Commentary on Matthew 23:1-12

Jesus teaches the crowds and his disciples not only by means of beatitudes that illumine the heart of the First Gospel’s theology (Matthew 5:1–12), but by woes that strike at the core of self-aggrandizing religiosity (23:13–36). Believers are to bear the fruits of repentance (3:8). Such fruits include compassionate deeds that constitute resistance to the violent ways of empire and commitment to holy practices that demonstrate faithfulness to the values of the kingdom of heaven. Here, Jesus honors the “seat of Moses,” the venerable position from which the scribes and Pharisees offer Torah teaching about lifeways that honor God, securing the ethos and cultural boundaries of the godly community.

Because Jesus holds the rabbinic vocation in such high esteem, he launches caustic invective against those dishonorable leaders who have failed to live up to their worthy juridical and pedagogical obligations. It would be a disastrous mistake to frame this conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees as setting the Christian emphasis on grace over against the Jewish focus on halakhic observance, a distorted polarity that would have been all but incomprehensible to Matthew and his Jewish Christian community. Rather, here and elsewhere in the First Gospel, Jesus focuses the attention of his hearers on the fidelity and honor due to their Father in heaven.

The “burdens” of Torah learning are not onerous for adherents of Judaism, who celebrate the perfection, clarity, and sweetness of Torah stipulations, essential for the shaping of communal life in the sight of God (Psalm 19:7–10). Treasuring God’s word in meditation and daily practices of halakhic obedience can strengthen the soul, giving hope to all who trust in the Holy One (Psalm 119:11, 28, 43, 81, and throughout). Torah-grounded fidelity is a powerful source of spiritual delight and ethical formation.

Jesus has come not to abolish but to fulfill what the Torah and the Prophets envision for God’s people. As Matthias Konradt observes, “Jesus fulfills the Torah and the Prophets by displaying the ‘fullness’ of what is commanded and realizing it in his life.”¹ The preeminence of the Torah is unassailable; it was, and remains, a precious gift of the One who made the cosmos, the temporal arc of history, and every creature that has ever drawn breath. Jesus insists, “Whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:17–19).

But the officiousness with which religious leaders tout their expertise is a different matter. Ulrich Luz remarks in rabbinic tradition “a great deal of sensitivity to the dangers” described in 23:5–6, evident in the “widespread warning not to make a ‘crown’ of the Torah and to misuse it to enhance one’s own reputation.”² On that score, arrogant leaders in many spiritual traditions, including Christianity, would feel the sting of Jesus’s polemic.

Jesus’s emancipatory pedagogy lifts up a fresh way to understand the authority of wisdom. All who seek the truth are taught by one instructor, the Messiah. Honorifics and other markers of status favored in educational contexts from antiquity to the present are meaningless, because teachers and learners alike are siblings, peers in the quest for understanding. Brendan Byrne muses, “Scarcely any injunction of the Lord has been so ignored as this ruling out of titles and, by extension, accoutrements of dress and ceremonial.”³

Matthew is clear: Rather than jockeying for position and privilege in social hierarchies, the faithful should seek a deeper understanding of God’s purposes from the Savior in whose radiant light “many who are first will be last, and the last will be first” (19:30; 20:16). The power of Christian love is expressed not in domination or prestige but in serving others, for “the greatest among you will be your servant” (diakonos, 23:11; see also 20:26).

“Come to me,” Jesus sings, “all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me. … For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (11:28–30). As has been recognized at least since the time of Thomas Aquinas, echoes of the invitation of divine Wisdom (Sirach 51:26, 29) are audible in those words of Jesus.⁴ The “yoke” of the Messiah’s teaching lifts the burden of sin from those who repent and walk humbly with God (Micah 6:8).

The practice of humility as a defining feature of imitatio Christi will yield spiritual transformation beyond anything the believer might imagine, for, as several New Testament texts teach, those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted (Matthew 18:4; 23:12; James 4:10; 1 Peter 5:6).

With Matthew 23, preachers have a golden opportunity to portray discipleship as offering the joy of lifelong learning at the feet of our Savior. In Scripture study, contemplative prayer, reception of the Eucharist, ministry with those in conditions of precarity (Matthew 25:34–40), and other spiritual practices, believers can strive to know Christ and his boundless love more deeply.

The theme of the Messiah as instructor could ground a preaching series, a Bible study, a retreat, or a program of community service. What does Jesus teach through the sacraments and other elements of Christian liturgical life? What lessons do we learn from the numerous healing stories in Matthew, Jesus’s healing power being central to the Christology of the First Gospel? How might the curricula presented in Jesus’s responses to temptations in the wilderness (4:1–11) and in the Beatitudes (5:1–12) train believers for the kingdom of heaven? What does our Messiah teach in the parables, those gems of paradox through which we ponder the “secrets of the kingdom of heaven” (13:11) and learn to proclaim that the kingdom of heaven has come near (3:2; 4:17; 10:7)? For those who study the wisdom of Christ, rich learning awaits.

Notes

1. Matthias Konradt, Christology, Torah, and Ethics in the Gospel of Matthew, trans. Wayne Coppins (Baylor University Press, 2022), 78.
2. Ulrich Luz, Matthew 21–28, trans. James E. Crouch, Hermeneia (Augsburg Fortress, 2005), 105. Walter T. Wilson urges that this material be interpreted in “light of the conventions of ancient polemic, in which inflated allegations of hypocrisy and caricatures of bad faith are commonplace”; Wilson, The Gospel of Matthew, Vol. 2: Matthew 14–28, ECC (Eerdmans, 2022), 244.
3. Brendan Byrne, Lifting the Burden: Reading Matthew’s Gospel in the Church Today (Liturgical Press, 2004), 172.
4. Ian Boxall, Matthew Through the Centuries, Wiley Blackwell Commentaries (John Wiley & Sons, 2019), 189; see Ulrich Luz, Matthew 8–20, trans. James E. Crouch, Hermeneia (Augsburg Fortress, 2001), 171–176.