J. N. Darby.
<24018E> {file section B.}
171 All that follows is the final procedure in which the dignity of the humble rejected One is vindicated against the withered pretensions of the unbelieving heads of Israel; in which each class, pretending to call Him in question and perplex Him, comes to receive its sentence from His mouth. Still, for every need His power is yet in grace. The blind and the lame come to Him in the temple, and are healed. When the chief priests see this done in the temple, in public and before the multitude, and the children crying, Hosanna to the Son of David, according to Psalm 118, they are sore displeased, and appeal to Jesus to stop it. He answers by Psalm 8. He must be glorified; and, if He gave Himself, still His glory must be maintained, and if the simplicity of children did not fulfil the task, as we read elsewhere, the stones would cry out. Here we have only the short and silencing allusion to Psalm 8, and He leaves them. He would no longer sleep in the condemned, though loved, city.
We have then the testimony to the final judgment of Israel as under the first covenant, that is, of man in his responsibility. He came to look for fruit; there were only leaves, and man is judged as utterly fruitless for ever. Israel thus judged would immediately wither away. But the whole power of the people, if the disciples had faith, would be cast into the sea of the Gentiles; and so it was. At the same time the Lord insists on the power of the prayer of faith in their service.
The chief priests and scribes came to Him, as He was teaching, to demand His authority for what He did. This is the common question of what is really apostate ecclesiastical authority. That which is of God owns God's work: God's work proves itself. If God's work is done, God has wrought it, and God's authority to act is not a matter of question for those who, being of God, know His work. Man may sometimes mix that which is of himself with it, and so far spoil and enfeeble the testimony. but that which is of God they who are of God will own. In Christ all was perfect, of course. Hence the Lord puts them on their capacity to judge of God's work, and from carnal motives they avow their incapacity to judge of it. Why then should He tell them by what authority He acted? They were confessedly unable to judge of it. It was a humbling setting aside of their pretensions - avowed incapacity. But it is well to remember that God's work does not need authorisation. From whom is it to receive this? God assuredly needs none to work, or make others work, and he who pleads ecclesiastical authority for working proves that it is not God who is working, for who can authorise Him?
172 It may seem more difficult till the proofs are there, but that is a matter of faith. If Christ has given the talent to trade with, the seeking another authority gives proof that he who does so does not know his Master. He does not know that he is sent of Christ, for then he need not seek another. If he has another without that, it is simply nought. But the Lord goes farther with their religious authorities, and in the parable of the two sons shews that the repentant sinner, not the pretended just one, was the doer of God's will. The publicans and harlots went into God's kingdom before such. Terrible and humbling sentence! but so it was. Nor had the bowing to John's testimony by these repentant sinners wrought on the conscience of these hardened self-righteous ones.
The Lord then gives utterance to a parable which was the divine judgment on the whole conduct of the leaders of Israel, represented by those before Him. He had done everything for His vineyard, and then in due season He sought fruit - sent the prophets, who were rejected, and persecuted, and killed - sent yet more, and they treated them in the same way; at last He sent His Son, saying, They will reverence my Son. Him they cast out and slew. The chief priests and scribes pronounce the only possible judgment on them in reply to the Lord. It was their own sentence. The Lord then from scripture - testimony which they could not deny - shews that what they rejected was made by God the head of the corner. There could not be a plainer testimony, more immediately applicable. God, and the chiefs of Israel, the builders, were in open contradiction. It was Jehovah's doing to exalt the rejected stone. It is still Psalm 118, the special oracle of God as to these events. We have then the Lord's open comment and statement as to the result with the Jews - the kingdom of God taken from them, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits of the kingdom. It was to Gentiles, but that is not the special point of the Lord's words. It was to a nation bringing forth the fruits of the kingdom. If that be not done, they cease to answer to the description, whatever the patience of God; and though that be not the subject here, they also would have to be cut off. The same truth is otherwise told in Romans 11.
173 Further, the Stumbling-stone (Isa. 8) was there. It was indeed Jehovah Himself in grace. Whoever stumbled on it was offended in Him, and (this is of wider application than the chief priests) would be broken, but those on whom He fell, when coming again in judgment, would be ground to powder. Such was the present and future result of the responsibility of the Jews, to whom every advantage had been given, and to whom the Son of God Himself had come. Here the Lord is looking for fruit. The aspect of the crisis from the side of grace follows. Meanwhile the chief priests and Pharisees would have taken Him, but feared the people.
The Lord presents then the state of things on the side of grace, not of seeking fruit. A king is making a marriage for his son. This leads us on into the christian sphere of things, though taking it up first as to Jewish responsibility. It is the kingdom of heaven, only the Jewish invitation here takes no effect. The streets and lanes of the city, the poor of the flock in Israel, are not in the scene here. We have the invitation to the Jews as then given. They would not come. When all is prepared after Christ's death, they are again invited, but they made light of it, and went their way to their own occupations, or treated the messengers injuriously, even to death. This brought judgment on them and on their city Jerusalem. They were not worthy, and the King sends out to such as had no claim or hope of such a privilege - sent, as sinners of the Gentiles, and the wedding was furnished with guests. But all this was the external thing. The title really to partake is tested amongst those who have come in, a single example being taken as the principle. He must be fit for the wedding: a wedding garment can alone be allowed at the wedding, and that is Christ. Fine clothes might be displayed, perhaps, but the wedding garment was indispensable. If a man has not really Christ, he cannot be allowed there.
This, then, is the outward profession of Christendom, tested by the possession of Christ. Judgment was exercised as to those who, being there, were not fitly there. What suited the King's mind and purpose could alone be allowed. The offender was cast out into outer darkness. The fullest grace that seeks the needy does not content itself with unfitness for the place that grace brings into. All blessing, the feast of God's delight and joy, was there; but if we have not really Christ, we cannot have part in it. One who has not really put Christ on is in a state discordant with the whole place and meaning of what is going on, and he must be cast out. He had no real title there.
174 We have now special classes who come up, but only to have the real state of the nation judged, and all the classes judged; they blamed each other. All were wholly wrong before God in the point they particularly contended for as their pride. But all the phases of Jewish moral condition are brought out, and the real truth of God in opposition to them. The Jews were under the power of the Gentiles since the time of the Babylonish captivity. This ought not to have been, but their unfaithfulness to Jehovah had brought it on, only God had spared a remnant to present Messiah to them, whom they were now rejecting. Till God gave deliverance they were to bow to the chastening. It was God's hand upon them. The last of the four great empires now held the rule.
But while one party accommodated itself to Caesar, and made nothing of unfaithfulness to God, the other, instead of bowing to the yoke as humbled under God's hand for their sins, were in constant rebellion against the empire, insisting on their rights as God's people, which they had really forfeited, hypocrites with Him, and not bowing to the yoke He had laid upon their necks for their sins. These two classes come together, that Jesus might be found in fault either way. No deliverer from the Roman yoke if he accepted the tribute easily; accused to the governor if he forbade it. The Lord puts all in its place. He asks whose authority this tribute money represents: "Caesar's," they reply. Give to Caesar, He says, what is his, and to God what is God's - the true secret of their place. They marvelled, and left Him.
Then came the Sadducees, the infidels of Israel. Israel was the sphere of God's earthly government, and resurrection no express part of the law. They gave as a fine piece of reasoning what shewed their ignorance, but the Lord was plain on so capital a point. They erred, not knowing the scriptures nor the power of God. The Lord reveals the state of the raised, shewing the mere ignorance and folly of the reasoning of the Sadducees. It is a high and holy state where what is merely earthly will have passed away for ever. Things ordered of God, and owned here, will have passed away there. What is spiritual alone remains, and the body itself changed into suited glory. But the Lord goes farther, and shews that the origin and basis of Judaism before the law was given is God's revelation of Himself, the basis of all hope for them. His memorial name for ever condemned their thoughts.
175 If Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had ceased to exist, could God have still taken their names, the name of naught to characterise Himself to Israel? He might have said, I am He who was with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, when they existed; and even so it would have been an utterly unworthy relationship - the God of those who had a mere animal existence. God characterises Himself by them - is not ashamed to be called their God. Could He characterise Himself by a mere dying animal, who, when He calls Himself theirs, did not exist at all? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. But this truth went farther, for, as to separation of soul and body, Abraham was dead, and, though living for God, was not what God meant him to be as his God. God was not even in this sense, as an abiding state, the God of the dead. They must be according to what He would have man, soul and body. Till all was accomplished they might wait with their spirits blessed, but this was not God's thought as to man. He was to be complete, and hence raised from the dead. The name of God indicating His relationship with those, gone for the moment, demonstrated the resurrection. For Him indeed, as we read, all are alive; but the ground of the argument here is God's relationship with them. He cannot be the God of those who do not exist. It was a living Abraham, body and soul, of whom God could be the God. Death therefore, for he was dead, proved the resurrection. Thus divine truth was established in contradiction to the Sadducees.
This brings the Pharisees forward, who used the law as a repertory of good deeds of different value to make out worth for themselves. They ask the Lord which is the greatest. This was all human pretension of doing and reasoning. The Lord goes to the root, and gives the summary and essence of the whole law in two verses, picked out of the mass of Moses' writings. This gave the law of God as He saw it. Thus we have resurrection, and another world, and the essence of the law established. Next, for Christ; whose Son was He? David's, they reply; and so He was according to the flesh, but that was only man's view of Him, and not what was being made good now. The truth that was to be fulfilled now was Psalm 110. He was David's Lord too, and going to sit on God's right hand. This closed the whole pleading between God and the people. They could give no answer, nor durst ask any more questions. The scene was closed with Israel. Yet till judgment was executed, testimony has its place in their midst; for the patience of grace is great. Morally they were now fully judged.
176 Chapter 23 is a remarkable proof how in this Gospel, till we arrive at the very last chapter, all refers to the Jews, and even there it is not what actually took place among the Gentiles in our present Gospel. The scribes and Pharisees are still seen as sitting in Moses' seat with the book of God in their hand, and in the very chapter in which they are utterly denounced (for it is the object of this chapter) in every aspect, the disciples, moving still as Jewish disciples among the Jews, are to follow what they say from Moses' seat, and their testimony (v. 34) is sent to these same Jews. No one sits in that seat now. We may find some analogies, which the church found early when it was corrupting itself; but there is no seat of Moses to sit in. Father or Rabbi is alike out of place. How completely however the testimony is here viewed as among the Jews, is seen (v. 34) where the apostolic and christian ministry is formally so treated, sent to those whom the Lord was now denouncing. With this is formally designated at once their place and ministry. The object of the chapter is to denounce those who led the people to reject their own mercy in Christ.
All the various sides of the Pharisaic evil are denounced. They impose burdens, and heavy ones, on others, but do not touch them with one of their fingers; to be seen of men, and solemn ritual observers for that purpose, is their object. To be made much of by men, set in high places, greetings, to be called Rabbi, theological doctrinal importance in the world, to be looked up to as having official religious reputation, such were they; but all this was forbidden to the disciples: he who set up to be great among them was to be servant; they were to follow the lowliness of Christ, who ever came down, yea, from the form of God to the dust of death. Christ was their Teacher and Rabbi, and their Father was in heaven.
