CHAPTER SIX
The Gospel according to Matthew

Orientation

When the rapid-fire notes of John Williams’s Star Wars theme song come forth from our speakers, they are immediately recognizable. Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, even if it is modified with a milk mustache or a punk hairdo, is also instantly familiar. Why? It is because these two works of art, one musical and the other visual, are masterpieces. They are widely known and appreciated, spanning hundreds of years and thousands of miles of different eras and cultures. It is always a mystery of history as to why some equally well-crafted pieces of art become universally famous (classics) and others do not. But what all masterpieces have in common is acknowledged beauty and excellence that make them attractive and memorable.

Figure 6.1. The Inspiration of Saint Matthew by Caravaggio [Shutterstock / PhotoFires]

The Gospel according to Matthew is one such masterpiece. Since the earliest days of the church the First Gospel has been recognized as a theological and churchly masterpiece. In recent decades scholars have come to realize what a literary work of art it is as well.

As a result of its power and beauty, the Gospel of Matthew has always stood at the head of the Fourfold Gospel Book and the whole New Testament. Because of its great influence, much of the church’s theological emphases, ways of speaking, and liturgical practices can be traced back to Matthew’s Gospel. As one scholar has noted, “Early Christianity was primarily Matthean Christianity.”1

The Historical Origins of Matthew

One day many years ago I (Jonathan) asked my young daughter if she knew where to the find the Gospel of Matthew in the Bible. She responded, “Yes, Daddy, it’s where the Old and New Testaments meet.” From the mouths of babes! This is an accurate way to describe the Gospel according to Matthew. Not only does Matthew physically sit in our Bibles at the place where the Old Testament and the New meet, it also serves this role theologically. As we will see, Matthew is a profound theological biography that is written to give us the ability to understand how the whole Bible is put together and how it makes sense. The answer to this, according to Matthew, comes through understanding who Jesus is, what he taught, and what he did through his incarnation, suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension.

The Gospel according to Matthew is a story. It is a particular kind of story—a biography. As a result, the basic outline of Matthew’s Gospel account is set out for him before he even starts writing: a biographer needs to tell who the person (the “biographee”) is, what they did and said, how they lived and died, usually followed by some discussion of the impact this person had and why he or she is worthy of a biography. In this way all four of the Gospels basically have the same kind of outline that a biography written today of Albert Einstein or John Adams would have. There is always some variation available to the writer, such as how much to tell about the subject’s childhood, whether to use flashbacks, which parts of the person’s life to emphasize more, and so on. We see these variations play out in the four canonical Gospels (as well as in the noncanonical Gospels).

The Holy Family’s Flight to Egypt

The story of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus’s flight to Egypt (Matt. 2:13–15) has inspired much creative output over the centuries. For example, many paintings depict this event, and there arose an additional legendary aspect of the story that was wedded deeply to the Christian imagination through the apocryphal books Pseudo-Matthew and the Protevangelium of James. In the many retellings of the flight to Egypt through painting and poetry we hear of a time when the Holy Family rested under a palm tree and Mary requested some dates to eat. In some versions Joseph was rather snippy and replied that whoever impregnated Mary should get her some. Then the child Jesus (sometimes in utero) made the tree bend down and provided the dates, causing Joseph to repent. In the medieval English tradition of the Coventry Plays the palm tree is replaced with a cherry tree, which eventually makes its way into the traditional English Christmas carol “The Cherry Tree Carol.”

Matthew’s Gospel biography is fairly straightforward. The first two chapters tell about Jesus’s ancestral people, his parents, and his early childhood. Then we skip ahead to his adult life, which spans chapters 3–20. Maybe surprising to us as modern readers, Matthew then gives us seven chapters (chaps. 21–27) about Jesus’s last week of life and his death. This is important because of the great theological weight that Christianity puts on Jesus’s death. Finally, the First Gospel ends with a chapter (chap. 28) that talks about Jesus’s resurrection and the sending of his disciples to continue his work.

Matthew’s Five Major Teaching Blocks

Chapter(s)	Title	Theme
5–7	Sermon on the Mount	Greater righteousness and the right way of being in the world
10	Mission and Witness	Power and persecution of Jesus’s witnesses
13	Parables	Separation of all people through the revelation of divine mysteries
18	Ecclesiological	The church as the new people of God
23–25	Judgment	The present and future judgment coming upon all peoples

This chronological or biographical outline is, as we have noted, common to all four of the Gospels, and it likely stems from Mark’s original story. In fact, Matthew’s story basically follows the plotline of Mark, minus the childhood section. But this is where Matthew adds something highly significant and why his Gospel becomes the first and most prominent of the four in the early church.

