"And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, 'All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.' Amen."
We can understand the Great Commission by studying its four key verbs. Verbs are action words that tell us what to do. These four verbs tell us what Jesus wants us to do and how to do it. The four key verbs are (1) Go, (2) Make Disciples, (3) Baptize, and (4) Teach.
One of these four verbs is the main action. The other three describe how to complete the main action. For example: I tell you, "Take my car and this money, go into the market and bring me back some mangoes." The main action I want you to complete is "bring me back some mangoes." The main action in the Great Commission is "make disciples." The other three verbs describe how we are to make disciples.
"Go" means that we are to do evangelism. To make a disciple of Christ, we must bring that person to Christ to be forgiven and cleansed from his sins.
The word "Baptize" tells us what we are to do after we have brought them to Jesus. Baptism brings them into the Church. Jesus is telling us that it is from the context of their relationship with the Church that new believers can best follow Him as a disciple.
"Teach" is the third step in making disciples. A disciple is a student. He is one who has dedicated his life to follow the teachings of his master. Jesus said we are to teach His disciples to "observe" (or obey) everything He has commanded us. Discipleship begins with obedience. Jesus said in Luke 6:46, "Why do you call Me 'Lord, Lord,' and not do the things which I say?" Obedience is also the proof of our love for Christ (John 14:15, 23-24).
Based on Matthew 28:18-20, we can derive the following disciple-making formula: Go + Baptize + Teach = Make Disciples
We can "translate" this formula in the following way to better understand the process of making disciples:
Evangelism (Go)
+ Church (Baptize)
+ Obedience (Teach)
= A Mature Follower of Christ
These three steps are necessary to bringing a person from a place of unbelief to a place of spiritual maturity. We will discuss this process more in the section entitled "Job #1, Making Disciples." For now, we want to see the specific assignment we are all called to through the Great Commission: to make disciples of all the nations.
The above formula shows us that making a disciple requires three steps: (1) winning them to Christ, (2) bringing them into the church and (3) teaching them to do the commands of Christ. Every disciple-making, church planting strategy must be based on these three steps. If we focus on only one of the three, we will fail to make disciples. Some churches have a vision for winning the lost. Evangelism alone can not fulfill the Great Commission. Others promote the church - its services, rules, government, and sacraments or ordinances. Again, these things are good and necessary, but alone cannot fulfill the Great Commission. The same is true of teaching. It takes all three of these steps to produce a mature follower of Jesus. A vital question is: