Matthew 19
ButlerMk. 1 And he arose from thence, and cometh into the coasts of Judea, by the farther side of Jordan: and the people resort unto him again; and great multitudes followed him; and as he was wont, he taught them again, and healed them there.L. 10 And he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. And behold, there 11 was a woman which had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bowed together, 12 and could in no wise lift up herself. And when Jesus saw her, he called her to him, and 13 said unto her, Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity. And he laid his hands on her: and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God. 14 And the ruler of the synagogue answered with indignation, because that Jesus had healed on the sabbath-day, and said unto the people, There are six days in which men ought to work: in them therefore come and be healed, and not on the sabbath-day. 15 The Lord then answered him, and said, Thou hypocrite, doth not each one of you on the 16 sabbath loose his ox or his ass from the stall, and lead him away to watering? And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, 17 these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the sabbath-day? And when he had said these things, all his adversaries were ashamed: and all the people rejoiced for all the glorious things that were done by him. 18 Then said he, Unto what is the kingdom of God like; and whereunto shall I resemble 19 it? It is like a grain of mustard-seed, which a man took, and cast into his garden, and it grew, and waxed a great tree; and the fowls of the air lodged in the branches of it. 20, 21 And again he said, Whereunto shall I liken the kingdom of God? It is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.
“He went about doing good.” He wiped away many a tear; he made many human hearts glad; and many others connected with them felt the benignant and genial influence of his earthly ministry. He relieved and removed a great amount of physical suffering; he created and planted in the world a great amount of physical happiness. He devoted himself to the work of blessing man; and in both regions of his life, in his acts and in his words, in the healing spiritual truths which he imparted, and in the unnumbered material kindnesses which he bestowed, we discover one reigning motive—love of man, deep, enduring, redeeming love.
Never passed before the imagination of man, and never but once alighted on this earth so heavenly a vision. Once, in all human history, we meet a being who never did an injury, and never resented one done to him, never uttered an untruth, never practised a deception, and never lost an opportunity of doing good; generous in the midst of the selfish, upright in the midst of the dishonest, pure in the midst of the sensual, and wise far above the wisest of earth’s sages and prophets, loving and gentle, yet immovably resolute; and whose illimitable meekness and patience never once forsook him in a vexatious, ungrateful, and cruel world. Y.
DESCRIPTIVE of a period of our Lord’s life and ministry, which otherwise would have been an utter blank, as telling us what happened away both from Galilee and Judea during the five months that immediately preceded the crucifixion. Evidently the chief scene or theatre of our Lord’s labors throughout the period was in the region of Perea, east of the Jordan. It is not likely that he had ever before gone so leisurely through this district. Certainly he had never visited it in the same manner. He came among this new population with all the prestige of his great Galilean name. He came sending messengers before his face—in all likelihood the seventy expending their brief but ardent activities upon this virgin soil. He came as he had come to the Galileans at the opening of his ministry, among whom many of the notices of what occurred here strikingly remind us. But while these coincidences as to events, and repetitions as to discourses, do occur, there occur along with them many things both in the spirit and actions of Christ appropriate exclusively to this particular epoch of his life. No allusions to the time or manner of his own death, no reference to his departure and return, no pressing upon his disciples of the great duty of waiting and watching for his second advent, no prophecies of the approaching overturn of the Jewish economy, came from the lips of Jesus during his sojourn in Galilee. But now all the reasons for reserve are nearly if not entirely gone. Jesus has set his face to go up to Jerusalem to die. He waits and works only a little longer in this remote region beyond Jordan, till the set time has come. Nothing that he can say or do here can have much effect in hastening or retarding the day of his decease. He may give free expression to those thoughts and sentiments which, now that it is drawing near, must be gathering around the great event. And there was a shortness, a decisiveness, a strength of utterance in all Christ’s sayings of this period, whether addressed to friends or foes. His instructions, counsels, warnings to his own disciples, he expressed in the briefest, most emphatic terms. This section of our Lord’s life and labors has been greatly overlooked—thrown, in fact, into the distance and obscurity which hangs over the region in which it was enacted. A careful study will guide to the conviction that in it Christ occupied a position intermediate between the one assumed in Galilee and the one taken up by him at Jerusalem in the days that immediately preceded his crucifixion. H.
Mk. 1. The farther side of Jordan. The region east of the river Jordan, including Bashan and Gilead, because lying beyond the river Jordan, called Perea (beyond). In the time of Christ it was fertile and populous, and inhabited by a mixed population, partly Roman, partly Jewish. It is said that the Jordan valley alone contains the ruins of 127 villages. Most of the events and incidents in Luke (chaps. 10-18) occurred in this district. L. A.
L. 14. The ruler of the synagogue answered with indignation. These remarks he has neither the courage to address to Jesus himself, nor the candor to address to the poor healed woman, but preaches at them both by rebuking the multitude, who had no concern in the action at all, beyond the fact that they had been passive spectators of it! F.—Blaming them for coming to be healed, he indeed is thinking not of them, but means that rebuke to glance off on him who has put forth on this day his power to help and to save.
15. Every word of Christ’s answer is significant. It is not a defence of his breaking the Sabbath, but a declaration that he has not broken it at all. T.—Their absorbing attachment to the Sabbath, the frenzy which filled them when he set at naught their Sabbatarian uncharities, rose from many circumstances. They were wedded to the religious system which had long prevailed among them, because it is easy to be a slave to the letter, and difficult to enter into the spirit; easy to obey a number of outward rules, difficult to enter intelligently and self-sacrificingly into the will of God; easy to entangle the soul in a network of petty observances, difficult to yield the obedience of an enlightened heart; easy to be haughtily exclusive, difficult to be humbly spiritual; easy to be an ascetic or a formalist, difficult to be pure, and loving, and wise, and free; easy to be a Pharisee, difficult to be a disciple; very easy to embrace a self-satisfying and sanctimonious system of rabbinical observances, very difficult to love God with all the heart, and all the might, and all the soul, and all the strength. F.—I have no heart to dwell on their absurd superstitions, their intense fanaticism, or their social and domestic institutions and manners, comprising an incredible and grotesque mélange of filth and finery, Pharisaic self-righteousness and Sadducean licentiousness. The following is a specimen of the puerilities enjoined and enforced by their learned rabbis: A Jew must not carry on the Sabbath even so much as a pocket-handkerchief, except within the walls of the city. If there are no walls it follows, according to their perverse logic, that he must not carry it at all! To avoid this difficulty, here in Safed, they resort to what is called erüv. Poles are set up at the end of the streets, and strings stretched from the one to the other. This string represents a wall, and a conscientious Jew may carry his handkerchief anywhere within these strings. I was once amused by a devout Israelite who was walking with me on his Sabbath. When we came to the end of the street the string was gone, and so by another fiction he was at liberty to go on without reference to what was in his pocket, because he had not passed the wall. The last time I was here they had abandoned this absurdity, probably to avoid the constant ridicule it brought upon them. W. M. T.
16. The “ought not” catechetically answers, with infinite condescension, the inconsiderate, proud, and unintelligent “ought” of verse 14. “Men ought” was the theme there; so now the “ought” is abundantly returned; “ought not she, according to the law of love, which specially ordains God’s works for the Sabbath, as man’s labor for the remaining days, to be loosed from this misery?” F.
19–21. The first of these parables sets forth the inherent power of the “kingdom of heaven.” Small and insignificant at first to outward sense—begun by a man ignominiously crucified, with a few illiterate followers, having no countenance or support from the ordinary forces of the world—it has yet daily become greater and greater, and at length it shall be for shelter to all the inhabitants of the earth. This parable assures us of the inherent power and outward glory and triumph of the Messiah’s kingdom on the earth. The parable of the leaven shows that, coextensive with this, there is proceeding an inward process of “penetrating and assimilating,” so that the dwellers under the shadow of the kingdom shall also have it “within them.” D. K. D. (Section 57.)
Section 101.—Entrance into the Kingdom. Message to Herod.
Perea.
