MATTHEW 28:16-20

Matthew 28:16-20

Matthew 28:16-20

Introduction

Matthew 28:16-20 has come to be known as the Great Commission, and it is one of the first texts that come to the mind of many modern Christians when they consider the missionary mandate of their own religion. Both because of its post-Pentecost mission content, and because the periscope contains the only scriptural occurrence of what would become Christianity's Trinitarian formula, the Roman and Revised Common Lectionaries assign the text to Trinity Sunday.

Discussion

Detach. Matthew 19:6, "What God has joined together, not divide, chorizeto) man. Paul uses this same word in 1 Corinthians 7:10, 11, 15. The Bible makes no distinction between separation and the divorce.

Repudiate. Matthew 5:32, 19:9, etc. (Apoluo), let loose, let go free. Quit. 1 Corinthians 7:11, 12, 13, (aphiemi), leave, leave.

There is no distinction. These three words refer to the same thing: to undo (remove) what God did together. He can separate the physical union, but can not abrogate the marriage covenant made with God. The Bible makes no distinction between the separation, the divorce (which Mel called the divorce) and leave (or abandon). Any of these acts done what Jesus condemned in Matthew 19:6, that is, God separates the seal and this is condemned by God. The fact that God ordered him to make it clear that is in effect the same marriage covenant that He established in the beginning of the world. The man can separate - in a sense - what God has joined together, ie the union can be separated physics. But doing it is damned if he does not for fornication, because it violates the covenant made with God.

Much the best way to grasp the sense of Matthew's Gospel is to repeat to oneself the formula that he is working on the basis of the Gospel of Mark. For whatever reason, he has decided to make a longer, fuller book than Mark, ensuring that it told us truths about Jesus which Mark had not made plain enough or else not made plain at all. He also seems to have decided that he should correct Mark's ideas where he thought them wrong or inadequate. Like many Christians after him, he both inherited from his past and tried to put it right where he felt it was amiss. In doing this he sometimes showed his own faults and limitations - as we may now presumptuously feel, especially if we are inclined to be Mark's fans.

Nowhere is this as prominent or as understandable as in his treatment of the way the Gospel of Mark ended. Understandable because nothing in Mark is as enigmatic and - to somebody with Matthew's concern to be plain and helpful to Christians - as unsatisfactory as in his final verses, 16.1- 8. (As we know, not only Matthew but others too, a few years later, dealt with this by adding what look like more rounded ways of finishing off Mark's Gospel, as every Bible, except the most enlightened modern versions, displays by ...