Why Christ Could Not Make His Authority Known to the Pharisees

“And when He was come into the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came unto Him as He was teaching, and said, By what authority doest Thou these things? and who gave Thee this authority? And Jesus answered and said unto them, I also will ask you one thing, which if ye tell Me, I in like wise will tell you by what authority I do these things. The baptism of John, whence was it? from heaven, or of men? And they reasoned with themselves, saying, If we shall say, From heaven; He will say unto us, Why did ye not then believe him? But if we shall say, Of men; we fear the people; for all hold John as a prophet. And they answered Jesus, and said, We cannot tell. And He said unto them, Neither tell I you by what authority I do these things.”—Matthew xxi. 23-27.

One might be quite sure that the chief priests and the elders would “reason with themselves” just as we are told by the Evangelist that they did. The simple consideration, “What is the fact, or what do we believe to be the fact?” is not the one which would present itself to their minds. It was a chief part of their religion to avoid impolitic words or acts, words or acts which might lead to some mischievous consequence. Straightforwardness and veracity they will have learnt to believe not only inconvenient, but in a certain sense wrong. The first thing required of them was, in their judgment, to keep up the credit of the Law and of those who interpreted and administered it. To endanger the popular faith in themselves was their highest notion of a sin. Who could tell what might come next if their disciples saw that they had committed themselves to any false step? I know not whether there is a more fearful symptom of decay in the heart of a nation than this. When its teachers not only dare not speak out the truth, but actually make a principle of not speaking it;—when they not only shrink, through some cowardly shame, from declaring the thing as it is, but when they have persuaded themselves that evasion is a merit, that there is a higher and better way of serving the God of Truth than by being true,—we may be sure that society has become radically corrupt, and that some great change is at hand.

I. But though the account which the Gospel gives of the motives which led the priests and scribes to reply to our Lord as they did, carries the most undoubted internal mark of genuineness,—though it affords us a glimpse into the secret life of that time, without which the events that occurred in it would be unintelligible——we may believe that they were actually uncertain whether John’s mission was of Heaven or of men. They were in a double sense self-deceivers. They sought carefully for language which might conceal their thoughts, and often after all expressed very nearly what they meant. I say, very nearly, for those words of John, which were addressed to their own class,—perhaps to some of themselves, “O generation of vipers, who hath bidden you to flee from the wrath to come?” must have sometimes occurred to them; and then the conviction will have come to them with a power they could not gainsay: “He who spoke that, had his commission from Heaven, not of men.” An inward voice will have told them this; if they had heeded it, they might have given a direct answer to our Lord. But it was part of their disease that they did not heed this monitor, that they did not think they ought to heed it. They had rules for ascertaining whether a man who professed to come with a message from God was an authorized messenger; they expected him to exhibit some signs of his mission, which they, being students of the Prophets, could at once recognize.

What faith they had, was a faith in their own power of applying these tests,—in the impossibility of the multitude, the unlearned and ignorant, being able to apply them. There were doubtless differences between them as to the presence or absence of the fitting signs in the case of John; the mind of the same person may have often varied on the point. Now the Rabbi would be struck with some correspondence which he had not observed; a light coming he knew not from whence would illuminate the page, and seem to show that the teacher with the leathern girdle about his loins might have been sent to him; then he would be ashamed at a conclusion for which so little tangible evidence could be produced; afraid to think that in his own day, actually before his eyes, there had been a witness of the Divine presence.

Such varieties of feeling might seem to justify men of a less prevaricating temper than these for saying, “We cannot tell.” They might even find a cause for self-congratulation in the diffidence which they manifested. They had not merely been skilful in avoiding a possible future mischief; they had been cautious and modest in not determining a point on which rash, foolish men were ready at once to pronounce.

