The Nice Fee serves because the church’s marching orders, which she does effectively to revisit.
Matthew’s Gospel closes with the resurrected Jesus showing to the eleven disciples and declaring,
All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go due to this fact and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them within the title of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, instructing them to look at all that I’ve commanded you. And behold, I’m with you at all times, to the tip of the age. (Matt 28:18–20)
The so-called Nice Fee closes the gospel narrative whereas initiating the mission of the church that may observe.
However it’s additionally powerfully evocative of earlier occasions, providing us quite a lot of frames for understanding the import of Jesus’s phrases. As we contemplate these frames, the character of our Christian calling will come into crisper focus.
Jesus’s story as a mirror of Israel’s
The beginning of Matthew’s Gospel incorporates a number of parts that recall the guide of Genesis.
- Its opening phrases (1:1)—“the guide of the family tree” (Βίβλος γενέσεως)—are solely present in similar type elsewhere in Genesis 2:4 and 5:1, the place they’re used of the heavens and the earth and of Adam.
- Matthew then traces Jesus’s ancestry from Abraham (1:2–17).
- He tells us of a son of Jacob named Joseph, who had goals (Matt 1:18–25; cf. Gen 37:5–11) and led his folks into Egypt (Matt 2:13–15; cf. Gen 46:1–27).
We quickly transfer into themes from the guide of Exodus:
- A king kills child boys (Matt 2:16–18; cf. Exod 1:15–22), from which Jesus, like God’s chosen deliverer, Moses, is spared (cf. Exod 2:1–10).
- Jesus and his household are referred to as out of Egypt after a dream during which Joseph was informed that these in search of Jesus’s life had been lifeless (Matt 2:19–23; cf. Exod 4:19–20).
- Like Israel, Jesus passes by means of the waters of baptism (Matt 3:13–17; cf. Exod 14).
- Afterwards, he’s led up by the Spirit into the wilderness, the place he stays for forty days and is examined (Matt 4:1–11; cf. Israel’s forty years, Exod 16:35).
- He then teaches regarding the Regulation from a mountain (Matt 5–7; cf. Exod 19).
As Peter Leithart has argued, Matthew tells the story of Jesus in a means that purposefully mirrors the story of Israel, underlining the best way during which the identification and future of the latter is fulfilled within the former.
This sample doesn’t conclude with the tip of Israel’s wilderness wanderings, however continues by means of the story of the conquest (e.g., Matt 10:1–23; cf. Num 13:1–20), the rise of the dominion (e.g., Matt 12:1–8; cf. 1 Sam 21), the prophetic ministry of Elijah and Elisha (e.g., Matt 15:32–39; cf. 2 Kgs 4:42–44), and the autumn of the dominion and the exile that follows (e.g., Matt 26:50–66; cf. Jer 26). Jesus’s dying is paralleled with the destruction of the temple and the autumn of the dominion to the Babylonians (e.g., Matt 27:39; cf. Lam 2:15–16).
A kingly, political declaration
Given this schema, it shouldn’t shock us that the Gospel of Matthew concludes with verses that strongly recall the ultimate verse of the Previous Testomony canon in sure orderings (2 Chron 36:23):
Thus says Cyrus king of Persia, “The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all of the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to construct him a home at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever is amongst you of all his folks, could the Lord his God be with him. Let him go up.”
By framing Jesus’s assertion (Matt 28:18–20) as he does, Matthew invitations us to check it to Cyrus’s declaration. There are probably similarities between the 2.
- Each are commissions that function the ultimate phrases of their respective books.
- Each Cyrus and Jesus start by asserting that God has given them common dominion.
- Each guarantee the commissioned events that the divine presence is with them.
- Recognizing the character of the church as a dwelling temple, we’d draw an additional parallel between Cyrus’s cost to construct the temple and Jesus’s cost to evangelise the gospel.
In Isaiah 45:1, the Lord refers back to the Persian emperor Cyrus as “his anointed” (actually his “Christ” or “Messiah”). The Lord’s institution of Cyrus’s imperial dominion prefigures the common rule of Jesus, the true King of kings and Lord of lords. The background within the cost of Cyrus ought to heighten our consciousness of political overtones to its parallel in Matthew 28.
Whereas Jesus’s instruction to “make disciples of all nations” mainly refers to creating disciples from all of the nations, this reference to nations presents the great realm of the church’s mission with a specific facet (see additionally Matt 24:9, 14; 25:31–32). In contrast to the longer ending of Mark, which describes preaching the gospel to an undifferentiated “complete creation” (Mark 16:15), Matthew casts the church’s mission in opposition to the backdrop the world’s peoples, rulers, and empires to which we had been launched in Genesis 10 and 11. Jesus will not be merely saving an indiscriminate group of people. He’s asserting his lordship over all peoples, forming his personal folks amongst every of them.
