Matthew 28


The Resurrection

¹After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb.
²There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. ³His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. ⁴The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men.
⁵The angel said to the women, "Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. ⁶He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. ⁷Then go quickly and tell his disciples: 'He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.' Now I have told you."
⁸So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples. ⁹Suddenly Jesus met them. "Greetings," he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. ¹⁰Then Jesus said to them, "Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me."

Matthew 28:1-10

Explanation:

The Risen Christ (28:1-20)
The Gospel concludes with the resurrection and the commissioning of the disciples. The gospel is good news because it does end with the cross; following Jesus demands from us all that we are and have, but it gives us a new and eternal life in return. The narrative of the resurrection paves the way for the commissioning: the witness of the women contrasts starkly with the fearful falsehood of the guards and provides a positive model for the witness of the church.


The Report of the Women (28:1-10)
The resurrection narratives in the four Gospels differ in detail, but in all four the women become the first witnesses, and Mary Magdalene is explicitly named as one witness among them (also Gospel of Peter 12:50--13:57). One could harmonize the accounts, but as they stand they present strong evidence for the basic story: E. P. Sanders (1993:280) may be right to argue that "a calculated deception should have produced greater unanimity." Two matters remain clear: (1) the differences in accounts demonstrate that the Gospel writers were aware of a variety of independent traditions, and (2) these divergent traditions overlap significantly and hence independently corroborate the basic outlines of the story.

God Often Sends His Message Through the Least (28:1)
Jesus' Jewish contemporaries held little esteem for the testimony of women (Jos. Ant. 4.219; m. Yebamot 15:1, 8-10; 16:7; Ketubot 1:6-9; compare Lk 24:11); this reflects the broader Mediterranean culture's limited trust of women's testimony, a mistrust enshrined in Roman law (Gardner 1986:165; Kee 1980:89). By contrast, the guards' report that the disciples had stolen the body (Mt 28:11-15) would command much greater respect then, as well as in an antisupernaturalistic culture like much of modern academia. Later Christians thus had to depend on the testimony of men for the public forum (1 Cor 15:5-8). No one had apologetic reason to invent the testimony of these women, but the Gospel writers may have a profound theological purpose in preserving it.
Matthew lays these two reports, the true and the false, side by side, forcing his audience to declare their choice. The testimony of the women thus becomes a model for the disciples who will follow them (28:16-20). Jesus commissions them as his s luhim (sg., saliah)--agents or apostled ones (see comment on 10:5)--to brings news of his resurrection to his own disciples. Their faithfulness, like Joseph's (27:55-61), is laid over against the authorities' deceitful accusation of deceit (27:62-66); Matthew thereby calls his audience to suffer rejection and dishonor at the hands of the hostile authorities of their own day.

God's Power Is Revealed (28:2-3)
The angelic revelation exhibits points of contact with biblical theophanies, and the description of glory recalls Jesus' own in 17:2 (compare further Dan 7:9; 10:5-6; 4 Ezra 10:25-27; 3 Enoch 22:9). Jewish angels traditionally appeared in linen (Ps-Philo 9:10; Rev 15:6) or white garments (1 Enoch 71:1; 87:2; 90:31-33; 2 Macc 3:26; 11:8) or clothed in glory (3 Macc 6:18; 1 Enoch 71:1). That the angel sat on the stone is also a dramatic statement of supernatural triumph, since the stone, probably disk-shaped, would not naturally accommodate one sitting on it. Although the guards feared for their lives, God had no intention of slaying them.
God Is Selective in His Revelation (28:4-10)
Although the guards witnessed God's power, the angel spoke only to the women. Often when people fell before a revelation as if they were dead, the revealer declared, "Do not be afraid" (compare v. 10; 17:7; Mk 16:6; Dan 10:11-12; for other parallels, see notes on Mt 17:6-7). But here the angel says Do not be afraid to the women, not to the guards who had fainted before him (28:4-5). Jesus appears directly to the women as well, but not to people who did not believe (vv. 8-10; compare Acts 10:41).
The men's initial dependence on the testimony of the women reflects the gospel's power to transcend gender restrictions (W. M. Thompson 1985:233). When the women met Jesus, they worshiped (Mt 28:9)--finally responding as the wise Gentiles had (2:2, 11), yet--again with an ironic touch--before the male disciples (28:17). Nevertheless, Jesus does not cast off the male disciples here; he identifies the disciples to whom he is sending them as his brothers (v. 10; 12:50; 25:40; Jn 20:17).

