Matthew 28:16-20 Commentary

Comments, Questions, and Observations

The eleven finally make it to Galilee where Jesus told them to meet him. In the gospel of Matthew, there are no upper room stories, so this meeting on the mountain in Galilee is the first time that the disciples actually encounter the resurrected Jesus in the narrative. After all they have seen and been through, when they see him, they both worship and doubt.

We ought to be careful with that word “doubt” since it carries a lot of weight—and different significance—in our time and place than in the world that Jesus walked as rabbi. For starters, this particular Greek word is not a word related to belief, thus doubt in this story is not the opposite of faith. In fact, the word is the same one used to describe Peter’s moment that leads to his sinking while he’s walking on the water towards Christ. These two stories are the only two places it is used in all of the New Testament. These two stories are parallel realizations of the supernatural wonder that is Jesus the Christ. He walks on waters and makes it so that I can too! He is resurrected from the dead: what will this do to me?!?!

So, as one biblical commentator put it, the disciples are fluctuating between worshipping and indecision (their way of understanding doubt) about what it is they should do with this encounter. Perhaps we should be glad that Peter is not offering to make Jesus another tent…

It doesn’t take long to find out what this change to their lives will be. Jesus comes to them and gives them their purpose and promise. He commissions them to go and make more disciples, to use baptism in the name of the Triune God—referencing now the Spirit and himself alongside the Father more directly than he ever has—and reminding them that what they show others to do and be on the Jesus Way is what they too are supposed to be and do. The promise, of course, is the promise that he gave them before he went to the cross; they are not alone: the great I AM is always with them.

John the Baptist’s practice of baptism has been transformed. Whereas emphasis was on repentance of sins in order to renew the people’s ways of living, Jesus emphasises everything that he has taught. Of course, this includes repentance of sins, but it also includes a vision reliant on following the author and perfector of our faith (to use language from the letter to the Hebrews). Jesus’s baptism is for the new covenant! Done in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, this baptism is rooted in who God is more than it is rooted in what we will do or have done. We are ruled by the three, revealed by the image of the invisible God that is Christ Jesus, made known to us by the working of the Spirit for the glory and purposes of the Father. That’s enough meat to spend our whole lives sinking our teeth into. That’s a grand enough reality that we can spend our whole lives exploring and only scratch the surface. That’s a joy waiting to be made complete.

Textual Points

The Gospel of Matthew and the Torah of Moses connection is strong in this section. Jesus is up on a mountain and giving final instructions much in the same way that Moses did before the Israelites started their next stage in the promised land. Plus, Jesus is talking about teaching and the need to obey—the underlying structure of the Torah.

Second, the reference to returning Galilee forms an inclusio: this handing off of ministry, or what we might call the end to the incarnate Jesus’s earthly ministry, takes place in the same place where his public ministry begins (starting at Matthew 4.12).

Illustration Ideas

I sometimes have the privilege of walking alongside adults who were baptised as infants in other traditions but come to faith as an adult and join our church. Coming from a Reformed background, I get to share about why we don’t need to re-baptise them as they make their profession of faith (though we often do some sort of practice to remember it). The reason is God. For us, baptisms done in Christian churches in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are baptisms. And when we come back to them as adults who have discovered faith, we look back at them with awe and gratitude for how God has kept those promises. That same God invites us to continue to be in covenant by keeping to the way of life that Jesus gives. And as our text shows, that need not be perfect or steady to be valid in the eyes of God.

The first edition of the book that John Stott wrote for The Bible Speaks Today Series on the Sermon on the Mount was called Christian Counter-Culture: The Message of the Sermon on the Mount (1978). Every printing after 1984 removed the counter-culture aspect and stuck with The Message of the Sermon on the Mount. The History of Christianity class I teach studies missionary movements from the Gospel of Acts into the twentieth century and students often note a pattern of cultural assumptions that the missionaries generally brought with them about what Christianity had to look like. In other words, the reminder to be counter-cultural to one’s own culture as a follower of Jesus may need to be applied to the Christian community itself. Setting aside the call to “go” for a moment, what if the Canadian and American church returned to a close examination of everything that Jesus taught and commanded to us? What cultural habits and mindsets need to be countered so that we can more fully live into what Jesus has commanded in things like the Sermon on the Mount?