II. “The multitude counted John for a prophet.” And were not the multitude liable to be deceived? Were they not continually the prey of impostors? We should certainly say that it has been so in every age and country; the writers of the New Testament assure us that it was so, specially in that age and country. They speak of Judas and Theudas as specimens of a class of men who were from time to time rising up, always with some claim to be teachers, inspired men, Messiahs, Christs, who tempted the people to acts of rebellion and madness, who sometimes suffered with their victims,—deceived as much as any of them;—sometimes deserted them. Such men the Jewish mob regarded as prophets; if they were mistaken in one case, why not in another? What did they know about the marks of a holy man? What skill had they in penetrating the dark passages of the Divine mind, and finding differences or correspondences? They were always going wrong, always at the mercy of some sudden, false, violent impression or other; what did their testimony signify? What wise men would judge the pretensions of a teacher by counting heads, and seeing whether he had the votes of a majority?

It was easy to argue thus, not easy to find where the flaw in the argument lay. And yet every learned doctor, when he had proved his point to his own satisfaction, will have been haunted by a thought of this kind: “It is very strange that men living in cities, in the country, by the sea,—women, publicans soldiers, brought up in circumstances altogether different—should have been moved at once by the same impulse. It is very strange that a man holding forth no definite prospect of emancipation to the Jews from the Roman yoke, or to the poor from the oppression of the rich, threatening judgment, speaking harsh words, denouncing sin, counselling repentance, should have drawn more into the wilderness than the preachers and guides of sedition. It is strange, above all, that we should not have been able to resist the current, but should have been carried away by it, going ourselves to hear the new teacher, and even some of us submitting to that humiliating ceremony, appointed only for Gentile proselytes.” I say such reflections as these will have come to them again and again with a disturbing force, a force which could not be explained or reduced under any rules. And the result will have been greater vagueness and uncertainty as to what they should believe; a deeper assurance that there was something which they ought to believe.

III. What way was there out of this contradiction? What help had they to distinguish the true instinct of the multitude from its habitual tendency to be led away by lies? John had said to them, “Bring forth fruits meet for repentance; and think not to say unto yourselves, ‘We have Abraham to our father:’ for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children to Abraham.” Might they not have needed these words? Were they deceptive? Did not the Pharisees know—actually know—that they were not deceptive, but that they brought deep, long-cherished deceptions of theirs to the light of day? What if John were an impostor? Then the more they purged their minds of impostures, the more sure they would be to detect him. There could be no danger in that course. Some one—they knew it—had found them out. Some one, who was acquainted with the secrets of their hearts, had revealed those secrets to them. They were saying within themselves, “We have Abraham to our father,” while they had no likeness to Abraham. They were wrapping themselves up in a comfortable security, while they had a sense of inward hollowness. They were exulting in the profession of faith in an unseen God; they were not believing in that unseen God. John said: “Repent! Turn round to Him Whom you say you believe in. Act as if you did believe in Him. Act as if you thought He did know you and care for you and wished you to be right in His sight,—to be true, honest men. If you have greater knowledge than the vulgar, use your knowledge. If you have studied the Law and the Prophets more than others, remember that every sentence in Law or Prophets is a declaration of God to man, and an exhortation to men not to hide their counsels deep from God. Remember that all the Law and Prophets are addressed not to Gentiles but to Jews, to men in the Covenant; that they are speaking to them of their sins and unbelief, and calling them to turn to Him from Whom they are turning away.” My brethren, the Pharisees had not the slightest call to settle John’s claim before they received this message as a message to themselves. If these things were true, it did not signify in the least to them whether the man who spoke them was a liar or not. Nor was it of any importance to determine how far the judgment of the multitude respecting him was to be trusted. If the multitude attended to him because he laid bare their sins and deceptions, the multitude could not be wrong. If the multitude listened to him because he showed them the source of their sins and the way out of them, the multitude were doing a safe thing, whether they could prove by chapter and verse that he was a person they had a right to listen to or no. The chapter or verse told them, so far as they entered into it, the same thing as he was telling them; his instructions, so far as they were obeyed, made chapter and verse shine out as they had never done before. What more did they want? what better evidence could they have had that the Book which they were taught to revere sanctioned him?

