Matthew 28
Matthew 28 — Commentary and Meaning
The short answer
Matthew 28 is the last chapter of Matthew's Gospel, and it moves fast. At dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary come to see the tomb where Jesus was buried. An angel rolls back the stone, terrifies the guards, and tells the women the news that changes everything: "he has risen, just as he said." Then comes an instruction that is easy to skim past: the women are told to "go quickly and tell his disciples." On the way, the risen Jesus himself meets them and repeats the sending. Before anyone else hears the news, these women are given a message and a mission.
That detail matters for how we read the chapter's famous ending. In verses 16-20, the eleven disciples travel to Galilee, where Jesus declares that all authority in heaven and on earth belongs to him and sends them to "make disciples of all nations," baptizing and teaching, with the promise "I am with you always." Christians call this the Great Commission, and it has shaped centuries of mission work. But notice the sequence: the disciples are in Galilee because they believed and acted on what the women told them. The chapter's most sweeping commission grows out of an earlier, quieter one.
Matthew is honest about the mixed reality of faith, too. When the disciples see Jesus, they worship him — "but some doubted." The commission is given not to people with perfect certainty but to worshipers who still carry questions. The chapter ends not with the doubt resolved but with a promise of presence: Jesus with his people, to the end of the age. Matthew 28, read whole, is a chain of witness — from an angel, to two women, to eleven friends, and outward to all nations.
What scholars say
The first excerpt traces how the Great Commission of Matthew 28:16-20 follows from the earlier commission given to the women at the tomb — a commission the male disciples act on rather than question. The second turns the chapter toward the reader, asking what it means to hold an Easter faith in a busy, distracted, and wounded world where lives are hard to change.
“That is Jesus’ first recorded act upon rising from the dead. Indeed, the Great Commission of Matthew 28:16–20, which many centuries later will become one of the foundations of the modern Protestant missionary movement, takes place as a result of the prior commission given to the women at the tomb. In Amy-Jill Levine’s words, this group of “independent, motivated women are both the first witnesses of the resurrection and the first missionaries of the church.” 3 The strongest statement of sending or mission in the Synoptic Gospels, where the disciples are sent to share the good news with all peoples and nations, appears precisely in Matthew, where the women’s commission is not questioned by the male disciples, but rather is acted upon.”
“I have often wondered what it means to be an Easter people. As we read again these verses from Matthew 28, what does it mean – in our individualistic, materialistic, distracted and busy world – to have a faith? What difference does faith mean to us, especially in our experience of sadness, fear and pain? Any seasoned observer of human nature will know that it is hard to shift and change people’s lives. We live in a world which is beautiful but also scarred and disfigured by human sin and weakness.”
What it means for you
If Matthew 28 describes a chain of witness, readers today stand somewhere along it. The chapter suggests that being sent doesn't require status or certainty — the first messengers were women whose word, in that culture, could easily have been dismissed, and the commissioned disciples included some who doubted. What it asks is honesty about what you've seen and a willingness to go and tell.
It also presses a harder question: what does resurrection faith look like in an ordinary week, amid distraction, grief, or fear? The chapter's answer is not a technique but a promise — "I am with you always" — and an invitation to live as if that presence changes how you treat the people in front of you.
Matthew 28 in context
Matthew 28 follows the crucifixion and burial in chapter 27, where the same women watched Jesus die and saw where he was laid. Chapter 28 opens at the tomb, moves through the angel's announcement, the women's encounter with the risen Jesus, and a brief account of the guards being bribed to spread a cover story. It closes on a mountain in Galilee — a fitting setting in a Gospel where mountains mark key teaching moments — with the Great Commission, the climax not just of the chapter but of Matthew's whole story.
Passages we cover in this chapter