“Then answered Peter and said unto Him, Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed Thee; what shall we have therefor? And Jesus 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 the twelve tribes of Israel… And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my Name’s sake, shall receive an hundred-fold, and shall inherit everlasting life. But many that are first shall be last, and the last shall be first.”
The words respecting the regeneration and the Son of Man sitting on the throne of His glory, are peculiar to St. Matthew, and as such will demand our consideration hereafter.
The particular form of St. Peter’s phrase, “What shall we have therefor?” also belongs to him. Hence, I apprehend, arises the difference in the rest of the passage. A great part of the emphasis of the whole story in St. Matthew evidently rests on the last verse, which is the text of the parable of “the Husbandmen and Laborers in the Vineyard.” St. Mark does not give the same selfish form to St. Peter’s demand; he merely says, “Then Peter began to say, Lo, we have left all, and followed Thee.” But as he had used the same phrase in the 8th Chapter, when Peter called our Lord to account for the prophecy of His humiliation, and when he received his great rebuke, I conceive he did mean to imply nearly what is intimated in the other Evangelists. Although therefore he omits the parable, he introduces the words, “Many that are last shall be first, and the first last,” in the same significant way. In St. Luke we read merely, “Lo, we have left all, and followed Thee.” By him the words, “Many that are first shall be last,” are omitted. They occur in the 13th Chapter of St. Luke, in connection with the great answer to the question, “Are there few that shall be saved?”
These remarks could not so well be introduced in speaking of the direct differences of the Evangelists. They may serve to explain how apparently accidental omissions or additions in narratives that are substantially the same, bring out the meaning which is common to them. There can be no doubt, I imagine, from the language of all the Evangelists, that our Lord meant to tell Peter that the blessing of those who really left all for the Gospel could not be exaggerated. If they had left all and followed Christ, there were houses, lands, persecutions, friends, mothers, brothers, sisters, everlasting life, in store for them. It is intimated as clearly, that while he was still asking “what shall we have therefor?” he had not left all. He was bargaining for wages, wishing to get more than others by his sacrifices. At the end of the day, if such a habit of mind continued, he would be angry when the great Householder admitted those who he thought had toiled less, to the same blessing as himself. The instruction therefore to the poor fishermen is essentially the same as that to the rich ruler. The discourses cannot be separated. They were still in a measure self-seekers as he was; in a measure, I say, for no one can suppose that they had really followed Christ upon a calculation. They were drawn after Him by a power, a love, which they could not resist. They clung to Him, and lost themselves in Him; so far they were already in seed and germ what they afterwards became. But the habit of mind which belonged to their country, which belongs to the evil nature of every man, which was encouraged by the pharisaic religion, and almost constituted it, still hung about them. They were still fancying as the ruler did, that certain measurable sacrifices would secure a certain measurable felicity. The associations of the market were not banished from their contemplation of eternal life. One great lesson comes out of the answers to them, that the mistakes of men are not treated by the Divine teacher according to the rule of the great human teacher, that a stick which has an inclination to bend one way, must be turned the other. On the contrary, He, both in dealing with the ruler and with His own disciples, goes all lengths with them; He admits that eternal life is to be obtained by sacrifice, and only shows them how the selfishness of their minds is really making sacrifice, in any true sense of the word, impossible.
The Going Up to Jerusalem
I have spoken already of two announcements of the Passion, especially of that which followed the Transfiguration. But the passage which follows immediately after the discourse with the ruler and with Peter, in all the three Evangelists, is introduced so significantly—little phrases in each indicate that it left so deep an impression upon the disciples—as to forbid that we should pass it over, under pretence of its being a mere repetition of what has gone before. “And Jesus going up to Jerusalem, took the twelve disciples apart in the way, and said unto them, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem; and the Son of Man shall be betrayed unto the chief priests, and unto the scribes, and they shall condemn Him to death, and shall deliver Him to the Gentiles, to mock, and to scourge, and to crucify Him; and the third day He shall rise again.”
