The last chapter had silenced those who pretended to most light. Not believing in Christ, they were destitute of the only key to Scripture, and Psa. 110, bright as its testimony is to their own Messiah, was a thick cloud not only to Egyptians now as of old but to Israel. They saw not His glory, and were therefore hopelessly puzzled how to understand that David, speaking by the Spirit, should call his son his Lord.
In this chapter 23 the Lord pronounces the doom of the nation, and most of all, not of those man would chiefly denounce, not of the openly lawless, licentious, or violent, nay, nor of the ease-loving, skeptical Sadducees, but of those who stood highest in general esteem for their religious knowledge and sanctity. And so it always is when we find a dealing of God with His people. Conscience, man, the very world can with more or less exactness judge of immoral grossness. God sees and eschews what looks fair to human eyes and is withal false and unholy. And the Word of God is explicit that so it is to be. The heaviest woes yet in store for this world are not for heathen darkness, but, as for rebellious Judaism, so for corrupt Christendom, for the spot where most truth is known and the highest privileges conferred, but alas: their power despised and denied. It is not that God when He ariseth to judge will leave the pagan nations unpunished. They shall not go without punishment, but surely drink of the cup. Yet “hear this word that the Lord hath spoken against you, O children of Israel, against the whole family which I brought up from the land of Egypt, saying, You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities.” Even so is it now with the professing Gentile; and the fuller the light bestowed, and the richer the grace of God revealed in the Gospel, they are only so much the graver reasons for unsparing judgments on Christendom, when the knell of divine vengeance tolls for those on earth who know not God and obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord seeth not as man seeth, whether in grace or in judgment; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart. No otherwise did Jesus speak in the scene before us.
It is remarkable, however, that in the first instance He spoke “to the multitudes and to his disciples.” They were yet to a great extent viewed together. The full distinction between them could not be made till the death and resurrection of Christ; and even then the Holy Ghost slowly breaks one old tie after another, and only utters His last word to the Jewish remnant (then Christian, of course) by more than one witness not long before the destruction of Jerusalem. But even in principle separation there was not, nor could be, till the cross. Hence the fatal error of some who argue from that which was done in Israel before the death of Christ to neglect and overthrow the holy union, apart from the world, to which believers are called since that momentous day. The foundation for it was not even laid, the middle wall of partition still subsisted; and though the faith that pierced through to the deeper glory of the Lord's person never failed to reap a rich reward and the fullest welcome, yet would it have been premature, and indeed contrary to God's order as yet, to have led the Jews outside the camp, or to have gathered them and the Gentiles into one body, before the cross. The more solemn the sentence of God pronounced or executed, the greater and more wondrous is the display of His long-suffering. And if He call us to patience, how astonishing is His own! How truly in His case patience has its perfect work! But what shall we say of the spirit that abuses His patience toward that which He is going to judge to a denial of the truth, equally sure, of His sensitive love and jealous care over such as stand in Christ in the most intimate nearness of relationship to Himself 1 He does speak peace to His saints; but let them not turn again to folly.
It was, then, part of our Lord's Jewish mission to say that “the Scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat: all therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do.” But there was the careful warning against making the Scribes and Pharisees in anywise personal standards of good and evil. “Do not ye after their works; for they say and do not.” They were in themselves beacons, patterns of wrong, not of right. (4-7.) Still not only are the disciples classed with the multitude; but in the very strongest denunciations of these religious guides, they are bound as yet by the Lord to acknowledge those who sat in Moses' seat. There they were in fact, and the Lord maintains, instead of dissolving, the obligation to own them and whatever they set forth, not of their own traditions but from the law. This was to honor God Himself, spite of the hypocrites, who only sought man's honor for themselves, and it affords no warrant for false apostles or their self-deceived successors now. For the apostles had no seats like that of Moses; and Christianity is not a system of ordinance or formal observance like the law, but, where real, is the fruit of the Spirit through life in Christ, which is formed and fed by the Word of God.
It has been urged, confidently enough of late and in quarters where one might have hoped for better things, that, as the saints in Old Testament times looked for Christ, and eternal life was theirs by faith, though they were under the law, so we who now believe in Christ are nevertheless and in the same sense under the law like them, though like them we are justified by faith. Now plausible and even fair as this may seem to some, I have no hesitation in pronouncing it extremely evil. It is a deliberate putting souls back in the condition from which the work of Christ has extricated us. The Jews of old were placed under the law for the wise purposes of God, till the promised Seed came to work a complete deliverance; and the saints in their midst, though they rose above that position by faith, were all their lifetime subject to bondage and the spirit of fear. Christ has set us free, by the great grace of God, through His own death and resurrection: and we have thereon received the Spirit of Sonship whereby we cry, Abba Father. And yet, spite of the plainest testimony of God to the momentous change brought about by the coming of His Son, and the accomplishment of His work, and the gift of the Holy Ghost, it is openly, seriously proposed, as if it were part of the faith once delivered to the saints, that this wondrous working and display of divine grace should be set aside, with their results to the believer, and that the soul should be replaced under the old yoke and in the old condition! Doubtless this is precisely what Satan aims at, all effort to blot out all that is distinctive of Christianity by a return to Judaism. Only one may be amazed to find so barefaced an avowal of the matter in men professing evangelical light.
