Ordinances and Sacraments: What Matthew 28 Really Commands
Short answer: The Bible commands two church rites instituted by Jesus himself: baptism and the Lord's Supper. Matthew 28:18-20 records the risen Christ sending his apostles to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them and teaching them to obey everything he commanded. The Lord's Supper was handed on by Paul as something he received from the Lord, not invented. Christians have historically called these things ordinances or sacraments depending on what they believe the rites do. Baptism marks union with Christ in his death and resurrection, and the Supper proclaims his death until he comes. The New Testament treats both as given to the church, not as optional extras a congregation may add or drop at will. Where believers differ is not whether Jesus instituted them, but what he accomplishes through them.
Why Matthew 28:18-20 Is the Starting Point
The Great Commission begins with a claim, not a command. Before Jesus says a word about going or baptizing, he says that all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to him. That order matters. Whatever the church does in baptism and the Supper, she does it under delegated authority from the one who holds all of it. These are not human traditions dressed up in religious language. They are the instructions of the risen Lord to his own people.
Notice also the scope. The command is to make disciples of all nations, and baptizing is folded into that making. Baptism is not a separate program alongside disciple-making; it is part of how disciples are made and marked. Teaching them to obey everything Jesus commanded is the ongoing half of the same commission. The Supper belongs to that ongoing teaching and obedience, which is why Paul can deliver it to a church as something received from the Lord.
And the commission ends with a promise: he is with them always, to the end of the age. The one who commands baptism and continued obedience does not leave his church to figure it out alone. That promise is the practical comfort of every congregation that takes these rites seriously and still finds itself arguing about details. The Lord of the church is present with the church as she obeys him, even when her understanding is incomplete.
Baptism in the New Testament: Command and Meaning
Baptism appears in the New Testament as an act commanded, administered, and received, not as a subject for speculation. On the day of Pentecost, Peter answers a stunned crowd with a direct instruction. Acts 2:38 says, "Repent, and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit." The response is immediate and corporate: those who received his word were baptized, and they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship.
Paul explains what baptism signifies rather than merely describing the ceremony. Romans 6:3-4 asks whether the readers know that all who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death, so that as Christ was raised they too might walk in newness of life. The water is not the point; the union it pictures is. Baptism is the visible marker of a real transfer, from the old realm into Christ, and Paul uses it precisely because his readers already knew what it meant when someone went under the water.
Colossians 2:11-12 ties the same reality to the language of circumcision, calling it a circumcision not made with hands, the putting off of the body of the sins of the flesh. The old covenant sign of belonging has its counterpart in the new, and the apostle is comfortable connecting the two. So baptism is at once a command, a sign, and a confession. It says something true about the person baptized, and it says something true about the Christ into whom they are baptized.
The Lord's Supper: Received, Not Invented
Paul's account of the Supper is deliberately traditional. In 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 he writes that he received from the Lord what he also delivered to them: that on the night he was betrayed, Jesus took bread. Paul is not innovating or offering his own devotional suggestion. He is passing on a chain of transmission that runs back to the upper room itself. That is why churches across wildly different traditions still read these words when they gather at the table.
The Supper is anchored in a specific night, in a specific act of betrayal, in a specific body about to be broken. It is not a general religious meal. It is a memorial with a forward edge: it proclaims the Lord's death until he comes. That phrase holds past and future together. The church looks back to the cross and forward to the return, and in between she eats bread and drinks the cup as a visible announcement to a watching world.
Because Paul received it from the Lord, the Supper belongs to Christ's church and not to any one faction within it. That is why the same letter that delivers the tradition also rebukes a congregation for turning the meal into a occasion for division and status. The remedy Paul gives is not to abandon the practice but to discern the body rightly and to examine oneself. The gift is retained; the abuse is corrected.
Ordinance or Sacrament: What the Words Actually Mean
The word ordinance emphasises that baptism and the Supper are things Christ ordained, that is, commanded. In that framing, the rites are obedience. They are visible words, signs that declare the gospel and mark out God's people, but the saving action lies entirely in God's grace received by faith. Many Baptist, evangelical, and free-church traditions speak this way, and they are not being dismissive when they do. They are guarding against the idea that a ceremony can accomplish what only the Spirit can.
The word sacrament emphasises that the rites are means through which God gives grace. The Latin term behind it refers to a sacred obligation or mystery, and traditions that use it—Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, Anglican, and Reformed in varying ways—do not mean that a pastor's hands have magical power. They mean that God has attached a promise to a visible sign and that he is faithful to work through it. Grace is God's gift; the dispute concerns how closely he has bound the gift to the sign.
Even within sacramental traditions there is sharp disagreement. Some hold that baptism regenerates; others insist it seals a grace already given. Some hold that Christ is bodily present in the Supper; others speak of a spiritual feeding on him in heaven. These are not trivial differences, but they are differences among people who all take the commands seriously. Honesty requires saying so plainly rather than pretending one word settles the matter.