177 Then come out the various aspects of ecclesiastical Pharisaism. First is the shutting up the kingdom of heaven against men; not going in themselves, they seek to hinder others; they profit by their religious profession to get widows' money, making long prayers; very great zeal to make a proselyte to their superstition, making him then worse than themselves; blind themselves, they lead the blind, but into the ditch. With refined casuistry as to what is evil, they shew their folly to the spiritual mind; excessively exact and zealous about the minute externals of religion, the substantial realities of it they neglect. They strain out the gnat and swallow the camel; as the chief priests bought Christ's blood for money without a scruple, but would not put it into the treasury because it was the price of blood. They clean the outside of the platter to appear very religious and holy, within they are full of extortion and excess; as whited sepulchres, clean without, full of uncleanness within. They honoured the true witnesses of God who were of old, true children of those who had killed them, piously alleging that, had they lived then, they would not have been guilty of their blood. They would fill up the measure of their fathers. God would test them, sending them to prophets and wise men and scribes, as He did in the beginning of the gospel, and they would kill, scourge, and crucify them, that, the measure being filled up, all the righteous blood from Abel might be required of that generation.
Ecclesiastical solemnity and superstition, and often with the profession of orthodoxy, have been the persecuting power and spirit of opposition to truth in every age and in every land. Look around and see where the traits here depicted are found, and see if it be not in hierarchy in the measure of its influence. Be it Jewish or Christian, it is the same story. If we go out to Mohammedans, nay, even to heathens, it is the same thing. But, specially in a pretended orthodox hierarchy, persecution and all the traits noted by Christ will be found. I appeal to every history in every land; for Jewish and Christian I may appeal to scripture, for though the chief priests were Sadducees, the scripture shews the same spirit of persecution, and the Pharisees and the doctors of the law fill up the rest of the picture, the Lord Himself being witness. Who delivered to the secular arm in Christendom, hypocritically asking for mercy? And as in Jerusalem for Jews, so in Babylon for Christendom, was found the blood of prophets and of saints and of all that were slain upon the earth. In the ecclesiastical power, from the pope downward, will be found in the measure of its realisation what the Lord describes here.
178 Finally, verse 37, the Lord, though in words of tender compassion, pronounces judgment on Jerusalem. Often would Christ, Jehovah her Lord, have gathered her children together as a hen her chickens under her wings, but they would not; but now her history was closed, their house was left to them desolate, and, until they took up the children's cry, the words of Psalm 118, they would not see their Lord again. The repentance of Israel (as proposed in the intercession of Christ, Acts 3, but then refused) would be the signal of His return to them. It is of importance to see clearly what I have remarked, that the position of the disciples and their ministry is in Israel more exactly among the Jews. It helps us in understanding what follows.
The testimony of the Lord to the Jews was closed. Their house was left unto them desolate, they were not to see the Lord, the rejected One, till they repented, when the prophecy of Psalm 118 comes to be fulfilled. This testimony of the Lord could be received only by faith, and that is what is available for the disciples and guides him out of the way of awaited peril. But there is another key and interpreter of prophecy, the fulfilment of judgment. What is discerned only by faith when it is matter of faith, is made plain by events in judgment. Warning prophecies are of no avail when the judgment is executed. It is too late. Thus we find in symbolical prophecies and parables that the explanation always goes beyond what it explains. At any rate, making events the proof of the truth of a revelation, while perfectly true, is not the ground of the Christian nor of faith at all. The believer has God's word, and what concerns him in the prophecy is the warning or encouragement it affords when it is not fulfilled. What is a direction to flee to the mountains worth when the prophecy is fulfilled? Where is the exhortation to wait for Jehovah available in the midst of tribulation and trial with the prophetic assurance that He will come, but in the tribulation when He is not come?
Besides, prophecy is of no private interpretation; the whole plan and ways of God as to earthly government are unfolded. This is so in a very central and important point here, perhaps we may say, as to earth the most important of all. The throne of God had been on earth from the setting up of the tabernacle, and in a special way at Jerusalem from the dedication of the temple. This ceased at the Babylonish captivity. In the beginning of Ezekiel we see the glory on the threshold, then on the Mount of Olives, and then depart entirely. But a remnant of the two tribes were brought back to Jerusalem that Messiah might be presented to them, and He was so presented to them.
179 The true temple indeed was His body, as He said to the Jews: still He owned the temple as His Father's house, though they had made it a den of thieves. Now the sad word came, "your house is left unto you desolate." The Lord now predicts present judgment, in the destruction of it; and when they took this as the end of the age, and as the same time as His coming, He unfolds all God's ways as to their testimony in Israel, and then of the power of evil, and judgment at the end when He should come to the deliverance of His servants. The Lord had merely said their house would be desolate till He came. When His disciples, still possessed with the thought of the temporal glory of Israel, boasted in what they could shew Him, the buildings of the temple, He declares that not one stone of it should be left upon another.
Then, on the disciples inquiring when the sign of His coming and of the end of the age would be, He unfolds the whole course of events as far as concerned Jerusalem, the disciples' testimony amongst that people when He was gone, and the state the Jews would get into, and the testimony such as He then could render it in the whole world; and, finally, in a distinct portion, the last events as they concerned them or those who might believe as they did.
The disciples connect what the Lord had already said with the end of the age and the hoped-for arrival of Messiah in glory which they awaited - were obliged in such case to await, and they looked for signs. This last point He does not touch till verse 30. In verse 29 He tells of overwhelming judgments and the subversion of all things supposed to be regular and stable, but no previous sign is given. These are after the tribulation and usher in His coming when it takes place. From Luke we learn that there is anticipation of judgments, at least terror as to what is coming when they take place as far as Judaea goes.
80 But I continue with Matthew. The prophecy divides at the end of verse 14, which verse goes to the end of the age. Then from verse 15 we have the special circumstances of Jerusalem and the tribulation there, closing in verses 29-31 with the coming of Christ and the gathering of the scattered Jews. But the Lord does not begin by satisfying their wish as a matter of curiosity, natural as it was, but treats it as a solemn matter as to their own service. His absence would put them to the test. The rejection by the Jews of the true Christ exposed them to every false pretender. Many would come in His name. So it is always; the rejection of a truth throws it, as it were, into the hands of Satan who gives his version of it to deceive. This is a solemn thing, and examples are not wanting of it. But the Lord is faithful. And here many would be deceived. Such deceivers suit themselves to the flesh, perhaps religious flesh, and the deception is great; men are religiously bad and hardened in evil and deep in delusion. We have had an example of it in Irvingism as to the coming of the Lord and the presence of the Holy Ghost, and a great and abiding one in the pretension (foolish as to fact, yet wise as to man) to unity in the Roman ecclesiastical body.
Further, besides the false Christs, political disturbances, restlessness, actual wars and rumours of them would attract attention and characterise the state of things on earth. But the disciples were not to be troubled; all this would come to pass, they were no signs of His coming, the end was not yet. Thus the Lord is caring for what would guide and strengthen His witnesses, keeping them calm and steady in their places. The end was not yet. He gives such instruction as would make them calm in service, not agitated with circumstances or by false hopes, neither to say, Lo! here, nor Lo! there, nor to be agitated by what agitated the world. They might still serve quietly on.
But besides these things judgment would come: the contentions of nations, famine, pestilence, earthquakes in divers places. These were the beginning of the throes of Jewish sorrows in the midst of which they were to render their testimony. It was surely the heaving of the nations; but the effect considered is on the disciples in their service among the earthly people, though that testimony would go farther. But there was more. Their own immediate sorrows and trials; they would be delivered up to be afflicted, killed, hated of all the Gentiles for Christ's sake. But this persecution from without would produce defections within; many would be offended, would turn against those once companions and betray them and hate them, and, because of abounding iniquity, many hearts not nourished directly from the flame of Christ's love would wax cold. He that went through all the difficulty and pressure to the end would be saved. This gospel of the kingdom would be preached to the Gentiles, and then the end would come.
181 In this passage the Lord seems to me to overleap the whole period in which we live, and gives the ministry of the disciples in the testimony they then had of the near setting up of the kingdom, in the midst of the Jews when He was gone and the house left desolate; and resumed when the Jews were again there to be spoken to; but especially to have in view the testimony amongst that people at the end. The destruction of Jerusalem interrupted this formally and judicially, and it would again be resumed when the church was gone, and be carried on in spite of opposition, till the end came. On to that end it clearly goes, and the present gospel of salvation is clearly passed over. Verse 14 comes in as an additional element by itself. In the beginning of His reply the Lord speaks of what would be applicable at any time after His departure, but soon passes essentially into what characterises the end in Judaea, and finally they are called to endure to the end.
Verse 14 gives us the gospel of the kingdom preached in all the world, which additionally shews us that we are here in the last days. It is for a witness to all the Gentiles and then the end comes. But it is important to remark here that it is the gospel of the kingdom. This gospel of the kingdom was what Christ could preach then, what He had been preaching, that is, that the kingdom was just coming, and that men must repent to meet it, only that it was to go out to all the Gentiles. It was to be preached, as naturally such a gospel must, as a witness, as the word was that the kingdom was at hand, only that then it was to come in with judgment and power, the end was to come according to, though then immediately and definitely, the everlasting gospel of Revelation 14 and Psalms 93-100. That was the end of the age in judgment.
According to this would the judgment of chapter 25 be carried on. Hence the brethren there, are, I doubt not, Jewish messengers of the kingdom, such as the Lord here speaks to, and of. I do not mean personally apostles, but His messengers to the nations, such as in Psalm 96, though that be modified by the prophetic tone. Only the end of the age is come when He sits to judge the nations. He has righteously judged and made wars, destroyed His adversaries, and sits on the throne of His glory; the whole state of things in the old age is judged, and Messiah comes, and sitting there. It is no longer the age to come, because it is come; only before it, the gospel goes out to all nations and then the end comes.
182 Thus the Lord has fully answered the question of the disciples, first in warnings as to their work in Judaea, available to them, then without any particular sign, save false Christs, and then more definitely what would introduce the end. There was a provisional end to service in Palestine and among the Jews as a nation, and a half-week of Daniel wholly unaccomplished; - for unbelief a whole one. This is resumed or taken up again when the faithful have to endure to the end and be saved. Other details are given elsewhere, as in Revelation 11-13, but that is not our object here, only we have that half-week referred to generally here in what follows verse 15, a distinct revelation as to the events of that closing period which in the Old Testament is unfolded to us in Daniel 12, as it is alluded to in other places as in Jeremiah 30:7, and in the word "indignation," and consumption decreed, though this last refers rather to what arrives on the close of the great tribulation; it gives the full guidance and instruction for service.
The Lord now gives the needed warning as to the power of evil which would be in the time Daniel had spoken of when the idol that brought on the desolation should be set up in the holy place. This was not the time of their continued testimony as His witnesses in the land of Canaan; the testimony gone out among the heathen might continue, but the history of testimony is closed and the time of tribulation begins. The covenant is broken, every claim despised, and Jerusalem trodden down. I do not mean that there is no sackcloth testimony in spite of this; we read there is, when the power of evil is most displayed, but the time is not characterised by service as their then instruction and duty. Trials and persecutions there would have been then, but this as the natural accompaniment of faithful testimony in the midst of evil. Now the power of evil was dormant and characterised the state of things. The Jews accept idolatry, that is, the great body of them accepted Antichrist, and the power of Satan reigns for the moment unhindered, save as God holds the upper hand after all.
