Great Commission

And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 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, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age."
-Mat 28:18-20

What is the significance of the word "therefore" in this passage? It is tying the two sentences together--saying Jesus' authority is the reason to go. It is saying because Jesus has all authority in heaven on earth, the logical conclusion is to go and make disciples.

Most of the time when we use this sort of language, we have two parts that we're combining to get a "therefore" conclusion. For example, "I like coffee and Starbucks makes coffee, therefore I like Starbucks." This passage is different because it doesn't combine two things to get a conclusion, at least not explicitly. What would be there implicitly? What other factor(s) would go into our going? It could be "You love me and want everyone else to know me, but you can't do anything about it on your own."

So that's one possible interpretation of this passage. But I think the best interpretation is to understand the hidden piece as "and I am commanding you to make disciples." He's giving us the logical conclusion tied together with the command. We can infer a lot about the success of our mission based on the fact that Jesus has all authority, but that is not what he's saying here. The main point of Jesus' stressing his authority is to lend weight to his command. It's not a meaningless command coming from a 2-year-old. No, it is a command coming from the King of Kings and Lord of Lords who hold all power of life and death, and he says "Go and make disciples."

Therefore, I (we) best make disciples.