In this narrative section of Book V in Matthew, Christ the King has been spelling out what it means to obey Him in specific areas of life: marriage and family, wealth and possessions so far. A change of journey at v. 17 ("as Jesus was going up to Jerusalem") indicates a change of subject: work and status is the third area where His Lordship is to be acknowledged.
This episode opens with the third prediction by our Lord of His passion, and it strikes the reader almost as an interruption in the neat three-point sermon chapters 19 and 20 contain. Why did Matthew put it here?
i. It is an example of what Jesus meant by 'the last shall be first,' a saying with which He ended His parable of the labourers in the vineyard. As we saw above, He meant by that that the standards we use to evaluate things in this world are not the standards by which God evaluates them in the Kingdom. We want justice, we say: God wants grace. And grace for all there cannot be unless we are willing to accept the loss of our so-called rights. In His condemnation, humiliation and death, Jesus Himself will become one of the 'last,' i.e. a 'loser' by this world's standards; but He will be a 'first' in His resurrection and exaltation to authority. His rule, the Rule of Grace, is grounded on the loss to Himself of all human rights. Establishing our own position is last; establishing others' is first.
ii. It serves to emphasise the point which the next incident will make. The brothers James and John will display a spirit of self-seeking in even the Kingdom of God which is totally unacceptable. 'Looking after No.1' is first in the world; in the Kingdom it is last.
Then observe where the Passion Predictions have been placed.
1. 16:21: Immediately after the revelation that He is the Christ, the Son of God. The true nature of His Messiah-hood is thus stated: the Messiah comes to His victory by the pathway of suffering and loss, for that is the only way love may pursue its aim in the face of hate.
2. 17:22: Immediately after the assurance that "all things are possible" to him who has faith "as a grain of mustard seed." The impossibilities disciples may believe in are the kind which they will often reach only through apparent defeat.
3. 20:17: As an introduction to this episode which teaches us the meaning of service, and the spirit in which it is given.
The first two are in Book IV 'The Church', the third in Book V 'The King and His own'. "It is the way the Master went; should not the servant tread it still?"
As in the other areas of life the Lord has so far reviewed, so here, to follow Him means that suffering and loss, by worldly standards, may have to be accepted.
i. Marriage and Family may have to be sacrificed.
ii. Wealth and Possessions may have to be sacrificed.
iii. Prestige and Power may have to be sacrificed.
Loneliness, poverty and weakness are to be embraced if God so disposes. We are back with the first three Beatitudes: blessed are those who have nothing, those who have no-one, those who are nobodies. Chs 19-20 are an exposition of them.
As we approach this incident, bear its lesson in mind v. 27-8: "Whoever would be great among you must be your slave; even as the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many."
Matthew tells us that the mother of James and John prompted their bid. Family ambition is included. At 4:21-2 and 10:2 (where the Lord's call to James and John to follow Him is recorded) she had lost her two sons to the Kingdom: was she now trying to get them back again? Or was she seeking to gain distinction through her sons? It is a subtle temptation, to compensate our failures and losses through our children. We do them incalculable mischief in the process.
Egged on by her, these two made a blatant bid for prestige and power. To 'sit, one on the right hand and the other on the left' means to have the two top jobs in the administration - to be Prime Minister and Treasurer (Chancellor of the Exchequer).
Hardly modest men, these two. Hardly generous, either. They made sure they got in first, before the other ten. It is hardly surprising that they took a dip in the popularity poles. "When the ten heard it, they were indignant at the two brothers."
"On a point of principle" they would have said, of course; but on a point of jealousy, really. They had been pipped at the post, they thought.
So the Lord had two problems on His hands: one was the request itself the brothers had made, the other was the attitude the rest showed. He dealt with both.
What would we have done? Their naked ambition was shocking. And the way they went about it was so childish:
"Promise us something, Lord."
"Promise what?"
"Just promise."
"Promise what?"
"No, promise first."
How pathetic! We would have felt, "They'll have to be taken down a peg or two, these two. Can't have men like that on the team." Almost always, our instinct is to require of people that they be what they are not before they can be accepted. Not so Jesus. He takes them on, just as they are.
Not without putting a damper on their ambition, to be sure. "You do not know what you're asking," He said; "you do not understand that in my Kingdom distinguished service means pain and loss willingly accepted."
By "the cup that I am to drink" He meant the suffering He was to endure: 26:39 "Let this cup pass from me."
"Can you drink that cup?" He asked.
"Yes," they answered, "We can." They are still being childish: they will promise anything just to be sure they do not miss out on the prizes. "Willing and able ..." They understood neither what they asked nor what they promised. It was sheer ignorant bravado, an ego trip. "O come on, you two," we would have said.
