Gospel According to Matthew

Many have attempted to derive a purely “social gospel” from the Gospel According to Matthew, that is, an account of the ethical teachings of Jesus that is stripped of all references to the divinity of Jesus Christ, or to a final judgement. It is not only coherent to derive a social ethic from the Gospel, but also is imperative in order to mitigate the differences among religions which have caused followers to believe in their own absolute truth and to judge others as misguided. At the same time, this has driven generations of followers to commit acts of violence in the name of God over subtle and relatively unimportant differences. The teachings of Jesus, which are found in the “Gospel According to Mathew” are mostly ethical; however, they revolve around a religious framework. In his teachings, Jesus makes reference to God as the fulfillment of life. More importantly, he does not assert that one has to accept him as a deity in order to gain a place in heaven. there is no evidence of him declaring him self a divinity. This idea of Jesus’ divinity and of the final judgement, the basis of Christianity, appeared only after his death. Despite the fact that for Christians the teachings of Jesus only make sense within this religious belief system, they nonetheless contain explicit moral and ethical values which concern primarily a person’s duty to his fellow man.

Throughout Matthews’ Gospel, the “Teachings of Jesus” make reference to an individual’s duty to others. Further more, his bases for teaching are centered on acting in accordance to the law: “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” (Matthew 22, 21), and also on developing ethical and social values that would lead a person into becoming righteous and compassionate. In his “Sermon on the Mount”, for instance, Jesus spoke about seeking the “kingdom of heaven” first thorough having become humble, compassionate, righteous and peaceful, all of which are purely moral values (Matthew 5, 3-11). He praised not to be hypocrite and to look at one’s own faults before judging others: “Do not judge, so that you may not be judge. For with the judgement you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get...how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the log out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye,...first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speak out log your neighbor’s eye”. (Matthew 7, 1-5). The religious elements found in Jesus’ teachings (i.e. his parables), fall into place in accordance to how they relate to the “moral fable” that contains them.

To say that the teachings of Jesus only make sense with reference to the idea of Jesus’ divinity and of the final judgement, is neglecting their very foundation: the teaching of ethics and morality. Jesus view of man’s obligations to God is rather indistinguishable from those obligations to his fellow man. When refereeing to the days of judgment, Jesus made no distinction between whether a person is been righteous to God or to man: “...the righteous will answer him (the king), ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or