Christology and Discipleship in the Gospels and Acts, Part 3
Matthew on "God with Us"
(avg. read time: 4–7 mins.)
Though the title Immanuel (“God with us”) only appears in the first chapter of Matthew (v. 23), the fact that the notion of Jesus being God-with-us bookends Matthew as well (28:20) shows its significance for Matthew’s understanding of Jesus. Matthew has a number of means of stating this point. First, the implication of the genealogy and subsequent Scripture citations is that Jesus is the climax of the scriptural story, the fulfillment to which all the story before has been pointing (1:22–23; 2:3–6, 13–18, 21–23; 3:1–3; 4:12–16; 5:17–20; 8:14–17; 9:10–13; 10:34–36; 11:4–10; 12:15–21; 13:10–15, 34–35; 16:4; 21:1–5, 9–10, 14–16, 42–44; 23:39; 27:46). The hopes of Israel, founded on the action of God in the past and the anticipation of the same in the future, were coming to inauguration in Jesus. Second, these texts and Jesus’s declaration in 4:17—which prefaces the Sermon on the Mount—serve as indicators that the kingdom comes in Jesus because he is the King (confirmed by God’s vindicating action in the resurrection, as implied in 28:18; also see 12:28). He is the King because of royal lineage and the King because he is God-with-us (1:1–17; 2:2; 7:21–23; 13:41; 16:28; 19:28; 20:21; 21:4–5; 25:31, 34). Third, Jesus is able to define who is Israel and he does so around himself, something which only God could do (1:21; 2:15; 10:1–4; 12:38–42, 50; 13:10–17; 19:28; 21:33–43; 26:28). Though the images in Matt 2 set up typological links with Moses, Jesus is not simply the new Moses; he has authority above Moses. As in Mark, Jesus refuses to take false roads to carrying out his identity, roads that seem good but ultimately rely on worldly definitions and displays of power rather than on submission to the will of God, which he defines for his disciples (4:1–11). Fourth, Jesus is thus not so much the authoritative interpreter of Torah in Matt 5–7; he is the authoritative teacher of the will of God, teaching it by his own authority and not the authority of ancient teachers. The Torah was supposed to be the living word of God itself. Only the God who gave the Torah could have such an authoritative voice concerning the true depth of the “heart” of the law and thus be able to call for a greater righteousness exceeding the direct word of the Torah (5:17–20). In fact, the image of Jesus as God-with-us sets up an echo of the exodus and wilderness wandering in which God delivered his people and gave them a covenant by which to live as he lived in their midst.
This righteousness that disciples demonstrate is fundamentally about knowing and doing the will of God (5:10; 6:1, 33; 12:50; 25:37). They have access to this greater righteousness because of Jesus’s teaching extending from a deeper knowledge of the will of God (7:24–27). They also have access to it because of the time. Jesus’s teaching is about living the eschatological life of the kingdom in the present, or at least living in response to the coming of the kingdom in him. The kingdom comes in him because he is climactically carrying out the will of God. Hence, the coming of the kingdom and the doing of the will of God are parallel clauses in the Lord’s Prayer (6:10). Jesus’s eschatological revelation of the will of God undergirds his teaching throughout his ministry and—when his claims of authority are fully vindicated and established in the resurrection—his commission to his disciples to make other disciples by teaching them to obey what he has told them (28:19). He makes that commission because his teaching is about the kingdom of God/heaven and the will of God. In fact, his five big teaching blocks in Matthew concern the nature/character of the kingdom (5–7), the mission of the kingdom (10), the mystery of the kingdom (13), the community of the kingdom (18), and the judgment that comes with the kingdom (23–25).
As 7:24-27 in particular makes obvious, Jesus intends for his words to be put into practice. In line with the claim that Jesus is God-with-us, there is an expectation that people will have faith in him and the proper outworking of having faith is faithfulness, which means loyalty and allegiance (in the case of human side of the faith relationship, that loyalty is based on trust: 8:10; 14:31 [negatively]; 18:6; 24:45; 25:21, 23; 27:42). This faith/faithfulness is what defines the people of God. Now that Jesus has embodied a deeper revelation of God, he has issued a call for a deeper righteousness and thus a call for a new people forged out of Jews and gentiles alike (8:10–12). Faith in Jesus is a deeper mark of the people of God than any regulations of the Pharisees regarding Jewish symbols or any traditional boundary-markers, so that no one can presume to have privilege when it comes to being in the kingdom (9:9–17; 11:18–19; 12:1–14; 17:24–27; 20:1–16; 21:28–32; 22:1–14).
As with Mark, once Peter acknowledges who Jesus is (16:13–20), Jesus presents a second call to his disciples in 16:24–28. In between, Jesus has defined his mission/purpose more clearly than before, and because it is so different from the expectations of the disciples, it leads into a second call. Here the basic definition of discipleship is to deny oneself, to take up one’s cross, and to follow Jesus. In light of Jesus’s own predictions about his fate (16:21; 17:22-23; 20:17–19), such self-denial and taking up of the cross means identification with Jesus. Those who deny themselves, including their lives, recapitulate the death of Jesus and will thus recapitulate his resurrection and exaltation (which is foreshadowed with the new life of the Christian by the Spirit; also see 20:23). Discipleship is complete dedication to the Lordship of Jesus and is thus a self-definition by that same Lordship.
It is prudent to provide a snapshot of the specific shape of that faithfulness to fill out what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. The best—and by far the most studied—passage in this regard in Matthew is surely the Sermon on the Mount. I plan to return to this text for further comment later, but we can address it in broad strokes at this point. The whole passage is essentially about the transformative way of life that characterizes the kingdom of God. The Beatitudes (5:3–12) are statements of “congratulations” for people who embody the virtues of the kingdom such as being humbly dependent on God, repentant and grieved in the face of sin, surrendered to the will of God, deeply hungry and thirsty for the doing of the will of God, compassionately healing, single-hearted/single-minded in devotion to God’s will, earnest in making peace with others in reflection of God, and willing to suffer and die for the sake of faithfulness to Jesus. The statements that disciples are the salt and light of the world are not commands, but they are calls to reflect Jesus through works that demonstrate the bond God has with the world for its good and the light with which God redeems the world (5:13–16).1 Because Jesus is the one who brings the story of Scripture (the law and the prophets) to its climax and fulfillment, disciples participate in that story and that fulfillment when they follow what he says (5:17–20). Richard Hays supplies a good summary for much of the rest of the Sermon:
To be trained for the kingdom is to be trained to see the world from the perspective of God’s future—and therefore askew from what the world counts as common sense.
The teachings of the rest of the Sermon, then, specify the character of a community that seeks to embody this eschatological vision of God’s righteousness. Community members are to put away anger, lust, violence, hypocrisy, pride, and materialism. In place of these self-asserting and self-preserving behaviors, they are to love their enemies, keep their promises (including promises to their marriage partners), forgive freely as they have been forgiven by God, give alms in secret, and trust God to provide for their material needs.2
The above does not cover chapter 7. As another quick summary, disciples do not usurp the role of Jesus in assigning everlasting condemnation to anyone or engaging in hypocritical/double-standard judgment (7:1–5). They earnestly offer trust, loyalty and prayers to the only one who can satisfy them (7:6–11; cf. 8:18-22; 13:44-46; 19:16-30). They treat others as they want treatment, as God treats them (7:12). And finally, they bear fruit by doing the will of God in obeying what Jesus instructs them to do (7:13–27).
Bonhoeffer, Cost of Discipleship, 115–18.
Hays, Moral Vision, 98.