M. 3 THE Pharisees also came unto him, tempting him, and saying unto him, Is it lawful Mk. 3 for a man to put away his wife for every cause? And he answered and said unto them, 4 What did Moses command you? And they said, Moses suffered to write a bill of 5 divorcement, and to put her away. And Jesus answered and said unto them, For the M. 4 hardness of your heart, he wrote you this precept. And he said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning of the creation made them male and 5 female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall 6 cleave to his wife, and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. They say unto him, Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorce-ment, and to put her away? He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives; but from the beginning it was not so. And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.Mk.10 And in the house his disciples asked him again of the same matter. And he saith unto them, Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery against her. And if a woman shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she committeth adultery. His disciples say unto him, If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry. But he said unto them, All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given. For there are some eunuchs which were so born from their mother’s womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it. Then were there brought unto him little children, that he should put his hands on them, and pray; but when his disciples saw it, they rebuked those that brought them.Mk.14 But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and called them unto him, and said, Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of heaven. Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall in no wise enter therein. And he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them. And he departed thence.
CHRIST is the most unworldly of beings, and yet there is no ascetic sourness or repugnance, no misanthropic distaste in his manner; as if he were bracing himself against the world to keep it off. The more closely he is drawn to other worlds, the more fresh and susceptible is he to the humanities of this. The little child is an image of gladness, which his heart leaps forth to embrace. The wedding and the feast and the funeral have all their cord of sympathy in his bosom. H. B.
While we are striving to be strong in the faith, let us not despise the faith of the weakest; for there will come a day to us all when, in the giving way of the powers of nature, and the pouring in of the great water-floods, we shall grasp at something which may hold us up and carry us over. And then, not how much we have searched out and known, not how much we have prevailed, will help us, but how much we have lived on Christ, and heard in our souls of his own life-giving voice, and how much we have shown in the world of his meek and lowly example. A.
M. 3. Lawful to put away his wife? A question of difficulty and danger, with which they here tempted him; for he was now under the jurisdiction of Herod Antipas. Herod had imprisoned John for declaring that it was not lawful for him to put away his wife. J. G. B.—4. Nothing is lawful to any man who doubts its lawfulness. Jesus, therefore, instead of answering them, directs them to the source where the true answer was to be found. Setting the primitive order side by side with the Mosaic institution—meeting their “Is it lawful?” with “Have ye not read?”—he reminds them that God, who at the beginning had made man male and female, had thereby signified his will that marriage should be the closest and most indissoluble of all relationships—transcending and even, if necessary, superseding all the rest. F.
6. Jesus sends them back to the original constitution of man as one pair, a male and a female; to their marriage, as such, by divine appointment; and to the purpose of God, expressed by the sacred historian, that in all time one man and one woman should by marriage become one flesh, i. e., so long as both are in the flesh. This being God’s constitution, let not man break it up by causeless divorces. B.—He declared that marriage is, according to its idea, an indissoluble union, by which man and wife are joined into one whole, constituting but one life. As it was his work everywhere to lead back all human relations to their original intention, so he decided that the idea of marriage represented in Genesis, as originally the basis of its institution by God, should be realized in life. N.
8. This verse is a key to much of the Mosaic legislation, which only reflected so much of the divine will as could be enforced by civil government. L. A.—“Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts (your rude and carnal condition), suffered you to put away your wives (as state laws do not aim to realize moral ideas or to create a moral sense, but to bring about outward civilization, the laws being adapted to the standpoint of the nature); but from the beginning it was not so.” But Christianity, from its very nature, can make no such condescensions. It is her problem everywhere to realize the ideals of the creation; a task which the new life imparted by God makes possible to her. In fact, Christ’s decision in this particular case illustrates the entire relation of Judaism to Christianity; there, condescension to a rude condition of the natural man, which could not be removed by outward means; here, the restoration of that which was in the beginning. Judaism, in a word, stood midway between the original and the renewal. N.—The law of Moses went as far as it was practicable to go, in view of the debased condition of the people. To have attempted more would have been to accomplish nothing. It laid a degree of restraint upon lawless passion and caprice. It was a license in form, but a restriction in reality. *But it did not, and could not, embody the true idea of the conjugal relation, as that idea lay at the beginning in the Creator’s mind. The New Testament law on this subject was the fulfilment of the Levitical rule. G. P. F.
