Section I

general view and distinctive characteristics

The Gospel according to Matthew connects the New Testament with the Old. It exhibits to us the life of Jesus in its historic connection with the life of the people of Israel. Jesus is, in this Gospel, presented to us chiefly as the promised Messiah of Israel—the end and aim of all the developments of the theocracy, of whom the whole history of the Old Covenant prophesied—in whom the symbolic signs of the law, and especially of public worship, the types in the Old Testament facts and the promises of the prophets, have been fulfilled and realized in the highest sense, and through whom the Old Covenant has been transformed into the New. But while he presents to us the kernel and crown of the true development of the Old Covenant, his essentially Israelite life forms the strongest contrast to the carnally Jewish, false development of the Old Testament principles of which the scribes and Pharisees are the representatives. From this contrast arises the great historical suffering of Christ, the conflict of the true king of Israel with the powers of false Judaism, which brings Him to death.

Thus, on the one hand, He appears in His divine-human life as the Heir of all the blessings of Abraham, nay, even of all mankind; and, on the other, He is, by the unparalleled hardness of His lot, by His more than tragic death, in being disowned by His people, given over by them to the heathen, who become His executioners and crucify Him blindly,—shown to be heir of all the historic curse which rests upon His people, and on all mankind. Thus His outward lot appears as the fulfilling of all tragic suffering; but His devotedness to God, and the self-sacrificing joy with which He dies for His people, mankind, is the fulfilling of all priesthood. And because He is at the same time the true High Priest and the true offering—because He dies for mankind, He overcomes their curse by the blessing of His obedience and His death, becomes a complete atonement for mankind. As the reconciliation of the world is effected by His death, it is made evident by His resurrection; and now He, who in His historic obligation was the most bound and conditioned, whom His obedience led to the death of the cross, appears as the unconditioned, absolutely free Lord and King, to whom all power is given in heaven and in earth, and who gathers His people from all the ends of the earth.

These are the main outlines of the view given in the first Gospel, and the composition of the Gospel history has taken a shape in accordance with the subject it treats of. The Evangelist gives us first the politically legitimate genealogical table of Jesus, by which He is announced to be the son of David, and also the son of Joseph the carpenter (Mat 1:1-17). Then follows the first historic scene. Joseph and Mary are introduced into history: Mary as the misjudged virgin who is to bear the Messiah; Joseph as misjudging, but brought by a special revelation to receive his espoused wife. Thus Matthew at once begins the Gospel history by an event in which we cannot but see the sufferings and also the glorification of Christ clearly prefigured (Mat 1:18-25). The historical character of Jesus is prefigured in its full significance in the account given of His birth. He is born the great King of the Jews, to whom even the wise men from the East bring their homage from afar, whose birth is celebrated by a star in the heavens, and to whom the prophets of the Old Testament pointed. But He is immediately sought to be put to death by the outward king of the Jews, Herod the Idumean; the innocent children in Bethlehem must die because of Him; He Himself can be rescued only by flight to Egypt, and must afterwards grow up in concealment in despised Galilee. Yet all this early distress, the foretoken of the toilsome course of His life, is overruled by the wonder-working hand of His Father, which protects Him, and pledges for the glorification which is to follow His suffering (Mat 2:1-23) The public ministry of Christ, with the appearance of John the Baptist, is next announced. The Baptist comes forth as the preacher of repentance, announces the Messiah, and by the theocratic purification of baptism prepares His people for His appearance. The ministry of the Baptist betokens the corruption of the people. We see in the fact that Christ too must undergo this baptism because of the law of Israel, a fresh sign of His submitting Himself to the curse of His people. But after thus humbling Himself, He is again glorified, by being filled with the Holy Ghost, and declared to be the Son by a voice from the Father (Mat 3:1-17) His official life must now begin. But He cannot directly present Himself as Messiah to His people. The Holy Ghost drives Him into the wilderness; and here He endures the temptations of Satan, which consist in setting before Him three great allurements taken from the Messiah-ideal of the Jews. Christ’s victory over Satan evinces at the same time His self-renunciation. He will not appear as Messiah in Israel to receive their homage: poor, concealed, in the form of a servant—this is henceforth His Messianic badge. But this time, also, He immediately receives the blessing due to His suffering: henceforth angels come to minister unto Him (Mat 4:1-11). The realization of this renunciation is touchingly intimated to us by His commencing His ministry in the despised district of Galilee, and here on a very small scale, by enlisting a few fishermen into His service. But His obedience is again glorified by the Father. The word of the prophet has already consecrated His residence in the despised land; His power over men’s minds is shown by the instant and joyous adherence of the first disciples; and now, an activity commences which soon sets the whole land in motion (Mat 4:12-25). As soon as the people are assembled, Jesus proclaims to them in the Sermon on the Mount the new law of righteousness of His kingdom of heaven, developed from the Old Testament law as its fulfilment, in contrast to its counterfeit development in the traditions or maxims of the scribes and Pharisees. He describes the way of life in striving after the true righteousness; then depicts the path of death as it consists in devotedness to the maxims of the false righteousness; and lastly, He points out how to avoid the wrong path, and to choose the right (Mat 5:1-48, Mat 6:1-34, Mat 7:1-29) In the law of the kingdom we recognized the word of the God-anointed King, the establishing of the New Covenant. We next perceive the forthputting of His power in a series of miracles of the most various kinds, commencing with the characteristic trait of touching and thereby healing the leper, not against the sense of the law, although, doubtless, contrary to what the traditions implied. He then makes whole the servant of the centurion at Capernaum, who was not a Jew; and it must not surprise us, that the Evangelist has inserted among the miracles of Jesus, his own call from the office of publican to that of apostle, for it seemed to him a great miracle (Mat 8:1-34, Mat 9:1-34). Now the multitude of those who seek to have health restored increases; and the Lord sees Himself compelled to consecrate His disciples to be His messengers, and to send them out on their first mission, in order at once to draw near to the people with many arms of blessing. In consequence of this, He gives them directions, in which we have His royal mandate for His messengers in all ages (Mat 9:35-38, Mat 10:1-42) But now the first conflict also arises, in which the distinction and contrast between the spirit of Christ and the spirit of His people become evident. It is a significant indication, that even John the Baptist cannot help letting himself be found for an instant among those who misunderstand Jesus. He opens the way; the Galilean cities, Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum, immediately follow, and are imitated by that generation in general. The scribes and Pharisees then appear in hostile form, casting one stumblingblock after another in His way. The calumny of these enemies is so satanic, and our Lord’s utterance regarding the darkness of their state is so free and public, that His friends are tempted for a moment to interrupt His course of action (Mat 11:1-30, Mat 12:1-50) This disclosure of the hostile spirit in His people makes our Lord henceforth veil His communications respecting His kingdom in parables, of which there now follows a cycle, containing in distinct succession the main features of the doctrine of the kingdom of heaven (Mat 13:1-52).