183 But He has shortened the days, or no flesh would be saved. And it is the time when Michael, that great prince, stands up for Daniel's people. But it is the time of flight for him that reads and understands as to those who dwell in Judaea. It is a peremptory sign of the great tribulation, the beginning of the last half-week of Daniel's seventy weeks. Desolation is there caused by the setting up of idols. The unclean spirit with seven others worse had entered in. They were to flee from the wonted habitations of men, and frequented places, to the desolate mountains, not to descend to get anything from the house, nor return if working in the field to get the clothes they had left aside. Woe to those hindered in their flight! But God can think of His people who trust Him even at such a time, and think of everything for them. They were to pray that their flight might not be in winter, difficult for the travel and sojourn of fugitives in the mountains, nor on a sabbath when a flight measured by a sabbath-day's journey would give a bad hope of escape in times such as never were nor would be; God would think of this for them.
But here we have and are meant to have a clear proof that we have to do with Jews, Jewish laws, as with Judaea for the scene, and with nothing else. Further, a little consideration shews that it is only of the last terrible time that it speaks. The Lord refers us to Daniel, and there we find the unparalleled tribulation which cannot be repeated, and the three-years-and-a-half, with seventy-five days added for certain cleansing. There too Michael stands up and the people are delivered, every one that is in the book. Now take 1260 days or years, nothing happened at either, after the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus. That is spoken of in Daniel 9 and then a period of continued calamity, desolations determined; so in Luke, where no abomination is spoken of, only Jerusalem encompassed with armies.
In a word it is the final and terrible tribulation of the Jews guilty of having rejected their Messiah, but whose deliverance will then take place in grace, those who are written in the book, for God has an elect people, and for their sakes the days shall be shortened. But in these last days we again find false Christs and false prophets encouraging the unbelieving with the hope of deliverance. They shall give signs and wonders so that if it were possible they would deceive the very elect. But these God will keep. The Lord warns them to believe none of them. They had His account of His coming; it would be sudden and unsuspected as a flash of lightning, where the object of judgment was there it would be, as the unseen bird of prey appears unlooked for where the carcase is. It is an allusion to Job 39:30. The shortening of the days I apprehend to be the confining them peremptorily to the 1260, whereas man's will and passions would carry them on indefinitely. But the Lord would come as a thief in the night and close it all.
184 Verse 28 closes that part which is warning for the disciples as to the dangers of every kind at the time of the great tribulation. Verse 29 is God's intervention in judgment. Immediately after the tribulation of those days there is a complete subversion of governmental order. All that held a place in the ordinances that ruled the earth would be shaken and subverted, and then Christ would appear, for the sign of the Son of man in heaven is His appearing. It is not signs of a coming kingdom and then a Messiah on earth, but the Son of man, heir of all things, who appears in heaven. There may be indistinctness of glory before He is personally seen, but it is the Son of man Himself who comes and is seen. It is Himself appearing, no premonitory sign but Himself, and Himself from heaven who had gone up there, not a Jewish expected Messiah, Son of David, on earth. This shall be mourning to all the tribes of the earth or rather land - hopes disappointed, judgment come. All the earth will be dismayed surely, but here it is rather "of the land"; nor is it I conceive the mourning of Zechariah 12:1014. There it is grace on the remnant, "the families that remain." They mourn for Christ. Here it is seeing Him come in power and all the tribes mourn.
Yet not only does the Lord deal then with those in the land, but the elect of Israel will be gathered from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. This closes the direct revelation as to His ways with Israel. What follows is exhortation and warning testimony as to the character of His coming and moral details. From verse 45 we have the estimate of conduct while He is away, in principle, state, and service, all in reference to His coming. The Lord directs them to that by which those forewarned would know it was at the doors. To the disciples such things as the idol in the holy place and the false Christs would tell it was just there. The Lord's warnings had given them the key. To Christians, as we now are with the Holy Ghost, such do not apply. A man who sets up to be Christ can have no deceiving power, for we know He is come, and when He yet comes, will come in glory, even if we have not scriptural intelligence to know we shall appear with Him. The whole scene is Jewish. No mountains in Judaea are my deliverance. I am going to be caught up to meet the Lord in the air. The sabbath day's journey and all the circumstances point to a Jewish scene. To the Jew who expected deliverance a false Christ would be a great snare. With this warning no doubt all is plain, but in itself what the Lord warns against would be a great snare. Even to the Christians before the destruction of Jerusalem, profoundly Jewish as they were, it would not have been without danger, false as it was. At the end, to which this latter part applies, it becomes in the highest degree applicable.
185 We have then the well-known word: "this generation shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled." If we return to Deuteronomy 32, the expression becomes quite clear (see v. 5, 20); the last is just what is spoken of here. I attach great importance to the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, because, consequent on the rejection of the Lord, the throne of God on the earth was finally set aside; but it is not the subject here, though there is analogy. Indeed it was more than an ordinary generation of men after the Lord's crucifixion, though perhaps not sufficiently so to use it as a proof that it does not apply. Nor has that unbelieving generation passed away; we have it amongst us to this day unmingled with the nations. The word of the Lord abides: heaven and earth will pass, Christ's word will not - a solemn assertion of divine testimony. The word of the Lord abides for ever. The "word of our God" says Isaiah. Precious and solemn truth! we have a testimony: God's word, essential truth that changes not, must be always true. Things change, heaven and earth pass away, all is rolled up like a garment; but truth is always truth, and God's word is truth, has revealed the truth blessedly adapted to us and the state we are in; but God's own truth, what reveals Him and His ways, what is heavenly and divine is suited, as Jesus Himself, to what is human and weak down here. We have what never passes away, and faith possesses it, the believer is sanctified by it, and Christ is the fulness of it. Grace and truth came by Him. But of the day and hour of His coming knows no man or angel. It is not a thing revealed. It is kept in the secret of the Father's counsels, the divine mind, and is not in any wise a subject of revelation; it does not come to expression out of the secret of that mind.
186 When the abomination is set up, then indeed the short remaining time is known at any rate in general, and one taught of God knows by the warnings we have been reading if the end is nigh, but when that is, who can say? So Noah, once warned, knew the judgment was then fast coming, but none else. Judgment came as a thief in the night. But this judgment, sudden and unexpected as it may be, will be sure and discriminative. The eye of God will discern those that are His, though in identical circumstances with those who are not. Two men may be in the same field, two women at the same mill; judgment will leave the one unscathed, and take the other. To the heart that was really watching and waiting for Him He would come as a deliverer from all the power of evil. The disciples were to watch, they knew not at what hour their Lord would come.
At the time of the end, when the Lord judges as a whole the unfaithful servant, the kingdom of heaven shall take, as to individual responsibility of those who make positive profession, the form or likeness of ten virgins who went forth to meet the Bridegroom, and servants to whom their Lord entrusted talents for service: the former referring to spiritual state; the latter to service.
The character attached to the saints at the beginning in the first parable is that they went out to meet the Bridegroom; as it is expressed doctrinally in 1 Thessalonians 1, they were converted to wait for God's Son from heaven. This is all important as the living characteristic of the Christian. "And ye like unto men who wait for their Lord when he shall return from the wedding": their loins girded about, their lights burning - a clear and manifest confession of Christ, and all in order in the heart, and as men ready to open whenever the Master knocked. Not a mere notion or theological idea, but the actual waiting for Christ, and the heart in a state ready to receive Him. It is well before we go farther to remark that we have not the bride here. The church is not viewed as such. If we will make out a bride here, it is Jerusalem on the earth, and that according to the whole tenor of the Gospel; not Jerusalem above. Christians are viewed as virgins accompanying the Bridegroom in to the wedding.
187 The Lord had warned the disciples in the parable of the servant, chapter 24, of the church's losing the present sense of His coming; that if the evil servant said in his heart, My Lord delayeth His coming, he would begin to persecute and fall in with the world, as it has happened. This looks at the professed assembly as a whole. Here we find that in fact the Bridegroom tarried. The effect upon all was that all slumbered and slept. True Christians forgot it - lost their character of being gone out to meet Him, as much as false professors. They had gone in, moreover, into worldly religion in spirit and principle whence they came out, though maintaining their profession, however dimly it shone; for the cry had to be resumed, "Go ye out to meet him." This is very solemn; the whole church, the brightest and the best, had forgotten their true place and character. Their original calling was forgotten and lost, but the true saints had not of course ceased to be such. There was a general waking up of all who made profession. The foolish were like the others formally and had their lamps.* But the cry came at an unlooked for, or as men would say, an unseasonable, hour, "Behold, the bridegroom cometh." They were to go out again to meet Him, to take their original calling. They all arose and trimmed their lamps; but, with the five, oil was wanting, there was no living grace, and hence nothing could last. What really shewed a right state, inward thoughtfulness of what they went out for, the effect subjectively in what was not displayed of that which was objectively before them - this was all that was wanting. They were with the others; they had their lamp or profession like them. What was to feed it, living grace within, was wholly wanting; the profession soon began to fail. It was not the time to get what was wanting for it. They were not ready. This was the great essential point. All had been asleep; the whole church, pious and all, had forgotten the Lord's coming. All that made any profession were awoke, the foolish as the wise, by the midnight cry. Any can be aroused to activity when the Lord sends forth the cry. They are not rejecters or infidels, quite the contrary, but there is no oil - the inward life and grace is wanting. Time is allowed after the awakening cry to test the reality of profession. It was soon going out. The Lord came and they had no part in the blessing - the Lord did not know them. A solemn testimony for those who may make a positive profession of Christianity! The midnight cry, the Lord is coming, is what wakes up the sleeping professors. Till then the whole church had lost the expectation of His coming - were asleep to it; but only those who had the Spirit of Christ, real living grace within, were ready to meet Him.
{*It seems these were rather torches, and they had oil in their vessels to feed them with.}
188 The points of the parable are these: the church was called to go out to meet Christ; the Bridegroom tarries, and all go to sleep, ceasing to expect Him. What wakes them up is the cry of His coming; they are called back to their original calling; but only those who had the Spirit of Christ, living grace, were found ready to meet Him, and went in to the marriage. The state of souls professing Christianity is in question.
In the following parable their service is in question. The Lord on His going away leaves talents with His own servants. It is not here, remark, natural gifts, however responsible we may be for the use of them; it is what Christ gave to His own servants when He went away. The Lord gave spiritual gifts on His departing. What were the talents given, and given to servants, for? To serve with. Those who understood their Master's mind, because they had confidence in their Master's goodness, entered in heart into His interests, which is the way of love - traded with them; one did not, he waited to be authorised, and why? He did not know nor estimate his Master. Confidence in Him was wanting, and so confidence in acting grace was not there known in the heart. The Lord is not here unfolding dogmas or explaining how this happens, but presenting phenomena. The servant who did not really know his Master did not serve Him; he feared to do so. He was in the place, had competency to act from the Lord, but did not feel interest enough in what concerned Him to act for Him while away; he had not heart enough to do it, because he did not know the Lord's heart.