9. This statement swept away forever the conception of woman as a mere toy or slave of man, and based true relations of the sexes on the eternal foundation of truth, right, honor, and love. To ennoble the house and the family by raising woman to her true position was essential to the future stability of his kingdom, as one of purity and spiritual worth. By making marriage indissoluble he proclaimed the equal rights of woman and man within the limits of the family, and, in this, gave their charter of nobility to the mothers of the world. For her nobler position in the Christian era, compared with that granted her in antiquity, woman is indebted to Jesus Christ. G.
Mk. 12. If a woman shall put away her husband. The practice of divorcing the husband, unwarranted by the law, had been, as Josephus informs us, introduced by Salome, sister of Herod the Great, who sent a bill of divorce to her husband; which example was afterward followed by others. By law it was the husband’s prerogative to dissolve the marriage. G. C.—M. 12. His decision was opposed not only to the old Hebrew notion that celibacy was per se ignominious, but also to the ascetic doctrine which made it per se a superior condition of life; a doctrine so widely diffused in later times. It involves his great principle, that the heart and disposition must be devoted to the interests of the kingdom of God, and for it must voluntarily modify all the relations of life as necessity may require. N.
13. Brought little children.** He had the ideal childlike spirit, and delighted to see in little ones his own image. Purity, truthfulness, simplicity, docility, and loving dependence, made them his favorite types for his followers. The apostles needed the lessons their characteristics impressed; and though enforced before, he gladly took every opportunity of repeating them. G.—Mk. 14. Forbid them not. He turned the rebuke of the disciples on themselves. He was as much displeased with them as they had been with the parents and children. F.—To refuse children access to his grace was to misrepresent his spirit, his mission, and his kingdom. In bringing the children at that moment, the mothers interrupted him in an important doctrinal discourse; yet Jesus suspended his teaching, and gave place to a sentiment, a symbol, a sacrament; for the blessing was of the nature of a sacrament. It signified that there was a place in his thought, in his heart, in his mission, in his Church, for children who were too young to understand his teaching. Myriads of children are in heaven, beholding the face of his Father; and the kingdom of grace and salvation upon earth is also for little children. It is pleasing to Christ that parents should bring their children to him in loving consecration, and that children should be embosomed within his Church. J. P. T.
Of such is the kingdom of heaven. Then, beyond a doubt, in that kingdom shall all the little ones be found. For it is not as children of Christians, it is not as baptized, but it is as children, that of such is that kingdom. Untainted by duplicity, by impurity, by the schemes of ripened selfishness, in them the great redemption takes effect at once and unquestioned. A.—If all that Jesus meant had been that of suchlike, that is, of those who resemble little children, is the kingdom of heaven, we can see much less appropriateness in the rebuke of the disciples, and in the action of the Lord which followed immediately—his taking the little children up into his arms and blessing them. We accept, then, the expression as implying not simply that of suchlike, but of them, is the kingdom of heaven. It is not, however, upon any single saying of our Lord that we ground our belief that those who die in infancy are saved; it is upon the whole genius, spirit, and object of the great redemption. They will share in the benefit of that life which the second, the spiritual Head of our race, has brought in and dispenses. “Your little ones,” said the Lord to ancient Israel, speaking of the entrance into the earthly land of promise—“Your little ones, and your children which in that day had no knowledge between good and evil, they shall go in thither.” And of that better land into which for us Jesus as the forerunner has entered, shall we not believe that our little ones, who died before they had any knowledge between good and evil, shall go in thither, go to swell the number of the redeemed, go to raise it to a vast majority of the entire race, mitigating more than we can well reckon the great mystery of the existence here of so much sin, and suffering, and death? H.
