JESUS WITH OTHERS IN THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW

It is said that a person is known by the company he keeps. If so, it is of interest to know whom Jesus is associated with, as revealed in the Gospel of Matthew. For simplicity sake, I will limit this brief study to just those passages in which the preposition meta (“with”) is present. And this includes 21 references.

    1:18 “When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph...she was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit.”

    1:23 “And they shall name him Emmanuel, which means, 'God is with us.'”

    2:11 “...going into the house they [the wise men] saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him.”

These first three references actually cover the Holy Trinity with their respective mentions of the Holy Spirit, Christ, and God – the last one since only God himself is worthy of worship.

    9:11 “...the Pharisees...said to his disciples, 'Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?'” This passage is interesting since it shows the common tendency of God-fearing people to consider themselves in an entirely different category from all the “sinners” around them. And generally that definition is applied to those who are guilty of those sins which hold no particular attraction for us personally. But, as C.S. Lewis reminds us, there are all sorts of sin, some which make us closer to the beasts (sins of passion and lust) and others which draw us closer to the demons (“spiritual” sins of self-righteousness and judgmental attitude).

    9:15 “And Jesus said to them, 'Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them?” Here he is really announcing that his time on earth will be very limited.

    16:27 “For the Son of man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay every man for what he has done.” In this announcement of the Second Coming, Jesus pictures himself as the Judge.

    17:3 “And behold, there appeared to them Moses and Elijah talking with him.” In this theophany, the glorified Christ is shown to be the fulfillment of both the Law and the Prophets.

    17:17 “And Jesus answered, 'O faithless and perverse generation, how long am I to be with you?” As Hendricksen says, “The fact that he directed his complaint to the 'generation' shows that he cannot have been thinking only of the nine disciples who had failed in this emergency.” However, these disciples were certainly the prime targets of his critical comments.

    24:30 “...they will see the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.” This is seemingly the only “with” reference in Matthew's Gospel in which it is something rather than someone with whom Jesus is associated.

However, as Betz points out, “God is the Mighty One (Lk. 1:48); and, according to Mk. 14:62, Jesus himself used the reverential circumlocution of 'the power' for the name of God. In a similar manner, Aalen says that the Septuagint translates the Hebrew kabod ('glory, honor') with the Greek word doxa “and gives it essentially the same meaning. When it is used of God, it does not mean God in his essential nature, but the luminous manifestation of his person, his glorious revelation of himself.”

    24:31 “and he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds...” This dubious passage can perhaps be eliminated from this study for two reasons: (1) a trumpet is definitely an inanimate object and (2) it is not really clear if the one with the trumpet is Christ, God the Father, or an angel (see I Corinthians 15:52 and I Thessalonians 4:16 for the last possibility).

    26:11 “For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me.” This sounds like a somewhat unfeeling comment, but as Nixon says, “The reaction of the disciples, 'Why this waste?', is understandable enough. Yet devotion to the person of Jesus has often in the long run produced the greatest benefit for the poor.”

    26:18 “My time is at hand; I will keep the Passover at your house with my disciples.”

    26:20 “When it was evening, he sat at table with the twelve disciples.”

    26:29 “I tell you I shall not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom.”

These three references concern Jesus and the Twelve at the Last Supper.

    26:36 “Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane.”

    26:38 “...remain here and watch with me.”

    26:40 “So you could not watch with me one hour?”

    26:51 “And behold, one of those who were with Jesus stretched out his hand and drew his sword, and struck the slave of the high priest, and cut off his ear.”

    26:69 “And a maid came up to him [Peter] and said, 'You also were with Jesus the Galilean.”

    26:71 “...another maid saw him, and she said to the bystanders, 'This man was with Jesus of Nazareth.'”

The disciples repay Jesus' great desire to be with them in his last hours on earth with acts of betrayal, denial, inattention, violence, and abandonment.

    28:20 “...lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.”

Despite their above treatment of Jesus, he reassures them at the end that he will always be with them. So the book closes as it began in Matthew 1:23 with the first mention of Jesus as “God with us.”

One final observation is in order. In looking at these scattered references to Jesus being with someone in the order in which they appear, a clear pattern emerges:

                                        Figure 1: Jesus and meta in Matthew's Gospel

A. Christ's deity revealed (1:18,23; 2:11)

        B. Jesus eats with sinners (9:11)

                C. Jesus hints at his coming absence from his followers (9:15)

                        D. The Second Coming (16:27)

A'. Christ's deity revealed (17:3)

------------------------------------------------

E. “How long must I be with you?” (17:17)

                        D'. The Second Coming (24:30-31)

                C'. Jesus hints at his coming absence from his followers (26:11)

        B'. Jesus eats with his disciples who repeatedly fail (9x in 26:18-71)

E'. “I am with you always” (28:20)

There are exactly 7 cases of Jesus being “with” someone in the first half of this structure and 14 in the second half (if one includes the dubious reference in 24:31. This piece of data would be in keeping with Matthew's penchant for including symbolically significant number such as 7 and 12, and their multiples in his Gospel account. Even more significant, however, is the lessons we can learn from comparing the parallel passages in Figure 1 above:

A and A': Combining these two passages, we learn two important things regarding Christ's divinity: (1) He is an integral part of the Holy Godhead and (1) He is the fulfillment of both the OT law and all the prophets.

B and B': These two passages show Jesus' willingness, and even desire, to have table fellowship with sinners. And these included the “moral” and the “immoral” members of society, all of whom needed his help.

C and C': Both teach that Jesus was well aware of his imminent suffering and death and that he attempted to warn his followers ahead of time so that they would not be caught off-guard when the event occurred.

D and D': I will not attempt to delve into all the various theories regarding exactly which event or events are being referred to in these passages. However, it is fairly obvious that these are both eschatological happenings.

E and E': I find this the most amazing pair of passages in that even after expressing his frustration and anger at those around him, especially his chosen Apostles, after Christ has risen, he promises that he will never leave them alone.