Matthew 19

Matthew 19:1-15

Section 5. (Matthew 19:1-15.)Nature and the Kingdom of God. In the fifth section the Lord shows to His disciples the relation of the Kingdom to what God as the Creator had established for the blessing of man: an important matter, as to which, it is evident, there would be need of instruction; as also the history of the professing Church has made manifest how easily the mind can get astray. Here was One who had declared Himself Lord of the sabbath, and revoked with His emphatic, “But I say unto you” the sayings of ancient days. It might naturally be questioned, how the new relationships which He had proclaimed would affect those of nature. He had bidden one whom He had called to “leave the dead to bury their dead,” as called into a new sphere and power of life. It was necessary to show whether and how far nature was to have a place in the Kingdom of God; and the two questions of marriage and of children are such as would throw light upon this. In the epistles, and with the advance of knowledge as to Christian place and privilege, such things had to be expanded and given practical application also; and it is significant that it is in those two of Paul’s epistles in which the position of the believer is shown at its highest (Ephesians and Colossians) in which the duties arising from natural relationships are insisted on in the fullest way.

1. (1) Here it is the Pharisees who bring up the question of marriage, or of its obligation, in order, as it has been reasonably conjectured, to seek to involve Him in the disputes between the rabbinical schools of Hillel and Shammai, who were at issue as to divorce. The question; “Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?” seems indeed to refer to the opinions of the former, who went as far as to decide that a wife spoiling her husband’s dinner was cause enough. But in answer the Lord goes further than Shammai himself, and removing all that man had in the meantime obscured it with, finds His argument in the institution of marriage at the beginning, - an argument which strikes at polygamy, as well as the loose holding of the marriage tie, and brings us beyond all that has come in with sin; to the first design of the Creator for His creatures. He had made them male and female, each adapted for the other, each completed by the other; and had said as to what the union implied, “they two shall be one flesh.” Two, and only two, are spoken of, as with Adam and his wife at first, where neither polygamy nor divorce could be thought of; and “one flesh” would make either polygamy or divorce abomination. Man’s own voice, before sin had beclouded the mind, thus had given utterance to what the Lord speaks of as a divine utterance: for God and man were then at one. He who with true insight had before named the beasts and found among them all no helpmeet, spoke now in the joyful discernment of that helpmeet found. (2) They have their objection from the law ready: “Why then did Moses command to give her a writing of divorcement and to put her away?” But they did not apprehend aright either Moses or themselves; and their argument is turned against them in the simplest manner: “Moses, for the hardness of your hearts, suffered you to put away your wives; but from the beginning it was not so.” It was Moses himself who was furnishing the evidence, and what an evidence, of their own condition! The law, which was “weak through the flesh,” could not perfect anything because of the resistance to it of a carnal people. That which they objected proved but at the same time their own evil and the hopelessness of it under law. And He turns upon them with one of those imperial sayings which put aside all power of resistance as with the lightning-flash of truth: “And I say unto you, that whosoever shall put away his wife except for fornication, and shall marry another committeth adultery; and whoso marrieth her that is put away committeth adultery.” One cause alone is permitted for divorce; and that where the bond of marriage has already been broken through. Where not so justified, another marriage on the side of husband or of wife is but adultery. Courts of law may legalize adultery of this sort, if they will, but they cannot sanctify it, or take away the brand which the Lord here puts upon it. How evident that the grace of Christianity is as far as possible from laxity! - that law is more tolerant here than grace can be. But the palliatives of law were only the proof that it could not heal; grace will not palliate, because it heals. This, let us remember however, is the abstract right of the matter - binding of course, as such, with all the authority that the Lord’s words can give it upon every one of His own. He does not pursue it further, nor consider the complications that may arise in a world such as this which knows Him not, and where His people may be entangled with alliances with the unbelieving, or followed by the consequences of their conduct before conversion. This manifestly belongs rather to what concerns the discipline of the Church, and we shall find the principles applying to it in their place in the epistles. It will be the proper place, therefore, to consider them there, though for the help of souls a few words here may be in place. We are all born in sin, and go astray naturally