15. Receive the kingdom as a little child.** This single saying expressed the whole nature of the gospel proclaimed by Christ. It implied that he viewed the kingdom of God as an invisible and spiritual one, to enter which a certain disposition of heart was essential, viz., a childlike spirit, free from pride and self-will, receiving divine impressions in humble submission and conscious dependence; in a word, all the qualities of the child, suffering itself to be guided by the developed reason of the adult, are to be illustrated in the relations between man and God. Without this childlike spirit there can be no religious faith, no religious life. N.—16. It is surely not to be conceived that all our Lord meant was to inform us that seeing grown people must become childlike in order to be capable of the kingdom of God, therefore they should not hinder infants from coming to him, and therefore he took up and blessed the infants themselves. Was it not just the grave mistake of the disciples that infants should not be brought to Christ, because only grown people could profit by him, which “much displeased” our Lord? And though he took the irresistible opportunity of lowering their pride of reason by informing them that, in order to enter the kingdom, “instead of the children first becoming like them, they must themselves become like the children,” this was but by the way; and returning to the children themselves, he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them and blessed them, for no conceivable reason but to show that they were thereby made capable, as infants, of the kingdom of God. B.
And he took them up in his arms. May the great Shepherd gather us all, us and our little ones, the fathers, the mothers, the children, into his immortal fold; out of the far country of a wilful and worldly and alienated life, into the Church on earth, into the larger Church, the household undivided and everlasting in heaven! F. D. H.
Section 112.—The Rich Young Ruler. Peter’s Selfish Question.
Perea.
Mk. 17 AND when he was gone forth into the way, behold, a certain ruler came running, and kneeled to him; and asked him, saying, Good Master, what good thing shall I do that I may inherit eternal life? And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God. But if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments. He saith unto him, Which? Jesus said, Thou knowest the commandments: Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Defraud not, Honour thy father and thy mother, and, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. The young man answered and said unto him, Master, all these things have I kept from my youth up: what lack I yet? Now when Jesus heard these things, beholding him he loved him, and said unto him, Yet lackest thou one thing; if thou wilt be perfect, go thy way, sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross and follow me. But when the young man heard that saying, he was very sorrowful, and went away grieved; for he was very rich, and had great possessions. And when Jesus saw that he was very sorrowful, he looked round about, and saith unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven. And the disciples were astonished at his words. But Jesus answereth again, and saith unto them, Children, how hard is it for them that trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God! And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. When his disciples heard it, they were exceedingly amazed, saying among themselves, Who then can be saved? But Jesus looking upon them saith, With men this is impossible, but not with God: for with God all things are possible.
27. Then answered Peter, and said unto him, Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed
28 thee; what shall we have therefore? And Jesus answered and said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed me in the regeneration, when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging
29 the twelve tribes of Israel. And verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake and the gospel’s, or for the kingdom of God’s sake, who shall not receive an hundred-fold now in this present time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come shall inherit ever-
30 lasting life. But many that are first shall be last; and the last shall be first.
EARTHLY riches are a great obstacle to salvation, because it is hard to possess without loving them. Truth itself affirms this, yet scarce any one hears or believes it. A man is not rich, in the sense here intended, unless he loves riches; and he is properly enough poor in the midst of his treasures, when he uses them, not as a proprietor, but as the steward of God. A rich man is not properly one who only possesses great wealth, but one who is possessed thereby; not one who distributes it as being only a steward, but one who makes it the instrument of his own will, and places his supreme good and happiness therein. The wealth of such a man is like food incorporated and changed into the substance of his heart: to take away the former is to tear out the latter. He alone can do this who has the heart of the covetous person in his hand, and can take out his stony heart, and give him one of flesh.
A man may be rich without riches: he may leave all, without having ever possessed anything. By the heart we cleave to earthly possessions; by renouncing them in our heart we disengage ourselves from them. We leave them, when we cease to desire and love them, because we possess them more by desire and love than by possession itself. We properly leave or forsake anything only when we do it by the Spirit, and for the sake of Christ, and in order to follow him; otherwise, whatever our hands let go, is retained by the desire of our hearts. Q.