Because Paul explicitly reports only resurrection "appearances," some suppose that the empty tomb tradition was a myth. But while Paul's language can apply to visionary experiences, nearly all scholars concur that he is reporting earlier Palestinian tradition in 1 Corinthians 15:3-7 (see, for example, Dibelius 1971:18-20), and Palestinian Jews did not speak of nonbodily resurrections. Nor would anyone have persecuted the early Christians for simply affirming that they had seen someone who had been dead; apart from the specifically bodily character of the resurrection--the sort that would leave an empty tomb--people would merely assume they claimed to see a ghost, a noncontroversial phenomenon (compare comment on 14:26; note on 1:20). Further, very little evidence suggests the plausibility of successive and mass, corporate visions (Schweizer 1971:48-49). Those inventing an empty-tomb tradition would hardly have included women as the first witnesses (see above), and "Jesus' resurrection could hardly have been proclaimed in Jerusalem if people knew of a tomb still containing Jesus' body" (Schweizer 1971:48).

Many who claimed they had seen Jesus alive from the dead (as in 1 Cor 15:1-8; virtually all the narrative accounts also suggest significant conversation with him, rather than fleeting appearances) were so sure that they devoted their lives to proclaiming what they had seen, and some died for it; clearly their testimony was not fabricated (E. Sanders 1993:280). Supposed pagan parallels to the resurrection stories are weak (see Aune 1981:48). To most ancient Mediterranean peoples the concept of corporeal resurrection was barely intelligible; to Jewish people it was a strictly end-time event. Yet once one grants the possibility of a bodily resurrection of Jesus within past history, the appearances follow naturally with or without parallels.

Matthew 28


The Guards' Report

¹¹While the women were on their way, some of the guards went into the city and reported to the chief priests everything that had happened. ¹²When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, ¹³telling them, "You are to say, 'His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep.' ¹⁴If this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble." ¹⁵So the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed. And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day.

Matthew 28:11-15

Explanation:

The Report of the Guards (28:11-15)
Just as Josephus's response to the anti-Jewish polemic of Apion has inadvertently preserved the basic outline of anti-Jewish polemic in his day, Matthew's response to arguments against the early Christian claims about the resurrection preserves what must have been the basic charge of his day: the disciples stole the body (compare later sources in Stauffer 1960:144-45; Tert. Apol. 21). But it is exceedingly doubtful that disciples would deliberately steal the body yet later prove prepared to die for the claim that they had seen Jesus alive from the dead!
Jesus' enemies could not account for the body's disappearance. Indirectly this suggests that opponents of Christianity conceded that Jesus' body was missing and that no simpler explanation (such as the body's being deposited in the wrong tomb) was available (also Craig 1984; Meier 1980:356). Although Paul does not appeal to the empty-tomb tradition in 1 Corinthians 15, his account necessarily implies it. Many people in antiquity claimed to see "ghosts," but for Palestinian Jews "resurrection" meant bodily resurrection and nothing else. Against some commentators, it is quite difficult to imagine that the disciples would have begun proclaiming the resurrection, and the authorities opposing them, without anyone's having checked the tomb (Craig 1995:151). Yet the church depended on the testimony of witnesses of the risen Christ, not simply on an empty tomb (Ladd 1974b:325). The empty tomb tells us about the nature of the resurrection (and the body and history), but the witnesses attest to its facticity.

In contrast to the disciples' claims, the report of the guards is not credible. Stones were rolled away so graves could be robbed (Char. Chaer. 3.3.1), but not with guards posted (at least, not unless the robbers had subdued the guards, normally fatally). Moreover, whereas tomb robbers normally carried off wealth, carrying off the body was so rare that it would shock those who heard of it (Char. Chaer. 3.3).

If the disciples did not protect Jesus while he was alive, surely they would not have risked their lives to rob his tomb after his death (grave robbing was a capital offense--for example, SEG 8.13). Nor could they have rolled away the massive stone without waking the guards. Penalties for falling asleep on guard duty could be severe, and guards who claimed to have slept through the stealing of the body, yet suffered no harm, would sound very suspicious. (Thus, for example, a soldier assigned to guard corpses hanging on crosses to prevent burial found a body stolen and preferred suicide to court-martial and execution--Petr. Sat. 112.) Under normal circumstances, people might suppose that such guards and those who failed to punish them had collaborated in the disappearance of the body, but in this situation those who failed to punish the guards had too much to lose.


