Matthew
Author: Matthew, also called Levi Audience: Greek- speaking Jewish Christians Date: Between AD 50 and 70
Theme: Matthew presents Jesus as the Jewish Messiah sent by God to bring salvation to Israel and the nations in fulfillment of OT Scriptures.
PERSPECTIVE
It is probably safe to say that the most- often read part of the Gospel of Matthew in our day is the Sermon on the Mount( chs. 5 – 7). It is easy to imagine why. We live in a moralistic, legalistic, individualistic age. The Sermon on the Mount can be read as a guidebook for ethical living, to be followed regardless of what you think of God, the Jewish community, or the Christian church. Unfortunately, this is the wrong way to read the Sermon on the Mount and the Gospel of Matthew as a whole.
Why? Because reading it this way assumes that the way we choose to behave determines who we are and determines our identity. And that’ s not true at all. What the Gospel of Matthew teaches us in general and what the Sermon on the Mount teaches us in particular is that who we are( or more precisely, whose we are, i. e., whom we choose to follow or identify with) determines how we behave. If we choose to follow Jesus as Messiah, Matthew tells us, then the Sermon on the Mount is a description of how we will behave.
Three important things happen, all of them bad, when we read the Sermon on the Mount incorrectly.
First, we overestimate our goodness. It is tempting to think of our characters as something we carefully craft, using a brick of honesty here, a two- by- four of generosity there, built on a cement foundation of discipline and energy. In such a scenario we choose the goal and we choose the building methods and materials we need to achieve the goal. And it is up to us to make the grade. Matthew says we are not that good( e. g., Mt 5:27 – 28; 12:34, 36; 15:11, 19).
Second, we underestimate our capacity for evil. The reason we cannot let our innate, God- created goodness dominate our personalities
UNCORRECTED PROOF
Reading Matthew
This Gospel begins with a genealogy of Jesus and the story of his birth. Starting with chapter 3, it can be divided into five main sections, each telling first what Jesus did and then what Jesus said; each section closes the same way( see 7:28; 11:1; 13:53: 19:1; 26:1). The last three chapters tell the story of the death and resurrection of Jesus.
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