God’s covenant of grace with His people stands: one of Abraham’s seed will beat sin, and change the sinful nature of people, so that God can dwell with His mob again. Circumcision is the picture God gave His people, which pointed to this promise. This promise could only happen by God’s work alone.
At the end of the Old Testament, this promise stands. At the start of the New Testament, there is the hope of a ‘new beginning’ (Matt.1:1). This hope is followed by a genealogy which traces the ‘seed [singular] of Abraham’ down to Jesus (Matt.1:2-17). Jesus is described as the One who will ‘save His people from their sins’ (Matt.1:21). And then He does – through His life, death and resurrection alone, Jesus offers the forgiveness of sins and changed nature for God’s people.
As Jesus sends His people out to proclaim this to the world, He does so with a picture that points back to who fulfils the promise of God: the picture of baptism points BACK to Jesus! And the work He achieved is received by trusting in what He has done!
In His last days on earth, Jesus instructed His disciples to continually practice two sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s supper as signs of God’s saving grace towards us in Jesus.
Jesus here continues God’s practice in the Old Testament of using pictures and words to teach His people about His abiding grace towards a sinful humanity.
Often in the Old Testament, God gave a sign to accompany His covenant with His people. For example, when God made a covenant with Abraham to bless the whole world through his offspring, He gave him the sign of circumcision. Circumcision symbolized God’s promise to cleanse sinners through Abraham’s seed.
We are at the end of Matthew’s good news biography of Jesus. Matthew started with a statement of ‘new beginnings’, as God fulfilled his promise through Abraham and David, to bring outsiders back to God. And now the message is to go out to all the nations, from the one with all authority, creating a community that is connected to all of God, taught all of Jesus’ commands, and obeying all of them.
This is how Matthew finishes – from new beginnings to the proclamation of the new beginnings, to the whole world, God gathering his people in, through the news of Jesus. And as Jesus gives this command, he promises that he will never neglect his people, always being with them as they proclaim this good news to outsiders everywhere!
