Conflict and Understanding in Matthew

Gary D. Collier

Index  |  1  |  2  |  3  |  4 

Originally published in Christian Matters, September 2003
for the Online Bible Class

The present article looks at “Conflict” and “Understanding” in the Gospel of Matthew.  This series on Matthew is part of a religious educational project which includes a Sunday morning radio program on WREB  (FM 94.3 from 8:40 to 9:00 A.M.) and two websites. 

The Kingdom of Heaven is a pervasive theme in the Gospel of Matthew that brings order to other themes and concepts.  The arrival of the Kingdom of Heaven causes the old order of the Pharisees (chap. 23-25) to give way to the new order of Jesus (5-7), and requires all disciples to accept the Master’s mission (10) and to be a self-governing body in pursuit of that mission (18).  But it is precisely the message about the Kingdom of Heaven that is so baffling to those who heard it.  It flew in the face of much popular teaching and seemed to many who heard it to be either unintelligible or heretical.  It was the cause of conflict, and that conflict made it hard to understand. 

One of the explicit agendas of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew is to train disciples for the Kingdom of Heaven.  And that training is mediated through conflict.  Throughout this Gospel, Jesus has many conflicts with the Pharisees over how to interpret Scripture.  But his disciples will know how to handle Scripture only when they understand the difference between what he is teaching and what the Pharisees teach.  That is, a disciple who understands about the Kingdom of Heaven will not read Scripture like the Pharisees, but like Jesus.

“Conflict” and “understanding” are two important concepts in Matthew.  Unlike the Gospels of Mark, Luke, and John, the Gospel of Matthew presents Jesus as constantly wrestling on two fronts:  On the one hand, he wrestles with the religious leaders (namely, the Pharisees) over how the law is to be applied to people.  And on the other hand, he wrestles with his own disciples that they might “understand” his new teaching. 

Let’s look at both of these ideas. 

Conflict

Even though the Gospel of Mark deals with Jesus in conflict, it does so in a very different way from Matthew and for very different purposes.  Conflict is certainly a guiding emphasis in Mark, though no single group is the target of ridicule in that Gospel.  Challengers may be demons, Roman or Jewish authorities, Jesus’ own family, or even his own disciples.

By contrast, in Matthew, the conflict is focused on the Pharisees;  they are, in fact, targets for Jesus.  He brings against them a searing charge of hypocrisy.  Throughout Matthew, the heart, the inner being, and righteousness are set in stark contrast to the Pharisees’ showiness, hypocrisy, and externalism.  Although Mark emphasizes conflict, Matthew more specifically and thematically focuses on conflict with the Pharisees. 

Look at just a few examples. 

In Mt. 5:20, Jesus says pointedly – in the very first speech – “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you’ll never enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.” 

In 12:1-8, Jesus blasts the Pharisees for not knowing how to read Scripture, and for not knowing what the phrase means, “I desire mercy and not sacrifice.” 

In 15:1-11, Jesus accuses the Pharisees of not knowing the difference between the law of God and their own traditions;  and then he quotes Isaiah the prophet as saying about them, that “they honor God with their lips, but their heart is far removed.” 

In chapter 16 he warns his disciples two different times to be on the look-out for the insidious teaching of the Pharisees because it has a way of growing and getting out of hand. 

And in chapter 23 – the grand-daddy of all texts anywhere about the Pharisees – Jesus blasts them as scam artists, liars, and murderers.  That’s right, murderers.  In a scathing rebuke in 23:31-36, Jesus holds them responsible for the death of prophets:  “that upon you may come, all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of innocent Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar.” 

And what follows in the closing chapters is a searing charge that the Pharisees were themselves responsible for the arrest, trial, and execution of Jesus.

Matthew does not ever say one positive thing about a Pharisee.  This Gospel has no use for them and considers them – as a group – to be little more than a murderous gang of thugs who pervert the Scriptures of God to their own benefit.

This is just a taste of all the conflict in Matthew, but it is enough to show that conflict with the Pharisees is an important medium for Jesus’ training of his disciples.

[By the way, this negative emphasis against the Pharisees doesn’t mean that Matthew is anti-Semitic, nor should one assume that Matthew is providing a complete or balanced view of the Pharisees.  For much more on this, please go to our website and listen to the August 17 radio broadcast.]

Understanding

If “conflict” is a dominant and recurring theme in Matthew, it is balanced by the theme, “to understand.”  And as before, this is different in Matthew and Mark.  In Mark, the disciples of Jesus are presented as being always in the dark.  Jesus would ask, “do you not yet understand?”  And that would be the end of it.  In Mark, they never understand.

But in Matthew, Jesus is keenly interested in his disciples’ understanding.  They understood, for example, in 17:13, that the Elijah to come was John the Baptist;  and in 16:12, that “the leaven of the Pharisees,” which Jesus spoke of, referred to the “teaching of the Pharisees.”  (Mark tells this same story, but stops with Jesus’ question, “Do you still not understand?”)  Matthew takes the step and emphasizes that “understanding” is an important mark of being a disciple.

And that brings us full circle to the Kingdom of Heaven – in Matthew 13.  The emphasis on “understanding” becomes especially important in this chapter because of the conflicts.  For in this chapter, Jesus repeats the word, “understanding,” six times while teaching parables on the Kingdom of Heaven.  The second and third of these are in a quotation from Isa. 6:9, which lays the foundation for the parables.  Then, while explaining the parable of the sower, Jesus uses the word twice in order to contrast two types of hearers.  The first is negative in 13:19:

“Everyone who hears the word of the Kingdom and does not understand, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown.  This is what was sown along the path. “

But in contrast to this is the positive use only a few verses later in 13:23:

“That which was sown upon the good ground, this is the one who hears the word and understands.  Indeed! He becomes exceedingly productive.”

Now this emphasis upon understanding the “word of the Kingdom” comes to its climax at the very end of the chapter, in verses 51-52 where Jesus asks his disciples:

“Have you understood all of these things?” 

“Yes, we have,” they say.

And so he says, “Well then, every scribe who has been schooled for the Kingdom of Heaven is like a household manager who brings out of the storeroom treasures new and old.”

These verses (51-52) occur only in Matthew and form the last of the eight Kingdom parables. 

Now it becomes clear.  Followers of Jesus who “understand” the message of the Kingdom are the new scribes:  unlike the Pharisees, they now know how to evaluate what is old – from Scripture and tradition –with what is new – what Jesus has to say.  Those who understand the message of the Kingdom are those who have broken free from the Pharisaic pattern of reading and applying Scripture.  They now have a totally new understanding. 

The light has gone on for them.

Our Next Step

Clearly, we can see the importance of the theme, “Kingdom of Heaven” in Matthew’s Gospel.  We’ll be spending more time with that theme on our radio program and ask you to tune it to hear more.  But for now, if we understand Jesus’ proclamation of the Kingdom, then how we handle Scripture will begin to work itself out.  One thing for sure,  if we understand what Jesus is truly talking about, we will never read Scripture as the Pharisees are said to have read it.  That way of reading, as presented in Matthew, was bent on conflict.  Rather, Scripture will be read according to the new understanding that was brought and taught by Jesus.  According to Matthew, he brought a new way of looking at what God wants. 

Our first step in learning how to read and apply Scripture is not to throw off our past . . . or to become slaves of it.  Instead, as the new scribes – trained for the Kingdom of Heaven – we need to learn how to evaluate what is old and what is new.  And that can’t happen until we walk with Jesus and are “schooled” by him for the Kingdom of Heaven. 

These are all the articles to date.  But the series is not finished.

Index  |  1  |  2  |  3  |  4