What I wish to fix your attention upon is, that the emphasis in this passage is made, by each Evangelist, to rest on the words, “Behold, we go up to Jerusalem.”
Our Lord had already spoken of His passion and resurrection in connection with His own character as the Son of God. There was another aspect in which they must be viewed, in connection with the holy city, with the people who would reject Him. St. Luke, perhaps, makes us feel with more clearness than the other Evangelists how continually this thought was present to the mind of our Lord Himself. But the more diligently we study both the others, the more we shall find how much the entry into Jerusalem is by them also regarded as the crisis in the history of their nation, and therefore in the history of all nations. Never for a moment have they lost sight of an approaching judgment in their view of the great Deliverer, never have they forgotten that a baptism of the Holy Ghost is also to be a baptism of fire. We shall feel how needful this consideration is when we come to the next step in the narrative.
The Descent from the Mount of Olives
“And when they drew nigh unto Jerusalem, and were come to Bethphage, unto the mount of Olives, then sent Jesus two disciples, saying unto them, Go into the village over against you, and straightway ye shall find an ass tied, and a colt with her: loose them, and bring them unto me. And if any man say ought unto you, ye shall say, the Lord hath need of them; and straightway he will send them. All this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, Tell ye the daughter of Sion, Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass. And the disciples went, and did as Jesus commanded them, and brought the ass, and the colt, and put on them their clothes, and they set him thereon. And a very great multitude spread their garments in the way; others cut down branches from the trees, and strewed them in the way. And the multitudes that went before, and that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna to the Son of David; Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest. And when he was come into Jerusalem, all the city was moved, saying, Who is this? And the multitude said, This is Jesus the prophet of Nazareth of Galilee.”
This is one of the narratives which belongs to the fourth Gospel as well as to the first three. I am not now to consider St. John’s reasons for introducing it. Every one has felt how important a place it occupies in those which are called the synoptical Gospels. Every one also, I suppose, has perceived that the passage is meant to describe a royal entrance into the city of David, an entrance for which there had been a long previous preparation, which even at the time the immediate disciples of our Lord, deriving their impression from Himself, regarded as the beginning of a series of great and solemn events. What would come of this to Him quite unusual method of announcing His dignity, why He who had been merely the prophet among fishermen in Galilee, should court the vengeance which he seemed to expect in the capital of his enemies, why, if He must enter the city towards which he had so long set his face, he did not more carefully than ever before eschew any conduct which might excite the suspicion of the Roman Governor, or furnish the Pharisees with a new and valid pretext against Him; this the disciples might in vain try to guess. But that this entry did stand in some very close relation to that Kingdom of which He had been speaking in all His parables, which He had been illustrating by all His miracles, they could not doubt. If He wished them to think that He was not a king, or one only in some imaginary, metaphorical sense, why seize just this moment and just this manner of conveying an impression to their minds, which all after events could not efface, but must deepen?
This is the kind of question which we should naturally urge upon those who are wont to read the Gospels with perfect faith in their genuineness and their inspiration, but only as the history of a Divine Teacher, not chiefly or primarily as the history of a Divine King. Those who look upon the Evangelists as vulgar men united by the superstition of their country in the common belief that Jesus was coming to depose the Cæsars, and restore the dynasty of David in Judæa, will of course eagerly grasp at this evidence in favor of their conclusion. And surely they are entitled to any benefit which they can derive from the most exact meaning which can be attached to the words of the Evangelists; they have a right to demand that no vague uncritical signification shall be attached to the description of an event evidently so important in the eyes of the writers, the one from which they date the last and greatest period of their history. If upon an attentive consideration of the words which I have quoted from St. Matthew, the Ebionite Evangelist, as we are told he is, the one in whom, after all later excisions and spiritualizations, there is said to remain the most marked traces of old Judaical materialism, it shall be found that there is any thing whatsoever which is inconsistent with that idea of a kingdom, of a real, actual, present kingdom, a kingdom which was the real fulfilment of the one David established, but because real, present, immediate, Davidian, Jewish, therefore in the deepest sense spiritual, lying at the root of things, existing in the person of One who had from the first upheld all things by the word of His power; if there is one phrase in St. Matthew’s narrative which after the severest examination is found to interfere with the impression which all his previous history has left upon us, then I admit, not merely that the story of the descent from the Mount of Olives is a perplexing passage in itself, but that it perplexes all which precedes and follows it.