It might be argued that someone took the body but guards were not actually present. But then why would the establishment circulate a rumor that guards were present, which would weaken rather than strengthen their case? The testimony of guards who slept through the theft would be less credible than the guesses of investigators after a theft. The story makes the most sense if guards had been present but somehow failed to protect the body, and the officials had to strike a deal to cover their embarrassment.

The narrative's irony announces both God's power and human weakness. Guards who saw an angel were ready, like Judas (26:15), to betray the truth for money (28:12); like Peter (26:69-75), they were ready to deny the unbelievable to protect their lives (28:14). Yet the guards only pretended to have slept through the Messiah's deliverance (28:15), whereas when Jesus needed his disciples the most, they slept through his time of testing (26:40-45). Disciples and enemies alike proved weak, but Jesus' resurrection was an act of God's power.
 

Matthew 28


The Great Commission

¹⁶Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. ¹⁷When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. ¹⁸Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ¹⁹Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

Matthew 28:16-20

Explanation:

The Report of the Church (28:16-20)
The mountain (v. 16) recalls the other sites of revelation in the Gospel (5:1; 17:1). All our earliest evidence indicates the Christian missionary impetus; this suggests that it originated with Jesus, as various Gospel accounts independently attest. The women offered a true report (28:1-10) and the guards a false one (vv. 11-15); Matthew's closing paragraph announces that we, like the women at the tomb, must offer a true report and resist temptations like money and protection to which the guards succumbed.
The narrative teaches us about faith and unbelief. Some of those who see Jesus worship him (compare v. 9), which suggests that they recognize him for who he is--"God with them" (1:23; 28:18-20). Others, however, despite seeing him, doubt (v. 17; compare Lk 24:40). Matthew here agrees with Mark (Mk 16:8) that disciples often are foolishly unbelieving (Mt 6:30; 14:31; 17:20), even after the resurrection. If even seeing is not necessarily believing, we ought not to wait to see before we will believe, as if God had not provided enough evidence already.



The narrative teaches us about Jesus' identity. Jesus holds all authority as does the son of man in Daniel 7 (28:18; compare 7:29; Jn 17:2; Dan 7:13-14). One may contrast here Satan's offer in Matthew 4:8-9; by pursuing obedience Jesus received more than Satan offered. Jewish teachers felt that confessing the one Lord by means of the Shema expressed submission to God's royal authority (m. Berakot 2:5); in this passage we learn that such submission requires confession of Jesus (compare 10:32). Disciples of rabbis normally made disciples of their own when they became rabbis, but Jesus is more than a normal rabbi (28:19) and summons us to make disciples for him alone and not for ourselves (23:8-10).

Disciples baptize not only in the name of the Father and the Holy Spirit, whom biblical and Jewish tradition regarded as divine, but also in the name of the Son. Placing Jesus on the same level with the Father and Spirit (28:19) makes even more explicit what is implicit in Acts's "baptism in Jesus' name" (Acts 2:38; 8:16; 10:48; 19:5; compare 22:16)--that Jesus is divine (Mt 1:23). One other aspect of this pericope emphasizes Matthew's high Christology. Jesus' continuing presence with his followers even after his departure (28:20) suggests his omnipresence--an attribute limited to deity alone (see comment on 1:23; 18:20).

Finally, the narrative teaches us about our mission. Because Jesus' future reign (28:18) has begun in the lives of his followers in the present age (v. 20), his people should exemplify his reign on earth as it is in heaven, as people of the kingdom, people of the future era (compare 6:10). Most significant in this passage, because Jesus has all authority, because he is King in the kingdom of God, disciples must carry on the mission of teaching the kingdom (10:7). Jesus' instructions include an imperative (a command) surrounded by three participial clauses: one should make disciples for Jesus by going, baptizing and teaching. Making disciples involves more than getting people to an altar; it involves training them as thoroughly as Jewish teachers instructed their own students. Most of modern Christendom falls far short on this count.