M. 17. That I may inherit eternal life. Jesus saw that he was putting all upon moral goodness; some higher virtue to be reached by his own effort entitling him to the eternal life. He saw that this idea regulated even his conception of Christ’s own character, whom he looked upon rather as a preëminently virtuous man than one having any peculiar relationship to God. Checking him, therefore, at the very first—taking exception to the very form of his address, he says, “Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God.” H.—He does not decline the epithet good as such, but only in the superficial sense of the rich youth who regarded him simply as a distinguished rabbi and a good man; not as one with God. He did not say, I am not good; but no man is good—much less in comparison with God. P. S.—He could have had but one object—to raise the youth’s ideas of Himself, as not to be classed merely with other “good masters,” and declining to receive this title apart from the “One” who is essentially and only “good.” This indeed is but distantly hinted; but unless this is seen in the background of our Lord’s words, nothing worthy of him can be made out of them. B.
18. Jesus, as the youth wanted to do something, tells him merely of the second table, for, as has been well remarked, “Christ sends the proud to the law, and invites the humble to the gospel.” F.—20. All these have I kept. There was no doubt great ignorance in this reply. He knew but little of any one of these precepts in the strictness, spirituality, and extent of its requirements, who could venture on any such assertion. Yet there was sincerity in the answer, and it pointed to a by-gone life of singular external propriety, and that the fruit not so much of constraint as of natural amiableness and conscientiousness. As he gave this answer, Jesus beholding him loved him. It was new and refreshing to the Saviour’s eye to see such a specimen as this of truthfulness and purity among the rulers of the Jews. H.—Our own experience tells us of not a few on whom we have looked with wistful regret, that they should have all the setting of fairest human jewels, of loveliness and grace, while in the centre, the absence of the one thing needful, the pearl of price, revealed a profound and irreparable blank. The Lord Jesus Christ, who had an eye for all that is fair in God’s creation, did not cast a chilling look on anything that is beautiful in human nature. He acknowledged it as good so far as it went, and sought to gain it for the divine and eternal. Ker.
21. Go, sell, and give.** Beneath the pleasing show of outward moralities Christ detected in the young ruler’s breast a want of any true regard to God, any recognition of his paramount claims. His heart, his trust, his treasure, were in earthly, not in heavenly things. He needed a sharp lesson to teach him this, to lay bare the true state of things within. Christ at once thrusts the probe into the very heart of the wound. He embodies the claim which he knew the young ruler was unprepared to honor, in that form which struck directly at the idol of his heart, and required its instant and absolute dethronement. H.—Christ commands him to follow, just as he was, without delaying to care for his possessions; expressing, in this particular command, the general thought: “The one thing which thou lackest, and without which none can enter into eternal life, is the denial of thyself and of the world, making everything subordinate to the interests of the divine kingdom.” He chose the particular form, instead of the general rule, in order to convince the rich man of his lack the more strikingly, by pointing out his weakest side; for he clung to his wealth with his whole heart; to teach him, from his own experience of his love of the world, how far he was from possessing that love which is the essence of obedience to the law. N.
22. He went away grieved.** It silenced, it saddened, it sent away. No answer was attempted. No new question was raised. The demand was made in such broad, unmitigated, unambiguous terms, that the young ruler, conscious that he had never felt before the extent or pressure of such a demand, and that he was utterly unprepared to meet it, turned away disappointed and dissatisfied. H.—When riches or heaven, on Christ’s terms, were the alternative, the result showed to which side the balance inclined. Thus was he shown to lack the one all-comprehensive requirement of the law—the absolute subjection of the heart to God—and this want vitiated all his other obediences. B.—Religion cannot yield us the fulness of its blessing till it brings the heart under the completeness of its gentle captivity to Christ. Submission first; then peace, and joy, and love. “Jesus beholding him, loved him;” yet sent him away sorrowing. How tender, and yet how true! tender in the sad affection—true to the stern, unbending sacrifice of the cross! It is because he would have us completely happy that he requires a complete submission. “One thing” must not be left lacking. Whosoever would enter into the full strength and joy of a disciple must throw his whole heart upon the altar. F. D. H.