But there is no such word. Every thing here is royal, but there are none of the trappings of royalty. He calls for the ass, and the owner feels that it must be yielded up, because the Lord has need of it. The ass is the ordinary beast upon which the judge of old rode, yet it is the symbol of lowliness. He is welcomed with branches of palm-trees, and with hosannas; but the honors are paid Him by a band of insignificant followers. Turn the narrative which way soever you will, consider the general impression which it produces, or look into its minutest details, and there is every thing to bear out the impression of quiet invisible power which will make itself to be felt, but which will not come with observation, which claims the homage of human hearts as the highest it can receive, before it shows to what master those hearts which refuse the homage are surrendering themselves. This is precisely the teaching which we have received from every passage we have studied hitherto in these Gospels. If there were a history composed of such passages, if the scene of it was laid in the land of Judæa, if every step of it was connected with an approaching crisis in the history of the land, and of its chief city, should not we look for this consummation, should we not feel that there was a blank in the story if it was wanting? All Christendom has felt, the conviction has been expressed in the language of art and in the language of books of devotion, by those who were meditating the Scriptures for their own spiritual profit, by those who were looking upon them as documents for the history of the world, that the meekest and lowliest of men did enter Jerusalem to say, “I am your Ruler and Lord. Will you own me in that character? If you do not, the stones of your city will cry out. The real invisible bond which keeps them together will be destroyed; in a little time not one will be left upon another.” I appeal to the existence of this conviction which has struck such deep roots, and has found for itself such manifold expressions, in proof of my original assertion, that I am not maintaining any novel hypothesis respecting these Gospels, but am merely bringing out the truth which the conscience of modern Europe has implicitly recognized, and showing that instead of its being grounded on some symbolical or mystical interpretation, it is the only one which is compatible with the literal understanding of these books, the only one which explains the connection of their different parts. What has been wanting, I conceive, to give this belief its full power and consistency, has been a more full and frank acknowledgment that Christ is the King of Men, and not merely the King of that particular portion of men who were permitted to call themselves by His Name. Our selfishness has robbed Him of more than half His glory, and threatens at last to deprive us of the blessing which we have refused to share. But I am anticipating future observations.
Jesus Going into the Temple
If the last passage contains one of the few coincidences between that part of St. John’s Gospel which precedes the history of the passion and the narratives of the other three Evangelists, the passage which follows contains almost the only memorable instance of a strong apparent disagreement between him and them. He seems to place the story of our Lord’s entrance into the Temple to cast out them that sold and bought in it, at the passover which followed His first miracle; they are unanimous in connecting it with His final entry into Jerusalem. St. Matthew’s account of the event is essentially the same with that of the rest. “And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves, and said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.” Every one of the three Evangelists intimates that this act produced a great impression upon the chief priests; every one of them seems to connect with it the question, “By what authority doest thou these things?”and the parable to which that question gave rise. St. Matthew and St. Mark introduce the miracle of the barren fig-tree, a miracle which all have felt to be in so close a connection with the withering of the Jewish nation, as part of the narrative; St. Luke, who had spoken of his beholding the city and weeping over it just before, translates as it were the miracle into words. But why should going into the temple and assuming a right to cleanse it, seem to the priests so audacious an act of authority? Why should it be linked in the minds of the Evangelists to deeds and words which betokened an approaching catastrophe? The whole after narrative I believe will explain these feelings. If the entrance into Jerusalem on an ass was an assumption of that kingly honor which he seemed previously to have disclaimed, the entrance into the temple was a no less significant assumption of the character of the divine Son which His disciples had acknowledged, but which as yet they were forbidden to proclaim. The one act was evidence for the charge before Pilate, the other was demonstration to the chief priest that he must be condemned as a blasphemer by the Sanhedrim. What, call the Temple His Father’s house, claim a right to drive out the invaders of it because it was such! Was not this the highest proof that He had committed that offence for which the law had appointed stoning? Accordingly the parable which I have considered already apart from its connection, and merely in illustration of the parables generally, has the most direct and obvious bearing upon this especial act. The Son was come to claim the fruits of the vineyard from the husbandmen; the stone had been brought in, which was the ground and corner-stone of the Temple, that it might be seen how the builders would deal with it.
