Hear devo: https://bit.ly/4fEYlNM
16 Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. 17 When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. 18 And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 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, 20 and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age." (Matthew 28:16-20 NIV)
Five verses. One mountain. The risen Christ standing before eleven disciples — some worshiping, some still doubting — and speaking the words that have shaped the church’s identity and mission for two thousand years.
On Trinity Sunday, the church pauses to worship the God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — the God whose inner life is community, whose very nature is love given and love returned. And this passage, the Great Commission, is not merely a mission statement. It is a Trinitarian declaration. Every sentence in these five verses is shaped by who God is: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — one name, three persons, the whole life of God poured into the church’s calling.
Let us hear it slowly.
Matthew’s honesty here is one of the most quietly remarkable things in the entire Gospel. These are the eleven — the ones who had followed Jesus for three years, who had seen the empty tomb, who had heard the resurrection reports. And when they see the risen Christ on the mountain, they worship him. But some doubted.
Matthew does not explain or excuse or resolve the doubt. He simply records it, and then records that Jesus came to them anyway. He did not wait until they had sorted out their uncertainty. He did not require a clean faith before he issued the commission. He came to the worshipers and the doubters alike — and spoke the same words to all of them.
This is Trinity Sunday grace. The God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — whose inner life is perfect, eternal, untroubled love — meets us in our imperfect, uncertain, still-working-it-out faith and commissions us from exactly there. The doubt in the room on that mountain does not disqualify the commission. It simply means the commission is given to human beings, which is what it has always been.
Jesus opens with a claim that reframes everything that follows: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”
This is not modesty. This is the risen, ascended Lord declaring the scope of his reign. Every authority — in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, present and future — has been given to the Son by the Father. The commission that follows rests entirely on this foundation. We do not go in our own authority or on our own initiative. We go because the one who sends us holds all authority, and he has chosen to accomplish his purposes in the world through the witness of his people.
Then the Trinitarian heart of the passage: “Baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”
Notice: one name, not three names. The Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit share a single name because they share a single being — three persons, one God, the eternal community of love into which every believer is baptized. When we are baptized, we are not initiated into an institution. We are immersed into the life of God himself — welcomed into the communion that has existed from before the foundation of the world, the love that flows eternally between Father, Son, and Spirit, the name above every name.
And the commission runs to all nations. Not one people, not one culture, not one language or background or social class. The God whose own life is a community of three sends his people to gather a community from every people. The mission has the shape of its sender: expansive, inclusive, refusing to stay within any boundary human beings would draw around it.
The commission closes not with a demand but a promise. And it is the promise that makes the demand possible.
“And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
The word surely carries the weight of an oath. This is not a casual reassurance. It is a solemn, binding, unbreakable promise from the one who holds all authority in heaven and on earth. He will not send his people into the world and then turn his attention elsewhere. He goes with them. He is present — not occasionally, not when circumstances are favorable, not when faith is strong and doubt is quiet. Always. To the very end of the age.
This is where Trinity Sunday and the Great Commission converge most beautifully. The presence Jesus promises is not an abstract theological idea. It is the presence of the Spirit — the same Spirit poured out at Pentecost, the same Spirit who hovered over the waters at creation, the same Spirit who renews the face of the ground. The Father sends the Son. The Son commissions the church. The Spirit goes with the church into the world. Three persons, one mission, one unbroken presence accompanying every disciple who has ever taken a step in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
You are not alone in the going. The one who holds all authority goes with you. Trinity Sunday is the day to let that truth settle into the bones: the God who is community sends you into the world in community with himself. Every step of the mission is taken in the company of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Five verses. And in them, everything the church needs to know about who sends us, why we go, what we carry, and who accompanies us.
All authority belongs to the one who commissions us — so we go with confidence, not in our own strength but in his. We baptize into one name — the name of the God who is himself a community of love, into whose life every new disciple is welcomed. We teach everything he commanded — not a portion, not the comfortable parts, but the whole of the life he called us to. And we go with the promise that he is with us always — not sometimes, not when we feel it, but always, to the very end.
The doctrine of the Trinity is not a puzzle to be solved on Trinity Sunday and put back on the shelf. It is the shape of the God who sends us, the name into which we are baptized, and the community we carry in our chest wherever we go. Go — in his name. All of it.
PRAYER: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — one God, one name, one unbroken presence — go with us into this week as you promised, and make us faithful witnesses of the love that has always existed at the heart of who you are. Amen.
Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Take one step this week in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit — a conversation, an act of service, a word of witness — trusting that the one who holds all authority is the one who goes with you.
I love you and I thank God for you! You matter to God and you matter to me! Remember what the Lord said, "Surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.