Mk. 24. Jesus notices the surprise that his saying had created, and, aware of the false track along which his disciples’ thoughts were running, proceeded to explain the real meaning of what he had just said. “Children, how hard is it for them that trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God!” It is not the having but the trusting that creates the difficulty. It is not the kind or quantity of the wealth possessed, but the kind or quantity of the attachment that is lavished upon it. The love of the penny may create as great impediment as the love of the pound. Nor is it our wealth alone that raises a mighty obstacle in the way of entering into the kingdom. It is anything else than God and Christ upon which the supreme affection of the spirit is bestowed. H.—The kingdom of glory is equally open to all true disciples of Christ, rich or poor; for it is not the condition we are placed in here, whether it be high or low, but the use we make of it, that will determine our condition in the life to come. Mann.
M. 24. Easier for a camel. The camel being the largest animal with which the Jews were acquainted, its name became proverbial for denoting anything remarkably large; and “a camel’s passing through a needle’s eye” came, by consequence, as appears from some rabbinical writings, to express a thing absolutely impossible. G. C.—The explanation that the small side gate of a city, through which a laden camel could only crush with the utmost difficulty, was called a “needle’s eye” is more plausible, but seems to need confirmation. F.—The similitude here used implies an absolute impossibility; yet, according to every rule of interpreting Oriental proverbs, it is intended only to express a great difficulty. These expressions of our Lord allude to the difficulty of embracing the gospel in his time, and apply properly to those who trust in riches; yet to all rich men they hold out this most important admonition, that their situation is at best a situation of difficulty and danger; that their riches furnish them with so many temptations to intemperance, pride, forgetfulness of God, and contempt of everything serious, and sacred, that they have peculiar need to take heed to their ways, to keep their hearts with all diligence, and, above all, to implore that assistance from above, which may enable them to overcome all the enemies with whom they have to contend. P.
“With God all things are possible,” is the same as saying, “All things are possible to him that believeth.” This, which it is impossible for man to accomplish in his own strength, namely, such a making of himself poor in spirit, such a loosening of himself from the bands which bind him so fast to the world and to the creature, shall yet be possible for him in the strength of God. The impossible thing, which yet is possible with God, is not the saving of the rich man, but the making of the rich man poor, one of God’s poor, and so an inheritor of his kingdom. T.
27. The young man had sought eternal life on the score of his own merits. Yet hardly had Peter seen the catastrophe, and heard the warning, than he comes putting in a claim of merit under cover of devotion to Christ, and saying, “Behold, we have forsaken all; what shall we have therefore?” Guthrie.—In the following parable Jesus warns them against any question of this sort, originating in greed for reward. It shows that the recompense to be received from the Lord will not be determined by the length of time during which we may have followed him, but rather by the character of our service, its affection and heartiness. Hence it is possible that the first in length of service may eventually prove the last in promotion and reward. No doubt all shall be blessed, for they have all labored, all been servants of the Lord. C. B.
29. Every one that hath forsaken. This promise of our Saviour extends to all his faithful servants in every age who part with anything which is dear to them for the sake of the gospel. Whoever gives up his pleasures, his interests, his fame, his favorite pursuits, his fondest wishes, and his strongest passions, for the sake of his duty, and in conformity to the will of his heavenly Father, may rest assured that he shall in no wise lose his reward. P.—Experience abundantly testifies to the fact, that in the Lord, and in fellowship with his disciples, we receive even here below compensation a hundred-fold for any sacrifice we may make. C. B.
27-30. First indeed the Lord answered the question, “What shall we have?” As they indeed and in sincerity had forsaken all for Christ’s sake, he answers them fully—the reward shall be great. But having answered so, his discourse takes another turn, as is indicated in the words, “But many that are first shall be last;” and he will warn them now against giving place to that spirit out of which the question proceeded; for there was therein an invidious comparison of themselves with others, a certain attempt to bring in God as their debtor. In short, the spirit of the hireling spoke in that question, and it is against this spirit that the parable following is directed, which might justly be entitled, On the nature of rewards in the kingdom of God—the whole finding a most instructive commentary in Rom. 4 : 1-4, which passage supplies a real parallel with the present. T.