Abram & the unique fee
Our minds may also be drawn again to the preliminary name of Abram (Gen 12), which occurred within the shadow of the failed imperial undertaking of Babel (Gen 11). In its city-building facet, Babel was an try to assemble humanity collectively as a single empire. In its tower-building facet, Babel was an try to say godlike human energy, uniting heaven and earth below its sway. After God annoyed this undertaking, he referred to as Abram out of Ur of the Chaldeans, promising him that he would make his title nice (Gen 12:2)—one of many aspirations that the Babel-builders had for themselves (Gen 11:4)—and that every one nations can be blessed by means of him.
The decision of Abram in Genesis 12:1–3 is the “nice fee” with which the story of Israel begins:
Now the Lord mentioned to Abram, “Go out of your nation and your kindred and your father’s home to the land that I’ll present you. And I’ll make of you an ideal nation, and I’ll bless you and make your title nice, in order that you’ll be a blessing. I’ll bless those that bless you, and him who dishonors you I’ll curse, and in you all of the households of the earth shall be blessed.”
This fee calls Abram out from the nations, specifically from his fatherland and other people, however guarantees that, by means of this preliminary separation, God will someday make Abram a blessing to all peoples.
God’s promise to bless the nations
There’s an early event of this blessing later in Genesis, as, by means of Joseph’s sensible administration of Egypt, many peoples are preserved through the seven years of famine (Gen 41). Joseph, presumed to be lifeless by his brothers and father, is the truth is raised to the correct hand of Pharaoh and given authority over all the kingdom. When his eleven brothers visited, they bowed earlier than him (Gen 43:26, 28; cf. Matt 28:16–17). After Joseph disclosed his identification to them—as one alive from supposed dying—he gave them a fee (45:8–10):
God … has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his home and ruler over all of the land of Egypt. Hurry and go as much as my father and say to him, “Thus says your son Joseph, God has made me lord of all Egypt. Come right down to me; don’t tarry. You shall dwell within the land of Goshen, and also you shall be close to me, you and your youngsters and your youngsters’s youngsters, and your flocks, your herds, and all that you’ve got.”
Like Matthew’s, this fee begins with the reassurance of a common rule and the cost to bear excellent news to a different (“Joseph is lord!”). Nevertheless, it’s primarily a name to “come” relatively than to “go.” As Jacob and his household come to Joseph in Egypt, they’ll benefit from the presence of the beloved son that has seemingly raised from dying.
Analyze the Bible’s intertextuality with Logos instruments just like the New Testomony Use of the Previous Testomony.
Daniel’s “son of man”
Cyrus’s fee, with which the Previous Testomony closes, is, in sure respects, a reiteration of the calling of Abram. Now addressed not merely to 1 man and his family, however to Jews all through his empire, Cyrus’s fee summons Jews to go away their present locations of exile and return to their ancestral land. This happens in opposition to the backdrop of a newly failed Babel undertaking—Babylon.
All through its first half, the guide of Daniel alludes to the story of Babel.
- After the defeat of Judah, its leaders are delivered to the land of Shinar, the place the place Babel was constructed (Dan 1:2; cf. Gen 11:2).
- The chapters that observe document a sequence of annoyed towering buildings, that are additionally annoyed makes an attempt to unite the peoples below a single human energy. We encounter the good picture of Nebuchadnezzar’s first dream damaged by the stone reduce with out palms (Dan 2:31–35), the picture of gold resisted by the three associates of Daniel (Dan 3:1–18), and the towering tree of Nebuchadnezzar’s second dream (Dan 4:10–17).
- We additionally witness a disaster of interpretation: the 2 goals of Nebuchadnezzar (Dan 2:1–45; 4:4–27) and the writing on the wall (Dan 5:5–31), and annoyed language: the decree of Darius (Dan 6:6–9).
These allusions create the background for the prophetic imaginative and prescient of Daniel 7, the place the determine of “one like a son of man” is given the rule that’s stripped from the beasts. In verses 13 and 14, we learn,
I noticed within the evening visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there got here one like a son of man, and he got here to the Historical of Days and was offered earlier than him. And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that every one peoples, nations, and languages ought to serve him; his dominion is an eternal dominion, which shall not move away, and his kingdom one which shall not be destroyed.
