing Jesus when the moment comes. That seventh grader I told you about did not have a strategy. He saw the people in the room, cared enough to say something, and let Jesus do the rest. That is what the Great Commission looks like in everyday life.
The passage is not complicated in its structure. But it is enormous in its scope.
This is what “make disciples” actually means: multiplication, not addition—disciples who make disciples who make disciples, the way that chain has stretched all the way down to you. If you want to learn what that looks like in ordinary life, Multiplying Movements is Forge’s 12-part discipleship resource built around exactly that vision.