The Lord does not treat the question whether there may be gift without grace; from other scriptures, as 1 Corinthians 13, we know there may; but it is not the question here, for there they might use them, where there was grace, for vanity. It is what renders one in the place of a servant an unprofitable one. Gifts of power are wholly distinct from grace. One in the place of a servant with capacity to serve (and every disciple of Jesus thus stood in that place when He was gone), who did not serve through distrust of His Master, proved he did not know Him, and was cast into outer darkness. Note here that the gift is distinct from natural capacity. This last is recognised here. The vessel was fitted and prepared, and the gift put into it. So Paul was a chosen vessel, and was then gifted for service.
189 In Luke the responsibility of man is more fully brought forward, and direct proportionate reward. Every one receives one pound, and he who gains ten gets ten cities. Here all the faithful ones enter alike into the joy of their Lord. They had known their Lord's character and acted on it, and had the blessing of it as associated with Him, were partakers of His joy, though also to be made ruler over many things. Here it is blessedness, there reward. Nor is the wicked person there cast into outer darkness; he loses even what he had-the subject is reward. If he had hard thoughts of his Master, he should have acted on it legally, if he could not according to grace. But now under grace, the want of the knowledge of grace takes away the sense of responsibility. The man does nothing; under law it is not so. A man really under it will toil and labour through fear. The whole parable shews the spirit in which Christ's servant labours according to grace, and its result, not in the kingdom, but together in the Lord's joy, which is according to grace, in our enjoyment of it. If this be wanting all is gone.
Remark another thing here, which is always so. The Lord puts His coming so as not to allow a thought beyond a living man's life. The virgins who fell asleep are the virgins who awoke; the servants who got the talent are the same that are judged. Christ was always to be looked for; and "which are alive and remain" is the right word for faith. Both parables refer entirely to the responsibility of the saints; but there is this difference: the first shews to us the universal way in which, even with true Christians, the original calling of the church was wholly forgotten. The Lord was not waited for. Only grace woke them up in time when He was coming, so that those that had grace, being ready, went in with Him: only there was sufficient interval between the cry and the coming to test personal grace. In the second it is individual all through, and the effect of individual grace in that knowledge of the Lord Himself, which made them serve with the confidence of love, without as to that referring to the Lord's return. They laboured while He was away, but not here in direct reference to His return. The state of the saints of God, as a whole, depended on that; but many have served devotedly, knowing Christ, without knowing aught really of His coming as a present expectation, though knowing He would return and take account, and their service was accepted with the blessed word, "Well done, good and faithful servant."
190 I would further remark that any application of these parables to the Jewish remnant is a mere mistake; God's dealings with and by this remnant, as far as treated in this part of scripture, are unfolded in chapter 24 to the end of verse 31, and this connects itself as to historical events on earth directly with verse 31 of chapter 25. Verse 32 of chapter 24 begins personal exhortations to verse 44. These exhortations have their application to that remnant and close with personal separation by judgment, the spared one being left on earth. From verse 45 we pass over to general christian ground - the disciples up to the destruction of Jerusalem having both positions (though the twelve and Paul had a different dispensational position), both founding the assembly; though its place was not yet revealed as afterwards by Paul, and carrying the last testimony to the Jewish people. Thus in Acts 2 you have church testimony; in Acts 3 you have remnant Jewish testimony. This closed morally with the death of Stephen, where we first find Saul as an adversary in ignorance, and judicially in the destruction of Jerusalem. Stephen began the departure to heaven, forming the heavenly company of Christians.
Matthew 24:45-51 gives us the general history of the service willed of God, in the assembly as a whole, and the source of it in view of the Lord's return, and the resulting alternative as regards the professing body upon earth; and the parable of the ten virgins, those who went out to meet the Bridegroom, which is not the character of the Jewish remnant. The Lord comes to the remnant where they are. These accompany Him to the wedding. The parable of the talents is the responsibility of service all the time He is away, as to their service by the gifts of the Holy Ghost, personal grace or knowledge of Christ being the testing point. Now all this is a solemn warning to Christians, as to their state and service, founded on true knowledge of Christ.
191 In chapter 25:31, we have formally His coming to earth and seating Himself there on the throne of His glory, connecting itself immediately, as I have said with chapter 24:30-31, which terminated the Jewish part of the prophecy and instruction. But when coming in glory with all the holy angels, He does not verily come as a flash of lightning, but takes, and seats Himself on, the throne of His glory, and gathers all the Gentiles before Him. He sits to judge the nations on the earth, the nations then living on it, to whom the message of the then coming kingdom, as declared in chapter 24:14, had come. They were judged consequently according to their reception of these messengers. No other test or ground of judgment was applied to sheep or goats.
Remark further that there are three classes here, the goats, the sheep, the brethren. There is no reference to the dead, nor to resurrection. When the Lord judges the dead at the end of the world, He does not come at all. He sits on the great white throne, and heaven and earth flee away, and the dead small and great are brought up before Him. They are judged according to the works.
And note here, that the ground of judgment in this parable does not apply to the great body of those of the Gentiles judged there when raised. They had had no messengers. The ground of their judgment is stated in Romans 1 and 2. What renders them inexcusable is quite different from the ground of judgment here. What is here is not mentioned there, what is there is not referred to here. The judgment of the assembly on earth, and of special judgment as to the state of individuals and their service, we have already had in the three preceding parables. But before the end God, ever mindful of His mercy, sends out a message to warn the inhabitants of the whole world that judgment is just coming - what in chapter 24:14 is called this gospel of the kingdom; warning them, that is, that the kingdom was just going to be set up. The final character of the testimony is found in the everlasting gospel, Revelation 14, and Psalm 96, called, I believe, "everlasting gospel" as being, not the testimony of sovereign grace taking us to heaven and revealing Christ sitting in glory at God's right hand, but that which was announced in the garden of Eden, that the Seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head. Compare Revelation 11:17-18, and chapter 12, the former passage going on fully to the end, for the casting into the bottomless pit is not the final bruising of Satan which is in Revelation 20:10. But Christ's coming and the binding of Satan in the bottomless pit is the close of God's earthly dispensational dealings, and the strange mystery of a disorder which God allows to go on while calling out souls in grace; Rev. 20:2-3.
192 The whole prophetic history then is contained in chapter 24:1-31. In verses 31-44 is judgment on the Jews when He comes. Chapter 24:45, to 25:30 is the judgment of Christendom, of the whole state and system, their distinctive judgment. Then chapter 25:31 takes up the consequence of the establishment of Christ's throne upon the earth in the judgment of the Gentiles. But for the immensely important fact of setting up the throne of the earth, we might say all is judgment from chapter 24:31. But this fact is all-important, because God has a throne of judgment on the earth again, which He has never had since Nebuchadnezzar took Jerusalem. The Lord comes from heaven and judges the beast and the apostasy, all that rises up against the Lamb. But by this He establishes His power on earth, and in fact in Jerusalem, and thus takes His earthly throne in connection with the Jews and the heavenly saints, to whom judgment, in the sense of ruling government and power, is given. The war-judgment against the beast is in Revelation 19, the sessional-judgment in chapter 20.
This judgment of the Gentiles is spoken of in the Old Testament too. Indeed all the Psalms from 93-99 are the full inauguration of it, in the cry of the remnant, and then first giving the appeal to Israel and to the Gentiles, Psalm 100 being the call of the world up to worship after judgment is accomplished. In a word, our parable is the judgment of the quick only, exclusively the Gentiles (the Jews having been judged, chap. 24:32-35), and the ground of it their reception of the messengers who had been sent out to announce the coming kingdom. The judgment of the quick is as final as the judgment of the dead, "These shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal." The wicked have their lot with the devil and his angels in the everlasting fire prepared for these. The kingdom will be inherited down here by the righteous, blessed of His Father. It was prepared for them from the foundation of the world.
193 We may notice here that those who have preached the introduction of the millennial kingdom will have a place that those born under it will not, though these enjoy the fruit of it in peace. They have gone through tribulation and are before the throne of God, and praise Him with a nearness the others cannot (see Rev. 7:9-17), though still on earth. I am disposed to think the 144,000, Revelation 14, are the Jewish remnant. I have so considered them habitually, and the everlasting gospel to the Gentiles comes after them. These spared ones who have received the messengers go into everlasting life. It is not merely the kingdom, but personal salvation. Those born during the millennium are not necessarily quickened; hence, when temptation comes, they follow Satan. Indeed, though we know that we have eternal life by many testimonies, yet the only passages in which it is spoken of in the Old Testament (Dan. 12 and Psa. 133) speak of it in reference to the millennium. We have it in a higher and better way, with and like Christ.
Some practical details I would yet notice. We have seen that what stamped the character and calling of the Christian was lost while the Bridegroom tarried, and the virgins were asleep. They had originally gone out to meet the Bridegroom - left the rudiments of the world and all religious association with it, for that especially is going out. They had got back into worldly religion, into the world for ease, while still making profession. There were living saints there; but what stamped their calling was lost, and therefore no separation took place. Asleep, a virgin without oil was as good as a virgin with it. "Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light." But the midnight cry awoke both. Religious activity was roused--how much we see of it! But this led to separation, the interval between the awakening cry and the Lord's being there testing the reality of their state. They did not endure; their profession of Christ got dim and was not maintained.
Thus the midnight cry restores the character of the Christian and puts all professors into the place of their calling. But, secondly, their getting into this tests their real state. They cannot go on apart from the world. Their faith does not endure, and then comes the solemn fact: it is now too late. Just as in Thyatira (the papal body), she had time to repent and did not, and now it was judgment; she was replaced by the kingdom and the Morning Star. So here, it was too late to get the oil now and go in to the wedding. It was not the time of calling and supply of grace, but of separation and testing as to the possession of grace - a solemn thought! Who can say how soon it may come? whether individually it may not be come for some who have heard the cry, woke up and given up all, or gone back to the world?
194 This is the point, I believe, intended by not getting oil from the others; and no more than this; it was not the time of calling and communication of grace, but of testing as to possession of it. It was too late, and Christ does not know them. If this be so, and the cry is gone out, and in some measure I believe it has, it is a very solemn thought. A time does come when the calling of grace to this place and position closes, and the time of separation begins. As in another aspect of things it is true, the net was drawn to shore and the good put into vessels and the bad left on the shore, though there the tale continues to the actual execution of judgment; here they are only shut out. But that says all. The door was shut. A gospel to heathens who have not heard may and will go forth, but a possessed gospel definitely without effect there is no gospel for.
The prophetic testimony of the Lord was closed: the immediate circumstances of His last hours now rise up before us. Still in these moments of humiliation He remains the same blessed object to teach us what the wisdom of God is, and even the power of God, though giving Himself up for a season to the will of man; and He shines only the more brightly by passing through it.
