Matthew

Background

Matthew stands first in the New Testament because the early church thought it was written first, and because it reads as the hinge between the Old Testament and the new. The gospel is formally anonymous. The oldest attribution comes through Papias, quoted by Eusebius around AD 325: Matthew “composed the oracles in the Hebrew language, and every one interpreted them as he was able” (Church History 3.39). Irenaeus repeats the claim around 180, adding that Matthew “issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect, while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome” (Against Heresies 3.1).

Modern scholarship mostly doubts that the Greek text we have is a translation: its Greek is competent, and where it overlaps with Mark it follows Mark’s Greek closely. That observation is one leg of the standard solution to the synoptic problem, which holds that Matthew used Mark plus a sayings source labelled Q. A minority, led by Mark Goodacre, argue that Luke simply used Matthew and that Q never existed. Nothing in the gospel’s theology turns on the answer, but how much of Matthew is independent testimony does.

The date usually given is AD 80–90, after the destruction of the temple in 70, chiefly because 24:2 and 22:7 read to many as looking back on it. Scholars who hold that genuine prophecy is possible, and who note that Matthew never says the temple fell, argue for the 60s. Antioch in Syria is the most common guess for where it was written, since that was a large mixed Jewish-Gentile church and Ignatius of Antioch quotes the gospel early.

Whoever wrote it knew Jewish scripture and Jewish argument from the inside. The gospel opens with a genealogy running from Abraham through David, quotes the Old Testament more than any other gospel with the refrain “this took place to fulfil what the Lord had spoken by the prophet,” and takes for granted readers who know what corban, phylacteries and the Sabbath rules are. It is also the gospel most hostile to the Pharisees (chapter 23), which most historians read as a family quarrel between a Jewish Christian community and the synagogue it was being pushed out of. That polemic has a dark afterlife: the crowd’s line “his blood be on us and on our children” (27:25) was used for centuries to justify Christian violence against Jews, and most churches now explicitly repudiate that use of it.

Outline and key ideas

Matthew is built around five long discourses, each closed with the formula “when Jesus had finished these sayings.” The five-part shape is usually read as deliberate, echoing the five books of Moses and presenting Jesus as a new lawgiver.

Birth and beginnings (1–4). The genealogy, the virgin conception, the magi, the flight to Egypt, John the Baptist and the temptation. Matthew keeps drawing Jesus along Israel’s own path: out of Egypt, through the water, into the wilderness for forty days.

The Sermon on the Mount (5–7). The first discourse. Beatitudes, the antitheses (“you have heard that it was said… but I say to you”), the Lord’s Prayer, and the closing parable of the two houses. Jesus says he came not to abolish the law but to fulfil it (5:17).

Miracles and mission (8–10). Ten miracles, then the second discourse, sending the Twelve out to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (10:5–6).

Opposition and parables (11–13). Conflict with the Pharisees sharpens, and the third discourse gathers seven parables of the kingdom: the sower, the weeds, the mustard seed, the leaven, the treasure, the pearl and the net.

The church (14–18). Peter’s confession at Caesarea Philippi and the promise of the keys (16:13–20), the transfiguration, and the fourth discourse on life inside the community: humility, the lost sheep, the procedure for confronting a sinning brother, and forgiveness “seventy times seven.”

Jerusalem and judgment (19–25). Teaching on divorce and wealth, the triumphal entry, the cleansing of the temple, the woes on the scribes and Pharisees, and the fifth discourse — the Olivet Discourse on the fall of the temple and the coming of the Son of Man, ending with the ten virgins, the talents, and the sheep and the goats.

Passion and resurrection (26–28). The Last Supper, Gethsemane, the trials, the crucifixion with signs peculiar to Matthew (the earthquake, the opened tombs), the guard at the tomb, and the Great Commission on a mountain in Galilee (28:16–20).

The classic patristic commentary is John Chrysostom’s 90 homilies (late 4th century); John Calvin treated it in his harmony of the three gospels (1555). The standard modern English commentary is R. T. France’s The Gospel of Matthew (NICNT, 2007).

How the traditions read it

Matthew is the gospel the churches argue over, because it is the one that talks about the church. Two of the three New Testament uses of the word ekklēsia on Jesus’ lips are here.

The rock and the keys (16:17–19)

“You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church… I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven” (16:17–19). No three verses have divided the churches more.

