Matthew 28:20
“teaching them to observe all things that I commanded you. Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen.”
Where this sits
The last sentence of Matthew's Gospel, spoken on a hillside in Galilee to eleven men, of whom the previous verse notes that some doubted.
Reflection
Matthew ends his Gospel without an ascension, without a farewell scene, and without any of the tidying you would expect. The last thing on the page is a promise of presence, and then it simply stops.
That is a deliberate choice, and it answers something Matthew set up in his first chapter. There the child is called Immanuel, God with us. The book opens and closes on the same claim, and everything between the two is the demonstration.
Notice who is standing there. The verse before this one records that when they saw him, they worshipped, but some doubted. Matthew does not name them or separate them out. The commission and the promise are given to a group that includes people who were not sure, and nothing in the text suggests they were asked to resolve that first.
Always is, in the Greek, closer to all the days. Not a single unbroken condition but a series — this day, and the next, and the one after. It is a promise made day by day rather than in bulk, which is how it actually has to be received.
And to the end of the age sets a term. Not forever in the abstract. Until the thing is finished — which means the promise has a job to do and will not be withdrawn before the job is done.
- Theme:
- Presence
- Book:
- Matthew