In addition to this chronological outline, Matthew adds five major blocks of thematic teaching, weaving them skillfully into his narrative. Each of these blocks or discourses has a theme within it, providing a sort of “one-stop shop” for what Jesus taught on these five major topics. Going beyond this, all five discourses also share the overarching theme of revelation and separation. Taken together, the blocks communicate a major Matthean point: God is revealing himself finally in Jesus, and the result of this will be a separating of people into two groups. These two groups are no longer determined by ethnicity, religiosity, gender, social class, educational level, or financial success. Rather, there is a new people of God being formed based solely on one’s reception of Jesus, and this includes both Jews and gentiles.

The Structure of Matthew

Exploration—Reading Matthew

The Beginning of the Fulfillment

READ MATTHEW 1:1–2:23

In chapters 1–2 we see what one would expect from a biography: basic information on who this biography is written about. These chapters answer two basic questions in this regard: Who is Jesus, and where does he come from? The first question is answered with a genealogy. This may seem boring and irrelevant to us, but in fact it strikes a chord that sets the key, tone, and tempo of the whole New Testament: Jesus is the Son of David and is therefore a king, and Jesus is the son of Abraham and is therefore the leader of all nations and peoples. This dual identity of Jesus will work its way out throughout Matthew and the rest of the New Testament. The second question is answered with the geographical information about his birth in Bethlehem, his urgent escape to Egypt, and his final settling in Nazareth in the north.

Figure 6.2. Plaque with the massacre of the innocents [The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1917.]

Across both of these questions and chapters there is one theme woven through like a golden thread. It makes an appearance somewhere in each of the five stories that follow the genealogy and forms a pattern there. It will also appear throughout the rest of Matthew’s story in various places. It is the idea of fulfillment. By fulfillment Matthew means that what happened with Jesus is connected to and is really the completion of all the other things God had said and done before. This serves as a lesson in hermeneutics for the whole Bible. It teaches believers how to interpret everything that Jesus said and did as the ultimate completion and goal of God’s work in the world. Simultaneously it teaches the disciples of Jesus to read the rest of the Bible as centered on and completed in Jesus.

The Fulfillment of God’s Word in Jesus: Matthew and Hebrews

Matthew argues that all the events of Jesus’s earliest days are the fulfillment of God’s past work. Even though the Letter to the Hebrews and the Gospel of Matthew are different types of literature and have their own purposes, there is significant overlap between them on this point. Hebrews states the same idea this way: “Long ago God spoke to the fathers of the prophets at different times and in different ways. In these last days, he has spoken to us by his Son. God has appointed him heir of all things and made the universe through him” (Heb. 1:1–2). It is now in the final age, inaugurated by Jesus, that God’s final and ultimate revelation of himself has come, fulfilling all that God has promised.

The Ministry Begins

READ MATTHEW 3:1–4:22

In these chapters we fast-forward about thirty years to when Jesus is an adult and ready to begin his public ministry and fulfill his calling. First we meet a wild man dwelling in the wilderness, a linchpin character who simultaneously serves as the last great Old Testament prophet (see Matt. 11:7–15) and the forerunner to Jesus: John the Baptizer. Just like an Old Testament prophet, he preaches a fiery message calling God’s people back to repentance because God is promising to show up and set the world to rights. Just as in the Old Testament, some people respond positively and others do not.

As Jesus’s forerunner, he is called to do something that makes even him uncomfortable: baptize Jesus. Matthew returns to his central theme and explains that this event is more than symbolic: it is a fulfillment of all righteousness (3:15), meaning that Jesus is once again bringing to completion all that God desires of his people. The result of this event is the declaration that brings us back to 1:1: Jesus is God’s beloved Son.

The Gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven

This unique sonship may not have been clear to the bystanders that day, but it was easily understood by God’s ancient enemy, the devil (who is known by other names as well: Satan, the tempter, the serpent). In a last-ditch attempt to thwart God’s inbreaking into the world through his Son, Satan seeks to redirect and derail Jesus’s mission. He does so through a series of temptations designed to lure Jesus into using his prerogative as the Son of God to operate outside God’s will—in effect, to be a disobedient son like the first Adam. The climactic third temptation asks Jesus to align himself with the prince of this world, Satan, and in exchange he will receive “all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor” (4:8). Jesus successfully resists this temptation and is then fully qualified to offer something greater: the kingdom of heaven (4:17).

This introductory unit ends appropriately with Jesus fully ready to begin his world-changing ministry. He has no plans to do this alone, apart from disciples, the first of which he calls to leave their regular lives in the world and to follow him into the mission that he is about to begin.

Figure 6.3. The temptation of Christ from the Book of Kells, a ninth-century book containing the four Gospels, shows Jesus at the pinnacle of the temple as Satan tempts him to jump off. [The Book of Kells, TCD MS 58, folio 202v © Trinity College Dublin]

Jesus the Teacher of God’s Way

READ MATTHEW 4:23–7:29

Matthew 4:23–25 is an important summary statement that serves as an introduction to the larger section of 4:23–9:38, indicating that Matthew wants his readers to see this part of his story as having one big point (notice that 4:23–25 and 9:35–38 are nearly identical in wording). This big point is a description of what Jesus’s ministry was all about, consisting of three elements: teaching and preaching the “gospel of the kingdom”; healing the sick and afflicted; and calling people to follow him. These three elements will be unpacked in subsequent chapters.

The Sermon on the Mount

The highly influential and beautiful Sermon on the Mount shares some material with Luke’s Sermon on the Plain (Luke 6:17–49) but is most famous in its Matthean form. It consists of three main parts: the introduction (5:1–16), the body (5:17–7:12), and the conclusion (7:13–8:1). The introduction focuses on the Beatitudes, which paint a picture of what the truly flourishing life looks like according to Jesus. Surprisingly, it is described as a life of suffering while being salt and light in the world. The body of the sermon emphasizes that there is a greater righteousness necessary to enter the kingdom of heaven (5:17–20). This righteousness is not just external but is based on the inner person or the heart. Disciples must be whole people (the best translation of 5:48), not hypocrites who have only external righteousness. The conclusion uses three metaphors to exhort people to wisely build their lives on Jesus’s teaching, not foolishly on the wisdom of the world.

The first part—the teaching and preaching about the gospel of the kingdom—is found in Matthew 5–7. This is called the Sermon on the Mount and is one of the most famous portions of the Bible. The sermon is a well-crafted collection of Jesus’s teachings about what the kingdom of heaven looks like and especially the “greater righteousness” that is necessary to enter into the kingdom (5:17–20). This “greater righteousness” is a call to inward purity and to a wholeness (5:48) between outer behavior and the heart. This is Jesus’s great critique of the religious leaders of his day: they had external behavioral righteousness, but their hearts were not connected to God. This is what Jesus calls hypocrisy. Jesus is painting a picture of the way of being in the world that is required to be his disciples: not being perfect but being authentically whole on the inside and outside, while looking in faith to God and his coming kingdom.

The Lord’s Prayer

The Lord’s Prayer is broken into two parts, much like the Ten Commandments. The first set of petitions concerns God’s name, fame, and glory being upheld (6:9–10). The second set of petitions relates to the daily life of the believer: God’s provision of daily needs, receiving God’s forgiveness and extending it to others, and being spared from trials that will test us to the point of tempting God (6:11–13). These petitions are not the only prayers that Christians can make, but they provide an anchoring model, orienting the believer in how to relate to our Father and others in the daily life of faith.

Whole-Person Righteousness and Doing the Will of God

A major theme in Matthew is righteousness, which is defined as doing the will of God. Jesus teaches that one must have a righteousness greater than that of the scribes and Pharisees in order to enter the kingdom (5:17–20). The Sermon on the Mount unpacks this shocking statement by showing what this righteousness looks like. This righteousness is not about performing extra pious acts but is being a whole person, righteous not just in external behavior but in the heart or inner person (see 5:21–48; 6:1–21).

