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Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace; Ephesians 2:15 KJV
What is the difference between commandments and commandments in ordinance form in the Bible?
Troy Day
Many scholars make only selective use of the traditional criterion of multiple attestation, excluding its application to the diverse and apparently independent accounts of Jesus’s resurrection appearances. Yet, Jesus’s post-resurrection message in the first-century sources that report it consistently focuses on mission (Matt 28:19; Luke 24:47–48; Acts 1:8; John 20:21–23) and, in connection with this mission, the empowerment of the Spirit (Luke 24:49; Acts 1:4–5, 8; John 20:22) or Jesus’s presence (Matt 28:20).
The coherence of these sources need not rely on verbatim agreement: comparison with other ancient biographies shows that the Evangelists’ ancient audiences would not expect these reports to recount Jesus’s words verbatim.3 That Luke can summarize the heart of the commission in different wording in his own two accounts,4 clearly meant to be read together,5 confirms that he never expected anyone to think otherwise.
Still, if Jesus spent any substantial amount of time with his disciples (Acts 1:3), he probably did repeat some key themes multiple times and in multiple ways (1:4–5). Did Jesus himself command baptism in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Matt 28:19)? Or at the least, did he provide the raw material that quickly led to trinitarian belief among his followers? (For Matthew, baptism in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit presumably evokes Jesus’s own baptism and experience of the Father and Spirit in Matt 3:16–17; cf. already Mark 1:10–12.)
Far from being a late development, as has often been supposed, Jesus’s divinity or Jesus as an object of worship appears in the earliest extant examples of New Testament Christology. While we cannot expect Paul to reflect later Nicene language, he often applies biblical language for YHWH to Jesus: for example, Zech 14:5 in 1 Thess 3:13; Deut 6:4 in 1 Cor 8:6; Isa 45:23 in Phil 2:9–11; and OT day of YHWH language in 1 Cor 1:8; 5:5; 2 Cor 1:14; Phil 1:6, 10; 2:16.6 Granted, his status appears subordinate to that of the Father in Paul (for example, Rom 8:3), but this remains the case even in the late first-century Christology of John’s Gospel https://www.pentecostaltheology.com/craig-keener-jesuss-trinity/