{"commentary":{"id":"jamieson-fausset-brown","name":"Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary","website":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamieson-Fausset-Brown_Bible_Commentary","licenseUrl":"https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/","licenseNotes":null,"licenseNotice":null,"englishName":"Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary","language":"eng","textDirection":"rtl","sha256":"db3d4c8b3c1f32ef9d1430a57392e02bda3a17aac1f9bbe398461de021a3cb13","availableFormats":["json"],"listOfBooksApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/books.json","listOfProfilesApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/profiles.json","numberOfBooks":66,"totalNumberOfChapters":1187,"totalNumberOfVerses":17056,"totalNumberOfProfiles":0,"languageName":"English","languageEnglishName":"English"},"book":{"id":"MAT","commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","name":"Matthew","commonName":"Matthew","introduction":"THE author of this Gospel was a publican or tax gatherer, residing at Capernaum, on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. As to his identity with the \"Levi\" of the second and third Gospels, and other particulars, see on Mat 9:9. Hardly anything is known of his apostolic labors. That, after preaching to his countrymen in Palestine, he went to the East, is the general testimony of antiquity; but the precise scene or scenes of his ministry cannot be determined. That he died a natural death may be concluded from the belief of the best-informed of the Fathers--that of the apostles only three, James the Greater, Peter, and Paul, suffered martyrdom. That the first Gospel was written by this apostle is the testimony of all antiquity.\n\nFor the date of this Gospel we have only internal evidence, and that far from decisive. Accordingly, opinion is much divided. That it was the first issued of all the Gospels was universally believed. Hence, although in the order of the Gospels, those by the two apostles were placed first in the oldest manuscripts of the Old Latin version, while in all the Greek manuscripts, with scarcely an exception, the order is the same as in our Bibles, the Gospel according to Matthew is \"in every case\" placed first. And as this Gospel is of all the four the one which bears the most evident marks of having been prepared and constructed with a special view to the Jews--who certainly first required a written Gospel, and would be the first to make use of it--there can be no doubt that it was issued before any of the others. That it was written before the destruction of Jerusalem is equally certain; for as HUG observes [Introduction to the New Testament, p. 316, FOSDICK'S translation], when he reports our Lord's prophecy of that awful event, on coming to the warning about \"the abomination of desolation\" which they should \"see standing in the holy place,\" he interposes (contrary to his invariable practice, which is to relate without remark) a call to his readers to read intelligently--\"Whoso readeth, let him understand\" (Mat 24:15) --a call to attend to the divine signal for flight which could be intended only for those who lived before the event. But how long before that event this Gospel was written is not so clear. Some internal evidences seem to imply a very early date. Since the Jewish Christians were, for five or six years, exposed to persecution from their own countrymen--until the Jews, being persecuted by the Romans, had to look to themselves--it is not likely (it is argued) that they should be left so long without some written Gospel to reassure and sustain them, and Matthew's Gospel was eminently fitted for that purpose. But the digests to which Luke refers in his Introduction (see on Luk 1:1) would be sufficient for a time, especially as the living voice of the \"eye-witnesses and ministers of the Word\" was yet sounding abroad. Other considerations in favor of a very early date--such as the tender way in which the author seems studiously to speak of Herod Antipas, as if still reigning, and his writing of Pilate apparently as if still in power--seem to have no foundation in fact, and cannot therefore be made the ground of reasoning as to the date of this Gospel. Its Hebraic structure and hue, though they prove, as we think, that this Gospel must have been published at a period considerably anterior to the destruction of Jerusalem, are no evidence in favor of so early a date as A.D. 37 or 38--according to some of the Fathers, and, of the moderns, TILLEMONT, TOWNSON, OWEN, BIRKS, TREGELLES. On the other hand, the date suggested by the statement of IRENÆUS [Against Heresies, 3.1], that Matthew put forth his Gospel while Peter and Paul were at Rome preaching and founding the Church--or after A.D. 60--though probably the majority of critics are in favor of it, would seem rather too late, especially as the second and third Gospels, which were doubtless published, as well as this one, before the destruction of Jerusalem, had still to be issued. Certainly, such statements as the following, \"Wherefore that field is called the field of blood unto this day\" (Mat 27:8); \"And this saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this day\" (Mat 28:15), bespeak a date considerably later than the events recorded. We incline, therefore, to a date intermediate between the earlier and the later dates assigned to this Gospel, without pretending to greater precision.