• Roman Catholic. The Roman Catholic reading is that Christ founded his church on Peter personally and that the Bishop of Rome inherits what was given him. The First Vatican Council quoted the passage in full in Pastor Aeternus (1870) and defined Papal Primacy as a matter of faith; Lumen Gentium (1964) restated it as Christ having placed “blessed Peter over the other apostles” and made him “a permanent and visible source and foundation of unity.” Catholic apologists note that the old Protestant argument from the Greek — petros a small stone, petra a rock — is now rejected by most Protestant scholars too, since the distinction is a feature of Greek gender agreement and Jesus most likely spoke Aramaic, where the word would be kepha both times.
• Eastern Orthodox. Eastern Orthodox churches honour Peter as first among the apostles but deny that his primacy was an office handed down to one bishop with jurisdiction over the rest. Chrysostom reads the rock as “the faith of his confession” (Homily 54), and the keys of verse 19 are read alongside 18:18, where the same binding and loosing is given to the whole community. The structure that follows is Conciliarity and a primacy of honour, not of supremacy — the question that split East and West at the Great Schism.
• Protestant. The Reformers argued that the rock is Peter’s confession, or Christ himself, and leaned on Augustine, who in Sermon 26 on the New Testament said plainly: “upon this Rock which you have confessed… that is upon Myself, the Son of the living God, will I build My Church.” Augustine said elsewhere that the rock was Peter and left the choice to the reader, which both sides cite. On the Protestant reading the keys are the preaching of the gospel, exercised by the whole church under Sola Scriptura, not a transferable office.

The Sermon on the Mount (5–7)

Everyone agrees the Sermon is the heart of Christian ethics. Almost nobody agrees on what obeying it means, given “do not resist the one who is evil,” “turn the other cheek,” “do not swear at all,” and “you therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (5:33–48).

• Anabaptist. Anabaptist churches read it as binding law for every disciple (Christian Nonresistance), without exemption for the magistrate. The Schleitheim Confession (1527) devotes its last two articles to the sword and the oath, concluding that Christians may not hold offices that wield the sword and may not swear oaths at all, because Christ forbade both. Menno Simons built the same case, and the Mennonite and Amish refusal of military service and of courtroom oaths comes straight from this chapter.
• Lutheran. Lutheran theology distinguishes the two kingdoms and reads the Sermon as governing the Christian as a person, not the Christian holding an office. The Augsburg Confession (art. 16) says Christians may lawfully hold civil office, serve as soldiers, and take oaths, and condemns those who say otherwise — written with the Anabaptists in view. The Sermon’s severity also does law-and-gospel work: its demand is impossible, so it drives the hearer to Christ.
• Roman Catholic. Catholic moral theology has traditionally distinguished precepts binding on all from counsels of perfection — poverty, chastity and obedience — taken up voluntarily, chiefly in religious life. Thomas Aquinas set out the distinction in the Summa (II-II q.184). More recent Catholic teaching treats the Beatitudes less as a two-tier ethic and more as the shape of human happiness for everyone.
• Reformed. Reformed exegesis reads the antitheses as Jesus recovering the law’s true intent against rabbinic softening, and applies the Sermon through the third use of the law: the believer’s guide to grateful obedience. Calvin denied that Christ added anything to Moses; he was clearing away the glosses.
• Dispensational. Some dispensational teachers in the line of John Nelson Darby read the Sermon as kingdom law, addressed to Israel and fully operative in the millennial kingdom rather than as the direct rule of the church age. This view is much less common now than a century ago, even among dispensationalists.

Divorce and the exception clause (5:31–32; 19:3–12)

Matthew alone adds an exception to Jesus’ prohibition of divorce: “except for sexual immorality” (porneia). Mark and Luke have no such clause.

• Roman Catholic. The Catholic position is that a consummated sacramental marriage cannot be dissolved at all. The Council of Trent (session 24, canon 7) anathematised anyone who says the church errs in teaching “that the bond of matrimony cannot be dissolved on account of the adultery of one of the married parties.” Catholic readings take porneia to mean an invalid union in the first place — one inside the forbidden degrees of kinship — which is why the passage is read as describing separation, or grounds for a declaration of nullity, rather than divorce with remarriage.
• Eastern Orthodox. Orthodox churches take the exception at face value and, under the principle of oikonomia (pastoral accommodation, secondary), permit a second and even a third marriage after divorce, with a penitential rite rather than the full crowning service. Trent’s canon was worded carefully enough — condemning those who say the Church errs — that it is usually read as avoiding a direct condemnation of the Greek practice.
• Reformed and most Protestant. The Westminster Confession (24.5–6) allows the innocent party to divorce for adultery and to remarry “as if the offending party were dead,” and adds wilful desertion from 1 Corinthians 7:15. This two-ground position became the mainstream Protestant one.
• No remarriage. A minority of conservative Protestants, and historically some Anglican practice, hold that the exception permits separation but never remarriage while the first spouse lives. Others read porneia as unfaithfulness during the Jewish betrothal period, which would make the clause a local provision rather than a general rule.

Binding, loosing and church discipline (18:15–20)

The three-step procedure — go privately, then take two or three witnesses, then tell it to the church (18:15–17) — is the charter text for formal church discipline.

Churches with Episcopal Polity locate the final decision in the bishop; Presbyterian Polity in the session and its courts of appeal; Congregational Polity in the gathered congregation, reading “tell it to the church” as literally as possible. Anabaptist churches developed the ban and, in some Amish and conservative Mennonite practice, shunning, from this passage together with 1 Corinthians 5. Verse 20, “where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them,” is very often quoted as a promise about small prayer meetings; in context it is about the authority of a disciplinary assembly, and commentators across traditions make that point.

