Matthew 7

Matthew 7:1-14

Section 5. (Matthew 7:1-14.)Lessons of divine government. 5. (1) The fifth section gives us lessons of divine government, the first of which is to remember that we are subjects under it, and not rulers, - so that we must keep off the judgment-seat. To put ourselves there is already a sign that personal feelings or interests are moving us; if it were otherwise - if God were aright before us - should we forget that He Himself was Lord in His own Kingdom? If personal interests are moving us, then we are in the worst possible condition to be judges, as is evident; for we are then judges in our own case: a thing that no law would permit, no sane mind tolerate. But then we must understand what it is, this judgment which the Lord forbids. And here two things should be clear to us: first, that we are to judge of things, - of the evil and the good in either principles or acts presented to us. Here we have what touches ourselves: it is necessary that we should have our “senses exercised to discern both good and evil” (Hebrews 5:14). It is true that we are to be “wise concerning that which is good and simple concerning evil” (Romans 16:19); and this word “simple” (literally, pure, unmixed") is a warning as to the defiling nature of evil, which if realized will forbid unnecessary occupation with it, as the contrast with “wise” would lead us to understand. Yet we must know it so far as to know it to be evil, or we have no safeguard against it. Judgment, therefore, as to whatever lies in our path, is absolutely necessary for us; and the character of the world and the state of Christians both warn us to be watchful.
We are obliged then to judge of things as we meet them, - are responsible to the Lord, and in our own behalf, to do so; but more, we are obliged, and by the same authority, to judge persons also: “by their fruits ye shall know them,” - twice repeated here (vers. 16, 20) - is our direct warrant to do so: “do not ye judge them that are within?” asks the apostle (1 Corinthians 5:12); we do and we must do it: it is, of course, not this, therefore, that the Lord is forbidding here. The example that is given shows what is intended: to judge of things and of persons in the way of duty is to be obedient and to serve; to judge of what is not before us for judgment - to volunteer in it, or to pronounce as to motives and springs of action, to assume knowledge of that which is not open to us, - this is to take authority, not be subject to it, and indeed to assume what only belongs to the Judge of all, and is an intrusion, therefore, on His office. This may be mere censoriousness; or passion; prejudice, self-interest may be at work with us: in any case, there is a beam in the eye, which effectually prevents a true and righteous judgment. The assumption is shown in the utterance, whether the mote in a brother’s eye exists or not; and such a spirit awakes an adverse spirit: the harshness is paid back in harshness; the measure we mete to others is measured to ourselves. The language used shows that, while this is permitted in divine government, it is not the sentence of the divine Judge. In the parallel passage in Luke (6: 38) this is plainly stated, “good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over shall men give into your bosom.” *The word “men” is not actually expressed: it is “shall they give.” You reap what you sow, and taste the quality of what you have been sowing; and this may be even mercy in result; for nothing is more likely to awaken in us the sense of what it is we have been doing, and of the omniscient Eye, that has been, unregarded, watching all. Thus God’s mercy and His holiness are found together. (2) The revolt from harsh judgment is apt to carry us into the opposite extreme of laxity, against which the Lord now proceeds to guard us. Dogs and swine are the very images which Peter uses in his epistle to represent those who manifest their still unrenewed nature after apparent conversion: the “dog” by “turning to his own vomit again, the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire” (2 Peter 2:22). Was he not thinking of the words of his Master here? Christendom has in fact done shamelessly what the Lord here forbids, and has proved the truth of His words in consequence. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, perverted from their original meaning and application, have been used above all to give the grossest evils tolerance in the house of God, and to make Babylon the great “a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.” They have thus been trampled under foot by the profane, and Christianity been rent and mangled fearfully, as all the centuries bear witness. The “judgment of charity” is continually invoked to take darkness to be light, and credit the most barren profession with what it dares not even claim for itself. But the false judgment of laxity has here its woe upon it, as much as the false judgment of censoriousness: upon that which puts good for evil, and that which puts evil for good alike. If grace is the spring of holiness, holiness is, by this very fact, the test of grace. (3) And now the heart of God is declared as the ready and bounteous Giver, whose fullness cannot be exhausted, whose word to His people ever is, “Open thy mouth wide and I will fill it.” There is no limit except the limit that little faith may put, or the guard on God’s side (which is not limit) that the gift be good. And the Lord double clasps His exhortations with assurances that every one that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth, and to him that knocketh it shall be opened." What a door is, in fact, opened for us here, and what possibility of blessing is here unfolded! How rich may we all be, if we only will be! and what free leave we have to covet the best things! And yet the apostle’s words could find application in the fresh early days in which they were written: “Ye have not, because ye ask not; ye ask and have not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts!” (James 4:2-3). Think of such an answer to the royal invitation here! what must man’s heart be, that can answer so? The appeal is backed with persuasive argument derived from affection subsisting even in earthly relationships. If we call God Father, do we expect to find Him less than such a title implies, even among men? Is not this, in fact, however real, only a feeble suggestion of what God is as Father? It necessarily would be, even if men were unfallen; but “if ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children; how much more” - there, indeed, is a calculation for faith to make - “how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good gifts to them that ask Him?” (4) The connection of the practical admonition following with this is surely of the same sort as that of what follows the prayer He has given to His disciples to one of the petitions in that prayer. If you realize this bounty of God, of which He has been speaking, you will practise bountifulness; the measure of your conduct to them will not be their actual conduct to you, but what you yourself would have desired it to be. Largeness of mind will be the result of living in the enjoyment of the King’s bounty; and then; conversely, the practical conduct so inspired will react upon yourself, and help you to realize the conditions of successful prayer. A character thus formed will enable one to feel more the character of Him to whom we thus draw nigh. We understand Him as we arc assimilated to Him; and faith strengthens itself thus by that which it has itself developed. But, moreover, “this is the law and the prophets.” The new dispensation falls into the same line, as has been already said, with all that has been before it. The same God has been all through aiming at the same results; and while with each step of progress the means used may vary, the end is continually kept in sight and steadily approaches. The righteousness which the law had in view grace has brought in, and yet law and grace are contrasts. (5) This section closes with a solemn exhortation to “enter in through the strait gate,” as the only way leading to life, and alas, found by few. The many would then (and still will) enter by another and wide gate, and throng a broad way, but a way leading to destruction and not to life. The words are figurative, of course, and the Lord does not further explain them here in any direct way. He leaves them as He does many other things, to awaken thought. There have, in fact, been very different thoughts about them: not, as to what they refer, in the mention of a gate and of a way, for the Lord speaks plainly of the way to life and the way to destruction; and these things are plain enough; but the gate, the way, are not themselves explained. We have but the description, -a “strait” gate and a “narrow” way, with few travelers, set in opposition to a “wide” gate, and a “broad” way, and many crowding them.