Where Faithful Christians Genuinely Differ
The most visible disagreement concerns who may be baptized and when. Credobaptist churches baptise those who can profess faith for themselves, pointing to the pattern in Acts where belief precedes baptism. Paedobaptist churches baptise the children of believers, reading baptism as the new-covenant counterpart to circumcision and pointing to household baptisms in the same book. Both sides appeal to Scripture, and each thinks the other has misread the continuity between the covenants.
A second difference concerns who may come to the table. Some churches practice a closed table, admitting only members of like-minded congregations. Others practice close communion within a denomination, and still others practice an open table for any baptised believer who trusts Christ. The Supper's character as a church-wide meal pushes toward some form of oversight, while the Supper's character as Christ's meal pushes toward generosity. Churches weigh those pressures differently.
A third difference concerns frequency and form. Some congregations celebrate the Supper weekly, others monthly or quarterly, and some only occasionally. The New Testament does not specify a schedule. Jesus said to do this, but he did not say how often or in what posture. Where Scripture is silent, churches must decide in freedom, and they should extend to others the charity they would want extended to themselves.
How These Rites Shape a Congregation
Baptism and the Supper are not private devotions. They are corporate acts, and they teach a church what it is. When a new believer is baptised, the congregation sees the gospel enacted and is reminded of its own beginning. When the church gathers at the table, she sees bread broken and cup poured and is reminded that her life rests on a death outside herself. Rites performed carelessly weaken a church; rites performed thoughtfully strengthen her.
They also protect the gospel from becoming an abstraction. It is easy to talk about grace in general terms. It is harder to stand in water before witnesses or to take bread in your hand and hear that Christ's body was given for you. The physicalness is the point. God has always been willing to give his people visible signs, and he has not stopped doing so under the new covenant. The signs do not replace the message; they carry it.
Finally, these rites bind a congregation to the wider church. A baptism in one town is recognised in another. A table set in one building is the same table the whole body shares. In a divided church, that is no small thing. Whatever else Christians disagree about, they can agree that the Lord who holds all authority told his followers to baptise and to remember him, and that he promised to be with them while they do it.
Biblical fidelity check
Matthew 28:18-20 establishes that Jesus, having received all authority, commands his apostles to make disciples, baptise, and teach obedience. It does not specify the mode of baptism, the age of the recipient, the words of administration, or the frequency of the Supper. Those details are worked out from the wider New Testament or from church practice, and honest teachers should say which is which. The passage does not make baptism a third thing alongside discipleship; baptising is part of making disciples.
A common misreading treats the Great Commission as a mandate for cultural influence or institutional expansion. The text says nothing about politics, markets, or empire. Another misreading treats baptism as a ritual that automatically saves, or conversely as a mere symbol with no significance at all. Both flatten the text. The New Testament ties baptism to forgiveness and union with Christ, and it also ties salvation to faith, which is why the whole church has never been able to reduce the rite to either a mechanical cause or a disposable extra.
Other passages that speak to Matthew 28:18-20
The commission does not stand alone, and reading it beside the rest of Scripture keeps it from being stretched. Paul's appeal for unity in a divided church shows why the rites must not become party badges, and you can trace that concern in What Does 1 Corinthians 1:10 Mean? Context, Theology, and Application. The ground of that unity is God's own faithfulness, explored in What Does 1 Corinthians 1:9 Mean? Context, Theology, and Application. For the wider setting of the letter, see 1 Corinthians 1: Called, United, and Boasting in the Lord. And because the Supper was handed on to a congregation with real problems, 1 Corinthians 10: Warnings and Freedom is worth reading alongside it.
Frequently asked questions
Are baptism and the Lord's Supper required for salvation?
No major Christian tradition teaches that a person is saved by performing a ritual, and the New Testament consistently ties salvation to faith in Christ, as Acts 2:38 itself shows by joining repentance, baptism, and the promise of the Spirit in one sentence. Where traditions differ is on how closely God has joined the sign to the grace it signifies. That is a real disagreement, and it should be discussed with care rather than dismissed on either side.
Why do some churches call them ordinances and others sacraments?
The choice of word signals a theology of how God works through the rites. Ordinance stresses that Christ commanded them and that they are acts of obedience and public declaration. Sacrament stresses that God gives grace through them by attaching his promise to a visible sign. Both words honour the commands. The difference lies in how much is attributed to the rite itself and how much to the grace it points to.
How often should a church celebrate the Lord's Supper?
Scripture does not say. Jesus said to do this in remembrance of him, and the early church devoted itself to the apostles' teaching and the breaking of bread, but no interval is commanded. Weekly, monthly, and quarterly practices all exist among Bible-believing churches. A congregation should decide prayerfully, teach its reasoning openly, and avoid treating frequency as a test of faithfulness.
