Matthew

Matthew (Hebrew Mattityahu, "gift of the LORD"), also called Levi, son of Alphaeus, was a tax collector at Capernaum whom Jesus summoned to be one of the Twelve, and to whom the church's earliest tradition ascribes the first Gospel. His double name reflects the moment of his calling: the publican Levi became the apostle Matthew, his very name proclaiming the grace that found him.

As a telones — a collector of Roman tolls from his own countrymen — Matthew belonged to a despised class, lumped together with "sinners" and regarded by the devout as collaborators with the occupying power and ceremonially defiled (Matthew 9:10–11). Yet when Jesus passed his tax booth and said simply, "Follow me," he rose and followed (Matthew 9:9; Mark 2:14). Luke records that Matthew then held a great feast in his house, gathering "a large company of tax collectors" to meet Jesus (Luke 5:29) — the occasion for Jesus' word that He "came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance" (Luke 5:32). Matthew's own Gospel underscores the lesson with the citation, "I desire mercy, and not sacrifice" (Matthew 9:13; cf. Hosea 6:6). He is then numbered among the apostles in every list (Matthew 10:3; Acts 1:13), where he is named — fittingly for one who knew his own debt — "Matthew the tax collector."

From the second century the Gospel that bears his name was attributed to him. Papias, preserved by Eusebius, reports that Matthew "compiled the oracles" of the Lord; while the exact relation of that note to the Greek Gospel has long been discussed, the canonical Matthew is unmistakably Jewish-Christian in cast. It opens with a genealogy presenting Jesus as "the son of David, the son of Abraham" (Matthew 1:1), arranges Jesus' teaching into five great discourses (beginning with the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:1–2), and threads the narrative with fulfillment formulas — "this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet" — that present Jesus as the goal of Israel's Scriptures.

Theologically, Matthew embodies the gospel he later wrote: that Jesus is the Messiah who welcomes the outcast and the unclean, and that following Him means leaving everything at His word. The Gospel closes with the risen Christ's claim to "all authority in heaven and on earth" and the Great Commission to disciple the nations (Matthew 28:18–20) — a fitting climax from the pen of a man whose own life had been turned by a single call. Tradition holds that he afterward preached among his own people and beyond, dying a martyr, though the details are uncertain.