Matthew in Dialogue with Paul

Paul’s salvation-historical argument in Galatians 3–4 serves as an important dialogue partner with Matthew’s teaching on the law in the Sermon on the Mount. Paul’s argument is that Christians are not bound by the prescriptions of the Mosaic law because it is part of a covenant that was only temporary and whose purpose has been completed. The Mosaic law reflected God’s will truly, but it was a temporary addition to something deeper and eternal: the promise to Abraham that all people would be blessed (Gal. 3:15–25). This is informed by Jesus’s foundational teaching in Matthew 5:17–20, when he says that he did not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it. Paul’s fuller explanation helps the Christian reader put this together: later in Galatians Paul speaks in this same way, that Christians can fulfill the whole law by loving one another (Gal. 6:2).

The Gospel of the Kingdom in Deed

READ MATTHEW 8:1–9:38

As noted above, this section is the narrative part of the larger unit of 4:23–9:38. The stories collected together here are illustrations of the second and third elements of Jesus’s ministry: healing people and calling disciples (along with the first, proclaiming the kingdom). Jesus’s healing of all sorts of diseases and afflictions comes from his heart of compassion (9:36) and at the same time is a picture of God’s coming kingdom, when God will bring peace, healing, justice, and wholeness to all of his people. The stories here are all illustrations of the coming time of God’s reign as foreseen and promised in Isaiah. The calling of assorted disciples is an important part of this preaching and healing ministry, because Jesus’s disciples will continue and even expand this work after his death, resurrection, and ascension. Therefore, Jesus ends this section with a prayer for God to raise up many laborers to work for the gospel as they await the return of the kingdom.

Figure 6.4. The Sermon on the Mount by Jan Brueghel the Elder depicts Jesus, with a halo over his head, almost lost amid a crowd of socializing onlookers. [Getty Center / Wikimedia Commons]

God as the Father in Heaven and Jesus as the Son

Though not unique to Christianity, since the earliest days of the faith Christians have referred to God as their heavenly Father. Matthew especially emphasizes God as Father (44x), particularly the “Father in heaven” (13x) and “heavenly Father” (7x). In the ancient world the idea of fatherhood communicated both intimacy and awe, the security of being part of the family, accompanied by reverent respect. The idea of God as the Father in heaven combines these notions beautifully. He is both high and exalted and yet relational and present.

Even before the details of the interrelationships of the three persons of the Trinity were spelled out fully in the creeds, Christians began referring to God as Father as distinct from Jesus the Son. Jesus’s divine sonship was always understood within the context of monotheism. The great question for the early Christians was not whether there was more than one God (the Hebrew Shema made very clear that there is only one God), but rather was how to speak of Jesus as the Son who shares the divine nature yet is distinct from the Father.

Opposition to Jesus and His Disciples

READ MATTHEW 10:1–12:50

Continuing the flow of the story, Matthew now gives Jesus’s second major block of teaching (10:1–42), this one concerning what it means to be a called disciple who engages in Jesus’s work in the world. The short answer is that it means both power and persecution. The power is that God is present with Jesus’s disciples and that they truly stand as his witnesses—whoever receives them receives Jesus (10:40–42). Persecution is to be expected because just as Jesus was opposed by the world, so his disciples should expect to be. “A disciple is not above his teacher, or a slave above his master” (10:24).

This teaching block is followed by two chapters of stories illustrating precisely this, increasing opposition to Jesus. The breaking point is 12:14, where, after two open conflicts with the Pharisees over the true meaning of the Sabbath (12:1–13), they decide once and for all to kill Jesus as soon as they get an opportunity. After they have resolved to do this, they even go so far as to accuse Jesus of being demon-possessed (12:24)! Jesus calls this the unforgivable sin (12:31–32).

Matthew in Dialogue with John

When reading Matthew in dialogue with John, it is interesting to observe how these two Gospels serve as bookends—as the first and last chapters of the Fourfold Gospel Book. This invites several intriguing canonical theological connections, such as how both Gospels emphasize Jesus giving authority to his disciples to forgive sins (compare Matt. 18:15–20 and John 20:21–23). In a sense, John reappropriates and reapplies several of Matthew’s teachings—the authoritative commissioning of the disciples in Matthew 10, the authority to bind and loose sins in chapter 18, and the Great Commission in 28:18–20—and combines them into Jesus breathing the Spirit on the disciples and commissioning them to forgive sins.