But Jesus looked at them a long moment ... and took their promise at face value. "Yes," He said, "you will. I bind you to your pledge."
What was Jesus doing here? To them the Kingdom meant one thing: power and prestige. To Jesus it meant quite another thing: servitude and sacrifice.
"We are able," the brothers said, meaning one thing.
"You will indeed," said Jesus, meaning quite another thing.
Said one commentator, J. H. Newman: "The two disciples were caught by One mightier than they, and as it were, craftily made captive." It was as though Jesus accepted their signatures on a contract He knew they had not read, and would not have signed if they had. Did He trap them in a promise they had not intended - the way they had tried to trap Him? How could He accept their pledge at face value, knowing it to be ignorant and selfish?
He could accept it because He saw something in these two that lay deeper than that, something we might have missed because our minds would have been fogged with anger and jealousy. He did not trap them; He set them in a new direction.
"Grant us a place in your Kingdom." They did not doubt there would be one. They believed in Him.
They were not put off by warnings of hardship. They really believed they would face anything for Him. They were wrong, of course: they all forsook Him and fled. (26:56) But Jesus was right! "You shall indeed drink my cup." In the end they did. James lost his life for Christ (he was the first to do so: Acts 12:2); John distinguished himself by a long life of lowly service. Together, they perfectly displayed the spirit of sacrifice and service reflected on a Roman coin in circulation at the time: on one side was an image of the Lord Caesar, on the other an ox facing an altar and a plough, with the inscription, "Ready for either" ... only their coin bore the image of the Lord Jesus.
You or I might have seen only the greed and the pride in them. Jesus saw their loyalty and their faith. And though their love and trust were all mixed up with these baser elements, they were real, nonetheless. Jesus knew they gave Him a basis on which He could truly build. And build He did.
He did not demand of them that they be what they were not; He took them, just as they were.
It is said of Michaelangelo, the great
Italian sculptor, that passing through a mason's yard one day, he saw
in a corner a misshapen piece of marble, and asked what it was for.
"Oh," said the yard owner, "that's a bit of rubbish we have no use
for."
"Rubbish?" mused Michaelangelo, looking at it searchingly; "There is
an angel imprisoned in that lump of stone. Let me set it
free."
That is how Jesus looked at James and John.
He knew the first law that governs the relationship between leader and led: that if a leader is to make anything of those who follow him, he must take them at first as he finds them. It is so obvious when you say it. But we do not always see it.
A leader's task is not easy. He has to have a clear sight of the goal to which he means to take his followers. But he must also understand how little of it they may see, and how they must be enabled to both see and embrace it. He has to work with his two eyes out of focus, so to speak - one eye seeing the whole truth, the other eye seeing the half-truth which is all his men can see. He must be in their world, but out of it, too. And the further he sees, the longer will be the distance between their horizons and his, and the harder will be his task. *
How hard was the task for Jesus then. How far-sighted He was; and how short-sighted His disciples were. In His mind, the Kingdom was a realm where greatness is measured by your service to others; in theirs, greatness was measured by the service others rendered you. So great was the contrast between His ideals and theirs that He could say, "My first is your last; and my last is your first." Yet He never doubted that He could carry them out of their world into His. "Where I am going you cannot follow Me now, but you shall follow afterward." (John 13:36) In the end He succeeded.
And He succeeded because first He took them as He found them.
It is one of the most cheering features of the Gospel that I am accepted 'just as I am.' Obviously I am not approved just as I am, but I am accepted. On that basis of acceptance, God in Christ is able to work a transformation in mind and heart that moulds me nearer to His desire and purpose. Without it, He can establish no relationship with me through which He can work.
By doing so, of course, He calls us into a brotherhood of mutual acceptance. That is why we have to live together by the Rule of Grace, not holding each other back with our insistence on justice, but helping each other forward with our commitment to grace. We have to forgive each other, or we hold each other back from His goal for us. We have to believe in each other - or rather, believe in the Christ in each other - or we hold each other back. We are, as Paul said, no better than clay pots (II Cor. 4:7) - misshapen pots at that, for we have little shape or beauty. But we need not despair, not even if we are in hardly better shape today than we were yesterday. We are disciples in clay - and there is the skill of the potter to be reckoned with. He sees the angel in the stone, the vessel in the clay. Let us forget our own judgments - on others and ourselves - and trust His. He has set His hand to the plough with us, and He will not look back. "He who has begun a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ." (Phil. 1:6)
"Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He Who has promised is faithful; and let us consider how to stir up one another to love and to good works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another - and all the more as you see the Day drawing near." (Heb. 10:23) The service He Himself models to us is the service we are to render each other.
