There has been debate, over the years, as to whether the church should focus on the Great Commandment or the Great Commission. I would like to offer my two cents to this long running conversation for consideration.
During His earthly ministry, Jesus said the greatest of His Father's commandments are to love "God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind," and to "love your neighbor like yourself" (Matt 22: 37-40). After His Cross and Resurrection, He commissioned his people- the church- to live out these commandments, by going through out the world making disciples of all nations, baptizing them, and "teaching them to observe all that [He] had commanded them" (Matt 28: 19-20). And after His ascension into heaven, Jesus sent the Holy Spirit, on the day of Pentecost, to empower His church to carry out this mission, to bear the good news of Jesus Christ, the message of His death and resurrection, to a world that is lost in the bondage of sin and death (Acts 1: 8; Acts 2).
So I ask, how can there ever be any separation between the Great Commandment and the Great Commission? One naturally leads to the other and vice versa. How would we know about the first without the latter? And how could we truly live out the latter without the first? The Great Commandment, by the power of the Holy Spirit within us fuels the Great Commission; and the Great Commission, by the grace and mercy of God, gives birth to the faith-filled utterance of the Great Commandment in the hearts, minds, and lives of those who- like we once were before we heard- are once far from God.
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