Matthew 28:18

Matthew 28:18 is the eighteenth verse of the twenty-eighth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament. This verse is part of the Great Commission narrative, containing the emphatic declaration of Jesus' absolute authority over the universe.

Content

The original Koine Greek, according to The [New Testament in the Original Greek|Westcott and Hort]/, reads:
In the King James Version of the Bible it is translated as:
The modern World English Bible translates the passage as:

Analysis

The word "all" are found multiple times in the verses 18–20, tying them together: all power/authority, all nations, all things and all the days.
Dale Allison considers the suggestions of the verse 18 allusion to or improbable. A more persistent correlation with Moses, however, is worthy of consideration, starting with "the mountain", as 'Moses ended his earthly course on a mountain'; the commissioning of Joshua by God through Moses; and the close parallels in, ; and, which are 'all about God'.
The Greek word for "power" is , which refers to 'delegated power or authority along with the right to use it'; not quite adequately translated by the word "power" or "authority" alone. The exousia of Jesus is already stressed previously in the same gospel, so it is not entirely correct to claim that the resurrected Jesus has more authority than the Jesus before the crucifixion. During his ministry, his words, just as God's, will not pass away and he, like God, forgives sins, but only after the resurrection, his spheres of exercising absolute authority can be said to include all heaven and earth. The authority is given to Jesus by the Father, and the Son becomes "the one through whom all God's authority is mediated. The received "well-defined exercise of authority" is the climactic vindication of Jesus' humiliation and marks a turning point in the redemptive history that the "Messiah's Kingdom" or Jesus' "king-dominion" has risen up in new power: the exercise of Jesus' "divine and saving authority".