Forming the New People of God

READ MATTHEW 13:1–17:27

Matthew’s third major teaching block (13:1–58) consists of a collection of several of Jesus’s famous parables about the kingdom of heaven. Contrary to what we might expect, Jesus’s parables are not given as quaint sermon illustrations, but instead we are told that Jesus changes his teaching style from direct authoritative instruction (recall the end of the Sermon on the Mount, 7:28–29) to parables so that those on the outside would not understand (13:10–17). This is the epicenter of the dual theme of revelation and separation that is woven throughout Matthew’s five teaching blocks (see also 11:25–30). God is revealing himself through Jesus, and this will result in some people believing and others opposing him. This collection of concealing-and-revealing parables fits perfectly here in Matthew’s story as Jesus’s response to the Pharisees’ dead-set opposition to him in chapter 12.

Jesus Is the Fulfillment of the Great Characters of the Bible

Not only does Jesus fulfill events from Israel’s history, but also he is the fulfillment of the great characters of the Jewish Scriptures. Matthew describes Jesus as the “son of” key figures such as David (1:1) and Abraham (1:1). As the new son of David, Jesus is the anointed king of Israel, the promised son who would reign eternally over the restored people of God (2 Sam 7:11–16). As the new son of Abraham, Jesus is the head and founder of the newly formed people of God and the one who will bring God’s blessing to all nations (Gen. 15:4–6; Matt. 28:18–20).

Jesus is also shown to be the new and greater Moses: their birth stories parallel each other (Exod. 1:16–22; Matt. 2:16; and Exod. 2:23; Matt. 2:19–20); Jesus gives the proper reading of the law from a mountain (Exod. 19–23; Matt. 5–7); Jesus is the great prophet whom Moses spoke of (Deut. 18:15; Matt. 21:11); Jesus brings about the new and final exodus and deliverance of God’s people from their bondage, providing for them miraculously in the wilderness (Exod. 16; Matt. 1:21; 14:13–15:39).

Following this teaching block (which sits right in the middle of Matthew’s story), chapters 14–17 present several stories that hinge on this idea of separating people and forming a new people of God out of the deconstruction. Jesus performs a set of actions that are intentionally evocative of the greatest story of Israel—the exodus. Matthew skillfully presents a pair of miraculous wilderness feedings and water crossings, one for Jewish people (14:13–33) and the other for gentiles (15:29–39), which together communicate that God is forming a new people of God out of both Jew and Greek (see also Rom. 10:12; Gal. 3:28; Col. 3:11). Along these same lines, Matthew provides several stories that contrast radically different groups of people, showing once again that God is separating people based on how they respond to Jesus. Note the different responses of the scribes and Pharisees from Jerusalem and the “Canaanite” woman (15:1–28).

Also crucial to this part of the story is Peter’s confession of Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah (16:13–20). This answers the question that has been lingering over the narrative: Who is this man Jesus? The answer given is that he is God’s anointed king, one who is worthy of and will enter into glory, as the story of the transfiguration shows (17:1–13). But he is also the suffering servant and Son of Man who will come into his glory only after enduring persecution and death (16:21–23; 17:22–23; 20:17–19).

Life Together as Jesus’s People

READ MATTHEW 18:1–22:46

Matthew’s fourth major teaching block concerns the new people of God, the “assembly” or “church” (Greek, ekklēsia). It flows naturally after the stories of chapters 14–17, when the people of God has been constituted anew of both Jew and Greek. In this way chapter 18, and beyond into chapters 19–20, serves like the instructions in Exodus after God rescued his people through the Red Sea (Exod. 21–23). In both places we find guidelines about life together in the community. The overall message is that kingdom living together is counterintuitive and based on values that are often the opposite of those of the world: the least are the greatest (18:1–5; 19:13–15); the externally righteous and blessed, who appear to be first in the world, don’t necessarily get into the kingdom of heaven (19:16–30); God rewards people justly but not necessarily according to human standards or desires (20:1–16, 20–28); and, maybe most importantly in Matthew, disciples of Jesus fully forgive others even when they have been wronged, mistreated, and sinned against (18:15–35).

The New People of God and the Church

Even as Jesus is the fulfillment of Israel, so too his disciples are the fulfillment of the sons of Israel. John the Baptizer sends the warning shot at the beginning that God can and will raise up children for Abraham, from stones if need be; being an ethnic Jew is no guarantee (3:9). Jesus then repeatedly speaks of his disciples as the true people of God, the ones who understand Jesus’s sonship (3:17; 11:25–27; 16:17; 17:5). Jesus’s disciples are given heaven-sanctioned authority on earth (16:18–19; 18:18–19), akin to Moses’s authority, and supplanting the Sanhedrin and temple. The kingdom is being transferred from disobedient sons to the followers of Jesus (8:11–12; 15:12–13; 21:43). Jesus’s disciples will sit with authority on twelve thrones from which they will judge the twelve tribes of Israel (19:28). And Jesus asks, “Who is my family?” and answers, “Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother” (12:50). If Jesus is the true Son of God then his family is the people of God.

