The Heart of the Man: A Guide to the Gospel of Matthew
Most animals behave in predictable ways. But humans are unpredictable on account of their hearts.
A man outwardly obedient and outwardly blessed may sin the next day because his heart is not satisfied in God. Yet the pure in heart, be he poor or afflicted, will finally come to see God.
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The Tetramorph
Over the millennia, the church has paired each of the four evangelists with one of the living creatures from Ezekiel 1 and Revelation 4. This is called the tetramorph:
- Matthew with the Man
- Mark with the Lion
- Luke with the Ox
- John with the Eagle
These pairings represent each evangelist’s depiction of Jesus. In this article, I explore the pairing of Matthew and the Man, taking inspiration from Richard Burridge’s book Four Gospels, One Jesus?
In Matthew, Jesus is depicted in his full humanity: with a genealogy of the sinful heart, identifying with this sin in his baptism, and experiencing the temptation of the heart. However, Matthew also depicts Jesus as a new Moses who teaches a righteousness of the heart, thereby coming into conflict with the Pharisees and fulfilling this righteousness in his own death and resurrection.
Genealogy of the Sinful Heart
Uniquely among the four gospels, Matthew begins with a genealogy of Jesus. It situates Jesus deeply within the human past, 42 generations back to Abraham.
The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham.
Matthew 1:1
The genealogy might be why the church ordered Matthew as the first gospel in the New Testament. The gospel of Mark was written first, but Matthew is a better bridge from the Old Testament to the New.
Forty-two generations of men means forty-two generations of sin, which is vividly depicted in the Old Testament. From Abraham’s cowardice and adultery to David’s adultery and murder, Jesus’s lineage may be royal, but it is not sinless.
Scholars also note the inclusion of four mothers in the list, who foreshadow Mary’s conception of Jesus. Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba—”the wife of Uriah”—each carry their own story of God’s grace working in spite of sexual irregularity or sin (Matthew 1:6).
In other words, Jesus is born into the human heart, the seat of wickedness:
The intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth.
Genesis 8:21
Baptism of the Heart
Yet Jesus does not sin. And this truth is the key to understanding Jesus’ baptism. Every gospel narrates the baptism of Jesus, but only Matthew shares the reaction of John the Baptist:
John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?”
Matthew 3:14
John was not wrong. As a sinner, he recognized his own need for baptism. Jesus was without sin and had no need for repentance. Yet Jesus persisted in going to baptism and responded to John the Baptist with his first words in the gospel:
Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.
Matthew 3:15
Jesus went to baptism not only to identify with the human heart but also to cleanse it by substitution. He whose heart was pure went into the muddy waters of our sin that in baptism we might receive his Spirit and be cleansed by his righteousness.
In other words, Jesus’ baptism answered the prayer of his father, David, when he confessed his sin and sought forgiveness from the Lord:
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.
Psalm 51:10
Temptation of the Heart
Though Jesus does not sin, in his humanity, he experiences the full force of demonic temptation. Mark briefly references Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, but Matthew expands the narrative to include three temptations of Satan (see Matthew 4:1-11).
Matthew also adds a key contextual detail of Jesus’ hunger:
And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.
Matthew 4:2
In other words, we see Jesus in his limited humanity, in his emptiness. Don’t we all know from experience how humans become especially vulnerable to temptation when hungry, tired, or sad?
Moreover, Jesus resists Satan in a distinctly human way. At other times, Jesus drives out demons through his divine power. Here, Jesus resists temptation with the revealed word of God, each time responding with a passage from Deuteronomy (see Matthew 4:4, 7, 10).
This is wonderfully characteristic of Matthew. Not only is Jesus bringing the Old Testament into the New, but he is doing so as a man, the Son of God become the Son of Man.
A New Moses
Matthew is a long text and not as tightly constructed as the gospel of Mark. This is especially because Matthew includes extended passages of Jesus’ teaching that do not appear in Mark at all.
