The King and His Kingdom: Matthew 4:18-25 Jesus Calls His Disciples

Matthew’s Gospel is often called the teaching Gospel because Matthew concentrated on what Jesus taught, and arranged his material kind of like a catechism. After establishing Jesus’s credentials in the first three chapters, Matthew now turned to the school Jesus was about to establish, and to the students who become a part of that school. This week’s passage picks up the story about a year into Jesus’s public ministry, as he selected his inner circle of disciples. 'Fishers of men' was a phrase that had been in circulation for hundreds of years. Roman and Greek philosophers used it to describe those who could catch people with strong and persuasive teaching. It was a particularly apt phrase for these first four disciples, since they were well acquainted with the patience, concentration, perseverance and hard work every day it took to fish. These were just ordinary people, not seminary students. But they had the one thing that was needed: they loved Jesus with their whole hearts and were willing to give Jesus their whole-hearted devotion. Joanne Hagemeyer