Matthew has redefined the people of God based not on ethnicity but on one’s faith response to Jesus, on those who as whole people do the will of God as revealed by Jesus. It is on this basis that this Gospel ends with the command to go and make disciples of all the peoples of the world by proclaiming who Jesus is and teaching them to follow what he has taught. This is in no way a rejection of the story of Israel or the Old Testament. Jesus’s gospel welcomes all who follow him, Jew or gentile.

Jewish Divorce and Remarriage

As long as there has been marriage in this broken world there have also been adultery, unfaithfulness, divorce, and remarriage. This is no less the case in the history of Israel and Judaism, though it has always emphasized the sanctity of marriage (Gen. 2:24; Exod. 20:14; Mal. 2:16). Moses gives detailed instructions about how to handle these situations (Deut. 22:13–30; 24:1–4). By Jesus’s day different rabbinic schools, such as Hillel and Shammai, all agreed that divorce was legal, but differed on what constituted a just cause. When Jesus is questioned about divorce and remarriage, his answer reveals his allegiances. Not only is his answer on the conservative end, but also he drives the issue deeper, revealing that no matter one’s view, divorce manifests the brokenness of humanity at the heart level. He pushes his hearers to embrace a radical, kingdom-oriented commitment to faithful marriage (19:3–12).

Matthew 21–22 marks a major turning point in the book because Jesus has finally arrived in Jerusalem, the heartbeat of Israel. The rest of the book (chaps. 21–28) will cover just the last week of Jesus’s life in and around Jerusalem. The consistent theme throughout these chapters is the increasing tension and open conflict with the Jewish religious leaders. They oppose Jesus being praised by the crowds (21:1–11). He opposes their corruption of God’s temple (21:12–22). They challenge his authority and try to trap him with tricky theological questions (21:23–27; 22:15–40). He undercuts their authority and rebukes them with a series of pointed parables (21:28–22:14), concluding by stumping them with a question about himself as the true Son of David (22:41–46).

Judgment Now and in the Future

READ MATTHEW 23:1–25:46

In this section we have the fifth and final teaching block. These teachings continue and deepen the theme of revelation and separation with an added emphasis on judgment. Judgment is first announced on the hypocrisy of the scribes and Pharisees through a series of woes (23:1–36). Future judgment is explored in chapters 24–25. Jesus foretells a time when great difficulties and destruction will come on the earth, leading up to the return of Jesus himself. At that time the ultimate and final separation will occur, explained through a series of metaphors: ten virgins, three servants, and two types of animals, sheep and goats. The overall message is an exhortation to vigilance and diligence in discipleship.

The Pharisees in Jesus’s Day

Jesus’s main opponents in Matthew are the Pharisees. They attack him, instigating his death (12:14; 26:1–5), and he doesn’t refrain from criticizing them as well (23:1–39; cf. 6:1–21). The Pharisees, whose name probably means “the separated ones,” were a conservative group of Jews amid the diverse factions within Second Temple Judaism. They were known for their strict adherence to the law of Moses, a great concern for ritual purity, and for maintaining the (oral) traditions of the elders. They were zealous and politically active. They often functioned as scribes who preserved the Scriptures and other rabbinic teachings.

Matthew in Dialogue with the Old Testament

Matthew’s main prophetic source is the book of Isaiah (around 10x), which the early church called the “Fifth Gospel” because of its intimate connection to the gospel message. Many other prophets make an appearance. Especially important are Jeremiah, Hosea, Zechariah, and Daniel. This dialogue means that the language, concepts, and ways of telling the story of Jesus are marked and shaped by the prophets. Matthew’s presentation of the Old Testament can be described as a prophetic way of reading the law, now understood fully through Jesus.