\n\nWe have adverted to the strikingly Jewish character and coloring of this Gospel. The facts which it selects, the points to which it gives prominence, the cast of thought and phraseology, all bespeak the Jewish point of view from which it was written and to which it was directed. This has been noticed from the beginning, and is universally acknowledged. It is of the greatest consequence to the right interpretation of it; but the tendency among some even of the best of the Germans to infer, from this special design of the first Gospel, a certain laxity on the part of the Evangelist in the treatment of his facts, must be guarded against.\n\nBut by far the most interesting and important point connected with this Gospel is the language in which it was written. It is believed by a formidable number of critics that this Gospel was originally written in what is loosely called Hebrew, but more correctly Aramaic, or Syro-Chaldaic, the native tongue of the country at the time of our Lord; and that the Greek Matthew which we now possess is a translation of that work, either by the Evangelist himself or some unknown hand. The evidence on which this opinion is grounded is wholly external, but it has been deemed conclusive by GROTIUS, MICHAELIS (and his translator), MARSH, TOWNSON, CAMPBELL, OLSHAUSEN, CRESWELL, MEYER, EBRARD, LANGE, DAVIDSON, CURETON, TREGELLES, WEBSTER and WILKINSON, &c. The evidence referred to cannot be given here, but will be found, with remarks on its unsatisfactory character, in the Introduction to the Gospels prefixed to our larger Commentary, pp. 28-31.\n\nBut how stand the facts as to our Greek Gospel? We have not a title of historical evidence that it is a translation, either by Matthew himself or anyone else. All antiquity refers to it as the work of Matthew the publican and apostle, just as the other Gospels are ascribed to their respective authors. This Greek Gospel was from the first received by the Church as an integral part of the one quadriform Gospel. And while the Fathers often advert to the two Gospels which we have from apostles, and the two which we have from men not apostles--in order to show that as that of Mark leans so entirely on Peter, and that of Luke on Paul, these are really no less apostolical than the other two--though we attach less weight to this circumstance than they did, we cannot but think it striking that, in thus speaking, they never drop a hint that the full apostolic authority of the Greek Matthew had ever been questioned on the ground of its not being the original. Further, not a trace can be discovered in this Gospel itself of its being a translation. MICHAELIS tried to detect, and fancied that he had succeeded in detecting, one or two such. Other Germans since, and DAVIDSON and CURETON among ourselves, have made the same attempt. But the entire failure of all such attempts is now generally admitted, and candid advocates of a Hebrew original are quite ready to own that none such are to be found, and that but for external testimony no one would have imagined that the Greek was not the original. This they regard as showing how perfectly the translation has been executed; but those who know best what translating from one language into another is will be the readiest to own that this is tantamount to giving up the question. This Gospel proclaims its own originality in a number of striking points; such as its manner of quoting from the Old Testament, and its phraseology in some peculiar cases. But the close verbal coincidences of our Greek Matthew with the next two Gospels must not be quite passed over. There are but two possible ways of explaining this. Either the translator, sacrificing verbal fidelity in his version, intentionally conformed certain parts of his author's work to the second and third Gospels--in which case it can hardly be called Matthew's Gospel at all--or our Greek Matthew is itself the original.\n\nMoved by these considerations, some advocates of a Hebrew original have adopted the theory of a double original; the external testimony, they think, requiring us to believe in a Hebrew original, while internal evidence is decisive in favor of the originality of the Greek. This theory is espoused by GUERICKS, OLSHAUSEN, THIERSCH, TOWNSON, TREGELLES, &c. But, besides that this looks too like an artificial theory, invented to solve a difficulty, it is utterly void of historical support. There is not a vestige of testimony to support it in Christian antiquity. This ought to be decisive against it.