We are left to ask what is this straitness, and what does it imply? Hard terms and difficult to comply with, with an uncertainty, on this account, of perseverance to the end? Surely not; although many have so taken it. The Lord once uses the first of these expressions in the Gospel of Luke, where He is answering one of those questions with which we so often perplex ourselves: “then said one unto Him, Lord, are there few that be saved?” which the Lord answers with a home-thrust at the questioner himself, “Strive to enter in at the strait gate,” to which He adds also that “many would seek to enter in and would not be able” (Luke 13:24). But He bases this upon something else than the straitness of the gate: the difficulty, or rather, the impossibility of entrance is only found “when once the Master of the house is risen up and has shut to the door;” it was a shut gate that was to be dreaded, not a strait one. Thus the exhortation: be urgent to enter in while there is time. Here in Matthew, there is no exhortation to strive, but simply to enter in there, and by no other gate. “Few there be that find it:” the mass go by a different road. It is not here the door being shut, but men mistaking which it is: the broad way of destruction being taken for God’s narrow way of life. This makes the picture of that broad way exceedingly solemn. Many have, no doubt, the thought of its representing the way of vice and open irreligion as opposed to the way of holiness; but closer consideration will convince us that it is not so. For no one expects, however careless he may be about it, the way of sin to lead heavenward. Whereas the Lord plainly intimates this to be what the writer of Proverbs speaks of - “a way that seemeth right unto a man; but the end thereof are the ways of death” (Proverbs 14:12). The question is of finding the way of life. Hence the solemn warning to beware of false prophets which follows thereupon, men who would lead those listening to them upon the broad way of death. “Few there be that find it.” The great company of heavenward wayfarers, as they would consider themselves, are thronging another road, congratulating themselves upon the number and respectability of their companions. As they said in the days in which these words were uttered: “Have any of the rulers or the Pharisees believed on Him? but this people who know not the law, are cursed.” It is plain that the Lord affirmed Himself to be the door and the way. “I am the door of the sheep: by Me if any man enter in, he shall be saved” (John 10:9). Again; “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (John 14:6). Again; if they asked about the works that they should do, He answered: “This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent” (John 6:29). Thus, if there are not two ways to life, (and He says there are not,) then the narrow way is Christ Himself. If the “gate” and the “door” are not different, it is still Christ who is represented by the gate. And then men miss the way of life, not because the terms are hard or He so unapproachable, but because men; glorifying themselves as good moralists, refuse the gracious Saviour of sinners, and seek out other ways. “They being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God; for Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth” (Romans 10:3-4). The gate is “strait,” because here is indeed an absolute condition: “no man cometh unto the Father but by Me.” Self-righteousness must come down; Christ must be the absolute and complete Saviour, which He alone can be: too strict conditions for multitudes to submit to. The crowds do not yet “come to Him that they may have life” (John 5:40). Yet grace itself can make no other terms, and we shall find, as we pass on here but a little way, that these are in fact the terms which exclude many of those who even call Him Lord, but who have never known Him. 6. There follows now a warning about false prophets, which is in very plain connection with that about the different roads which men were taking to reach a common end. This is intensified by the fact that, wherever the true Voice speaks, there will come the false voice after it, its mocking echo; like Jannes and Jambres opposing by imitation, putting on the dress of the sheep, but as a lure, over the evil heart within. The fruit would manifest them, but we must remember that this is not necessarily immoral conduct, in which the sheep’s clothing would no longer remain, but rather their doctrines tested by experience, as when men looking for grapes find nothing but at most the mockery of these.* Satan; when coming in as an angel of light, does not send out open evil-doers to commend his doctrines, while on the other hand an evil life may dishonor the preacher of substantial truth. But a true and needy soul, testing for itself the fruit of what is spoken, will assuredly find that the truth has its own witness to the heart and conscience, such as nothing but the truth can have. Here, above all, the Lord’s words apply, that a good tree cannot bring forth bad fruit. \

