My homework tonight asked this question: "Which is more significant, obeying the Great Commission (making disciples) or the Great Commandment (loving God and your neighbor)?"
Something about this question intrigues me. I'm typically bad at answering "either or" questions (mainly because I'm indecisive. Ok, that needs a qualifier: extremely indecisive.) Of course, both the Great Commission and the Great Commandment are extremely significant, so perhaps it's not right to judge one over the other. But for the sake of answering the question, here's the answer I came up with:
"I think the Great Commandment is more significant because by loving God and our neighbors, we are being a light of Christ to those around us, which can open doors and pathways to make disciples through these acts of service. Both are important, but the Great Commandment is a heart-matter. We need to change inwardly and have the right motives before we can be truly effective in our outward expressions and activities to make disciples."
If anyone has an answer or reasoning for the other viewpoint, I'd be interested in hearing it.
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4 comments:
Being indecisive, I mean, a great mediator myself, I tried coming up with the argument for the great commission being more significant. The best I could come up with is that without the great commission there would be no point to having the great commandment, but that doesn't seem entirely true. I think the question was designed to lead people to your answer.
Well don't you sort of think it is kind of a like a cause and effect matter. I mean because of the Great Commandment, don't you do the Great Commission because loving your neighbor would mean you would want your neighbor to love God and be in Heaven.
I would think of it kind of like how we think of works maybe.
Mandy took the words right out of my mouth. Without the Great Commandment, the Great Commission wouldn't have any more meaning to us than "You can't roller skate through a buffalo herd." (a Roger Miller song and the first, and only, as it turns out, nonsensical phrase I could think of...)
The question then becomes "Does that make the Great Commandment more important?" It seems more intuitive to say yes, but what if they are different ways to say the same thing? The Great Commandment is to love the Lord your God. Elsewhere in the Bible, (John 14), Jesus says, "If you love me, you will obey what I command." One of his commands is...the Great Commission! Also, Jesus says, "If you love me, feed my lambs." (John 21) Part of feeding Jesus' lambs is...the Great Commission!
I think my point is that we can't have one without the other.
An excellent question, to be sure.
Sorry to be a yes-man, but, like the rest of you, I do not see an alternative. One is a prerequisite for the other. The consequences of pursuing some perversion of the great commission without having a complete true love of God *and* neighbor can be catastrophic. I'll support this with an example (I am a big fan of examples).
I recall a number of "missionaries" visiting A&M who, under the watchful gaze of ole Sully, hatefully accused every passerby of being a sinner. Why did they take such joy in pointing out the obvious? These messengers were operating under the guise of enlightening people as to how many of their accepted daily habits were hurting themselves (eg. loudly and violently accusing every woman passing by of being an evil temptress, saying worse things about the men). They thought they were spreading God's Word (well, they were spreading *something*), but, from my (imperfect) vantage, it seemed they did not love their neighbor, only themselves and their own self-righteousness. The result was that they sowed hate toward every sinner (not the sin) who passed by. Sure, God can work through everything, but I cannot imagine these individuals were properly performing "The Great Commission." It appeared to be due to a lack of application of the Great Commandment.
To me, the question is like comparing apples and trees (not oranges). You can't grow a healthy apple tree without a healthy apple.
The real question, which all this leads to is, once one is following the great commandment, can he or she do so without following the great commission? One is a natural progression of the other. Some Christian churches concentrate on knowing Jesus and being saved to such an extent as to be a detriment to what comes next, forgetting we must continually grow. God gave us reason. Christians have used that reason and seen the aforementioned shortcoming. Personally, I have heard the term "Great Commission" much more in the past two years than I have in the twenty-six before, and I think I can attribute that to Christians' realization that much of the Church is too narrow-minded and self-focused. Such a cycle (change in focus of movements) is nothing new. Every generation must act based on their environment. Perhaps the last correction made (evangelical movement?) was to make sure everyone knew how to "start" to be a Christian. We, like those before us, seek our answers (in order) in the scripture, on Christian works and theology created and debated by our forefathers, utilizing the amazing gift of reason, and must make sense of it all through the lens of our personal experiences and journey.
Pursuing the great commission (properly) is one example of continued growth we should expect of ourselves, one which shows both our adherence to the Word and our love of God and neighbor.
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