It’s to this that Jesus alludes in his assertion earlier than the Sanhedrin in Matthew 26:64. Jesus has the common dominion foretold in Daniel’s imaginative and prescient. Or, as Richard Hays expresses it,
Daniel’s imaginative and prescient of Israel finally vindicated and ruling over the Gentile nations is to be enacted exactly by means of the disciples’ work of preaching and instructing. Their mission will instantiate the triumph of Israel’s God by extending his sovereignty over all of the nations on earth. Integral to Matthew’s imaginative and prescient, nevertheless, is his insistence that the sovereignty of God over the nations will grow to be effectual by means of nonviolent means. The nations are “conquered,” because it had been, by means of baptism into the title of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and thru their instruction to obey the teachings of a grasp who has insisted that the which means of the Torah is summed up in acts of affection and mercy.
The Psalter’s testimony
This dominion was additionally anticipated within the Psalms.
As an illustration, Psalm 2:7–9 states,
I’ll inform of the decree: The Lord mentioned to me, “You’re my Son; in the present day I’ve begotten you. Ask of me, and I’ll make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron and sprint them in items like a potter’s vessel.”
Likewise, Psalm 72 alludes to the calling of Abraham, presenting the common dominion of the inheritor of David (“Might all kings fall down earlier than him, all nations serve him,” v. 11) as the best way the common blessing promised in Genesis 12 can be realized (“Might folks be blessed in him, all nations name him blessed,” v. 17).
God’s presence for Joshua-like conquest
The Nice Fee additional remembers the fee that the Lord gave to Joshua after Moses’s dying.
- Joshua was charged to “be robust and really brave” (Josh 1:6), going over the Jordan into the land and taking possession of all of it.
- The Lord assures Joshua of his presence with him: “I can’t depart you or forsake you” (v. 5); “the Lord your God is with you wherever you go” (v. 9).
- Just like the disciples in Jesus’s Nice Fee, Joshua is informed to obey every thing that the Lord commanded him (vv. 7–9), instructions that he’ll train to the folks (vv. 10, 13).
The Nice Fee initiates a brand new form of conquest, because the apostles are given the church’s marching orders. Now not merely coming into a promised land, they exit right into a promised world.
A fee as outdated as creation itself
Behind all these commissions lies a extra elementary one, which we discover within the first chapter of Holy Scripture:
Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the ocean and over the birds of the heavens and over each dwelling factor that strikes on the earth. (Gen 1:28; cf. Ps 8:4–6)
Man is created and empowered to go into all of the world and produce it below righteous rule.
All subsequent commissions develop out of, or return us to, this primary one. The Nice Fee of Matthew fulfills it: Because the reign of Christ is established all through the world, the calling of humanity arrives at its true finish. Within the ascension and common lordship of Christ, humanity is exalted to its destined station (Heb 2:5–10), and, as this lordship is proclaimed all through the world by the church, Christ’s glory is displayed.
Rejecting the satanic different
Alongside the elemental human fee, a satanic different arises. It’s seen within the serpent’s misleading promise that godlike authority is to be loved by means of taking the forbidden fruit. On this similar vein, the summons of Babel (Gen 11:4) inverts God’s unique fee: As a substitute of filling the earth (“lest we be dispersed”), they be part of their forces to construct Babel. Moderately than humbly obey, they rebelliously pursue self-exaltation (“allow us to make a reputation for ourselves”).
So, likewise, these listening to the Nice Fee within the wider context of Matthew may also hear in Jesus’s phrases a recollection of the ultimate wilderness temptation of Matthew 4:8–10:
Once more, the satan took him to a really excessive mountain and confirmed him all of the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he mentioned to him, “All these I gives you, if you’ll fall down and worship me.” Then Jesus mentioned to him, “Be gone, Devil! For it’s written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him solely shall you serve.’”
On the finish of Matthew 28, we’re as soon as once more on a mountain (v. 16). Nevertheless, Jesus is now being worshiped (v. 17) and possesses the dominion the satan supplied him at the start of his ministry. Having resisted the satanic temptation of Eden and Babel, Jesus is raised to the correct hand of the Father because the devoted Son, realizing humanity’s correct future.
Conclusion
Nearly two thousand years after it was given, the Nice Fee continues to direct the labor of the church. Attuning our ears extra absolutely to its wealthy scriptural resonance, the true greatness of what it locations earlier than us offers clearer form and impetus to our calling.
Within the Nice Fee, we see the success of the promise made to Abraham in his name, of Daniel’s imaginative and prescient and the psalmists’ praises, the declaration of a brand new empire, and the outworking of a brand new conquest—divine grace stripping this world’s ruler of his former dominion. As Jesus’s disciples boldly proclaim his authority amidst all of the rulers and peoples of this world, forming communities obedient to his phrase, God’s functions for and guarantees to humanity might be fulfilled.
Urged sources on the Nice Fee
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