Notice which themes are present in Matthew’s gospel as well as what’s missing.
The crucifixion is Jesus’ coronation ceremony
Jesus is king. It says so on the cross itself (27:37). His passion and death are his coronation. Kingship is all over the crucifixion narrative, from the trial before Pilate to the mocking of the guards. They gave him a purple robe and a crown of thorns and a reed for a scepter. They addressed him as they would a king and said, “Hail, king of the Jews.” What his murderers meant as cruel mockery served as Jesus’ coronation. Now, risen and ascended to the throne of God (like the Son of Man in Daniel 7:13), he is installed at “the right hand of power” (26:64) where he has he received “all authority in heaven and on earth” (28:17).
Jesus is an innocent victim of injustice
Jesus is an innocent victim of evil. His betrayer says so (27:4). Pilate’s wife also proclaimed his innocence (27:19) and Pilate himself asked him, “What evil has he done?” (27:23). Pilate killed him anyway. The evil powers of this world have been trying to kill Jesus from his infancy (2:16). On the cross, Jesus quotes Psalm 22, the prayer of an innocent victim of injustice. The resurrection, then, vindicates Jesus.
Jesus stands in solidarity with al victims of injustice. He follows in a long line of prophets and faithful prophets and believers who suffered unjust deaths at the hand of Israel’s leaders (23:29-39).
Resurrection begins at the cross
Matthew alone reports that dead saints came to life at the moment Jesus died (27:52), making the crucifixion itself the immediate cause of a resurrection occurrence. The crucifixion and resurrection are essentially one event.
God’s destruction of evil has begun
Darkness came over the land (27:45). The earth shook and the rocks were split (27:51), signs accompanying pronouncements of God’s judgment in the Old Testament.
The temple leadership has been judged
The curtain of the temple was split from top to bottom. It was through the inner curtain of the temple that the High Priest passed on Yom Kippur to make atonement for Israel’s sins. Matthew records Jesus’ prophetic cleansing of the temple (21:12-13) and his prediction of the temple’s destruction (24:2). In Matthew, the temple was the setting for Jesus’ prophetic judgement on Israel’s leadership (21:23, 24:1). Matthew blames Jesus’ death on High Priesthood (26:3-5) and Judah’s coming destruction on the temple leadership (21:43-45). Judas conspired with the High Priest to betray Jesus for thirty pieces of silver (26:14-15) but later threw his blood money back into the temple (27:5).
Was the splitting of the curtain temple just a sign of God’s judgment on the temple leadership or was it something larger, pointing to a new way of being the people of God in Jesus?
A new covenant has been inaugurated
At the Last Supper, Jesus announces that the cup of wine is “the blood of my blood of the covenant, poured out for many, into the forgiveness of sins” (26:28) Jesus’ words point back to Exodus 24 and the inauguration of God’s covenant with Israel at Sinai. Moses took the blood of the sacrificial oxen and sprinkled some on the makeshift altar, and the rest he sprinkled on the people. “Here is the blood of the covenant the the Lord made with you in accordance with all these words” (Exodus 24:8). Jesus’ death, then, inaugurates a new covenant with God’s people, the one prophesied by Jeremiah.
The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the LORD. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another or say to each other, “Know the LORD,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD, for I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more. (Jeremiah 31:31-34)
Life for God’s people under the New Covenant is characterized not only by forgiveness, but God’s law being written on the heart. Matthew doesn’t have much to say about how God’s people, who due to their own perversity have not been keeping God’s law properly up to this point, will now be able to keep Jesus’ even more demanding interpretation of the law. The New Covenant is Matthew’s answer. That’s how Jesus will save his people from their sins (1:21).
Mitchell Lewis 