from the womb, except as the grace of God may prevent this. When converted to God we may have spent a large part of our lives in disobedience; the effects of which are not necessarily removed by our conversion. With the truest desire to do so, it may be absolutely impossible to return to the position in which we were before the sin was committed. Thus the Lord has Himself decided in the case of a divorced wife, after marriage to another, even though death has dissolved the newer relationship. For the former husband then to take her back again is declared to be an “abomination” to Him (Deuteronomy 24:4); and no change of dispensation can affect what is clearly grounded in nature itself, as an ordinance of the God of nature. Hence restoration to a past state may be, and will commonly be, where divorce has taken place, a thing impracticable. We have but to accept things as they are, and rejoice in the mercy that has blotted out the past, and enables us to start afresh, with Him. Again, there are cases in which separation may be a necessity or allowable, where divorce could not be according to God; separation leaving yet room for the mercy of God to come in and restore; and this door the apostle opens in Corinthians (1 Corinthians 7:15), not too widely. Divorce he does not touch: for the Lord has decided there. (3) To return now to our text: the disciples show out now the state of their own hearts. “If the case of the man with his wife be so,” they say, “it is not good to marry.” And the Lord replies: “Not all have capacity for this,* but those to whom it has been given.” The word of God having pronounced from the beginning, to which our Lord has been referring us, that it is not good for man to be alone," we cannot expect that the gift to abide alone will be other than exceptional. Christianity leaves the general truth unaffected, while it may and does give power over nature where special circumstances call for this. Nature itself has imposed this necessity upon some: the cruelty of men has imposed it upon others. But the Kingdom of heaven, as a motive in the heart, may lift men above all necessity, and enable them to take this place freely. How different a thought, however, from the selfishness which had just spoken out in the disciples, and of which their Master takes no further notice. The shining of the light sufficiently reveals the darkness which it displaces. \
2. We pass on to a different scene, and a far happier one, though still to find the painful contrast between the Master and the disciples. It is in this case so much the more so, as He has already declared the spirit of His Kingdom by the example of one of these little children who are now brought to Him, that He may put His hands on them and pray." But they seem full of nothing but of His dignity as a Rabbi, in which they found also, without doubt, their own. Of what use to bring such mere babes to Him? But the Lord answers their rebuke Himself by bidding them place Him higher in their thoughts, and recognize what the parents here more truly apprehended in Him, - the - the power which had all within its absolute control, the love which wielded this power. To put His hands on them and pray: would this be barren?

In the Kingdom of God in Israel had there been no place for babes? And now that heaven was manifesting itself, and the Father’s name being declared, in the Kingdom of heaven was there to be no place for babes? Yes; emphatically yes: for “of such” it was, and of no others. If men had to become like babes to enter it, the spirit of the babe was the very spirit of the Kingdom; and who should shut them out? “Suffer the little children,” He says, “to come unto Me, and forbid them not; for of such is the Kingdom of heaven. And He laid His hands on them, and departed thence.” It is to be observed, however, that Matthew excludes, what Mark and Luke both record, the Lord’s words as to moral resemblance. The latter is not here the point, but the place with Him of little children themselves, the answer to the heart’s affections, given of God Himself, to those who are manifestly put in their weakness and need, to be nurtured, trained, reared amid the contrary influences of the world, to be for the glory of Him whose they are, while in it. How gracious and comforting is the assurance then, that we may come in the confession of our weakness to Him who is Lord of all, though yet the world does not own Him, and in faith still put our little ones into His hand, assured of His reception of them, and that He recognizes them, not as part of the outside world, but as subjects of His Kingdom and disciples in His school. Here is our warrant and encouragement to “bring them up in the discipline and admonition of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4), expecting from Him the grace of the Spirit, which alone can make it effectual. For the word abides for us, if we do not through our unbelief make it barren, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house” (Acts 16:31). The Kingdom of heaven was not yet come: it is only at the end of this Gospel and after His resurrection that we find the Lord announcing all authority as given to Him in heaven and on earth (Matthew 18:18). The words are, therefore, anticipative of that time, and perpetuate the value for us of His action here.

