Gospel of Matthew

Matthew portrays a very God like, all-powerful Jesus, with very few humanistic characteristics.

Matthew 2:3, "at this news King Herod became greatly disturbed." I thought the king would be happy to hear about the birth of Jesus. Apparently the kings intentions were not very nice. I really find this passage interesting, mainly because it separates God from the kingdom. Meaning the King has power and is afraid of losing it to the Son of God.

Matthew's description of healing is very interesting; he gives Jesus more powers then Mark did. In Matthew 4:23 Jesus goes into Galilee and heals every disease and every sickness among the people, he does this with such ease.

He helps a man with Leprosy in 8:2 by simple touching his hand and saying "be clean." In Matthew 8:12, Jesus says to a man, go and your friend will be healed because of his faith. Faith definitely plays the biggest role in Jesus' healing.

Matthew refers to faith often throughout the gospel; you have to have faith to be saved by the lord. It's the only way you can believe in something that no one has ever seen. In Matthew 8:25, Jesus is on a boat in the middle of a storm, when his men say, "Lord, save us! We are perishing!" Jesus says, "why are you fearful, o you of little faith." Jesus stops the storm and his men are amazed. It would be so easy to be scared in that situation, you have Jesus sleeping as waves come over the boat, I might loss a little faith myself, especially if it happened in the twenty-first century. A great example of faith comes in Matthew 9:22, when he cures a woman with a hemorrhage, she is cured by touching his clothing. And Jesus tells her it was because of her faith. Faith comes into play many times in Jesus' healing, many times he doesn't even have to touch the person in order for them to get better. Faith to me is a very tough concept to grasp, if I ever do then I'll have the lord on my side.

Jesus according to Matthew has very few humanistic characteristics, but he is definitely human because he was born to the Virgin Mary. According to the gospel it seems like people get there faith from his healing more then his teachings, a more humanistic Jesus would have to be a great teacher in order to get the faith of the people.

Jesus sends his disciples out to spread the word