That the Lord has really ground for maintaining this reserve towards the people, is proved by a series of misunderstandings, disparagements, and acts of enmity which meet Him everywhere, compelling Him to retire, and by distant journeys, which have partly the appearance of flight, and partly the form of expulsion by His hardened opponents, to avoid meeting with them. He must first leave the town in which He was brought up. He then retires to get away from Herod, who wishes to see Him, after having shortly before put John the Baptist to death, and withdraws into the wilderness, where He feeds the destitute people while their prince riots in gluttony. Once more He departs altogether from Galilee to the borders of Tyre and Sidon, to avoid the scribes and Pharisees from Jerusalem, and on His return feeds the people a second time in the wilderness. But as soon as He again sets foot on the soil of Galilee, the enemy once more bars His way, and He retires anew into the territory of Philip the tetrarch, beyond Jordan, in the certainty that His last sufferings begin soon (Mat 13:54-58, Mat 14:1-36, Mat 15:1-39, Mat 16:1-12). Since Jesus is now proscribed in Judea as well as in Galilee, He prepares to found His Church in her definite New Testament form in contrast to that of the Old Testament, which is on the point of rejecting Him. He makes this preparation by bringing His disciples to confess that He is the Christ, and while assigning to Peter his future position in this Church, He describes the power of the keys which He means to confer upon him, announces His sufferings to the disciples, and calls upon them to follow Him in the path of suffering. He next prepares them for His suffering, by strengthening His confidential disciples through His transfiguration on the Mount, and restoring the shaken faith of the whole circle of them through healing the demoniac at its foot (Mat 16:13-28, Mat 17:1-21). Then follows a series of transactions showing the fundamental laws of the New Testament social order, in contrast to the maxims of the degenerated Old Testament economy. The first thing treated of is the relation of Christ and His people to God, the Lord of the temple (which is the symbol of the economy of the kingdom). Christ gives prominence to this relation in the narrative of the piece of money in the fish’s mouth. He is not tributary, owing service, nor in any way a vassal in relation to the royal institution of the Father—to the temple or its worship—He is the Son in the house. And with him His people are the children in the house, and in this respect also free. Thus the character of the New Testament worship of God is different from that of the Old Testament: there, a servant’s relation, and here, sonship. The next matter treated of is the mutual relation of the disciples, or the constitutional charter of the kingdom of heaven in the narrower sense. The disciples are thinking of a new hierarchy like the former order in Israel, and inquire, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? But Christ decides the order of rank in His kingdom solely according to simplicity and humility: he who becomes like a child in self-abasement shall be the greatest, and even the child is to be received in His name. Connected with this is a warning against the offences of the hierarchy (despising of little ones). The order to be observed in New Testament excommunication follows from this fundamental law, ordaining all the members of the new Church to show forth the life of Christ. First of all, the fundamental idea is, the Church, like Christ, is not to expel the lesser members, but rather to seek the lost. But for that very reason, and for love’s sake, church discipline is bound to be exercised with all strictness-for the same reason, however, with the most tender care. Our Lord then declares the validity and power of church censure, duly supplementing, however, what He had said by defining the necessary attributes of His Church, describing free Christian fellowship, and concluding by pointing out that the spirit of kindness and readiness to forgive repeatedly ought to be a characteristic of His Church. Next follows (in Perea) a special discussion of the marriage laws of the new economy. He shows the lawfulness of abolishing the curse of conjugal irregularities by the blessing of ideal celibacy; and to this discussion the law regarding children in the Christian Church is most appropriately attached. Then, in the narrative regarding the rich young man, our Lord shows with what freedom we ought to possess and be able to give up worldly goods in the new, Christian, ideal order of things. He shows the disciples with what blessings all acts of self-denial which are required of His followers shall be recompensed to them in His kingdom. He next speaks of the relations of work to wages, of good conduct to recompense, as these obtain in the new constitution of the kingdom of love, and very specially in contrast to the mercenary maxims in the external Jewish economy, but also in contrast to the honourable symbolic service in the Old Covenant; and with this He completes His sketch of the New Testament constitution in contrast to that which is now antiquated (Mat 17:22-27, Mat 18:1-35, Mat 19:1-30, Mat 20:1-16). Now He begins His journey to Jerusalem, to endure the death of the cross; and now the contrast between the government of His Messianic kingdom and the state regulations of the world is displayed in a series of characteristic touches. The sons of Salome wish to obtain the first and most honourable positions in the new kingdom. Jesus shows the disciples that His kingdom would be established by the labours of a love which devotes itself even unto death, and that the arrangements of rank in that kingdom depend upon eternal and essential arrangements which the Father has appointed. Then His journey begins with festivity. A courtier spirit already seeks to assume form, and the blind men are thus kept back from Jesus, under the false idea that now He is no longer inclined to give attention to individual sufferers of that kind; but Jesus hears the cry of the distressed amid the acclamations uttered by those who truly honour Him, as well as by the courtier class, and heals the blind. He enters the capital on a colt, the foal of an ass, which He has caused to be