Matthew’s gospel concludes with the Great Commission of Jesus Christ. It is not new that the command of Jesus in the Great Commission is the hermeneutical key to interpret Matthew’s gospel. Jesus called the disciples in Galilee, and he gave them the Great Commission in Galilee. From Galilee to Galilee, how did Jesus call and make disciples in Matthew’s narrative? Matthew’s Gospel became the discipleship blueprint for Matthew’s community in the first century.
In discipleship, there is no fairy-tale or magic. The ups and downs of discipleship path are real and inevitable. We grow along the way with the guidance and power of the Spirit. I find it interesting to realize that some disciples still doubted when they saw the resurrected Jesus on the mountain in Galilee. “Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted.” (Matt. 28:16-17, ESV) At the end of the gospel, after Jesus had done and proved everything he said through the cross and resurrection, they worshipped. However, some doubted.
In commenting on the Great Commission, David J. Bosch notes:
Clearly these references to the weakness of the disciples have an important meaning for Matthew’s readers. Being a disciple of Jesus does not signify that one has, as it were, arrived…The weaknesses of the disciples in Matthew’s gospel do not, however, have a dark side only. In Matthew 28:17 the disciples’ doubt is strangely juxtaposed to their worship: “They (all!) worshiped him; but some doubted”…[Matthew] wishes him community to know that mission never takes place in self-confidence but in the knowledge of our own weakness, at a point of crisis where danger and opportunity come together. Matthew’s Christians like the first disciples, stand in the dialectical tension between worship and doubt, between faith and fear.[1]
There is always a dialectical tension between trusting and following. Matthew’s gospel recognizes it in the path of discipleship. It seems to imply that there is a place for disciples to worship and doubt God at the same time even though Matthew does not promote it as a norm for the life of discipleship (see Matt. 8:23-27). We worship with doubt; we doubt in worship. How true it is in real life.
I wish I can say that we worship wholeheartedly and trust in His authority all the time. I wish I can teach something like that. But I am glad that Matthew put the weaknesses of the disciples toward the end. And Jesus did not rebuke them. Rather, Jesus gave them a mission and a promise: I will continue to be with you at the end of age as you continue to make disciples of all nations in the name of the triune God. The life of discipleship is grounded in the promise of God in Christ as we continue to fulfill His mission commissioned to us. In the midst of fulfilling this great task, we grapple with the dialectical tension with the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.
[1] David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1991), p. 76.
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