Matthew 19:16-20

Section 6. (Matthew 19:16-30; Matthew 20:1-16.)Human limitation, and how overcome. The sixth section shows us man in his creature place, limited necessarily because of this, but still more as fallen and in his sins; but it shows us also how God, who alone can; overcomes for him the straitness of his condition, and brings him out (as the psalmist says) into a large place. This is developed in two ways, which are in beautiful connection, while yet very different: as regards the salvation of the sinner, and as regards the reward of a saint. For rewards there are, in which divine love sovereignly displays itself, for they are “mercy” (2 Timothy 1:18) and not a claim of right; as the Lord has emphatically taught us to say, when we have done all, we are unprofitable servants: we have done but that which it was our duty to do. Creature merit is thus impossible, - a doctrine which destroys at once not only the supererogatory works and merits of the saints as Rome teaches them, but very much else held quite outside of Rome; while it makes eternal life for the sinner (such as we all are) only possible to grace. But, alas! we are as naturally self-righteous, as we are absolutely without the least true claim to righteousness. If we will look around, we may quite easily find the Pharisee in the felon’s coat; and nearer still, in our own hearts, the spirit of Pharisaism ready to spring out from under the shadow of the Cross itself; its God-ordained condemnation. Here we have the beginning and the end of it, as we may say, the self-assertion of the sinner and of the saint; and in the last case creeping, if it might be, into heaven itself in the abuse of the truth as to rewards. In the glimpse of heaven which immediately follows we shall have at last a scene from which it will be perfectly and forever banished. The victory of divine grace over us will then be fully accomplished.

1. We begin here with a question addressed to the Lord, not, as so often, by one tempting or caviling, but, on the contrary, earnestly seeking the way of life: “Teacher, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life?” It is “what good thing:” he does not doubt at all that some good thing is what is needed. Too many are on that road to allow him to doubt its being the right one. At the same time he is conscious of a lack, -not self-satisfied, and yet, as we see directly, with no conviction of sin; no thought of inability to attain his goal, if only the means were pointed out to him. Yet there were many instructors on such points whom he must, with the anxiety that he has, have sought out, but had not gained satisfaction from them. He confesses himself ignorant of the way of life, and has confidence, as it seems, that Christ can teach him. All this is encouraging, and yet he is on the broad way still with the multitude (no sign for good, that) and expecting God to give eternal life to the doer of “some good thing.” The Lord meets him, therefore, where he is: not as we might have expected, perhaps, with the gospel and the declaration of His grace, for he has as yet no need of grace. Law must do its work with him, for “by the law is the knowledge of sin.” Yet He does, at the same time, intimate the result, and so had the law itself done with its unrent veil, Cod in the darkness, - whether men realized it or not: witness and warning on God’s part can never be wanting, and so here: “Why askest thou Me about that which is good? there is One good,” and only One. That blocks the way for the legalist entirely; which yet in a sense the Lord opens directly, that one who must learn by experience may do so: “but if thou desirest to enter into life, keep the commandments.” There was nothing fresh to be pointed out as to such a path. The law had long since precisely defined every thing, and not left men to search for some good thing additional or other than this. It is true they had not found life in this way, and hence resulted the uneasiness that prompted such inquiries as that of the young man now. But the law had nevertheless precisely defined all the good required: “the man that doeth these things shall live in them.” True, “that which was” thus the way “to life, I found to be to death,” says the apostle; and so will all true experience find it, a “ministration of death” (2 Corinthians 3:7), - the very thing man needs to shut him up to the grace of God in Christ. But the young man has not received this ministration of death: he had no “sentence of death in himself, that he should not trust in himself, but God that raiseth the dead.” He was unsatisfied; the light of God was not on his path, - that he knew. There was no burden of sin to be lifted. He lacked, but confessedly knew not what he lacked. How many are in just such a condition! rich, and comfortably able to thank God for that; ignorant of such trials as even a Job had to learn before the depths of his heart could be made known to him, but, like him, not at rest. As to “commandments,” which did the Master mean? The Lord tests him by the second table of the law, the human side, summing it all up in “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” But he is with Saul of Tarsus, “touching the righteousness which is in the law blameless.” There is no shadow upon the honest face with which he turns to Him he is questioning, with the assertion; “All these have I kept; what lack I yet?” And then the bolt falls for him out of a summer sky: “If thou wouldst be perfect, sell what thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.” People ask, how could the Lord make that the condition of eternal life for him? But it was the law that had made that necessary which would have made this easy - that he should love his neighbor as himself: and this he had declared he actually did. Why not, then; sell what he had, and give to the poor? Would it be more to him than giving it back to himself, to give to the neighbor whom he loved as himself? Evidently the Lord is but searching out a heart that sorely needed it. He does not make it a condition of eternal life; for that is a gift which He Himself had come to acquire for us; but He speaks to the young man according to the character which he professed; adding to it that tender assurance of a heart open to him, which was ready to give him a place among His followers and intimates. “Jesus, beholding him, loved him,” says Mark in connection with these very words. And this love, may we not hope, might, even spite of present failure, wake up to consciousness of its condition the heart that could now, alas! turn from it, though grieved, to enjoy in its now exposed selfishness its “great possessions.”