The most famous of these discourses is the Sermon on the Mount, from Matthew 5-7. But the gospel actually contains five such sections of teaching, and scholars often connect these five discourses to the five books of the Pentateuch, connecting a typology between Moses and Jesus
- Matthew 5-7 (Sermon on the Mount)
- Matthew 10 (Mission)
- Matthew 13 (Parables of Inner Growth)
- Matthew 18 (Life in the Church)
- Matthew 23-25 (Woes on the Pharisees & Ending of the World)
Moreover, the connection is not merely structural but also present at the level of content. Jesus repeats or develops many of the concepts from the books of Moses, including an extended discussion of the most important commandments. Like Moses, Jesus is the new teacher of the human condition, revealing God’s way for human righteousness. And like Moses, Jesus teaches the love of God from the heart:
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.
Matthew 22:37-38
Other points of comparison to Moses include Jesus’ infant deliverance from a murderous king Herod (Matthew 2), his provision of bread for the hungry (Matthew 14), the Transfiguration on a mountain in which Moses makes a cameo appearance (Matthew 17), a new Passover and exodus (Matthew 26-27), and final commissioning from a mountain to a new land (Matthew 28).
Righteousness of the Heart
The central concept of Jesus’ teaching in Matthew is that true righteousness is a matter of the heart and not merely an external observance of the law. This is why the word ‘heart’ appears most frequently in the gospel of Matthew and also why many passages and parables emphasize what is internal and hidden.
Consider, for example, the sixth commandment against murder. Jesus heightens the moral bar, applying it not only to external actions but also to the inclination of the heart:
You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder,” and whoever murders shall be liable to judgment. But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment.
Matthew 5:21-22
Similarly, consider the seventh commandment against adultery. Jesus applies it to the heart:
You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
Matthew 5:27-28
Clearly, Jesus is modifying the law of Moses. But he is careful to explain that he is not abolishing the law. At his baptism, Jesus uses the language of fulfillment:
Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.
Matthew 5:17
Jesus fulfills the law by applying it to the whole human person, not only to the outer activity but also to the inner inclination of the heart.
Conflict with the Pharisees
The Pharisees were a specific sect of Jewish rabbis who taught external obedience to the law. Given Jesus’ emphasis on the heart, it is not surprising that he conflicted with them. Nor is it surprising that the gospel of Matthew offers more detail on this conflict than any other gospel.
To be clear, Jesus did not oppose external obedience to the law. Rather, he opposed the hypocrisy of external obedience combined with internal wickedness. In the last of his discourses, Jesus pronounced seven “woes” on this hypocrisy, to wit:
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.
Matthew 23:25
And again:
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness.
Matthew 23:27
Eventually, Jesus’ conflict with the Pharisees turned violent, from verbal trapping to physical capture and then to conviction and the cross.
Fulfilling Righteousness
Jesus’s death was a fulfillment of both prophecy and righteousness. When one of his followers took up a sword to try to prevent his arrest, Jesus told him to put it away:
Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then should the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so?
Matthew 26:23-24
By accepting the cross, Jesus fulfilled not only the prophecies of the Old Testament but also the way of righteousness that he himself had taught. The Pharisees did not practice what they preached. But Jesus walked the talk by bearing his cross, taking upon himself the sin of the world.
It was Jesus himself who fulfilled the Sermon on the Mount:
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Matthew 5:8-10
The Resurrected Heart
Though Jesus died, God vindicated his righteousness by raising him from the dead. He became a new man, a spiritual body with a resurrected heart.
He sent his disciples to all nations, both to baptize them and also:
teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.
Matthew 28:20
In other words, Jesus’ new way of righteousness is now available to all. It was available to Matthew, a tax collector who became a disciple, evangelist, and martyr (see Matthew 9:9-13).
And it is available to each of us, whatever our background. Our hearts need no longer incline toward evil. By the truth of the gospel and the power of the Holy Spirit, our hearts can be cleansed and born anew.
Thus, in the Collect for Purity, we pray:
Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid: cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love thee, and worthily magnify thy Holy Name, through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Image: Human Face of St. Matthew stained glass from Saint Bernard Catholic Church, Corning, OH. Photo by Nheyob, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
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