brought from the mystic stable, which stands prepared for His service at every stage of His royal progress through the world. The jubilation at His solemn entrance has not the least power to becloud the clearness of His spirit: the King, whose entrance is celebrated, beholds the spirits of corruption in the people plastically exhibited in the abomination which desecrates the temple; and immediately after His entrance into the city He appears with severe dignity, and in His own right, and the zealot-right in Israel, purges the temple. He then seats Himself in the temple as in His royal residence; but by healing therein the blind and the lame, He transforms into a house of mercy (a veritable hôtel dieu) the sanctuary which the Jews had made a den of thieves. But as the representatives of the people here refuse Him the hosanna which is His due, and even impute to Him as a crime His mere listening to the hosannas of the children, He declares to them that He beholds in babes and sucklings the people which is to be assigned to Him (Mat 20:17-34, Mat 21:1-16). After these occurrences, in which the twofold contrast between the kingdom of Christ and the decaying economy, and also between that kingdom and the world, has been unveiled, the last purely spiritual conflict between Christ and His opponents begins, whereby His death is decided. This conflict is first announced by the symbolic-prophetic act of Christ, in which, by pronouncing sentence on the fig-tree, He indicates that His people are condemned in judgment. As soon as He enters the temple, His enemies begin to assail Him. They seek first, by asking for His authority, to overthrow Him by the force of their prerogative and power—to cast Him down by an open attack, and then to seize Him. As He frustrates this attack, they next try cunning: ironically conceding that He is the Messiah, they propose for His decision a series of insidious questions in order to entangle Him. But He leaves none of their questions unanswered, overcomes all their cunning contrivances, and puts to them the great counter-question, Why does David call the Messiah his Lord?—a question which to this day remains unanswered by the spirit of Judaism. His putting them to silence by this question completes the breach between Him and them. And now the old Israel and its temple are given over to judgment. This judgment He announces in His comminations against the scribes and Pharisees, and spiritually carries into effect by departing from the temple, leaving unto them their house desolate (Mat 21:17-46, Mat 22:1-46, Mat 23:1-39, Mat 24:1-2). Our Lord now explains this announcement to His disciples. The judgment on Jerusalem and the temple is a symbol of all God’s judgments, the prophetic type of His judging the New Testament Church and the world. He describes the preparatives, the sign, and the form of these judgments, giving at the same time the most emphatic admonitions. In accordance with Matthew’s habit of presenting great contrasts, and His Messianic apprehension of the kingly glory of Christ, he makes the Lord appear in the light of His prophetic Spirit as the Lord and Judge of the world, before he presents Him in His suffering form (Mat 24:3-25) After this preliminary glorification of our Lord, Matthew can boldly relate Christ’s sufferings on the cross. He points out the kingly clearness with which Christ foresees His sufferings, while those who are preparing them for Him are still in perplexity. He then goes back to show how the anointing of Jesus in Bethany became the occasion of Judas’ betrayal of our Lord, although Judas fancied that he more than the others wished Him to be anointed as King. Matthew also paints in the strongest colours the dissatisfaction in the circle of the disciples. He points out the signification of the anointing as a prophetic anointing of Jesus for His burial. He represents the Passover of our Lord in the most definite sense as a passover; yet here also he makes Him appear in His kingly glory by the way He sends the disciples into the city to a friend to make ready the feast. He informs us that Christ, when seized in Gethsemane, expressed His consciousness that He could pray to the Father, and that He could presently give Him more than twelve legions of angels. He describes the judicial process before the council, giving special prominence to its most solemn and awful incidents, when Jesus declares on oath before the high priest that He is Christ the Son of God, when He announces to the council His beginning glory and His return to judgment, and is therefore condemned to death as a blasphemer. In the end to which Judas came, the Evangelist produces a special testimony to the innocence of Christ, and a proof of the fulfilment of Scripture. In giving an account of Christ’s examination before Pilate, Matthew relates that Pilate’s wife was induced by a significant dream to warn her husband, and also that the people imprecate a curse upon themselves by exclaiming (on Pilate’s declaring that he was innocent of the blood of Jesus), ‘His blood be on us and on our children.’ Matthew gives the most detailed account of the crowning with thorns, in which, unknown to Jesus’ enemies, there lay a type of the truth that His kingly glory issues from His kingly endurance. Referring to a passage in the Psalms, he describes the sour wine offered to Jesus on Golgotha as vinegar mingled with gall. But we specially recognize Matthew’s peculiar view, by observing that he alone relates how the veil of the temple was rent, the earth quaked, the graves were opened, and many bodies of the saints which slept arose and appeared to many. The last feature as well as the first—the completion of the Old Covenant in the New Testament reconciliation—shows that the saints were now made perfect in the kingdom of the dead through the power of the death of Jesus. He alone gives the beautiful trait, in which the new age is so impressively announced, that Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came and sat in the evening twilight opposite our Lord’s lonely tomb. Again, his peculiarity is shown very prominently in his relating how the council corrupted the watch and sealed the sepulchre. In this Matthew saw the last impotent attempt of the blinded old Judaism to seal up in the grave the glory of the true Messiah (