2. But of this we have no knowledge. The Lord makes use of this case now to impress upon His disciples the difficulty, nay, the impossibility, of a rich man entering into the Kingdom of God. The camel may more easily pass through a needle’s eye, He says; and we must leave these words in all their simplicity, - the thing completely passes nature. The camel is, no doubt, the suited figure of one burdened with his possessions, after the manner of the young man here. The things of the world thus claim and control the natural man; and how often is their influence seen upon one who is through grace a Christian! Only the almighty grace of God can change this, that is, can change the nature of man; and so, when in dismay the disciples ask, “Who then can be saved?” the Lord assures them, salvation is not of self, but of God.
3. The question of Peter cannot but suggest how readily in a saint also the spirit of self-seeking can intrude into the most sacred themes and places. The Lord’s answer perfectly recognizes and provides for this, which comes out presently in a more offensive form in the other two of His most privileged disciples. But we may be thankful for that which exposes what is our own need as well as theirs, and has been the occasion of such an answer to it as we find here. “Peter answered and said unto Him, Behold, we have left all and followed Thee: what shall we have then? And Jesus said unto them, Verily, I say unto you, that ye who have followed Me, in the regeneration when the Son of Man shall sit on the throne of His glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” This is found only in Luke and in this Gospel, and in perfect suitability with the character of it. It shows us how literally the reign of the saints with Christ is to be taken; and in the term “regeneration” applied to the millennial Kingdom presents an instructive parallel between the work of God in the individual and in the world at large. That these are, in fact, in correspondence with one another, the first chapter of Genesis has already made us fully aware (see notes). The only other place in which we find this word “regeneration” (paliggenesia) is in the epistle to Titus (Titus 3:5) and it is there applied to the individual state: “according to His mercy He saved us by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost.” In the present state of the world sin not only dwells, but reigns; in the coming Kingdom sin exists but reigns no longer, as in the soul that has truly bowed Christ; then comes the change of the heavens and earth, as for the saint the bodily change into His likeness; and so finally for each, sin neither reigns nor exists. Thus there is a complete parallel between the ways of God in grace with the individual and with the world at large, a unity which is the stamp of the perfect workmanship of the One God in every sphere of His working, whatever may be the variety also which testifies to His infinite resources. The Lord goes on to assure us that His love can forget nothing of whatever any disciple of His may have renounced for His name. He shall receive a hundredfold and inherit everlasting life. These distinctive rewards, whatever may be the blessing in them, we must remember always to keep apart from what is the common portion of believers, which it is good to realize, as being simply the fruit of Christ’s work for us, must be by far more blessed than anything which even in divine mercy can be accorded to our own. The place of children with God, of membership in the body of Christ, - these and such things as these are to us the fruit of divine grace alone, and have nothing whatever to do with reward of our work. This is so simple that there should be no need even of mentioning it; and yet many Christians confound, more or less, things so different as these; as even the “many mansions” of our Father’s house have been taken to imply different degrees of reward, and to put the children of God at various degrees of distance from their Father, - the very thing which assuredly is most opposite to the Lord’s intention of comfort in it. But, in fact, the legality of the human heart is such as to make the whole matter of reward require the most jealous guarding from abuse; and this the Lord proceeds now to supply in the parable which follows here.