The Baptism of John
I must not, however, pass over the words common to all the three Evangelists, which introduce the parable. “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.” One part of the value of this passage consists, as all have perceived, in the witness which it bears to the general law that those who have not profited by a preparatory dispensation contract an incapacity for a higher one. But it must not be forgotten that the chief priests are here especially spoken of, in distinction from, even in contrast with, the people at large; nay, in St. Matthew’s Gospel with the grosser part of the people, with the publicans and harlots. The passage then must be compared with the words in which St. John addressed the Scribes and Pharisees when they came out to his baptism; “Oh generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father; for God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.” The whole sin of the Pharisees is brought out in that sentence, the height and the meanness of their ambition. They were proud of being Abraham’s children; they did not think it possible that the benefit of that position could be ever taken from them; they did not care to be God’s children. To have the lower honor to themselves was better than to have the higher honor shared with those whom they looked upon as mere stones. They were therefore wrapped up in a religious atheism, satisfied without feeling that they stood in any relation towards God. Of this sin, which was a proof that they had forgotten the blessings of their own covenant, John called on them to repent. They were to turn from Abraham to the God of Abraham; not to glory in their strength or in their wisdom, but in this, that they might know Him who executed righteousness and judgment upon the earth. If they did that, He would reveal Himself to them, There was One among them who would baptize them with the Holy Ghost and with fire. The chief priests had not heeded that call; therefore they could not know by what authority Christ did these things. They wished to be rulers themselves in the temple, when He whose it was had suddenly come to refine and to purify it. They did not know who He was, but they had an instinct that He was one whom they ought to obey, therefore they said, “Come, let us kill him, and the inheritance shall be ours.”
Paying Tribute to Cæsar
“Then went the Pharisees, and took counsel how they might entangle him in his talk. And they sent out unto him their disciples with the Herodians, saying, Master, we know that thou art true, and teachest the way of God in truth, neither carest thou for any man: for thou regardest not the person of men. Tell us therefore, What thinkest thou? Is it lawful to give tribute unto Cæsar, or not? But Jesus perceived their wickedness, and said, Why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites? Shew me the tribute-money. And they brought unto him a penny. And he saith unto them, Whose is this image and superscription? They say unto him, Cæsar’s. Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.” The parallel passages to this are in the twelfth chapter of Mark, from the 13th to the 18th verses, and in Luke the twentieth chapter, from the 19th to the 27th verses. The differences between the three Evangelists here are very slight. The most considerable is that St. Matthew introduces the parable of the king making a marriage for his son between the parable of the husbandmen in the vineyard and the sending forth of the spies; that St. Mark and St. Luke refer that measure directly to the stricken conscience and bitterness of the chief priests, who perceived that these words had been spoken against them. Probably, if we consider the second parable attentively, we shall not feel this difference to be a very weighty one. It is closely related in spirit and purpose, even in form, to the other, and may well have deepened and sharpened the rage which it excited. I need not enlarge much on the question respecting the tribute-money; it will not escape, and has not escaped any, even the most superficial reader, that it bears upon our Lord’s pretensions as a king, and was meant to prepare the way for the destruction of His reputation with the people, or for an accusation before the Roman Governor. Nor has it ever, as far as I know, been suggested that our Lord, in His answer to the question, renounced or explained away, even in the slightest degree, the dignity which He had seemed to assert when He entered the city. What I would chiefly complain of in the interpreters of the passage is, that they have led their readers to admire a kind of dexterity in our Lord’s answer, as if it were indeed an evasion of the question, as if it did not carry out the whole meaning of His previous teaching, and present it in a new and striking application, as