The ubiquity of the Great Commission is rivaled by its interpretive poverty. Matthew 28:18-20—containing the command to make disciples of all nations—is frequently summoned to validate countless and sundry discipleship and evangelism programs, ideas and practices, very often ignoring the interpretive wealth beneath its surface. It’s as if we expect that planting the end of our sentence with a Great Commission flag will immediately summit our discipleship agendas.

This interpretive poverty can be remedied by paying attention to the other great commissions. Yes, commission(s). How many “great commissions” are there? Well, depending on who answers the question, we might have anywhere from one to five, one in the Old Testament and four in the New.

The four commissions in the NT are actually variations of the same mandate (Matt. 28:18-20; Mark 16:15; Luke 24:48-49/Acts 1:8; John 20:21), each emphasizing a slightly different dimension of what it means to be a disciple. The operative verbs in these NT commissions are: make disciples, preach, witness, and send. The OT commission, frequently referred to as the creation or cultural mandate, was issued by God before the Fall, emphasizing creative activity with the following verbs: be fruitful, multiply, rule, and subdue (Gen 1.27-28).

Do the new evangelistic mandates make the old mandate obsolete? Is older better? I believe each commission charges us with a unique aspect of being a disciple of Jesus. An enriched reinterpretation of the Great Commission will require whole Bible interpretation, one that allows the old and the new to speak. Sampling the evangelistic beats of the NT commissions, we quickly discern a rhythm different from that of the earthy dominion and reproductive impulse of the OT commission. On the one hand, we have soul winning and disciple-making and, on the other, people producing and culture making activity.

If we are to move beyond poverty ridden proof-texts and into the wealth of these biblical commissions, we must reflect on their differences and dig deeply into their interpretive pockets. This will require confrontation with the Bible’s demands to make culture and disciples, to care for creation and be agents of new creation. This work will pay off. Through it we will amass truth and grace to be spent on whole Christian living and Christ-honoring discipleship.

Though my biographical sketch on Kuyper has come to a close, we have only begun to explore the depth of Kuyper’s thought. Over the next few weeks, I will offer a post that explores some of Kuyper’s contributions to the concept of a Christian worldview. Lectures on Calvinism will be our primary guide.

Attempting to summarize Abraham Kuyper’s contributions to Christian worldview thinking in such a short amount of space is almost absurd. Due to Kuyper’s commitment to acknowledge and exegete God’s glory in all of life, from science to art, one is hard-pressed to focus on one aspect of his work. His bibliography, numbering 223 items excluding his editorials published in the Standard, towers in mockery at any fleeting attempt to summarize his thought. Kupyer’s thought was robustly integrated and thus presents the reader, or writer in this case, with an overwhelming quantity and quality of material to consider. Nevertheless, in light of the fact that all of Kuyper’s writing followed a principle of integration, it appears only sensible to begin an examination of his thought at its nexus, Calvinism. In order to do so, we will take his famous Stone Lectures on Calvinism, given at Princeton in 1898, as our primary guide.

In his attempt to wage war against the onslaught of the Modernist worldview, Kuyper, who was educated in the Netherlands’s finest Modernist schools, devoted his life to the development, articulation, and implementation of an opposing Christian worldview, that of Calvinism. Kupyer summarizes the conflict between the two worldviews, “Two life-systems are wrestling with one another, in mortal combat. Modernism is bound to build a world of its own from the data of the natural man, and to construct man himself from the data of nature; while, on the other hand, all those who reverently bend the knee to Christ and worship Him as the Son of the living God, and God himself, are bent upon saving the ‘Christian Heritage’”.

It is important to note that Kuyper did not approach worldview contstruction as a purely theoretical exercise, hence his frequent use to “life.” The “life-system” as he sometimes referred to it, is better understood as a worldview or Weltanschauung. There is no English equivalent for the German, Weltanschauung, literally translated “view of the world”; nevertheless Kuyper, under the influence of American colleagues selected the term, life-system.

Check it out here.