4. The meaning of the parable is given both at the beginning and the close; so earnestly is it pressed upon us. We must not allow ourselves to be carried away from this by any supposed demand of special features, as to which we are cautioned here in the same way as in the case of the previous parable of the unmerciful servant (Matthew 18:23). There it is “a man; a king”; here, “a man, a householder.” In the application we are bidden to remember that we must distinguish between the ways of men and the ways of God, even where the one may be taken to illustrate the other. God certainly does not “hire” laborers after the manner of men; where work in His vineyard is in question; but this is human misunderstanding of His way. The prodigal still afar off may talk of the “hired servants” of his father’s house; but we are not to take this as a representation of the actual truth.

And the very design of the parable here is to warn us by the issue against such perversions. It would seem, therefore, plain that to seek to interpret everything in it as if it stood for absolute truth would be to fall in measure into the very misconceptions from which it is intended to deliver us. (1) The agreement with the laborers illustrates but the legality of souls who so misconstrue the Lord’s gracious recompense of what is done for Him. Just so far as this is made the end for which we labor, it is clear that the character of what is done is deteriorated, and its value to Him lost. We are living to ourselves, the misery from which divine grace has delivered those that are Christ’s. We are not, therefore, to conceive of this either, as if any child of God could be a mere hireling. The principle, given broadly in the parable, is by this means put before us in its proper repulsiveness, and the picture is an ideal one solely. Were we to take it as literally exact, we should have to imagine God giving in the day of recompense some stipulated measure of reward to those who have worked for it; which, whether it were saint or sinner, would be positive error. Recognizing it as ideal only, the lesson remains, and with no perplexity. (2) In those who are called to labor at various hours in the day, we find the thought of a stipulated agreement more and more given up, and those who go into the vineyard becoming correspondingly more dependent upon the goodness of the householder to give to them as he sees fit. To those called at the third hour it is simply said, “Whatsoever is just I will give you.” At the sixth and ninth hours, “what is just” becomes a more and more slender hope. In the case of those at the eleventh hour, nothing seems to be said of this at all:* they are left entirely to the owner of the vineyard to give as he please, or not.
(3) At the end of the day, the laborers are called and paid; and then those called at the eleventh hour receive a whole day’s wages. Of those called at the intermediate hours we are told nothing, but it is implied that they all receive the same: for when the first come, expecting to receive more, they also are paid every one a penny. From this some have deduced the doctrine of an equality of reward for all; but that is not the doctrine of Scripture; and the rewards here are plainly according to the moral of the parable given to us, that the “first shall be last and the last first:” which again is not equality. (4) It is the first alone who murmur: it would be impossible for any of the rest, one would say, to do so; for they are all, in fact, overpaid. Ah, were we not, how little would we any of us receive! In the day of reward will there be a legalist found to murmur against the amount of his recompense? Surely, not one; all is again only ideal here. And yet even the first can only complain that they have not received more than they bargained for. (5) The answer of the householder to one of those that murmur brings before us the conditions which have determined that result of which they now so foolishly complain. They cannot say they have not received what they contracted for. They had got what was just; grace they had not trusted nor sought: how can they complain that to those who were dependent upon it it has been shown? - and indeed in the measure in which they were dependent. For them it was a matter of bounty, not of right; for the giver of it, had he not the right to be bountiful? What I am entitled to must be measured by what I am; what grace shall give can only be measured by what God is. Human measure and divine! put it at the best you can for man, what a difference here! The more we think of our service, the less must we think of Him to whom the service is done; the more we imagine claim, the less must His grace appear: that the first should thus be last is absolutely simple. Think of it as the Lord once put it, a supper at which the guests take their places as they estimate themselves. No one here, however, says to another, “Give this man place.” They are permitted to assign to themselves just the rank they claim. Only, when the King comes in to take His own place among the guests, He takes it at the opposite end of the table from that which they imagined! Then; of course, “the first is last and the last is first;” and yet their places are decided by their own self-measurement. “For many are the called,” says the Lord in closing, “but few the chosen ones:” words which here tell us that among the guests few are they that are according to His mind indeed. Alas! how slow we are indeed in the true judgment of self! how difficult is it for divine grace to obtain full possession of us!