if it were not full of the most solemn reproof to the Pharisees and Herodians, and the profoundest lesson to the whole Jewish nation, respecting the secret of its slavery. What was the deliverance the Pharisees dreamed of, and sought for? A deliverance from the payment of tribute to Cæsar. And why was that the great cause of their lamentation? Because their hearts were in bondage to covetousness, because they knew nothing of any more ignominious service than that which was signified by the presence of the publican, any emancipation greater than that which was implied in his exaction being withdrawn. But whose is this image and superscription on the tribute-money? Is it not Cæsar’s? Why should it not go to him? Whose is the image in which you are made? What superscription is written on your hearts? Render them to the invisible God, claim Him for your King, and your chains drop off; you are slaves no longer. Christ then did not merely say by this answer, “I am not come now to disturb the government of the Cæsars,” but He showed why He was not come to disturb it, why He could not effectually deliver the nation by setting them free from tribute. He was come to reveal the Kingdom of God to them, to tell them that they were God’s servants, and not Cæsar’s; He was come, therefore, to accomplish all that the people expected from Him, if they had known what they expected; He was come to undermine the tyranny of the Cæsars, the tyranny of the Pharisees, all other tyranny in the world. Pharisees, Herodians, Romans, had a right to be suspicious of Him. He was far more really dangerous to them, and they were beginning to know it, than all the incendiaries who had ever exhorted the Israelites to throw off their yoke.
The Sadducees and the Resurrection
“The same day came to him the Sadducees, which say that there is no resurrection, and asked him, saying, Master, Moses said, If a man die, having no children, his brother shall marry his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother. Now there were with us seven brethren; and the first, when he had married a wife, deceased, and, having no issue, left his wife unto his brother: likewise the second also, and the third, unto the seventh. And last of all the woman died also. Therefore in the resurrection whose wife shall she be of the seven? for they all had her. Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven. But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. And when the multitude heard this, they were astonished at his doctrine.”
It was clearly intimated in our Lord’s observation respecting the leaven, that there was a habit of mind which was common to the opposing sects of the Jews. It is not enough to say that their common dislike to Him proved the existence of this radical similarity; it was quite certain that in the course of their opposition the inward nature of it would discover itself. Here was an occasion in which the Sadducees took up the line of argument which would at other times have brought them in most direct collision with the Pharisees. They strove to embarrass our Lord with a case which must have served for the topic of many a debate, and many a jest, when they were refuting the doctors of the other school. And yet here our Lord detected a temper of mind very closely akin to that which He had just exposed in the men who asked Him whether it was lawful to pay tribute unto Cæsar. The idea of God as a Lord of the heart and reins, as a spiritual Being related to His spiritual creature, was wanting in the Pharisee, it was wanting also in the Sadducee. Neither, therefore, were able to enter into the history of their forefathers. The old commonwealth of Israel, the kingdom of David, the new city after the captivity, was not regarded by the Pharisees as really under the dominion of an invisible Lord, who was reigning over it from generation to generation: it was only a state separated by certain religious privileges and distinctions from all others, and entitled to look down upon them. The Roman yoke therefore was bitterly galling; but it never led them to cry out for a real, divine government, only for a government in which they should be supreme. The Sadducees had neither less nor more apprehension of a living God. They were not nominally atheists, probably the most violent Pharisee would not have given them that name; but their belief was in a dead god, in one who had established a law, or laid down maxims of morality, which men were thenceforth to keep for themselves, by which they were to regulate their conduct. But that this Being was still,—nay, that He had ever stood in any actual relation to His creatures, that He could communicate with them, or that they could in any actual sense call upon Him, they did not and could not believe. Therefore they logically, consistently, honestly, repudiated