The Ransom - the price paid for our release.
He does not pretend that it is easy. To bless others with that sort of acceptance is a costly exercise. That is the point of v. 28: "The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many." To give to another the sort of service He gives to us 'costs us' ... and the cost is a cost to life, as it was to His.
The word 'ransom' means simply 'the price of release.' He pays the ultimate price to secure our release. From what? From our bondage, our imprisonment to sin and guilt. We need to develop this a little, for this statement of our Lord's is critical in the Gospels to our understanding of His atoning work.
In real life God is hurt by our sin in His Person, in His very Being. Our sin does violence to His nature; it wreaks havoc in His heart. Bearing what our sin does to Him is like death to Him. Just as a black betrayal by someone we loved and trusted would 'strike death to our heart,' so our sin 'strikes death' to His heart. It wounds Him, it mauls Him; He is stricken by it. To bear our sin, loving us the way He does, is a killing thing. He suffers to forgive us.
I am not careful to try and define that suffering. None can. It is enough that we have a sense of what our sin does to God, of what it costs Him to bear it, to absorb it, and in forgiving us to put it away from between us.
It is in the 'putting away' of sin that the personal dynamics of forgiveness lie. To put away sin is a personal, relational thing. It is not a mechanical, transactional thing, as though sins are like so much freight or baggage to be moved about, off us and on to Christ. Sins are not entities in themselves separate from the sinner who commits them. They are simply examples of the sinner in action
If you do me a grievous wrong, I cannot wipe out the fact of it; that remains. What I can do is wipe out the effect of it on our relationship. I can put it away from between us, so it no longer presents an obstacle to our fellowship.
The only way I can do that, so trust and love flow freely between us again, is if the offence I feel dies in me. I have to absorb the hurt and the loss so completely that it withers away inside me ... so I am able to look at you, meet you, and relate to you without the bile rising in me any more.
It is the person sinned against who has to do that. However sorry you may be will make no difference unless I somehow find it in me not to hold it against you any more. Nothing the offender can do can bring that about in the one he offended. Either the one who has been wronged has it in him to do it - in which case there is real forgiveness; or he has not - in which case there is no hope of forgiveness. The forgiveness of sins is decided, not by the intensity of the offender's repentance, but by the willingness and ability of the one offended to bear the hurt of them and not hate the other for it. Only then is the offender 'released' from the guilt of his wrongdoing. For it must be recognised that guilt is not a feeling we have about what we have done, but the condition of having to answer for what we have done.
Just so, God's forgiveness of our sins is decided, not by the sincerity or intensity of our repentance, but by God's willingness to bear the hurt of them and not hate us for it. That price which God pays, that cost which He meets within Himself, however we define it, is the 'ransom' of which Jesus spoke when He said "the Son of Man is come to ... give His life a ransom for many." A ransom is the price of release. By putting away the sins that stand between us and Him, to Whom we must answer for them all, He releases us from the guilt of them.
When God came among us in the human person of His Son, there was no way that cost could be met but by suffering the death our sin inflicts on Him. Nothing less can sustain the moral realities. God reaches out His arms to gather us to Him; but in doing so He has to gather to Him the sin that is in us, and it is 'death' to Him. That death He suffers.
That is not to say that God the Father dies, as Jesus died physically on the Cross; but in the death Jesus died "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them" (II Cor. 5:19); Father and Son were one in the action of the Cross. It cost God that to put away sin from between us and Him. The cost is real. It is dreadful beyond all human comprehension. It is that reality that was fully realised in the passion and death of Christ our Lord, Who at the Cross still, as all through His life, was God ... manifest in human flesh. In the Cross, Jesus was doing "what He saw the Father doing" - suffering at the hand of sinners so as to forgive them.
It happened the once, at one time and in one place; but because it was a work of the eternal God, it transcends time and space. All the redeeming passion of the Triune God was poured into the work of that one time and that one place, so that it is for all times and all places. That is why it is the "one, full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice" for all time, for all the sins of all the world.
On that basis - on that basis alone - there is forgiveness. There is no other way. The sacrifice of Christ, as "God manifest in the flesh," is the only basis on which a just forgiveness can rest.
But the repeated emphasis of the New Testament is that we are to forgive as we have been forgiven. We are to be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ has forgiven us. (Eph. 4:32)
It is no accident that this profoundest of all statements by our Lord about the meaning of His sacrifice arises in the context of our relations with one another.
* I owe this insight to H. H. Farmer, 'Thing Not Seen' [Nisbet] p. 170ƒƒ
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