IV. The Pharisees and the multitude then had a common starting-point. Both had this test of John’s truth; both might use it or reject it. If they rejected it, we may be sure they would not be capable of profiting by any other. An angel from Heaven saying, “This is a true prophet,” would not have availed the least. For the angel would have had need to prove his own commission; he would have had to prove it, not to their eyes, but to their hearts. And if their hearts had clung to the falsehood or the pride which made them impervious to light, his proofs must have been wasted. But supposing this first step was taken,—supposing a Pharisee honestly confessed, “I have been deceiving myself; I have been substituting belief in a belief, for belief in God; I have been claiming to be a child of Abraham instead of claiming the privilege of a child of Abraham, which is to know God and trust Him;”—supposing he desired that he might be brought into a truer, healthier state of mind, and that he heard the call to repentance, not as if it were meant for others, but himself;—he might, I think, find that the Prophets had given him some hints by which to identify the Baptist as one of themselves. For instance, if he turned to the fortieth chapter of Isaiah, in this new state of feeling, I do not fancy the mere outward correspondence of a “voice crying in the wilderness” would chiefly occupy him. That would only lead him to inquire whether the cry which that voice uttered was really John’s. And when he read the words, “Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low,” I cannot help thinking that he would recognize the very substance of the doctrine which had gone home to his heart, with only the more certainty and satisfaction because the form of it was so different. “The stern man with the leathern girdle bade us, the religious men, do just the same thing which he bade the publicans and harlots do. He did not treat us as better than them; he seemed to consider us worse; he made me know that I was worse. Surely this was exalting the valleys and laying the hills low. I never felt the truth or the beauty of Isaiah’s discourse till now. I saw it had a beauty and a truth. The natural image was a striking one; it seemed a worthy preparation for some Divine appearance. Yet I used to feel a kind of exaggeration in it; I did not understand how the reality could be commensurate to the symbol. I now know in myself what it is to be cast from an eminence, whence I looked down upon all beneath me as a set of crawling emmets, and to feel myself one of these emmets, not better than the meanest of them,—to feel thus, and yet to discover that each of these insects, whereof I am one, has the capacity in it of a divine elevation and glory such as I never dreamed of. Oh, surely the Prophet’s comparison is not overstrained, but feeble and cold! What change in the condition of nature can be an image of this change in the condition of the lord of nature,—of Man; of the levelling which goes on in him; of this exaltation which he feels is possible for him!” And then surely the other part of the passage will also have acquired a new significance: “The Glory of the Lord shall be revealed.” John spoke of One Whose fan was in His hand, Who should purge His floor, Who should gather His wheat into His garner, and burn up the chaff. He had spoken of One Who should baptize with the Holy Ghost and fire. This was altogether a different idea of the glory of the Lord from any which the Scribe had entertained hitherto. But how it harmonized with the previous sentence, as that was interpreted to him by his internal discoveries! It was such a revelation he needed,—the revelation of One Who could purify him and purify Society from its root; Who could burn up the dross in him and in it; Who could bestow upon him and it a new life. One Who could do that must be the King his countrymen and he were looking for. Such a One must be that Righteous Lord of Whose day or manifestation the Prophets had been continually speaking, and connecting it at once with the sins and the redemption of the nation and of the world.