\n\nIt remains, then, that our Greek Matthew is the original of that Gospel, and that no other original ever existed. It is greatly to the credit of DEAN ALFORD, that after maintaining, in the first edition of his Greek Testament the theory of a Hebrew original, he thus expresses himself in the second and subsequent editions: \"On the whole, then, I find myself constrained to abandon the view maintained in my first edition, and to adopt that of a Greek original.\"\n\nOne argument has been adduced on the other side, on which not a little reliance has been placed; but the determination of the main question does not, in our opinion, depend upon the point which it raises. It has been very confidently affirmed that the Greek language was not sufficiently understood by the Jews of Palestine when Matthew published his Gospel to make it at all probable that he would write a Gospel, for their benefit in the first instance, in that language. Now, as this merely alleges the improbability of a Greek original, it is enough to place against it the evidence already adduced, which is positive, in favor of the sole originality of our Greek Matthew. It is indeed a question how far the Greek language was understood in Palestine at the time referred to. But we advise the reader not to be drawn into that question as essential to the settlement of the other one. It is an element in it, no doubt, but not an essential element. There are extremes on both sides of it. The old idea, that our Lord hardly ever spoke anything but Syro-Chaldaic, is now pretty nearly exploded. Many, however, will not go the length, on the other side, of HUG (in his Introduction to the New Testament, pp. 326, &c.) and ROBERTS (\"Discussions of the Gospels,\" &c., pp. 25, &c.). For ourselves, though we believe that our Lord, in all the more public scenes of His ministry, spoke in Greek, all we think it necessary here to say is that there is no ground to believe that Greek was so little understood in Palestine as to make it improbable that Matthew would write his Gospel exclusively in that language--so improbable as to outweigh the evidence that he did so. And when we think of the number of digests or short narratives of the principal facts of our Lord's history which we know from Luke (Luk 1:1-4) were floating about for some time before he wrote his Gospel, of which he speaks by no means disrespectfully, and nearly all of which would be in the mother tongue, we can have no doubt that the Jewish Christians and the Jews of Palestine generally would have from the first reliable written matter sufficient to supply every necessary requirement until the publican-apostle should leisurely draw up the first of the four Gospels in a language to them not a strange tongue, while to the rest of the world it was the language in which the entire quadriform Gospel was to be for all time enshrined. The following among others hold to this view of the sole originality of the Greek Matthew: ERASMUS, CALVIN, BEZA, LIGHTFOOT, WETSTEIN, LARDNER, HUG, FRITZSCHE, CREDNER, DE WETTE, STUART, DA COSTA, FAIRBAIRN, ROBERTS.\n\nOn two other questions regarding this Gospel it would have been desirable to say something, had not our available space been already exhausted: The characteristics, both in language and matter, by which it is distinguished from the other three, and its relation to the second and third Gospels. On the latter of these topics--whether one or more of the Evangelists made use of the materials of the other Gospels, and, if so, which of the Evangelists drew from which--the opinions are just as numerous as the possibilities of the case, every conceivable way of it having one or more who plead for it. The most popular opinion until recently--and perhaps the most popular still--is that the second Evangelist availed himself more or less of the materials of the first Gospel, and the third of the materials of both the first and second Gospels. Here we can but state our own belief, that each of the first three Evangelists wrote independently of both the others; while the fourth, familiar with the first three, wrote to supplement them, and, even where he travels along the same line, wrote quite independently of them. This judgment we express, with all deference for those who think otherwise, as the result of a close study of each of the Gospels in immediate juxtaposition and comparison with the others. On the former of the two topics noticed, the linguistic peculiarities of each of the Gospels have been handled most closely and ably by CREDNER [Einleitung (Introduction to the New Testament)], of whose results a good summary will be found in DAVIDSON'S Introduction to the New Testament. The other peculiarities of the Gospels have been most felicitously and beautifully brought out by DA COSTA in his Four Witnesses, to which we must simply refer the reader, though it contains a few things in which we cannot concur. \n\n\n\nNext: Matthew Chapter 1\n\n","order":40,"numberOfChapters":28,"sha256":"85230502f7845520bbf6f2983f2d40076dbb901c7feac0d1cfa0d62c8b7d54f8","firstChapterNumber":1,"firstChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/MAT/1.json","firstChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"MAT","chapter":1},"lastChapterNumber":28,"lastChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/MAT/28.json","lastChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"MAT","chapter":28},"totalNumberOfVerses":525},"chapter":{"number":7,"content":[{"type":"verse","number":2,"content":["For