The introduction is very striking, though simple. In divine calmness the Lord tells His disciples what is about to happen: after two days was the passover, and at that time the Son of man was to be betrayed to be crucified. The true Passover was to be sacrificed, the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. Such was God's sure purpose. The chief priests anxiously seek not to have it then, fearing a tumult of the people who so eagerly listened to Him and had seen His miracles. They need not have feared; His hour was come, and the heart of man would be led by Satan's power, where alas! they wished. Enmity against God was to have its full course. At the passover at which they feared the people, the whole people would follow them to have Jesus crucified, to bring the victim on the altar - God's Lamb, but a rejected people. They would now have their will, but God's purpose was to be accomplished. Evil was to have its way, and all, save the special work of grace attaching the heart to Jesus, and so ordering a testimony to Him and to the heart it filled - all were to bow to the power, and yield to the tide of evil.
195 The Lord is at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper: a woman comes (we know elsewhere it was Mary the sister of Lazarus; but here it is Jesus who is in view and the state of mind as to Him) and spends what she had most precious on Him - right-hearted devotedness drawn out through grace by the growing power of evil. But the disciples, led away by the spirit of Judas, are indignant at what they call waste. To be sure, spending anything on Jesus is waste in the eyes of the world. On what is useful for man, it is not waste. Even, if worldly-wise wisdom does not see too much encouragement of the poor contrary to the rules of political economy, spending something on them is not waste; but on Christ devotedness of affection to Him - to what purpose? Man's benefit may pass, but testimony of affection of heart to Him (be it that it only does that) cannot pass in the world, no, nor with disciples, where that devotedness is not. The calculations of hypocrites lead them astray, finding ready access to their heart in the state it is in. But the Lord owns it: care for the poor is all right and well; the Lord owns it, but love to Him, when the world's ruin and eternity depend on the manifestation of His self-sacrificing love, rejected or owned, is above all. It is not a corban to those who hold the place of priests, and use His name to the neglect of duty to God and those He has put us in relationship with; but a free and uncalculating heart which shews, as best it may, its unselfish devotedness to Him.
I have noticed elsewhere that it is this devotedness to Christ, to Himself, which obtains true knowledge instinctively in doing what is right, or in the revelation of Him and of truth. Thus Mary Magdalene's watching at the sepulchre makes her the vessel of communication of our highest privileges to the apostles themselves. So the gospel is first fully brought out in the blessed Lord's meeting the case of the poor woman that was a sinner in the city--like this Mary in affection, though so different in state; but each brings out the suited testimony of the Lord. But the attachment to His person draws it out, for He is the centre of all truth and blessing, and, when rejected in this world, brings out further grace connected with Himself; for in Him all divine riches and purposes are found and fulfilled, and it is His breach with the lower position of this world and promise, that raises us up with Him into the higher world of purpose and glory, and it is just there we are now in the Gospel of Matthew. It was worthy to be recorded in all ages that one heart estimated the Saviour, when the world was gone against Him, when the disciples even had not heart or understanding to see and know His preciousness in that solemn moment. It was not insincerity in them but poverty of heart; it was man's heart that looked no deeper than prudence and common sense: divine perception was not there. Attachment to Christ felt what was fitting in heart and drew out divine knowledge for Him.
196 In Judas we have the full contrast with Mary. It may be that the spending the precious ointment on Christ, and so much money lost, as he would think, roused his cupidity. It is very probable - at any rate the hour was there, and good and evil were coming to their full crisis and contrast - money was his motive and Satan suggested to him, blinded utterly by his wretched avarice, to sell the blessed Lord. Nor is the price unnoticed by the Holy Ghost. It is fearful to think for how small a sum he could betray the Master he had so known; but man's heart was to be manifested, and here man's heart under the leading and hardening power of Satan. The love of money was there, this was the lust; Satan suggested the means of gratifying it, and then hardened his heart against even natural feeling. Many a natural man would recoil from betraying with a kiss one known in long kindness and grace. It is evident also that being ever with Christ with evil in his heart and ways must have hardened him in hypocrisy.
For my own part I believe Judas expected Him to get off as He had so often escaped their power, blind as he was as to the hour being come; but this only makes it more horrible. Alas! he had sold himself, not Christ. For He could have got free, with twelve legions of angels, or gone away when they went backward and fell to the ground. But therefore it was the greater sin, and man was to be shewn by his dishonouring the Lord. measured in his mind by this goodly price. For Christ and Christ's perfectness bring out fully the evil of man's heart. What thief being alongside another would insult and outrage the companion of his misery? but, when Christ is there, the poor criminal can join in ribald insults against the Lord of glory. Oh, what a test He is, and what it shews is in the human heart under God's searching power, the searching power of Christ's presence!
197 But another scene was to take place before all was accomplished - the blessed testimony of grace in the institution of the Lord's supper. Yet here also the power of evil was to be ripened by the presence of grace. It was one that dipped his hand with Christ in the dish that was to betray Him, and as we read elsewhere, after the sop he went out. All is prepared of God and used by the Lord in the calmness of divine perfectness. A heart was ready to provide the room, nay, had it ready; and the Lord sends him word, My time is at hand (for that indeed He was come), I will keep the passover at thy house with My disciples. The Lord then refers to His betrayal in words which express, what indeed other passages reveal, His deep feeling as to its being one of the disciples who should betray Him. His knew who it was, He told it here, but what was on His heart in His love to His disciples was, that one of them should do it. The disciples, I think, here shew a true and right spirit, which indeed spoke their innocence. They were sure the Lord knew and told what was certain. Some of them would, and they distrusted themselves; but their asking freely shews they had no such thought: sorrow and honesty of heart were there. The Lord's answer alludes to the prophetic statement which told of His sorrow and the cause of its being so poignant. See Psalm 41:9; 55:12. The Son of man must go as it was written of Him, but terrible was the doom of him who did it. In truth it was awful: - one who had seen His miracles, been sent out to work them himself, witnessed His grace and perfectness; and then to sell Him for thirty pieces of silver! This drew out unhappy Judas; who must speak like the rest, though avoiding doing it till thus denounced. Now he would say as all, to seem as clear as others; afraid, his doom thus denounced, to be different from the rest, but only to bring out the full testimony to his known guilt.
The Lord then institutes the supper, putting first Himself, then the blood of the new covenant, then its being shed for many, in the place of the Jewish passover, the old covenant, and the limitation of everything to that people. This is the distinctive character of the supper here, suited to this Gospel. Mark's account is essentially the same. Luke's is much more personal and connected with (surely divine, but also) human affection to the disciples. But in all it is the blood of the new covenant, or the new covenant in His blood. In Matthew it is leaving association with them, breaking with men, even with the disciples down here, drinking no more of the fruit of the vine; only in Matthew and Mark His drinking it again with them after a wholly new sort is also spoken of. It was the simple and blessed testimony of the displacing all that was before, man and any previously presented ground of man's relationships with God.
198 No new covenant was yet established; but the blood on which it was to be founded was shed, and it could be announced so that Judaism was closed, that is, man's relationships with God as in flesh, and on the footing of man's righteousness; also closing any connection between the Lord come in flesh and man. His body, but His body as dead, was given as meat indeed. This carried the double testimony that there was no possible connection any more between man in the flesh and God; but also, that redemption was wrought, the true passover offered. Hence, as before that, death was death to man, now he lives by death, the death of Christ. It is not here as in Luke, "Do this in remembrance of me," but His separation from His disciples is strongly marked. He does not eat or drink with them, but gives what was the sign of His death to them, the sign of a perfect redemption by His death, but that His death, not His life with them was their portion with Him. This was a total and mighty change, the essence of their whole relationships with Him and having an eternal character. Death was the portion of the Son of God as man down here, and their part with Him and with God was founded on it.
The blood was shed for many for the remission of sins, and the new covenant was founded on it; all was dispensationally changed, but all was eternally founded also as to man, the believer's relationships with God. But present association was wholly broken off till renewed in a new way in His Father's kingdom. This is an expression of Matthew's Gospel like the kingdom of heaven. It is the higher and heavenly part of the kingdom. In chapter 13 we find it in the explanation of the tares and the wheat. We read, "The Son of man shall gather out of His kingdom all things that offend … then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father," that higher part where they shall be in the same glory as Christ Himself, predestinated to the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself: only here it is My Father; there, "their." Then Christ will anew, but in a blessedly new way, enjoy companionship with His disciples and they with Him. Blessed place and blessed familiarity! If the Lord has given up the companionship of His disciples, it is to accomplish their redemption; and He waits, as we wait, to renew it in a better place and in brighter scenes, but as truly and more intimately than they could have it here. Nothing more beautiful or touching than this intimation of the Lord at the moment of His departure. He shewed where His heart was, His love to us. And they sung a hymn together, and went out to the mount of Olives, His wonted resort.
199 But on the way the Lord reveals to them what was about to happen, and that immediately, but still with His heart resting on them. They would find only an occasion of stumbling in Him. With what gracious calmness the Lord tells them of it! For it was a poor and base path, one alas! too natural to us; but He only thinks of them to warn and apprise them of it as those He loved. But, as it was written, they were the sheep of His pasture, and the Shepherd was to be smitten and the sheep scattered. He speaks of them as those gathered to the good Shepherd in this world, the Jewish remnant gathered to Messiah the true Shepherd of Israel, though now to enter on brighter and better hopes and a more blessed service; but here the sheep of His flock already gathered, and now to be dispersed by the death of Messiah the Shepherd.
But He would rise again and then go before them into Galilee, the place where according to prophecy He had been the light of Israel, and gathered these poor of the flock around Him. As such they are looked at here, as such His death scattered them. For Messiah, the true Shepherd, was smitten, and cut off; and what was the flock with the Shepherd taken away? But risen, He would go before them again into the place where He had been associated with them; for in Matthew we have no ascension. The Acts are wholly founded on Luke's mission.
But Peter, trusting as ever his own strength, declares that he never would be offended if all were; if Jordan overflowed all its banks, he was not afraid to dip his foot in it. But self-confidence in a disciple must be corrected by abasement of self. Humble, we are safe, for God gives grace; self-confident and not humble, we must be humbled: so with poor Peter. The Lord warns him, but he maintains his confidence; and so, instead of watching and praying, he goes to sleep, and, though he knew it not, the enemy close at hand, man's hour and the power of darkness. And how easily we are led by what is wrong without exactly what is apparently evil, but what suits human nature! All the disciples are led away into the same self-confident assertion; so they chime in with Judas about the ointment; so they were carried away - even Barnabas - by Peter's dissimulation. What is of man is contagious for men, be it false boldness, or servile fear.
200 But we are drawing to the last scenes of the blessed Lord's life. He is here, the tested but perfect victim, while alas! the disciples again shew what man is! but all only brings out the Lord's grace. It is not, as in John, a divine Person above all, offering up Himself, nor the man overcoming in dependence all that pressed upon Him. Obedience and grace must be perfect in the true and spotless victim. Death and the cup were there; and He must be put fully to the proof of His obedience. But He passes through it all with His Father and yet can think of others who can think but little of Him; for, as to them, it is the testing of the disciples more than what was special to Christ that is portrayed. He looked for their watching, and they failed Him. But we have Jesus perfect in patient obedience, Jesus perfect in referring all to His Father, though feeling, and when feeling, all He had to go through.
