Originally published in the Midwestern Magazine, Issue 38
A VISION OF DISCIPLESHIP
Part of the purpose of Matthew’s Gospel is to communicate a vision of discipleship. Disciples are ultimately to be like their teacher and become teachers themselves who transmit the message of Jesus to future generations.
But what does it look like to be a disciple in Matthew? One can see what it means by looking both at the negative and positive portrayals throughout his Gospel. To be a disciple of Jesus is to recognize and follow Jesus as the Messiah and teacher of wisdom (theological), interpret the law rightly (practical), and practice the law (ethical). Disciple-making has theological, practical, and ethical implications.
RECOGNIZING JESUS AS MESSIAH AND TEACHER
To be a disciple means that one has recognized Jesus as his or her Messiah and teacher of wisdom (theological). Jesus is God’s final Word of Wisdom to which all the law and the prophets point (Isa 11:1–4). Matthew himself was a tax collector who gathered money from his own people for the Roman government, and Jesus called him out in repentance. When Jesus saw Matthew sitting at the tax booth, he said, “Follow me.” Matthew rose and followed him acknowledging his deprivation (9:9). This Greek word for “follow” means to go in the same direction, to obey, or comply with. Matthew became a pupil of Jesus.
Negatively, those who reject Jesus are contrasted to disciples because they don’t follow Jesus as their Messiah and teacher of wisdom. The scribes of the day become jealous of the people’s response to this new teacher so they claim he is blaspheming (9:3), ask for a sign from him to prove his authority (12:38), and assert Jesus’s disciples are breaking the tradition of the elders (15:1–2). Jesus himself claims this school has rejected him and now he must “suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised” (16:21; 20:18).
INTERPRET THE LAW RIGHTLY
Second, a disciple is a true interpreter of the law who understands the relationship between the new and the old (practical). They realize Jesus completes the Torah and that they cannot understand the old without the new. They therefore understand the Scriptures because they understand the one to whom they pointed all along.
Alternatively, those who reject Jesus are “searching the Scriptures” (Jn. 5:36), but they cannot find life in them for they are impoverished interpreters. They do not recognize that all of the Scriptures point to Jesus. If the new is not accepted, then the old will be left in obscurity. We see this illustrated in Matthew 2. Herod (the king) assembles all the chief priests and scribes of the people and inquired where the Christ was to be born (Matt. 2:4). The chief priests and the scribes pass a Jewish text onto Herod, and it is the correct text (Mic. 5:2), but they do not understand the words because the words are not meant only for their historical context but their redemptive historical context. Though it seems they understand the meaning of the words historically and fail to understand through the new lens, Matthew indicates that, because they have missed the new, they understand neither. The old only makes sense in light of the new. They have not interpreted the law rightly because they do not know to whom it points.
PRACTICE THE LAW
Third, a disciple is someone who practices justice and mercy, not hypocrisy (ethical). Not only do they rightly interpret the law, they live rightly by it. They follow Jesus’s teaching not only in word but in deed. Disciples perform their righteousness not to receive praise from others, but to receive a reward from their Father in heaven. They do not neglect the weightier matters of the law—justice, mercy, and faithfulness (23:23). To understand is not merely an intellectual effort. Understanding involves the heart. “The heart has grown dull when the people do not understand” (13:15a), and it is with the heart that people understand (13:15b).
Those who do not follow Jesus are characterized as hypocrites and lack righteousness. Though Jesus says the scribes and Pharisees sit on Moses’s seat (Matt. 23:2), the disciples should observe what they say but not the works they do. They do the opposite of what Jesus said in the Sermon: they tie up heavy burdens, do their deeds in order to be seen, enjoy being called rabbi, and boast in their accomplishments. Therefore, Jesus pronounces woes instead of blessings to the scribes and Pharisees because they are hypocrites (23:13–39).
FOLLOWING JESUS
Jesus came to form a new community. According to Matthew, to be a part of that community means rising from one’s tax booth and learning how to both live and interpret the Torah correctly in light of Jesus. He is the teacher of wisdom. Then, disciples are to go out and form new disciples, as they embody and repeat the practices of Jesus for the world to see.
PATRICK SCHREINER |Assistant Professor of New Testament Language and Literature, Western Seminary