V. Here were signs of a correspondence between the mind of the Prophet and the mind of John the Baptist which were worth all the signs the Pharisee had been used to look for with so much diligence. One can conceive that some of those which he had fancied were quite decisive, looked to him far less decisive than heretofore,—that he may sometimes have missed them altogether. One can fancy that he may have discovered less of a distinct chronological arrangement in the Prophets than he had supposed was there; more apparent mingling of times and seasons; more difficulty in understanding whether any of them was speaking of that which was going to take place in his own age, or of events reserved for generations to come. But I suspect that the awakened inquirer, instead of being discouraged by such an observation, will have gathered the greatest help from it. He will have found that what he needed, what he was to seek, was an Eternal Kingdom,—a Kingdom of God,—the manifestation of which might be different in one age or another; which might come more mightily into prominence at one particular time; but which is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever; which is really about all; which, when it shines forth with its greatest brightness and fulness, can only be entered into and really beheld by those whose eyes have been purged,—who have been stripped of their pride and self-sufficiency, and enabled to feel that their right and share in it is the same with that of every vagabond and outcast,—that every one is a stranger to it who will not submit to be humbled, and no one who will.

VI. My brethren, it is this which makes the words of my text and the whole history of John the Baptist so profoundly instructive to us. The lesson is eternally true. Our Lord did not arbitrarily refuse to tell the Pharisee what His authority was unless he could tell Him whether he believed in John’s Mission. He refused to tell them what they could not understand, except upon a previous condition. Were they still the proud, contemptuous, self-exalting men whom John had denounced? They could not know what Christ’s authority was; they could not enter into its meaning, let it be defined to them with the most divine accuracy. Had they listened to John’s words; had they felt that they as much as any Gentile needed to be cleansed, and that God must cleanse them; had they received the call to repentance as the best, most comfortable, most divine of all messages, not only to the publican, but to them? Then they were in a condition to be taught about that mysterious government over the heart and will which Christ carries on; then they could feel something of the freedom and universality and penetrating quality of His royal grace. Every prophet had come proclaiming that valleys were to be exalted, that mountains and hills were to be made low, because every prophet had come witnessing of a divine and eternal and invisible kingdom, which claims all as its subjects, which refuses its blessings to none who do not choose to be without them. The greatest of the Prophets spoke most distinctly and fully of the abasement of the proud, of the exaltation of the beggar, because he could speak most distinctly and fully of a King Who had come into the world to be mocked, spat on, cast out as a blasphemer, and yet to baptize with the Holy Ghost and with fire.

VII. And that last of the old race of prophets was to be the opener of a dispensation, the least in which was to be greater than he. Strange that it should be so! We, the ministers of the New Covenant, cowards as we are, reeds for the most part shaken with the wind, or clad in soft garments, liking kings’ houses better than the wilderness, rebuking no Herod, offending no Herodias,—we, even we are declared to be greater than the brave, true preacher of righteousness, who prepared Christ’s way before Him! And it must be so. Those who speak of One Who is exalted to give repentance and remission of sins, must be greater than he who only preached the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins;—those who can say, “The King has come, and has died and risen and ascended, and is with us always,” must be greater than the man who said, “One is coming after me Who was before me;”—those who can say, “He is baptizing with the Spirit,” must be greater than the man who said, “He shall baptize with the Spirit.” Yes, richer in power, with mightier responsibilities, however much poorer and feebler in purpose and in act. Shall not the time come when God will make us understand our calling, will make us willing to fulfil it, or when He will silence us altogether, and raise up faithful witnesses in our place? Is not the time at hand—is it not come—when He will Himself exalt the valleys and level the mountains, when every kind of pride—lay pride and ecclesiastical, commercial pride and religious pride—shall be trampled down, the rags that have covered it torn off, its nakedness exposed,—when every one who in weakness, ignorance, blindness, has turned to God and trusted in Him, shall have His likeness and be satisfied with it? Yes, brethren, the cry, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand,” shall yet be heard through the palaces and the hovels of our land. And God will make the lofty as well as the lowly understand whether that voice is from Heaven or of men. For it will come, not with evidences drawn out to suit the taste of the dogmatists of the earth, but with a demonstration to the consciences of wayfarers, convincing them by crushing them. It will come, bidding us cease from man whose breath is in the nostrils, and expect the glory of the Lord to be revealed, which all flesh shall see, however it may shrink from the sight; in which all spirits that have waited for it shall find their own glory and life and joy.