Mat 26:1-75, Mat 27:1-66) Matthew describes the resurrection so as to glorify Him as the Messiah whom the Father in heaven bears witness to by a great manifestation, namely, by the earthquake, by sending the angel who respects not the seal of the Sanhedrim, and by the resurrection itself. Christ comes forth from the grave in His glory-victor over the watch, over the sorrow of His disciples, who designed to anoint Him in the tomb—victor over His enemies, who by corrupting the watch betray their own utter impotence, and at the same time betray even to heathen soldiers their consciousness of their utterly false position—and victor over the doubts regarding His divine glory still existing among His disciples. He then solemnly assembles His faithful ones upon a mountain, and explains to them that now the absolute kingdom is given to Him, with all power in heaven and on earth. And in this royal name, which is assumed in the name of the Three-one God, He sends them out as His messengers into all the world, to make all nations, by the holy washing of baptism, a true theocratic people of God, and to pledge them to obey His kingly commands. With this commission He combines the assurance that He abides with them alway even unto the end of the world, so that not only His kingdom but also His presence pervades all time and space, even until the end of the world, when His glory shall be revealed (Mat 28:1-20).

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Notes

1. The peculiarities of Matthew’s Gospel make it for us a Gospel symbol of the general signification of historical connections, and their transformation in Christianity. Nowhere else is so much importance attached to the golden thread of the historical coherence of the ever-progressive, silent development in humanity. It instructs us regarding the contrast between true and false historical sequence, between symbolical and real Christology, between the commencement and the fulfilment, and finally between the hereditary historic curse and the hereditary historic blessing. It is the history of the Gospel and the Gospel of history, the transformation of universal history by the history of Jesus (see vol. i. p. 200).

2. Those who consider Matthew’s Gospel as only a compilation from a collection of sayings by the Evangelist, to which the historical parts have been added, cannot have attained to a right view of the living and nicely compacted organism of this Gospel, which pervades every part of it. On the discovery of this organism that hypothesis must fall to the ground. Thiersch has made the apt remark, that apart from their historical connection, we should scarcely be able to explain sufficiently these sayings (see Versuch, &c., 186).