The true answer, then, to such misunderstandings of Matt. 23 and misapplications of similar portions of Holy Writ, is that as yet our Lord was adhering, and so He did to the last moment, to His proper Messianic mission; and this supposed and maintained the nation and the remnant under the law, and not in the delivering power of His resurrection. Which of the disciples could yet say, “Henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more. Therefore if any man be in Christ he is a new creature: old things have passed away; behold, all things are become new. And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation.” Now, on the contrary, this is the normal language of the Christian. It is not a question of special attainment nor of extraordinary faith, but of simple present subjection to the full Christian testimony in the New Testament. And this I may add, that what the law was to the Jew, the Word of God in all its extent is to the Christian, specially that part which was founded on and followed Christ dead, risen, glorified, and sending down the Holy Spirit. Even were we Jews, the old tie is dissolved by death, and we are married to another, even to Christ, raised from the dead. Thus to have the law as well as Christ for our guide and rule is like having two husbands at one time, and is a sort of spiritual adultery. Subject even to one another in grace, we are to heed no authority save God's in the things of God.
Surely also we can and ought to take the moral profit of our Lord's censure of the Scribes and Pharisees (for what is the heart!) We have to beware of imposing on others that which we are remiss to observe ourselves. We have to watch against doing works to be seen of men. We have to pray against the allowance of the world's spirit—the love of pre-eminence, both within and without. (Ver. 4-7.)
The truth is that here, as everywhere, the power of the truth and blessing depends on a hearty acquiescence in Christ's glory in one form or another, and our participation consequently in His thoughts and feelings. Hence the word is, “Be not ye called Rabbi; for one is your Master, even Christ, and all ye are brethren. And call no man your father upon the earth; for one is your Father, which is in heaven. Neither be ye called masters; for one is your Master, even Christ.” (Ver. 8-10.) The question here is not of the various gifts which the Lord confers by the Holy Ghost on His members in His body the Church, but of religious authority in the world and a certain status and respect by virtue of ecclesiastical office or position. This were to govern divine things on the principle of men and to reward the fruit of God's grace, if it be anything real, with that which appeals to and gratifies the base selfishness of the heart. Thus, while asserting the authority of the law in the sphere for which it was given, there is gradually increasing severity in the exposure of the moral worthlessness of those who turned it to their own exaltation. But there is no development as yet of the blessed provision His love would make, when He was ascended, for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ. But the great moral principle of the kingdom (which is always true, I need hardly say) is enforced here. “He that is greatest among you shall be your servant. And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.” (Ver. 11-12.) The cross and the heavenly glory would but deepen the value and significance of these words of the Savior; but even before either and independently of the new order of things in the Church, they bore His stamp and were current for the kingdom.
In marked contrast with this pattern of true service for the disciples were the Scribes and Pharisees, on whom the Lord next proceeds to pronounce eight solemn woes. (Ver. 13-33.) What else could He say of men who not only entered not the kingdom of heaven, but hindered those disposed to enter? What else could be due to those who sought religious influence over the weak and defenseless for gain? Granted that their proselyting zeal was untiring, what was the fruit in souls before God? Were not the taught as usual the truest index of such teachers, as being more simple and honest after the flesh, unreserved as to their ways, and aim, and spirit? Then there is the laying bare the nice hair-splitting as to outward distinctions, which really overlooked the patent authority of God; and the insisting on the pettiest exactions to the neglect of the plainest everlasting moral truth. Next is detected, the effort after external look, whatever might be the impurity within; and this both in their labor and in their lives and persons, which were full of guile and self-will, crowned by affected great veneration for the prophets and the righteous who had suffered of old, and no longer acted on the conscience. This last gave them the more credit. There is no cheaper, nor, in the world, more successful means of gaining a religious reputation, than this show of honor for the righteous who are dead and gone, especially if they connect themselves with them in appearance, as being of the same association. The succession seems natural, and it sounds hard to charge those who honor the dead saints in this day with the same rebellious spirit which persecuted and slew them in their own day. But the Lord would put them to a speedy and decisive test, and prove the real bent and spirit of the world's religion. “Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes; and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them ye shall scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city; that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar.” It was morally the same race and character all through. In righteous government, adds the Lord, “Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation.” Thus should be judged the full measure, begun by their fathers and completed by themselves. Hypocrites they were on all the counts of which the Lord accused them, and as guilty as the worst of their predecessors, they would soon prove themselves in the very point of their self-complacency. Serpents indeed they were—a viper-brood. How could such escape the judgment of hell?
Yet how touching here is the Lord's lament over the guilty city, His own city: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets,” &c. His glory shines out more than ever; the rejected Messiah is in truth Jehovah. He would have gathered (and how often!) but they would not. It was no longer His house nor His Father's, but theirs, and it is left unto them desolate. Nevertheless, if it be a most solemnly judicial word, there is hope in the end. “For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.” Israel are yet to see their, king, but not till they, at least a godly remnant of them, are converted to welcome Him in Jehovah's name.