The Messiah Is Killed

READ MATTHEW 26:1–27:66

A somber darkness hangs over these two lengthy chapters. The pace of the story continues to get slower and slower, with this section covering the critical final two days of Jesus’s life and his crucifixion. Every event is theologically significant: his anointing for burial; his final Passover supper with his new family of disciples; his betrayal by one disciple (Judas), denial by another (Peter), and abandonment by all; his court trials and beatings; and ultimately his death. Most of this section consists of stories, but there is one part that explicitly teaches important theological truths about all that is happening: Jesus’s words at the Passover meal on the night he was betrayed and arrested (26:26–29). He explains that he is giving himself in death to bring about the new covenant. He invites his disciples to participate in this covenant by partaking in his body and blood and by receiving the forgiveness being offered. And he looks forward to a future time when the kingdom will fully come.

Figure 6.5. This plaque from Italy (900–925) shows Jesus entering Jerusalem on a donkey as people place their garments before him. [The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1917.]

From the Last Supper to the Lord’s Supper

The Last Supper (Matt. 26:26–30) was Jesus’s special version of the Passover celebration meal that Jews have celebrated for millennia, commemorating God’s deliverance of the Israelites from bondage in Egypt. It was a special version of this traditional meal because Jesus celebrated it with his disciples rather than his biological family and because he made the meal ultimately about his own delivering of God’s people from bondage. Jesus uses the Passover event to speak of his death and resurrection, which will bring forgiveness of sins, the new covenant, and the beginning of the kingdom.

Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. Matthew Passion

The greatest master of the Baroque period of music was the devout Protestant Johann Sebastian Bach. One of the most elaborate and sophisticated of Bach’s hundreds of pieces of sacred music is his St. Matthew Passion, written in the 1720s and performed for the first time on Good Friday, 1727, in Leipzig (in modern-day Germany). This powerful piece of music is nearly three hours long and includes assorted soloists in dialogue with a large chorus and full orchestra. The lyrical text is based on a poetic rendering of the story of Jesus’s betrayal, sufferings, crucifixion, death, and burial taken from Matthew’s Gospel. (The name “passion” for the last days of Jesus’s life comes from the Latin word for “suffering.”) Bach’s St. Matthew Passion provides a theologically thoughtful and emotionally commanding interpretation of these final days of Jesus’s earthly life, inviting the listeners into a deep experience of the Gospel story.

Figure 6.6. Portrait of Johann Sebastian Bach by Elias Gottlob Haussmann [Bach-Archiv, Leipzig / Wikimedia Commons]

The New Age Begins

READ MATTHEW 28:1–20

If the story ended at chapter 27, it would be a tragedy—an inspiring and admirable portrait of Jesus, but a tragedy still. Jesus preached and taught and healed and changed people’s lives, but the bad guys won. They killed him. But chapter 28 turns everything around and transforms Matthew’s story into a eucatastrophe—a catastrophe or tragedy that is ultimately good and beautiful. Jesus’s physical resurrection from the dead is the apex of each of the Gospels because it changes everything. His shameful death is turned into honor, and his defeat by his enemies is turned into victory over death.

The Great Commission?

One of the most famous passages of Matthew is its concluding “Great Commission” (28:18–20), in which Jesus authorizes his disciples to make disciples of all the nations of the world. There is no text more foundational to the modern missions movement. Many will be surprised to learn, however, that throughout much of the church’s history this text was read differently: as a command that was given only to the apostles and completed in their lifetimes. With few exceptions, most readers interpreted the text this way up until the time of William Carey in the nineteenth century. The church has always been outward looking, however, and in recent centuries Matthew 28:18–20 has rightly provided a clarity and impetus for this cross-cultural evangelistic impulse.

God with Us

From the beginning of the First Gospel, Matthew emphasizes that Jesus’s coming is the dwelling of God with his people; this is why he is ascribed the name Immanuel, which means “God with us” (1:23). This theme continues with Jesus’s solemn promise to dwell with his people in the church (18:20). It concludes and is deepened in the final scene of this Gospel, when Jesus promises that he will be with his disciples, even to the end of the age (28:20). This theme not only makes assertions about Jesus’s divine nature but also serves the pastoral function of assuring Jesus’s disciples of his love, care, and authority while they suffer and await his return. It is also one of the New Testament teachings that leads to the church’s robust trinitarian theology and rejection of Modalism and Docetism.

