Jesus as God's Delight in the Gospel of Matthew: An Overlooked Aspect of Matthew's Christology

Abstract

Throughout the Old Testament, there are many things that God delights in: righteousness, mercy/steadfast love, Israel, Israel’s properly offered sacrifices, and Israel’s king, to name a few. This repeated theme in the Old Testament provides the background for an unexpected and underappreciated aspect of Matthew’s Gospel. Four times in the First Gospel we read that Jesus himself is the object of God’s delight, and each of these occurrences appear at key moments within Matthew’s sophisticated narrative (3:17; 12:18; 17:5; 27:43). God’s delight in Jesus is an unexplored and overlooked aspect of Matthew’s Christology. After establishing the contours of the Old Testament objects of God’s delight (chapter 2), this dissertation argues that Matthew portrays Jesus as the embodiment and fulfillment of God’s delight. Matthew’s portrait of Jesus as God’s delight is developed in the Gospel in three ways: First, Matthew explicitly declares Jesus to be the object of God’s delight at four key moments within his story (chapter 3). Second, Matthew portrays Jesus’s ways of moving throughout the world to be the object of God’s delight (chapter 4). Third, Matthew portrays Jesus as the obedient Son and Davidic king, and these themes, taken together, contribute to Matthew’s multifaceted portrait of Jesus as God’s delight (chapter 5). Unearthing the theme of God’s delight in the Old Testament and the repeated rhythm of God’s delight as a plot line in the First Gospel brings to light an overlooked aspect of Matthew’s Christology. God’s delight in Jesus is a multivalent plot line that surfaces at key junctures in the First Gospel to bring Matthew’s story to moments of narrative climax and to resolve narrative tension, stabilizing the reader’s vision of Jesus in the midst of repeated conflict.