Theopedia

Gospel of Matthew

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”

— Matthew 5:17 (ESV)

Overview

Matthew stands first among the four New Testament Gospels, narrating the birth, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Early Christian writers received it, alongside Mark, Luke, and John, as apostolic testimony to Jesus rather than as ordinary biography, a status reflected in the way the church came to treat all four Gospels as one authoritative witness in fourfold form.1 Matthew’s own opening signals the same self-understanding: its first phrase, “the book of the genealogy” (Βίβλος γενέσεως, Matt. 1:1), echoes the Greek title of Genesis and the phrasing of Genesis 2:4 and 5:1, framing the whole work as a continuation of Israel’s Scriptures rather than a merely human record.2

Author and Date

Traditional apostolic authorship

Church tradition from the second century onward attributes the Gospel to Matthew, also called Levi, the tax collector Jesus called to be one of the Twelve (Matt. 9:9; 10:3).3 The earliest and most important witness is Papias, bishop of Hierapolis, writing around AD 125 on the authority of an elder who had himself known the apostles: “Matthew collected the oracles (τὰ λόγια) in the Hebrew language, and each interpreted them as best he could.”4 Papias offered the same testimony about Mark’s Gospel, tying it to the preaching of Peter, and evidently regarded both Gospels as trustworthy because they rested on apostolic memory rather than later invention.5

Matthew’s own text supplies fewer explicit internal clues to its authorship than some other New Testament books, since it never names its writer directly.3 What internal evidence there is points the same direction as the external testimony: Matthew structures Jesus’s teaching into five major discourses, a pattern some interpreters have read as a deliberate echo of the five books of Moses, presenting the Gospel as, in effect, a new and definitive revelation centered on Jesus.6 The genealogy that opens the book, likewise, follows the pattern of Old Testament genealogies such as the one that opens Chronicles, with a marked emphasis on the line of David.7

The critical alternative and a fair hearing

Some modern scholars read Papias’s report differently, arguing that the “Matthew” he describes was not the canonical Gospel but an early Aramaic collection of Jesus’s sayings, similar to the hypothetical source scholars call Q, on the grounds that Papias’s Matthew was written in Hebrew (the canonical Gospel was not) and is called “oracles” rather than a narrative.8 This reading undergirds the widely held critical position that Mark’s Gospel was written first and that Matthew, writing later, drew on Mark together with Q and other material, rather than on the direct testimony of an apostolic eyewitness.8 Kruger judges neither of the two arguments for this reading decisive: Papias’s phrase “in the Hebrew language” can describe a Hebraic style of Greek rather than the language of composition, and Papias uses the same word “oracles” for Mark’s Gospel, which plainly narrates deeds as well as sayings, so the term does not by itself indicate a sayings-only source.9 Traditional and confessional interpreters have accordingly continued to hold that the apostle Matthew is the Gospel’s actual author, an eyewitness who may have drawn on Mark’s account, among other materials, without that use compromising his own apostolic testimony.

Date

Matthew’s text does not date itself. Patristic memory placed the composition of the Gospels within living apostolic memory: Papias, for instance, received his information about Mark and Matthew from an elder who had himself heard the apostles preach, at the end of the first century.10 The standard critical dating for Mark’s Gospel, which many scholars hold Matthew used as a source, is around AD 70;11 on that reckoning Matthew is usually placed in the 70s or 80s. Confessional interpreters who hold that Matthew wrote independently, drawing on his own apostolic memory rather than depending on Mark, have generally been open to an earlier date, sometime before the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. Scripture itself does not settle the question, and Matthew’s date remains a matter on which faithful interpreters differ.

Historical and Literary Context

Matthew wrote primarily for a Jewish-Christian audience. His Gospel is saturated with Old Testament citation and allusion in a way none of the other Gospels matches, including nine formula quotations unique to Matthew that explicitly mark an event in Jesus’s life as the fulfillment of a specific prophecy (e.g., Matt. 1:22-23; 2:15; 2:17-18; 2:23; 4:14-16; 8:17; 12:17-21; 13:35; 27:9-10).12 Matthew’s opening genealogy and infancy narrative deliberately place Jesus within the story of Israel, with particular emphasis on his descent from David, and the Gospel’s account of Jesus’s early life is patterned closely on the story of Moses: his life is threatened as an infant and he is delivered (Ex. 2:1-10; Matt. 2:1-18), he recapitulates Israel’s exodus from Egypt (Hos. 11:1; Matt. 2:15), and he goes up on a mountain to deliver authoritative teaching, just as Moses went up to receive the law (Ex. 19:3, 24:12; Matt. 5:1).13 Reading Jesus this way, Matthew presents him as the true and obedient Israel who fulfills the promises made to Abraham and David, succeeding where the nation itself had failed.14

Structure

Matthew narrates Jesus’s ministry through five major blocks of teaching, each concluding with a variation of the formula “when Jesus had finished these sayings” (e.g., Matt. 7:28; 11:1; 13:53; 19:1; 26:1), interwoven with narrative sections recounting his actions.6 Some interpreters have read this fivefold shape as a deliberate parallel to the five books of Moses, framing Jesus’s teaching as a new and definitive law.6 The narrative sections move from Jesus’s birth and preparation (chaps. 1-4) through his Galilean ministry (chaps. 5-18) to the journey to Jerusalem and the events of his passion and resurrection (chaps. 19-28), with the five discourses distributed across this movement: the Sermon on the Mount (chaps. 5-7), the mission discourse (chap. 10), the parables of the kingdom (chap. 13), instruction on the church (chap. 18), and the Olivet discourse on the last things (chaps. 24-25).