the idea of a resurrection. It was a loss, no doubt, to be without the relic and shell of such a conviction, to have said distinctly to themselves, “Our life is bounded by the conditions of it in this world; when the appearances of things disappear, we shall disappear with them; the laws which govern us are merely the circumstances in which we dwell. Man has nothing in him but that which is determined by measures of time and space.” But so the Pharisee really believed also. His doctrine of a resurrection was merely the carrying out beyond the grave of all the low, selfish, carnal notions and maxims which had governed him on this side of it. To this cause we may attribute perhaps the mildness of the rebukes, “Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God,” as compared with the “Why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites?” in the former case. But the practical correction of the error, was even deeper, and yet simpler than that which defined the difference between the obligations to Cæsar and to God. “Have ye not read in the Scriptures that God saith, I am the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” “Whatever you may think about the prophets, you acknowledge the simple records of the Book of Genesis as having some worth. The principle of the resurrection is there. Once believe in God as the same yesterday and to-day, as the God of men from generation to generation, as really connected with them; once believe Him to be ever alive, and you believe in their life. And you become disentangled from these notions which have led you astray when you were considering whose wife the woman should be of the seven; for you begin to contemplate men in their higher relation to God, and therefore in higher relations to each other.” Here is the preparation for all the after teaching respecting the resurrection. Its ground is laid in the deepest theology, and yet in the earliest revelation of God. Thus were the Sadducees taught, and the Pharisees no less, that to understand and believe in a resurrection they must seek for some One in whom they could realize an actual relation to an actual and living Being. Thus was the question presented to their minds whether their dislike to the idea of a Son of God was not the real inward ground of their dislike to the idea of a resurrection, and whether without the belief of a Son of God a resurrection is any thing but a dark and fearful vision of a probable promulgation and extension of the world’s wretchedness.
What Think Ye of Christ?
“While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, saying, What think ye of Christ? whose son is he? They say unto him, The Son of David. He saith unto them, How then doth David in spirit call him Lord, saying, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool? If David then call him Lord, how is he his son? And no man was able to answer him a word, neither durst any man from that day forth ask him any more questions.” This question is given, with slight variations, in the twelfth of Mark, from the 35th to the 38th verses, and in the twentieth of Luke, from the 41st to the 45th verses. It is one of the few questions which our Lord is said by the three Evangelists to have directly addressed to the people, or to the scribes, without any immediate provocation upon their part. It occurs in close connection with all the passages which we have lately been considering, and it is placed in all the Gospels very shortly before the last Passover. All evidently considered that though it led to no direct or obvious result, though it was a short question and one which found no answer, though our Lord raised the difficulty without giving the solution, it yet deserved an emphatical, enduring record. Did not every event they had been recording or were about to record, in fact, contain this question? Were not those events taken in connection with the whole past history of the nation, with all the future history of the human race, to give the reply? “How is it possible that Christ can be both the Son of David and the Lord of David? How can He fail to be either if your Scriptures are true?” This was the tormenting awful paradox to the Pharisee, the paradox in his own being as well as in the divine Books, from which he could find but one way of delivering himself. After eighteen centuries it is still the question which is presented to every Jew and every Christian man, and which Christians as well as Jews are disposed to get rid of almost as the Pharisee did. If there is to be a King, a Son of Man over Men, must He not be the Son of God? If there is a Son of God must He not be the King over men? Could the Christ fulfil one character unless He fulfilled the other? The Crucifixion was man’s attempt to remove the difficulty; the Resurrection was God’s.