It is the perfectness of His mind when His being a victim is in view that is here specially brought before us. He takes all the disciples with Him to Gethsemane; and then, telling them to tarry there while He went on farther and prayed, He takes Peter, and James, and John, who had also been with Him on the mount of transfiguration, and afterwards had the place of pillars farther on; and there all that was before the blessed One came upon His spirit. He began to be sorrowful and very heavy; He felt as man what He had to undergo, not mere pain or suffering, the power of death weighed upon His spirit, weighed upon it as man, yet with a weight no man could fathom. Yet with what calm simplicity He tells it out! We ought to know it, though it may be beyond our knowledge. "My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death." His need was there, and told out to hearts that ought to have felt it and watched earnestly, occupied with Him. He looked for this, some one to have compassion. "Tarry ye here and watch with me." Blessed Saviour! what ought a heart to have felt to whom He said it? Oh how should it have watched, but alas! what are we?
201 He went on to be alone there with His Father about that which with Him only He could enter into, and which must be altogether with Him. He was perfect in referring it to His Father, and referring it alone. There the solemn question must have its solution. There alone it could, and there alone His perfectness could bring it. He fell on His face and prayed, saying, "O my Father," in supplicating earnestness, "if it be possible, let this cup pass from me." He should feel it fully and He did: submission would not have been perfect else, but then His obedience and submission were perfect: "nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt." In the perfect sense of the cup to be drunk, and the holy desire to avoid it, the piety of soul which desired it (for it was all the repulsion of sin from God, and what our wretched souls had fallen into - what man was as departed from God, which He must take upon His soul, if indeed He had to drink it, if He undertook our cause, and it was a holy desire to shrink from such a judgment and being made sin, even as bearing it before God), yet with perfect submission and obedience to His Father, whatever His will was, and to His Father He brings it there where it ought to be brought, alike perfect in desiring not to drink it, and obediently submitting to drink it if it was His Father's will; and this was His second utterance, "If this cup may not pass away from me except I drink it, thy will be done." The no reply now to His first demand leaves His soul in the unclouded perfectness of the second and third, for He was with His Father in full and solemn sense of what it was, but with Him - He is occupied with it. How could it be otherwise? It ought to have been so. The disciples sleep, leaving Him alone with God. Where else could He have now been with such a work, such a cup, before Him? Now it is over, one can linger round this scene to learn His perfectness and love, the love we shall enjoy in brighter days when we shall see Him as He is - when He shall see of the travail of His soul and be satisfied. Yes, it was well; it was only right that He should be alone with His Father then. It could have been nowhere else, and He went naturally there, if I may so speak, for all His thoughts were perfect.
202 But where was he (let us think of ourselves) who was to go to prison and to death? With what touching grace He calls up to view the strange inconsistency. "Peter, could ye not watch with me one hour?" Where was the strength that was going through everything just now? yet with what grace He warns, with what grace He excuses! "Watch and pray that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." How must one have hated oneself for such a want of earnestness and love to Him! alas, how we have to do with it! But here so perfectly is He with His Father for the depth of what was before Him, so perfectly had He had all that with Him only, that the free unhindered grace could in all liberty be as perfect towards His poor feeble but failing disciples: no weight on His spirit with them; that was borne with His Father. How perfect are all His ways! what could they be else? But He can warn them, and warn them as to what was just going on. To Him it was now the path of obedience; but what was not that was temptation. So indeed with everything: all we meet with is occasion of temptation or obedience, only there brought out where all was brought to a crisis with man. But this intercourse with the disciples at this moment is a witness of a depth and calmness in His path which is divine perfection, though in man and in human ways and grace which calls for adoring recognition. We struggle or faint, or hide our sorrow in pride. I have known what it is not to know relief till I said, O my God, my soul is cast down within me. But He has all with God, and can state it as to the fact in perfect simplicity to man. We cannot tell our grief, we need support; and where are we to trust it if it be heavy? He had His resource so elsewhere - all His heart out, looking to His Father - that He could confide where really there was nothing to lean on, only truth of heart - the spirit was willing.
Now this is greatness, only in perfection, yet in lowliness, not in self-sufficiency, in conscious weakness of humanity, but all told in perfect faith and dependence to God His Father, yet never losing His human place, yea, the very expression of it. It is here it comes out so perfectly: never a thought that was not human indeed, but never one that was not suited to such a place in the presence of God, that is, to death and drinking the cup, yet, though a man's feelings there in view of it, not one but what was according to the perfectness of One in whom the fulness of the Godhead dwelt bodily. It would not do that He should not have been fully in conscious manhood there, for He was there for us; nor that in that place a thought or a feeling, that was not divine in its fitness for it, should have been there, and so it was. He was not drinking the cup, but He had to feel it as to all that it was, and feel rightly about it; had He not been God as well as man, that could not have been. Surely He could not have drunk it else, but He could not have thought about it adequately, if a divine source and measure of thought had not been the spring of it in man's necessity before God.
203 Blessed Lord, I do not pretend to fathom what Thou wast: who could? But we may learn from it and adore in our hearts, we may look on and learn Who was there, and with thankfulness of heart. No man knows the Son but the Father, but oh, what traits of paramount blessedness flow forth from this Son being a man! And we shall see that, very man as He is, (and who shall tell the joy of that?) yet He is as perfect in gracious gentleness to man. What it must have been to them, when they had the Holy Ghost, to look back to, and when they knew themselves in their flight from that which He was going to meet! Humbling surely, but a great thing for the heart to have been thus humbled; for after all, we must learn what we are where Christ was, save of course atonement, and even there in respect of guilt to know the perfectness that is in Him. It is not by our minds, but in looking at perfectness in the same place in our weakness. Who will know strength like the weak one that leans on it? Still we know it as taught of God, as He in the perfectness of His person.
In verse 45, in tender words which yet shewed them their service was over, and how He had been alone, He says, "Sleep on now [watching time is finished, the power of evil in act is here]. Arise, let us be going: he that betrayeth me is at hand." But they must be fully proved, He does not send them away. They must be with Him to the end, learn the tale however gently they may. If there was over confidence as in Peter, yet even so it fitted him to strengthen his brethren when restored by a deeper knowledge of what human strength came to in the things of God. But we must learn ourselves where He was, save where He was wholly for us, instead of us, making propitiation for our sins. There He was perfectly alone, alone with God. Who else could have been? He was practically alone in Gethsemane; but He looked for their watching with Him, susceptible of human interest and watching with Him, though indeed He had only to feel how man failed Him even in that. If He looked for that watching, the sense of some one with Him, it was to feel that there was none. But the betrayer was there - and here man and the blessed Lord must be again in contrast. Unhappy Judas, over whom one's heart would draw a veil, betrays the Lord by that which was the expression of long intimacy and that held Him fast. It is horrible. Oh, he was up to his work, and would shew he was!
204 The Lord receives it with the calmness of One who, now in the path of obedience, had perfectly bowed to His Father's will. "Friend, wherefore art thou come?" For indeed, when He warned His disciples, He might have gone away, for it was dark, but for that He had not come. He could have had twelve legions of angels; but how then should the scriptures be fulfilled that thus it must be? It was now, having gone through all with His Father as to His path, a settled thing, not His feeling about it, but the divine path itself. It must be: scripture, the true revealed mind of God, had pointed out that path. What a testimony to scripture and its authority! In that greatest and lonely hour, that stands out from all and has none like it, it sufficed. How then should the scripture be fulfilled that thus it must be? It was by that the Lord conquered in the wilderness, by that He was as to authority determined in this moment in which He gave up all to glorify God and atone for our sins. It is to be remarked here that there is no healing of the servant which we know was wrought; another subject is set forth by the Spirit here, the obedient and submissive victim. He was going as a lamb to the slaughter. This was His place. He ever perfectly obedient, He was learning obedience by the things that He suffered; and that path is ours: human violence and human weapons in the Christian will meet with human weapons and stronger ones in the world; submission to God's will and the cross, is the path marked out for God's glory, as the world is - a wondrous lesson but a blessed one.
If we do well, suffer for it, and take it patiently, this is acceptable with God. This Jesus was now doing, and in the most perfect sense. He could have had His legions of angels and used no violence; but He came to obey and suffer, and do so to the full, accomplishing the work given Him to do, not to contend or escape. But here too, as with the disciples, yea, even with Judas, He has His word for the multitudes. He had sat daily with them in the temple, and they laid no hands upon Him; now they came out against Him as against a thief. There is tenderness and compassion in these words toward them; and the sense that the truth was, His hour was come as to Himself. He had been quietly with them in the temple, and they hanging indeed on His lips, and they had laid no hands on Him. But so it was to be: He was to lay down His life for the sheep, for all the glorious purposes of atonement. They were led by others, but would not have been, were they not away from God. Compassion on ignorance there might be, but this time was to signal Satan's power and Jesus' submission. He is conscious of the difference; He expresses calmly, as to His disciples, His sense of the state of things, and notices it in grace, and bows to it.
205 He was there to submit and accomplish His work. If such was the case, what were the disciples to do? Go His path they could not, though not with the evil. They were powerless, and the enemy exercises over them all the power he can. They forsake Him and fly; they fail utterly in faithful love, when danger is there. They save themselves: it is all they think of. Fight they might have done; flesh can do it; but this path flesh cannot tread. The ark must go alone first through those waters. It was the moment for devotedness; with man, a friend, that might have been; but with Christ - no - He must stand alone. The circumstances which follow do not call for explanation unless in a very small degree. The importance of them is not so much in the moral elements (though their manifestations be brighter than ever), but in the blessed and glorious work which was now accomplished. The chief priests and council held two meetings, but all was prepared already. They were enemies, accusers, and judges - had already paid the price of His capture, making an agreement for His betrayal. They were awaiting His capture in a meeting gathered together for that purpose.
The Lord was taken first to Annas, father-in-law to Caiaphas, actual high priest that year, and they question Him in the morning very early. The council was formally assembled, but when they only ask Him the questions for form, on His answer that He was the Son of God, they condemn Him and take Him to Pilate. All of this is not found in this Gospel, but will be, I think, on comparing the Gospels together. All that is important to display the willing victim, and on whose testimony He was condemned, is found here. They lead Him to Caiaphas. And Peter follows afar off; John (we know he was known to the high priest and went in) gives details not necessary to the moral scene here depicted. They may be seen in John 18:13 and following. Here we have, first, the witness of truth in presence of vain falsehood and violence; Peter will come in his place. It is another scene. He sat with the servants to see the end, a natural feeling even as to one he loved, but which shewed no sense of what was going on. I do not think the apostles shine in all this part of the history. It teaches the difference between ministerial power when sent, and the state of a soul. How the Lord could see through and judge of fitting vessels when power should be conferred, and bear in patient grace with what man was through all! The chief priests and assessors seek for witness to put Him to death, but, ready as they and their followers might be, none was to be found.
206 At last they bring forward what was in the main a true statement, for we have it recorded in John; elsewhere we learn that the testimony, as testimony failed; there must be two for death, and they did not agree. But to man's testimony against Him the Lord returns no answer. Defending Himself was not His object, nor even teaching now; He stood as the willing Victim, as the Lamb for the slaughter, and as the sheep before his shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth. The high priest turns and adjures Him* to answer if He be the Christ, the Son of God according, as we have seen, to His title (Psalm 2) - His true, full, Messiah-title among the Jews. To this the Lord at once answers, He was: for now it was His own testimony and He must give the whole truth, and adds, "moreover, also I say to you henceforth [not hereafter] ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven."