Major Themes

Jesus as the fulfillment of the Old Testament and the true Israel

Matthew’s central theological claim is that Jesus fulfills Israel’s Scriptures, both in specific predictions and in the larger pattern of Israel’s own history.12 Jesus recapitulates Israel’s own experience, but where Israel failed under testing, he obeys; Matthew’s account of Jesus’s temptation in the wilderness deliberately echoes Israel’s own testing after the exodus (Matt. 4:1-11; cf. Ex. 4:22-23).14 On this reading, Jesus is the typological fulfillment of Israel, the true Israel who fulfills the promises made to Abraham and David on the nation’s behalf.14

The kingdom of heaven

Matthew, alone among the Gospel writers, consistently speaks of “the kingdom of heaven,” and presents that kingdom as both a present and a future reality. The Beatitudes open and close the Sermon on the Mount with the present-tense declaration that the kingdom belongs to the poor in spirit and the persecuted (Matt. 5:3, 10), while Jesus’s parables of the kingdom describe a reality still small and growing toward a future consummation, when what is now hidden and mixed with unbelief will be openly separated and revealed (Matt. 13:24-30, 36-43, 47-49).15

The Sermon on the Mount

The Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5-7) is Matthew’s fullest statement of kingdom ethics, presenting a righteousness that exceeds the Pharisees’ external observance of the law (Matt. 5:20).16 Jesus does not set his teaching against the law but claims to fulfill it, holding that “not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished” (Matt. 5:17-18); on this point David Turner, quoted in a Southern Baptist Theological Seminary dissertation, states that “Christology is the foundation of ethics. Jesus, the one to whom the law points, emphasizes the higher righteousness that is the true ethical intent of the law and that enables the disciples to enter the kingdom.”16 The sermon repeatedly locates true righteousness in the heart’s inward disposition rather than in outward conformity alone, as when Jesus traces the commandment against adultery back to lust itself (Matt. 5:27-28).16

The Great Commission

Matthew closes with Jesus’s commission to his disciples: “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” (Matt. 28:19-20).17 This closing scene echoes the ending of 2 Chronicles, the final book of the Hebrew canon in Matthew’s own day on some reckonings, in which Cyrus commissions the exiles to go up and rebuild (2 Chron. 36:23), so that Matthew’s Gospel closes, as the Hebrew Scriptures once did, with a divine commission sending God’s people outward.[^kruger-canon-146] The commission ties evangelism to the same instruction Jesus has given throughout the Gospel: disciples are made not merely by baptism but by being taught to observe everything Jesus commanded.18

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Michael J. Kruger, The Question of Canon: Challenging the Status Quo in the New Testament Debate (Nottingham: Apollos, 2013), chap. 4, “The Authors of Canon,” 119-154. ↩

  2. Kruger, Question of Canon, 144-146. ↩

  3. Kruger, Question of Canon, 144. ↩ ↩2

  4. Michael J. Kruger, The Question of Canon (Nottingham: Apollos, 2013), chap. 5, “The Date of Canon,” 155-203, quoting Papias in Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 3.39.16: “Matthew collected the oracles (τὰ λόγια) in the Hebrew language (Ἑβραϊδι διαλέκτῳ), and each interpreted them as best he could.” ↩

  5. Kruger, Question of Canon, 183-184. ↩

  6. Kruger, Question of Canon, 147. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  7. Kruger, Question of Canon, 145-146. ↩

  8. Kruger, Question of Canon, 185-186. ↩ ↩2

  9. Kruger, Question of Canon, 186. ↩

  10. Kruger, Question of Canon, 183. ↩

  11. Kruger, The Question of Canon, chap. 2, “The Origins of Canon,” 47-78, at 72-73, noting that “the standard dating for Mark’s Gospel is around A.D. 70,” while some scholars argue for an earlier date. ↩

  12. Kruger, Question of Canon, 144-145. ↩ ↩2

  13. Kruger, Question of Canon, 145-147. ↩

  14. Oren Rhea Martin, “The Land Promise in God’s Redemptive Plan: Part 2, The New Testament,” in “Bound for the Kingdom: The Land Promise in God’s Redemptive Plan” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2013), 228-229: “Matthew now sees Jesus as the locus of true Israel…Jesus is the typological fulfillment of Israel, for he is the true Israel who fulfills the promises made to Abraham and David.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  15. Ken Magnuson, “5. Aspects of Biblical Ethics: New Testament,” in Invitation to Christian Ethics: Moral Reasoning and Contemporary Issues (Grand Rapids: Kregel Academic, 2020). ↩

  16. David Turner, quoted in Jared Heath Moore, A Biblical and Historical Appraisal of Concupiscence with Special Attention to Same-Sex Attraction (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2019), chap. 5, 164-165: “Christology is the foundation of ethics. Jesus, the one to whom the law points, emphasizes the higher righteousness that is the true ethical intent of the law and that enables the disciples to enter the kingdom.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  17. Matthew Michael Barrett, Reclaiming Monergism: The Case for Sovereign Grace in Effectual Calling and Regeneration (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2011), chap. 4, “The Scriptural Affirmation of Effectual Calling,” citing Matt. 28:19-20: “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.” ↩

  18. Magnuson, “Aspects of Biblical Ethics: New Testament.” ↩