Making disciples involves "going" (28:19), as it had before (10:7). Because "going" (NIV go) is a participle, we could read, "as you go"--essentially, "on your way," implying that one need not cross cultural boundaries to fulfill this commission (compare Culver 1968). But this misses the parallel between the final commission and the model mission in chapter 10: even while remaining within Galilee, the disciples had to proclaim the kingdom to those who had not yet heard the message (10:7; compare Mk 1:38). Nevertheless, the commission probably emphasizes teaching and baptizing while presupposing that disciples have already done the necessary work of crossing cultural boundaries. "Going" might mean "having gone" (the Greek aorist); the aorist participle "going" may represent part of the command, the aorist imperative "make disciples," while the two present participles explain how to make disciples (Rogers 1973; compare R. White 1960:127 n. 3). But this does not require us to excessively subordinate "going," since Matthew often uses this participle in a sense coordinate with the main verb (compare 2:8; 11:4; 17:27; 28:7; Blomberg 1992:431). Given Matthew's similar expression in 10:7, we must still regard crossing cultural boundaries as an integral part of the commission.

Unlike other ancient teachers, Jesus' disciples would not raise disciples for themselves but only for Jesus (23:8). Greek tradition could praise those who made many disciples (as in Diog. Laert. 8.1.16). Greek philosophers thought in terms of "conversion" to philosophy (see Nock 1933), and various pagan religious cults were propagated by travelers in antiquity (Stambaugh and Balch 1986:42; compare Acts 8:4). Judaism also spoke of sages as having disciples (see comment on 4:19; 19:21-22) and sometimes even persuading large numbers of people to become students of Torah (as in ARN 26, Section 54); they also separately recognized the conversion of Gentiles (see comment on 23:15; see De Ridder 1971). But ancient hearers would, and modern hearers should, recognize a drastic innovation in a command to disciple nations.

All nations may signify all groups of "peoples," rather than the modern concept of "nation-states" (McGavran and Arn 1977:38); in many nations a variety of different peoples coexist. Thus Christ commands us to sensitively reach each culture, not merely some people from each nation. Also far from abandoning the mission to Matthew's own people, his commission represents "peoples" and not simply "Gentiles" (Saldarini 1994:59-60, 78-81; compare Meier 1977), although in the context of his whole Gospel he lays the emphasis on Gentile peoples, whom his community most needs to be encouraged in evangelizing.

As long as unreached peoples exist, we disobey the Great Commission by refusing to cross those boundaries. Given the explicitness of Jesus' command, perhaps many use the lack of "call" to missions as an excuse; yet it may be that the Lord of the harvest has been calling us through the need of the world but we are not willing to hear. If Christ has already called his disciples to go, is it not possible that it is those of us who stay who need an explicit message from God?

Matthew needed to encourage Jewish Christians in their commitment to reach Gentiles, but he could not have imagined the present situation: a huge Gentile church with Jewish Christians as a small and marginalized minority. If Matthew were writing his Gospel to the church today, he would certainly plead with Gentile Christians to remember, pray for and minister to his own people, who gave them the gospel (compare 10:6; Rom 15:25-27).

But wherever God leads particular disciples to carry out this commission, the text is clear how one makes disciples. First of all, one baptizes them under the Lordship of Christ. Baptism was an act of initiation and conversion (see comment on 3:6), so this text suggests that we initiate people into the faith, introducing them to Jesus' Lordship. But once they are initiated, we must also build them into stronger discipleship by teaching them Jesus' message. The summaries of Jesus' teachings earlier in Matthew's Gospel work well as a discipling manual for young believers. Here, as in Jewish instruction of converts to Judaism, the process of teaching continues subsequent to initiation.

The Gospel closes with a promise: as Jesus' disciples carry out the Great Commission, he will be with them to the end of the age (28:20). The text probably specifies the end of the age because at that time the Son of Man would return in his kingdom--after the nations had heard the good news of the kingdom (24:14) and hence been prepared for the judgment (25:32-36). If many Christians today have lost a sense of Jesus' presence and purpose among us, it may be because we have lost sight of the mission our Lord has given us. If we would be his disciples, then we must prepare the way for our Lord's second coming and his kingdom, as John the Baptist did for his first coming (3:1-3). If we truly long for our Lord's return, our mission is laid out before us until he comes.