Picture Jesus as he prepares to go to the cross. Praying to the Father, he recounts his ministry in the world. He begins, “I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do.”1 Then he describes that work.
What is shocking is that when Jesus summarizes his work on earth, he doesn’t start reliving all the great sermons he preached and all the people who came to listen to him. He doesn’t talk about the amazing miracles he performed—giving sight to the blind, enabling the lame to walk, and feeding thousands of people with minimal food. He doesn’t even mention bringing the dead back to life. Instead he talks repeatedly about the small group of men God had given him out of the world. They were the work God had given to him. They were, quite literally, his life.
When you read through John 17, you cannot help but sense the intensity of the affection Jesus had for this band of disciples and the gravity of the investment he had made in their lives. Consider this sampling from Jesus’ prayer to his Father regarding his disciples:
Jesus lived for them. During his earthly ministry, he spent more time with these twelve men than with everyone else in the world put together. This is astonishing when you really think about it. At the end of the Son of God’s time on earth, he had staked everything on his relationships with twelve men. In the middle of his prayer, he even mentioned that one of them (Judas) was lost. So now we are down to eleven. These eleven guys were the small group responsible for carrying on everything Jesus had begun.
After his prayer in the upper room, Jesus went to the cross and died there. Then he rose from the grave and appeared to his disciples. One of his final moments with them is captured in Matthew 28. The eleven gathered around him, and Jesus said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”3
After intentionally spending his life on earth with these eleven men, Jesus told them, “Now you go out and do the same with others.” The megastrategy of Jesus: make disciples.