{*Let the reader remark here that this also is an instance of obedience to Leviticus 5:1. It is just what being sworn as a witness is now; and the Lord, who forbids all voluntary oaths as coming of evil from ourselves, takes this at once.}
207 The affected indignation of the high priest and the willing assent of the rest I will not notice. But this is to be remarked, and we shall see it again, that the Lord is condemned for the truth, being the truth in what He said, and the truth as to His own person. He was the Victim again of insult and outrage. The truth He told was the truth, dangerous there but specially the truth there, I mean, which was in connection with Israel, and the point of faith or refutation of all for them, as He owned Himself king before the representative of the Emperor. It was the truth itself as to His person as the object of faith for them. There He was the Christ the Son of God, and rejected, He takes, as we have seen Him do, in peace, the place and title of Son of man coming in glory.
The word "henceforth" is of moment. It says that place of Messiah and Son of God, according to Psalm 2, was over from this, and they would only see Him coming in glory and for judgment, and so it is in fact for Israel. The end of chapter 23, though referring to the same judgment, applies to the remnant repentant through grace; this, to the nation in judgment. Peter's history follows. What poor feeble man is, is shewn even where love is sincere. The flesh has no power in the presence of the world; where it is leaned on, sincerity does not keep us. But it was the means of knowing himself and perfect grace to man being such, but that is not the point here. It is, as all through these scenes in Matthew, what man is in opposition to what Christ was, feeling the trial fully and crying to His Father; perfect in testimony, in truth, and in meekness, not seeking deliverance now but letting the will of God take its course. He is the silent Victim, as the sheep before its shearers, while man was boasting, sleeping, shrinking from the testimony, and denying the truth and his Master, to escape. It is a wonderful picture of a perfect Christ, and what poor wretched man is, in every respect.
Some difficulty having been felt and made current by rationalists, and some rationalists are such by trusting their minds on scripture, I will just briefly notice it, though it be hardly worth it. Matthew and Mark are the same. Luke has this difference, which is not really one: the two former speak of what the maid in the passage said to the men. Luke their remark on it, then all three Peter's denial. The last is the same in all; John is much more general, and mentions only two instances: first, when he was at the fire, when the maid spoke, in John it is merely, they said to him - and then he gives a precise point not noticed by others, that a kinsman of Malchus, whose ear Peter cut off, recognised him, which is given generally in the three others, "they that stood by"; very likely several spoke and convicted him so that he was angry, for from John 18:27 what is said in verse 26 was probably the last time. Peter, on whose face the fire shone (for in the original it is said in Luke "sitting in the light"), went out into the entrance, but it was only to fall into the hands of another maid. I suspect he had got back into the central court, for the last time was an hour afterwards, and the Lord would look on him from where He was. Still the poor apostle's heart was true and the Lord's prayer effectual, his faith did not fail; the Lord's look, full of grace, broke him down, and he went out and wept bitterly. The sorrow of repentance, not despair, was the blessed effect in his heart.
208 After the morning's council, at which the Lord was formally condemned (for they had buffeted Him and insulted Him as a condemned person already), they led Him away to Pilate. But before the Lord's answering before the Gentile governor, we have the ways of unhappy Judas and the priests. It is remarkable how the account in Matthew brings out the wretched condition of man, believers or unbelievers, what man in the flesh is, even if won by grace to Christ; but here the wretched exhibition of those who were His enemies. Remorse seizes Judas when the evil one has done his work by him. He seems to have thought He would, as before, escape; but this made his sin worse, for he knew that power then was there, but money governed his heart, and by it Satan led him into the horrible sin, but he could not shield him when the sin was there. What was money to one who was in despair? The fruit and witness of sin is no comfort to one who is lost by it. He goes to those who ought to have led him in the right way, his heartless companions in the wickedness, and throws down the money in despair: "I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood." He knew well now what he had done, for lust hides sin from the conscience, and Satan will furnish excuses to the mind; but committed sin is on it, it is all dark in its trail behind; and if the love of God be not there to cling to, despair, dark, black despair, only remains. The chief priests have gained their point by Judas' wickedness: what do they care about the effects for him? With consummate heartlessness they reply, See thou to that: what is that to us ?A frightful picture of man's heart given up to wickedness. One can conceive nothing more frightful than such a state-more appalling than such a scene. Judas threw the money down on their answer. What comfort can sin when done find from Satan? And he was even here to be a witness of the terribleness of his sin; and he went and hanged himself. There is something strange in this part of the account which throws the money, and Judas, and the temple, and the priests, all together. He threw it down in the temple, naos; the word is that used for the house. How did he throw it there? I am not aware that the word is ever used for anything but the house itself. And then see the religiousness of those who can buy the blood of the Son of God for thirty pieces of silver. It was the price of blood, and they could not put it into the treasury. To buy the blood they had no scruple, to put such into the treasury was defiling. What a picture of man the Spirit of God gives all through here! and they bought the potter's field to bury strangers. They were common things, but they or any Jew was too holy to be profaned by being buried there. The most outward official religion, and the most absolute wickedness, run together; and even in a Christian, official religiousness is the bane of piety.
209 But the Lord now stood before Pilate, and it is remarkable that again His own testimony is the foundation of all. The governor asks Him if He be King of the Jews? The Lord replies (for He was the truth) in the affirmative, witnessing a good confession; for before the chief priests His confession was to that which was dangerous there, but the truth; before Pilate, what was dangerous there. He was "Son of God" before the priests, "King" before the Roman governor. To the accusing Jews He answers nothing, as I have said; He was not there to defend Himself or escape, but a willing Victim, and He was witness to the truth. But the heads of the Jewish people are before us here as the enemies of God. Pilate, who saw it was all envy, seeks to deliver Him, so much the more anxiously that his wife had sent to press it on him, being alarmed by a warning dream, and presses His deliverance; but the Jews persevere in their enmity against the Lord; and, inexcusable as the governor was, who clearly was bound to protect one he knew to be innocent, yet the wilful sin rests on the head of the unhappy leaders of the people.
210 Ecclesiastical wickedness is always greater than civil; in a persecution it is what is religious and clerical that is the spring and mover in it. But we have the terrible testimony from their own mouth of their part in it, their judgment on themselves The careless and reckless governor (to his eyes there was nothing much to care for) washes his hands of the matter and leaves His blood on their heads, and they take it in their folly. "His blood be on us, and on our children," and so it is to this day. And he delivered Jesus to their will, releasing a murderer whom they desired according to Paschal custom.
And now the blessed Lord is the subject of outrage and insult from the soldiers - accustomed as this poor world is to revel in evil when it is congregated and can encourage one another in it. The Lord bows to it all with patient endurance; He is still the Lamb led to the slaughter. The whole scene is still the patient and perfect victim. But man appears with his heart unveiled. Who would be found to insult and outrage a dying man if he were a criminal? What executed criminal would insult his fellow on the gibbet? but when Christ is there, all this happens. They wag their heads and say, He saved others, Himself He cannot save. Oh, terrible victory of sin over One who would not save Himself because He would save others. Yet if sin had its full display and seeming victory, it was to meet a grace which was, in the perfect work of obedience, accomplishing that which puts it away - a sovereign grace which allows the sin to run to its height to accomplish that which puts it away. The mere provision for present relief the Lord declines accepting, the cup His Father had given Him, that He drinks in peaceful submission, but to know its whole bitterness. But see, as has appeared all through, the awful state of these unhappy priests. They quote their part of Psalm 22 as Jesus did His afterwards. There is in that psalm a verse (8) which is the utterance of the insulting enemies of God, of unbelief; that they quote in utter moral blindness, and fulfil it.
To verse 44 we have the patient silent submission of the blessed Lord, and as heretofore, what man is when it is manifested in the light of His presence, only here ripened into perfect manifestation. From verse 45, though we find man's utter insensibility to all, a stranger to all that was going on, yet we especially get His place with God as the true Victim of propitiation. He was shut in from man and all around to God, as "made sin who knew no sin." Darkness was over all the land. At the close the Lord gives utterance to that which was going on within the veil of darkness which hid Him from all earthly things - an utterance which in few words declares to our souls the cup that He was drinking, His perfectness who was drinking it, perfectness as sinless, perfectness in reference to God. He is the Victim of propitiation; and His voice, not to man but for him, which alone could rightly declare it, announces the solemn fact of what He was accomplishing. For here He is the offering for sin, bearing our sin, made sin for us.
211 It is not now communion with His Father, though perfect submission to His will, and love to Him; but before God as made sin, yet perfect in His confidence and reference of heart to Him. It is the holy and righteous God dealing with sin as sin, yet in Him who had none but was made it, and had voluntarily offered Himself for it; the wonderful work of settling the question of sin before God, and God glorified in dealing with it, where His love to us might be infinite in dealing with sin, in divine and absolute righteousness, and His Majesty and truth made good: where perfect obedience and love to His Father was found, where He stood as made sin, with no departure of heart from confidence in God. "Thou continuest holy." It was not, as Job, reproaching God for His dealings with him, with a yet unbroken will. It is, "My God," yet with a full sense that there was no cause in Him - "why?" and the absolute sense, according to His own enjoyment of that presence, of God's forsaking Him, that which no horror is like. He is simply here the Victim, the offering to God in propitiation. We can say "why," when brought to the cross; first, as bearing our sins, and then as glorifying God.
Other circumstances or words of the Lord are not brought forward here; He stands in the solitary solemnness of the Victim before God, perfect in that place of sin. This there is nothing like. It is once for all; God is perfectly glorified and sin dealt with for His glory. It stands alone in the history of eternity and all, for divine glory depends upon it, its results immutable; for it is done, and its value cannot change or God's must, which cannot be, for His nature is glorified here as well as our sins put away. Man understands nothing of it; they say, He calls for Elias! Then we find that the whole accomplished, and Jesus yet in the fulness of His strength gives up His spirit. It is not here as in John 19:30, "delivered up his spirit," nor as in Mark 15:37, and Luke 24:46, "expired," breathed His last as we say. In Luke we have also the words, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit" - words of faith in death, when its sting of terror and anguish which He has borne was gone. Yet death was still there, but His Father perfectly trusted in it.
212 Here all these deeply interesting parts of the scene are passed over, that the great fact of death in letting now His spirit go away from His body, really dying yet when in full strength, the dying but perfect and willing Victim might stand out before us in its own majesty and force. But all God's dispensation and God's creation, and the dead themselves, felt its power; yea, the rude heart of the Roman soldier was awed. The veil was rent, that which was the sign that man could not approach God. The whole Jewish dispensation in which man's responsibility to God was tested outside was rent from top to bottom; man's sin complete, and man down here had lost God for ever; but the way into the holiest, by a new and living way, fully opened. The sign of God's present power in creation was there; the earth quaked, and the rocks were rent, and the graves were opened, but none stirred till the first-fruits of them that slept had broken the bonds of death, and then they appeared to many in Jerusalem, the witness of the wondrous work that had been accomplished. No wonder all felt its power, or that God gave witness there even to what had glorified Him. He has indeed suffered His Son, in the accomplishment of divine counsels, to be despised and rejected of men, but we shall find that in His humiliation He has always taken care to give a testimony to His glory and what He was to Him. The raising of Lazarus, the riding into Jerusalem, the voice from heaven, and the dove; the dove and His own voice when He bows to enter in by the door with John, taking His place among the poor of the flock; the chorus of angels when He stooped to the incarnation, all are witnesses to His glory in the very place where He humbles Himself, and so it was here in the closing act of all. Nor did the heart of the centurion withstand the power of all that passed; a poor dark heathen, but at least not hardened as the unhappy Jews were religiously, and susceptible of these outward signs of divine power; he and those with him, struck with awe and fear, echoed at least with natural conscience the testimony Jesus gave of Himself when questioned by the priests, "Truly this man was the Son of God."
