Charles Ellicott Commentary Matthew 28:20

"teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you: and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world." — Matthew 28:20 (ASV)

All things whatever I have commanded you — The words obviously point, in the first instance, to the teaching of our Lord recorded in the Gospels: the new laws of life, exceedingly broad and deep, of the Sermon on the Mount; the new commandment of love for the inner life (John 13:34); and the new outward ordinances of Baptism and the Supper of the Lord. But we may well believe that they went further than this, and that the words may cover much unrecorded teaching which they had heard in the darkness and were to reproduce in light (Matthew 10:27).

I am with you always — Literally, all the days, or, at all times; the words emphasizing continuity more than the English adverb. The “days” that were coming might seem long, dark, and dreary, but He, their Lord, would be with them in each of those days, even to the far-off end.

Even unto the end of the world — Literally, of the age. The phrase is the same as that in Matthew 13:39-40, Matthew 13:49, and Matthew 24:13. In Hebrews 9:26, it is used for the time of the appearance of Christ in the flesh as the beginning of the last age of the world. Like all such words, its meaning widens or contracts according to our point of view. Here the context determines its significance as stretching forward to the end of the age, or aeon, which began with the first Advent of the Christ and shall last until the second.

We ask, as we close the Gospel, why it ends this way. Why should there be no record of a fact as momentous as the Ascension? The question is one we cannot fully answer. There is an obvious abruptness in the close of the book. It may be that it was left unfinished. It may be that the fact of the Ascension was part of the elementary instruction of every catechumen and was therefore taken for granted; or that it was thought of as implied in the promise of Christ’s perpetual presence; or, lastly, that the promise itself, in its grandeur and blessedness, seemed to be the consummation of all that Christ had come to accomplish, and therefore the fitting close to the record of His life and work.