He has risen, just as he said: the empty tomb and the great commission

Matthew is the first book of the New Testament. It does not name its author, but the title 'According to Matthew' is attached to it in the earliest manuscripts. Eusebius reports that Papias (early second century) said Matthew collected the sayings of Jesus in the Hebrew manner of speech. Scholars disagree about what Papias meant. Most hold that Mark was written first and that Matthew used Mark along with other material, some of it shared with Luke (the 'two-source' answer to the synoptic problem, the puzzle of why Matthew, Mark and Luke are so alike). A minority argue that Matthew came first, as Augustine believed. This class does not depend on that debate.

The date is also disputed. Many place the Gospel in the 80s AD, after Rome destroyed Jerusalem in AD 70. Others favour the 60s, and some conservative scholars argue for a date before the destruction. The first readers were almost certainly Jewish Christians, perhaps in Syria, though the book does not say. The evidence is the repeated statement that events happened to fulfill what a prophet had spoken, the genealogy that opens with Abraham and David, and five long discourses that echo the five books of Moses. Matthew's purpose is to show that Jesus is the Messiah, son of David and Son of God, and the teacher whose commands the church must keep. The book opens with Gentile wise men worshiping the child and closes with a commission to all nations.

Chapter 28 follows the burial in Matthew 27. The chief priests and Pharisees had asked Pilate for a guard because they remembered that Jesus said he would rise after three days, and the stone was sealed (27:57-66). Jesus had made that prediction several times (12:40; 16:21; 17:22-23; 20:18-19).

All four Gospels agree that the tomb was found empty at dawn on the first day of the week, that women came first, and that Jesus then appeared alive. They differ in the number of women and angels, in where the appearances happen, and in what is told at all. Mark's earliest ending stops at 16:8 with the women afraid. Luke sets the appearances in and near Jerusalem. John has both Jerusalem and Galilee. Matthew gives two appearances, one to the women and one to the eleven on a Galilean mountain, and adds the guard story, which no other Gospel has.

Matthew is an ancient biography of Jesus written in a Jewish way. It is narrative with a theological point, and it expects to be read from start to finish. Chapter 28 is its last, so the first question is how the ending completes what the book began. Two links are clear. The name Immanuel, 'God with us' (1:23), returns in 'I am with you always' (28:20). And the commands the disciples are to teach (28:20) are the teaching of the earlier chapters, above all the five discourses beginning with the Sermon on the Mount.

The chapter moves in three stages: the empty tomb (verses 1-10), the rival explanation (11-15) and the commission (16-20). The guard story sits in the middle on purpose. Matthew sets the false report beside the true one and lets the reader weigh them.

Ancient historians selected and compressed, and Matthew does not claim to tell everything. He omits Peter at the tomb, Emmaus and Thomas. Many ways of harmonising the Gospel accounts have been proposed since the early church, and none is needed to read Matthew's own. Critical scholars often judge the guard story to be Matthew's defence against a charge of his day, and some doubt that the threefold wording of verse 19 goes back to Jesus. Others answer that the charge itself assumes an empty tomb. The class follows Matthew's account as written and notes where scholars differ.

Verses 1–4

The women come 'after the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week'. Mary Magdalene and 'the other Mary' watched the burial (27:61). Matthew does not describe the resurrection itself. He shows its result. An earthquake strikes, as at Jesus' death (27:51), and an angel rolls back the stone and sits on it. The stone is moved not to let Jesus out but to let the witnesses see in. The soldiers, posted to prevent anything happening, 'became like dead men'. The irony is plain: the guards look dead and the dead man is alive.

Verses 5–7

The angel speaks to the women, not the guards: 'Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified.' The word 'crucified' is a perfect participle, a past act with a standing result. The risen one is still the one who was crucified. 'He has risen, just as He said!' The verb is passive, 'he was raised', which in the New Testament usually means that God the Father raised him. The women are invited to 'come, see the place where He lay', an appeal to evidence, and then sent to tell the disciples. The first witnesses are the first messengers. Later Christian tradition called Mary Magdalene the apostle to the apostles.

Verses 8–10

The women leave 'in fear and great joy'. Jesus meets them with the ordinary Greek greeting chairete. They 'grasped His feet, and worshiped Him'. The grasping shows a real body, and the word for worship (proskuneo) is the one used of the magi in 2:11 and of the disciples in the boat in 14:33. Jesus repeats 'Do not be afraid' and says, 'Go and tell My brothers.' The disciples had fled (26:56). He still calls them brothers.