Matthew 7:21-29

Section 7. (Matthew 7:21-29).The complete disciple. 7. (1) We have now pressed what the complete disciple is in contrast with the mere barren professor, and the man who does not in fact build upon the rock. The time surely comes when the reality under all appearances will be made evident, and nothing will stand but what is real. Empty profession will not do: the saying, “Lord, Lord,” is not necessarily subjection to Him. Prophesying, casting out demons, doing miracles, are no decisive proofs of true discipleship. For this there must be living acquaintance with Himself, that true knowledge without which, after all, the life will be lawless. (2) The second illustration exhibits the true dependence of the soul on Him where He is known; in contrast with the false dependences which betray men to their ruin. In both cases we have pictured the builder of a house - the place of his affections and his rest, but above all, as it is viewed here, his shelter and refuge from the storm. Now for the stability of a house the foundation is the matter of first moment. If the foundation is not firm, no matter how solidly the house is built: it will go with the foundation. Christ and His words are here the rock that abides; all else, whatever be its nature, is but sand. He who puts His sayings livingly into practice shall build a house that will endure the storm.

None else and nothing else will: while the fair weather lasts it is quite possible that this last may look better than the rock-set one, and the man who trusts it enjoy a passing triumph. Too soon! and when the storm shall come, too late to remedy it. (3) No wonder that the multitudes were astonished; no wonder that they found this teaching different from the strange conceits, the externalism and traditionalism of the scribes. It was a Voice from another sphere than that of earth, and the strange authority that was in it suited it yet how well! Nothing else could have suited it: any other tone would have been the renunciation of His whole mission. This claim of authority demanded the miracles that accompanied it; and yet, on the other hand, rested itself not even upon these, but above all on the manifest holiness and love and truth which commanded mind, heart, conscience into His presence, compelling the whole man to reverence; where, at least, the man remained to recognize and answer such a claim.