The Olivet Discourse (24)

Jesus predicts the temple’s destruction, then answers a question about “the sign of your coming and of the end of the age.” The difficulty is verse 34: “this generation will not pass away until all these things take place” (24:29–35).

1. Preterist. Most or all of chapter 24 was fulfilled in the Jewish war of AD 66–70. The darkened sun and the Son of Man coming on the clouds are apocalyptic imagery for a judgment within history, drawn from Isaiah and Daniel. R. C. Sproul argued a partial preterism of this kind in The Last Days According to Jesus (1998), and N.T. Wright reads the chapter similarly. On this view “this generation” means exactly what it says.
2. Futurist. The discourse looks past AD 70 to the tribulation and the second coming. Premillennialism in its dispensational form reads the abomination of desolation as a future event and “this generation” as the generation that sees the signs begin. The pre-tribulation rapture is often argued from 24:40–41, though critics note the ones “taken” in the flood analogy are the ones judged.
3. Both at once. The most common position across Amillennialism, Postmillennialism and much of Catholic and Orthodox tradition is that Jesus answers two questions together, with the fall of Jerusalem as a type of the final judgment and the text sliding between them. France’s commentary argues the hinge falls at verse 36.

The sheep and the goats (25:31–46)

The nations are divided by what they did for “the least of these my brothers”: fed, clothed, visited. The passage is the sharpest New Testament statement that final judgment turns on deeds.

Roman Catholic teaching has long drawn the corporal works of mercy from this list, and reads it as consistent with justification by grace working through love. Protestant commentators who hold justification by faith alone read the works as the evidence of a faith already given, not its ground — D. A. Carson’s treatment is representative — and most add that the sheep are surprised, which rules out works done to earn a verdict. Liberation Theology and Gustavo Gutiérrez take the passage as the hermeneutical key to the gospel: Christ is encountered in the poor, so the church’s option for the poor is not optional. A long-running exegetical dispute concerns “the least of these my brothers”: the narrower reading, common among evangelicals, takes it to mean persecuted Christian missionaries, which makes the scene a judgment on how the nations received the gospel; the broader reading takes it to mean the poor as such. On hell, the parable’s “eternal punishment” (kolasis aiōnios) in verse 46 is the strongest single text for Eternal Conscious Torment; Annihilationism argues that kolasis can mean a punishment that destroys, and Christian Universalism that aiōnios means pertaining to the age to come rather than endless.

The Great Commission (28:18–20)

“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.”

The verse is the New Testament’s only triune baptismal formula, and the Didache, probably from the first century, already instructs churches to “baptize into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” (ch. 7). Nearly every church uses those words. Oneness Pentecostals are the main exception: reading Acts, where converts are baptised “in the name of Jesus,” they baptise with that formula and treat Matthew’s “name” (singular) as pointing to the one name Jesus. Trinitarian churches answer that the Didache’s witness is too early for the formula to be a later invention.

The commission also carries the argument over who may be baptised. Infant Baptism reads “make disciples… baptizing… teaching” as a sequence that need not put teaching first, and points to household baptisms elsewhere. Believer’s Baptism reads the participles as defining what discipling is, so that baptism follows a profession of faith that an infant cannot make. Nothing in the verse settles it, which is why the debate runs through the rest of the New Testament.

The virgin birth and Isaiah 7:14 (1:22–23)

Matthew quotes Isaiah — “the virgin shall conceive” — using the Septuagint’s parthenos. The Hebrew word is almah, which means a young woman of marriageable age and does not by itself specify virginity; the more specific Hebrew word is betulah. Critical scholars, Dan McClellan among them, argue that Isaiah was speaking of a child born in his own lifetime as a sign to King Ahaz, and that Matthew is reading the text christologically rather than reporting a prediction. Defenders answer that almah is never used in the Hebrew Bible of a non-virgin, that the Jewish translators of the Septuagint chose parthenos two centuries before Christ, and that Matthew’s wider use of “fulfilment” is typological anyway — Holy Tradition and most Protestant commentators alike read it that way. The virgin birth itself is affirmed in both the Apostles’ and the Nicene creeds and is not seriously disputed between the historic churches; what is disputed is how Matthew’s proof text works.

Further reading

• R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew, linked above: the best single-volume commentary in English, strong on Matthew’s structure and on chapter 24.
• W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, Matthew (ICC, 3 vols, 1988–1997): the most thorough critical commentary, exhaustive on Jewish background.
• Ulrich Luz, Matthew 1–7 (Hermeneia, revised 2007): unusual among commentaries for tracing how each passage has been read and used through church history.
• Glen Stassen and David Gushee, Kingdom Ethics (2003): a sustained argument that the Sermon on the Mount is practicable guidance rather than an unreachable ideal.