Verses 11–15

Some of the guards report to the chief priests. The leaders meet with the elders and pay the soldiers 'a large sum of money' to say the disciples stole the body while the soldiers slept. The story has its own difficulty: sleeping witnesses cannot say who took it. Sleeping on duty was serious for a Roman soldier, which is why the leaders promise to satisfy the governor. Matthew adds that the account has circulated 'to this very day', which shows the Gospel was written some time later. Justin Martyr, in the mid-second century, reports that the charge of theft was still made. The rival account agrees on one point: the tomb was empty.

Verses 16–17

The eleven go to the mountain Jesus had designated. The number is a reminder that Judas is gone. Mountains are places of revelation in Matthew (4:8; 5:1; 17:1). 'They worshiped Him, but some doubted.' The word for doubt (distazo) means to waver, as Peter did on the water (14:31). Matthew does not hide the uncertainty. He places it in the scene where the commission is given.

Verse 18

'All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me.' 'Has been given' is a divine passive: the Father gave it. The wording resembles Daniel 7:14, where the Son of Man is given dominion over all peoples. It also reverses the temptation of 4:8-9, where the devil offered the kingdoms of the world for an act of worship. Jesus receives the whole through obedience, by way of the cross.

Verses 19–20

In Greek there is one command, 'make disciples' (matheteuo), and three actions explain it: going, baptizing and teaching. 'All nations' means all peoples. Scholars debate whether Israel is included. Since 10:5-6 sent the Twelve first to Israel, and 24:14 and 25:32 speak of all the nations, most take the phrase to include everyone. Baptism is 'in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit'. The word 'name' is singular, with three persons joined under it. Teaching aims at obedience: 'to obey all that I have commanded you.' The promise at the end carries no condition. The Greek for 'always' is literally 'all the days'.

The resurrection is the centre of the Christian message. The New Testament teaches that it vindicated Jesus' claims, declared him Son of God with power (Romans 1:4), is the reason his death saves (Romans 4:25), and is the first of the harvest of the dead (1 Corinthians 15:20). Paul says Christ rose on the third day 'according to the Scriptures' (1 Corinthians 15:4). Matthew 28 tells the same message as the close of the first Gospel in the canon.

The chapter also teaches the Trinity in outline. The disciples are baptized into the one name of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Worship given to Jesus, divine authority given to him, and the promise of an unlimited presence say more than that he was a great teacher. Philippians 2:9-11 and John 20:28 build on this.

The commission rests on the long promise to the nations. God told Abraham that all the families of the earth would be blessed through him (Genesis 12:3), Isaiah said the Servant would be a light to the nations (Isaiah 49:6), and Psalm 2:8 promises the nations as the Son's inheritance. Matthew 28:19 sends that promise out, and Acts shows it carried out. The promise of presence has roots in God's words to Moses (Exodus 3:12) and Joshua (Joshua 1:5). In Matthew the same God speaks as the risen Jesus.

Matthew 28 is fulfillment in the plain sense. The angel says Jesus has risen 'just as He said', and he had foretold it: as Jonah was three days in the great fish, so the Son of Man would be in the earth (12:40), and he would be killed and raised on the third day (16:21; 17:22-23; 20:18-19). The New Testament also says the resurrection fulfilled the Scriptures: Acts 2:27 and 13:35 apply Psalm 16:10 to it. Hosea 6:2, which speaks of being raised up on the third day, is a possible echo only; the New Testament does not quote it.

The claim to 'all authority in heaven and on earth' is most likely an echo of Daniel 7:13-14, where one like a son of man comes before the Ancient of Days and receives an everlasting dominion over all peoples. Jesus used the title Son of Man throughout the Gospel. Here the Son of Man receives the kingdom, and the commission to all nations belongs to the same picture.

The last verse closes a frame. The Gospel opened with the promise that the child would be called Immanuel, 'God with us' (1:23, from Isaiah 7:14). It ends with 'I am with you always'. In between Jesus said that where two or three gather in his name, he is among them (18:20). The book is bounded by one claim: in Jesus the God of Israel is present with his people. That is fulfillment, not a mere echo.