Matthew ends his Gospel with a return to Galilee, where everything began. On a mountain in the far northern gentile area of Israel, Jesus forever transforms the world by commissioning his disciples to go throughout the world making more disciples. The content of this Great Commission focuses on creating followers through baptizing them and teaching them all that Jesus has taught them about what it means to be a disciple awaiting the coming kingdom of heaven. The point of the Gospel according to Matthew finally makes sense now: disciples of disciples of disciples are to use this book to understand, teach, preach, and proclaim who Jesus is and how to respond to the good news of the kingdom.

Implementation—Reading Matthew as Christian Scripture Today

The ideal reader of Matthew is the one who reads, studies, analyzes, and receives this Gospel biography as a Christian disciple, reading it with an openness to its purpose, which is to make and shape disciples through understanding who Jesus is and what he did and taught (28:16–20).

Matthew’s call to discipleship has many facets, but one of the most dominant is the call to avoid hypocrisy, the kind of religiosity that is manifested by the scribes and Pharisees. This group of “Extra-Super-Holy People” (as the Jesus Storybook Bible calls them) appears very frequently in Matthew and is particularly highlighted as the enemies and opponents of Jesus. This likely reflects Matthew’s own social and religious setting—a time of open tension and conflict between Jewish people who have become Christians and those who have not. But for the Christian reader today, the best approach is not to focus just on the historical Pharisees and their problems, but rather to see in the Pharisees a challenge to the individual Christian today as well as to the church. Readers should ask themselves, “Do I approach God and others in this same pharisaical way—focusing on external behavior rather than wholeheartedness toward God and forgiveness and compassion toward others?”

Closely related to this, a Christian reading of Matthew will rightly ask how his emphasis on wholehearted discipleship (the “greater righteousness” that is required according to 5:20) relates to the apostle Paul’s repeated theme of justification by faith. In light of Paul’s teaching that no one can earn standing with God through doing good deeds apart from union with Christ, what is the role of obedience, transformation, and following after Christ (discipleship) for entering into the kingdom of heaven? Matthew particularly raises this issue through his strong emphasis on the necessity of doing God’s will in order to enter the kingdom. Asking these questions and earnestly seeking their answers is an important part of whole-canon, and spiritually sensitive, Christian reading.

While there is no simplistic way to put all of this intracanonical dialogue together, we can see Matthew and Paul as living in a healthy orthodox dialogue (like Paul and James do as well). They are in ultimate agreement but are putting a necessary emphasis on different aspects of the complexity of salvation and human development. Paul’s message about justification by faith primarily addresses the question of whether a sinful human (even a Jewish person) has any inherent rights to stand before God (based on ethnicity or morality), to which his answer is no. Matthew addresses a larger and more comprehensive question of what it means to be a disciple, which he answers by saying that true discipleship looks like whole-person transformation. For both Paul and Matthew, grace and faith are the key ideas, while they address different issues in the complex reality of the Christian life.

The masterpiece that is the Gospel according to Matthew is like a treasure trove that people all over the world keep returning to, and they continue to discover riches old and new (13:52). Like Bach’s “Little” Fugue in G Minor for organ or John Steinbeck’s novel East of Eden, this Gospel is worth revisiting over and over again to learn more and to appreciate more of its depth and artistry.

Now all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet: “See, the virgin will become pregnant and give birth to a son, and they will name him Immanuel,” which is translated “God is with us.” 1:22–23
Don’t think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. . . . For I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never get into the kingdom of heaven. 5:17, 20
Jesus came near and said to them, “All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. 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 everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” 28:18–20

Christian Reading Questions

Read the Lord’s Prayer (Matt. 6:7–15) and answer the following questions: (a) How is this poem structured? What are its different parts and how do they relate to one another? (b) Where else in Matthew do the themes in the Lord’s Prayer appear? Where else in the New Testament? (c) If the Lord’s Prayer is central to the Christian life, how does this affect how Christians should live and what the church’s priorities are?

Trace the theme of the new people of God and the church throughout Matthew’s whole story. Which texts particularly highlight this theme? How is the new people of God defined, and what does life together as the church look like?

Read all the Letter of James, followed by reading the Sermon on the Mount. Make a list of similarities and differences. Why do you think there are so many similarities?

Read Revelation 1–4; 21–22. Make a list of similarities of language and theme between Revelation and Matthew. Are there significant differences?

CHAPTER SIX The Gospel according to Matthew

CHAPTER SIX
The Gospel according to Matthew