213 We cannot tell whether there was any divine and lasting operation, in his or the other's soul; we may hope. The object here was the public divine testimony given to the dying Lord that went home irresistibly to the hearts and consciences of those who watched Him, and brought out of their awed spirits the confession of who He was. The testimony had been spread abroad and even they knew that this was the thing in question - Was He the Son of God? What unhardened heart could resist the witness?
But what a terrible witness was this against the Jews! When God gives testimony to His Son, so that the heart of the poor pagan bows under it, theirs remain unmoved! It is well to notice that, though the saints did not arise to shew themselves at Jerusalem, yet their resurrection is connected here with the Lord's death. There He destroyed the power of him who had the power of death. But all was now closed for man and Judaism. All is to begin on a new footing, foreknown indeed and predicted; but now, the work being accomplished on which all was to be founded - yea, had been in fact, though not revealed, man begins according to the counsels of God upon the ground of that accomplished work, wrought to put away sin, to glorify God, and lay the foundation of immutable blessing the result of that which could never lose its value with God. Here, as we shall see, we go on farther than the fact of resurrection and its power, and that in connection with the residue of Israel though sent out to the Gentiles on this ground. So that while historically brought out, as a present thing, yet its realisation bears on the days yet to come, when a restored residue, not having the heavenly place, will be a testimony to Christ's death and resurrection in their own blessing, but on earth, and they disciple the Gentiles on that ground, leading them in the path of Jesus' commandments to the disciples when on earth.
But the Father would have accomplished the testimonies of His word in honouring His Son rejected and crucified; for all here is really a contrast between the blind incredulity of the Jew and all else; even, as we have seen, a poor ignorant Gentile. He was to be with the rich in His death. Not only the devoted women were watching their crucified Lord, but Joseph of Arimathea, when now He was surely dead, goes on to Pilate and begs His body and it is given to him, and he lays it in his own tomb wrapped in a linen cloth, there where never man was yet laid, and rolled a great stone to the mouth and departed. In them all it was respect and attachment, but in Joseph's act God had another purpose; not only to render due respect to Jesus, but to give the strongest proofs that He was really risen. The Jews remembered that He had said He would rise again. The fears of a bad conscience without God fear what they would not believe. Blinded they were, for what was all this in presence of power to rise again? And the thought of stealing His body was the suggestion of their own wicked heart, anything but reassured, and seeking what by self-deception might quiet the suspicious dread of a self-condemning heart. But their plans only make the matter doubly sure. They would have engaged Pilate, thinking all were to be under the powers of their restlessness, in securing the tomb. Pilate leaves it to them to settle the matter. It was their affair; they might make it as sure as they could. But what were seals or guards against the power and will of God? They might make the fiction of the apostles stealing the body absurd and impossible, but that is all. The angel does not quicken the Lord, nor raise Him, but shews - acting according to the majesty of Him who had sent him - the empty tomb. To the guards it is terror and dismay, for such any manifestation of the unseen world is to man; to them the angel says nothing. They were witnesses of the intervention of God, no guards against the working of His power. But to those attached to Jesus words of grace and restoring comfort come from heaven, "I know that ye seek Jesus; he is not here. he is risen."
214 Our Gospel here brings together in a brief statement the bearing of Jesus' resurrection and what accompanied or rather followed it, on various persons - the women, the soldiers, the Jews. As to the first, it is comfort and grace, they are the messengers of the good news to the disciples. The soldiers are alarmed and as dead men. Such is the effect of the manifestation of God's power and intervention. There is nothing which man is so unused to, and which is so strange to his heart and thoughts: A legion of devils might be sought to be restrained, but must be borne and people be used to it, save personal danger; but the presence of Jesus, who drives them out by divine power and goodness, brings the demand at once that He should leave them; and so He did. The soldiers are as dead men. It is the simple effect on the natural man of the manifestation of the power of God, of the unseen world, introduced into this. With the Jews it is deliberate hardness of heart. They seek to destroy the testimony they could not deny, that they had made secure themselves by setting the guard. The women have direct communication from God by means of the angel; they are the Lord's messengers to the disciples. We see, as in so many cases, that love to the Saviour for His own sake brings us into the place where we receive the communications of His grace.
215 It is these communications which must occupy us now. They are comforted with the assurance that He is risen; they are to go at once to tell His disciples that He was. Here it is still the relationship of Christ with Israel which is before us. We have not the special communications of Jesus with Mary Magdalene, which take us into the heavenly place of Jesus, and His interview with His disciples on this ground. We are not at Bethany with Luke, to see Him going up to heaven with hands outstretched to give a heavenly blessing, which could begin with guilty Jerusalem and reach to the ends of the earth. Nor are the various positions of the women brought out, different and distinct in their nearness to Christ; simply, briefly, the different relationships to Christ of the ignorant Gentiles, the women, and the Jews, in presence of the resurrection and what followed it.
The ascension is not found in Matthew. The Lord directs the disciples to go to Galilee where He would meet them. Nor was He content to leave it to the angel only to communicate His will to the disciples, though at the tomb this was needed to apprise them of His resurrection; He Himself meets these poor devoted women - ever the same gracious Saviour. He salutes them graciously, coming to meet them as they went joyfully in haste to deliver the angel's message and the good news of the resurrection to the disciples. And here with the gracious dealing of Jesus we are not on the ground of Mary Magdalene. There Christ presents Himself as going to the Father (His and His brethren's, the disciples), His God and their God. He was not come back to be on earth in visible and bodily presence risen, as Mary's heart hoped, but for what was better. Here He presents Himself to the remnant in connection with Israel, but calling His disciples "brethren."
216 And this gives its character to the whole conclusion of the Gospel. It puts a risen (not ascended) Saviour in connection with the remnant of the Jews, owned as brethren, sending them, as thus owned, to bring in the nations. The body of the nation remains in the blinded hostility which the presence of Jesus had drawn out. We see too how all the characteristic circumstances are drawn together here in a brief review. As the women were going on their errand, some of the watch go into the city to inform the chief priests what had happened. The elders are gathered; the facts communicated; and they deliberate what to do. Hostility to the Lord was the settled source of all. Deliberation as to receiving the clear testimony of the Lord's resurrection there was none; how to get rid of it was all these unhappy chiefs of the people deliberated about. The evidence was clear, clear by their own witnesses; they resort to bribery to engage them to give a different account of the matter, assuring them, if so grave a fault in a Roman soldier as being asleep on his post came to the governor's ears, they would secure them. Their desire to keep all quiet would be a sufficient motive, perhaps money for him too, as for Festus, and the heartless indifference of the governor would have thought as little of the resurrection as of the death of Jesus. Such at least was their ground as to the general result with the soldiers; and the money sufficed to make them run the risk. Such is the world. "The transgression of the wicked saith within my heart, that there is no fear of God before his eyes," Psalm 36:1.
Yet this was but the outside of what was closed, and passed away, though judgment yet lingered. The real and abiding fact with God is the risen Jesus. This, wholly new as to man, never passes away; it is the divine result, though not in all its consequences, of the perfect solution of every question as to good and evil; divine power being come in to solve it, the basis laid which spoke of evil passed away, and of the accomplishment of all God's counsels of grace in righteousness, and man in a position in which, guilty or innocent, he had never been before, after all had been settled according to God, and immutable blessing secured. Here however we have its application, as I have said, the discipling the Gentiles, recognising the Jewish disciples, the remnant of Jews already gathered, as His brethren. The disciples go into Galilee, to the mountain Jesus had appointed. There He appears; when they see Him, they do homage, but some doubt. In the utmost simplicity of truth we find that if the Jews plotted to secure their infidelity, there was no plot in the disciples, for some doubted it was He. No one would have said this who sought to compose an account; the evidences would have made it flagrantly true, incontestable. It is made more incontestable by the doubt, but it is not man's way of making it so. He comes upon them by surprise and some are not sure. A plot arranged would have secured His acceptance; a testimony unfounded in fact would not have invented a doubt. The apostle tells us in simplicity, and guided of God, what occurred.
217 The Lord addresses them on the ground of the place which now belonged to Him, which He will fully take in power hereafter, which belonged to the risen Lord, being His in right of the new place into which He had entered as man. "All power is given to me in heaven and in earth." All is not accomplished, all things not yet put under His feet, but it is His place as the risen Man who has glorified God and accomplished the work given Him to do. Hence He sends them forth beyond the limits of the King of Israel in Zion, that had been set forth fully in chapter 10, then and on to the future. Here connected with the remnant of the Jews, associating them as brethren with Himself, having accomplished redemption, they were to disciple the nations, baptizing them (not to Jehovah, not to Messiah or the Son of David, but) to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, that in which the one God of Israel was fully and completely revealed; teaching them to observe that which they had learned from Him on the earth; and He would be with them to the end of the age. It is thus before the millennium, not the mystery of the church, nor the future gathering of all things. The former was revealed and confided to Paul, the latter to come in when the age was finished. Not the mission from Bethany (which the Acts follow throughout), not starting from Jerusalem nor beginning it as that did; but accepting the poor of the flock as brethren to Christ; they were to bring in, disciple all the nations on the footing of their relationship with Him as thus risen.
It is well to notice what has been alluded to: - the ministry in the Acts is not the accomplishment of this but of the mission in Luke, the book itself being, as is known, the continuation of his Gospel; nor was the ministry of Paul, who took up by a separate divine mission the evangelisation of the nations, the carrying out of this. His was more fully even yet a mission from an ascended and glorified Saviour, to which was added the ministry of the church. It connects itself even much more in its first elements with Luke. The ministry here established stands alone. The disciples are not sent to Jews, as in Luke coming from an ascended Saviour they were to begin at Jerusalem. Jerusalem is rejected, and the remnant attached to Christ (His brethren, and owned in this character) sent out to Gentiles. This, as far as scripture teaches us, has never been fulfilled. The course of events under the hand of God-another term, so to speak, the disciples remain at Jerusalem; and a new mission to the Gentiles is sent forth in the person of Paul and that connected with the establishment of the church on earth. The accomplishment of this mission has been thus interrupted, but there is the promise to be with those who went forth in it to the end of the age. Nor do I doubt it will be so. This testimony will go forth to the nations before the Lord comes. "The brethren" will carry it to warn the Gentiles. The commission was given then, but we find no accomplishment of it. It connects the testimony with the Jewish remnant owned by a risen Lord of all, with the earth and His earthly directions, and for the present it has in fact given place to a heavenly commission, and the church of God.