Matthew 28:16 Commentary and Bible Study

Before Calvary Christ had told the disciples to go into Galilee and there he would see them (Matthew 26:32). Peter however had scarcely taken this in, as his thoughts were entirely focused on the Lord’s prediction that all the disciples would be offended at his arrest, and be scattered. But the angels had repeated this direction to the women at the tomb after the resurrection, and they were to tell the dsciples (Matthew 28:7), and Christ himself had soon afterwards told the women to again instruct the disciples to go to Galilee, and said that he would see them there (Matthew 28:10). More details of this instruction are revealed in this verse; he had told them to meet him on a certain mountain. Why did he tell them to go to Galilee? Although there were resurrection appearances in Jerusalem before the disciples departed, this giving of the great commission was to take place in Galilee. The disciples had gone with Christ up to Jerusalem, but it was not their home, and after the immediate events of those days, they were to return to Galilee, where they lived and where he had first called many them. Here they would for the moment be out of the eye of the religious authorities. It was in Galilee that Matthew’s (and probably Mark’s) account of the great commission was given; it was there that the Lord appeared to seven of the disciples after an all-night fishing expedition; and it was certainly in Galilee that he appeared to the five hundred (1 Corinthians 15:6) for that number is more than would have gone up to Jerusalem. But the disciples did return to Jerusalem, and Acts 1:3 tells us that after the various appearances of the risen Lord over a period of forty days, they were back in Jerusalem where they were told to remain, and where they would be ‘baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence.’ Since Pentecost took place fifty days after the Passover, it was something like ten days that they were to wait in Jerusalem.