Scripture is very careful to press the respect and obedience which are due to authority, but it is not a Christian's work to occupy himself with settling questions of the earth. He has nothing to do with the ways and means whereby kings or other governors have reached their place of authority. There may have been wars, and revolutions, and all sorts of questionable means for them to arrive at such exaltation. What he has to do is to obey, as a matter of fact, those who are in authority. “Let every soul be subject unto higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.” Scripture does not attach obedience to the powers that ought to be, but to “the powers that be.” No doubt this may expose to danger where a revolutionary leader usurps the authority for a season; but God will care for results, and the duty of the Christian remains simple and sure. He obeys the powers that be. Notwithstanding all obedience in man has its limits. There are cases where the Christian is bound, I do not say to be disobedient, still less to set up his own authority (which is never his duty), but “to obey God rather than men.” Where earthly authority demands sin against God, for instance where a government interferes with and forbids the stewardship of the believer in proclaiming the name of Christ, it is evident that it is a question of a lower authority setting aside the highest. Consequently the principle of obedience to which the Christian is bound forbids his being swayed by what is of man to abandon what he knows to be the will of God.
Take again a peremptory call on a Christian to fight the battles of his country. If he knows his calling, can he join Christ's name with such unholy strife? If right for one side, it is right for another, or the Christian becomes a judge instead of a pilgrim, and the name of the Lord would be thus compromised by brethren on opposite sides, each bound to imbrue their hands in one another's blood, each instruments of hurrying to perdition souls ripening in sins. Is this Christ? Is it grace? It may suit the flesh and the world; but it is in vain to plead the word of God to justify a Christian's finding himself engaged in such work. Will any one dare to call human butchery, at the command of the powers that be, Christ's service? The true reason why people fail to see here is, either a fleshly mind, or an unworthy shrinking from the consequences. They prefer to kill another to please the world, rather than to be killed themselves to please Christ. But they should not ask or expect Christian sympathy with their unbelief or worldly-mindedness. To sympathize with such is to share their failure in testimony to Christ. To deplore the thing while doing it does not mend matters, but is rather an unwitting testimony of our own lips against our own ways.
In short, the divine rule is what our Lord Himself laid down with admirable wisdom and perfect truth. “Render unto Caesar the things which be Caesar's, and unto God the things which be God's.” This alone gives us the true standard of the path of Christ through a world of evil and snares. He Himself seems to act on the same principle here. “The same day there came certain of the Pharisees, saying unto him, Get thee out and depart hence, for Herod will kill thee.” (Ver. 31.) The Lord knew better. He knew that, bad as Herod might be, the Pharisees were no better, and that their profession of interest in caring for His person was hypocritical. Whether Herod had made use of this or not, He was not going to be influenced by any such suggestions direct or indirect from the enemy. He had His work to do for His Father. As the child, we have seen in this gospel, He must be about His Father's business. It was not otherwise when the anxiety of His mother was expressed to Him at a later day before His public work. So now the Lord said to the Pharisees, “Go ye and tell that fox.”
There is no hiding the truth of things where there is an attempt at interference with the will of God. The cunning that wrought to hinder the Lord's testimony for God was vain. He saw through it all and does not scruple to speak plainly out. “Go ye and tell that fox, Behold, I cast out demons, and I do cures to-day and to-morrow, and the third day I shall be perfected.” The Lord was then evidently the vessel of the power of God on earth. The gracious work which He was doing showed man's folly in seeking to hinder God. “Behold, I cast out demons.” Not all the power or authority of the world could have done such deeds as these. This was paramount to every consideration: He was here to do the will of God and finish His work.
It was in vain therefore for Pharisees or Herod, under false pretensions, to draw Him aside and thus interrupt the execution of His task. He was obeying God rather than men. He came to do the will of Him who sent Him, and at all cost this must be done. “I do cures to-day and to-morrow, and the third day I shall be perfected.” The work was in hand and assuredly should be done. The Lord, having finished His course, entered into a new position for man through death and resurrection into heavenly glory. “Nevertheless I must walk to-day, and to-morrow, and the day following.” He knew better too than that any power of man would be permitted to stop Him till His work was completed. He knew beforehand and thoroughly that Jerusalem was the place where He must suffer, and that Pharisees were to play a far more important part in His suffering unto death than even Herod. Man does not know himself. Christ the truth declares it, and shows that it was all known to Him. There is nothing like a single eye, even in man, to see clearly; and Christ was the true light that made all things manifest.
“It cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem.” Their anxiety therefore was a mere pretense. The Lord had His work to do, and devotes Himself to it till it is done. From the beginning and all through He shows clearly as here that He knew where His rejection was to be. We gather this clearly from a previous chapter, where we are told that He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem, and this too when the time was come that He should be received up. He looks onward to His being perfected. He knew right well the pathway through which this lay. It was through death and resurrection. So here; it might be the perishing of the great prophet in Jerusalem, but it was the receiving up of the Lord of glory, now man after accomplishing redemption, into that glory from which He came. The Lord therefore remains perfectly master of the position.
But there is more than this. He was free in His love. Not all the cunning of Herod, nor all the hypocrisy of the Pharisees could turn aside the grace that filled His heart—grace even to those who loved Him not. If His servant could say that, though the more abundantly he loved the less he was loved, how much more fully true is it of the master! The disciple was like his master; but the Master was infinitely perfect. And so love fills His heart as now He utters these solemn words over Jerusalem, guilty of all the blood of the witnesses of God from Abel downwards. He has His own cross before Him; yet He says, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee: how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not.” He was then more than a prophet—the Lord Jehovah. He was one competent to gather; and He had a love that proved its divine spring, source, and character by His willingness often to have gathered the children of Jerusalem together. He could have been their shield and exceeding great reward, but they would not. There is no blessing that the will of man cannot shut its eyes to and reject. Flesh can never see aright, because it is always selfish. It does not see God, and consequently misses all that is really good for itself. Man is most of all his own enemy when He is God's enemy; but of all enemies, which are so deadly as religious enemies? as those whose hearts are far from God, though they draw near with their lips and have the place of the highest religious privilege? Such was Jerusalem. They had had the prophets, but they killed them. They had had messengers sent from God to them unweariedly, but they stoned them. And now that He who was the great prophet, Messiah, Jehovah Himself was in their midst in divine love, what would they not do to Him? There was no death too ignominious for Him. “Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.” It was their own ruin, when they thought and meant it to be His. But love rises over every hindrance. It is impossible that grace should be defeated in the end for its own purposes. Therefore, He adds, “Verily I say unto you, Ye shall not see me [this was judgment, ‘Ye shall not see me'], until the time come when ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord” —this is grace. He comes in glory, but in the perfect display of that love which had suffered for them and from them and which will not fail in the end by this very suffering to ensure their eternal blessing.