with what judgments ye Judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete--whatever standard of judgment ye apply to others. \n\nit shall be measured to you again--This proverbial maxim is used by our Lord in other connections--as in Mar 4:24, and with a slightly different application in Luk 6:38 --as a great principle in the divine administration. Unkind judgment of others will be judicially returned upon ourselves, in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ. But, as in many other cases under the divine administration, such harsh judgment gets self-punished even here. For people shrink from contact with those who systematically deal out harsh judgment upon others--naturally concluding that they themselves may be the next victims--and feel impelled in self-defense, when exposed to it, to roll back upon the assailant his own censures.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":3,"content":["And why beholdest thou the mote--\"splinter,\" here very well rendered \"mote,\" denoting any small fault. \n\nthat is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?--denoting the much greater fault which we overlook in ourselves.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":4,"content":["Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":5,"content":["Thou hypocrite--\"Hypocrite.\" \n\nfirst cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye--Our Lord uses a most hyperbolical, but not unfamiliar figure, to express the monstrous inconsistency of this conduct. The \"hypocrisy\" which, not without indignation, He charges it with, consists in the pretense of a zealous and compassionate charity, which cannot possibly be real in one who suffers worse faults to lie uncorrected in himself. He only is fit to be a reprover of others who jealously and severely judges himself. Such persons will not only be slow to undertake the office of censor on their neighbors, but, when constrained in faithfulness to deal with them, will make it evident that they do it with reluctance and not satisfaction, with moderation and not exaggeration, with love and not harshness.\n\nProstitution of Holy Things (Mat 7:6). The opposite extreme to that of censoriousness is here condemned--want of discrimination of character.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":6,"content":["Give not that which is holy unto the dogs--savage or snarling haters of truth and righteousness. \n\nneither cast ye your pearls before swine--the impure or coarse, who are incapable of appreciating the priceless jewels of Christianity. In the East, dogs are wilder and more gregarious, and, feeding on carrion and garbage, are coarser and fiercer than the same animals in the West. Dogs and swine, besides being ceremonially unclean, were peculiarly repulsive to the Jews, and indeed to the ancients generally. \n\nlest they trample them under their feet--as swine do. \n\nand turn again and rend you--as dogs do. Religion is brought into contempt, and its professors insulted, when it is forced upon those who cannot value it and will not have it. But while the indiscriminately zealous have need of this caution, let us be on our guard against too readily setting our neighbors down as dogs and swine, and excusing ourselves from endeavoring to do them good on this poor plea.\n\nPrayer (Mat 7:7-11). Enough, one might think, had been said on this subject in Mat 6:5-15. But the difficulty of the foregoing duties seems to have recalled the subject, and this gives it quite a new turn. \"How shall we ever be able to carry out such precepts as these, of tender, holy, yet discriminating love?\" might the humble disciple inquire. \"Go to God with it,\" is our Lord's reply; but He expresses this with a fulness which leaves nothing to be desired, urging now not only confidence, but importunity in prayer.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":7,"content":["Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you--Though there seems evidently a climax here, expressive of more and more importunity, yet each of these terms used presents what we desire of God in a different light. We ask for what we wish; we seek for what we miss; we knock for that from which we feel ourselves shut out. Answering to this threefold representation is the triple assurance of success to our believing efforts. \"But ah!\" might some humble disciple say, \"I cannot persuade myself that I have any interest with God.\" To meet this, our Lord repeats the triple assurance He had just given, but in such a form as to silence every such complaint.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":8,"content":["For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened--Of course, it is presumed that he asks aright--that is, in faith--and with an honest purpose to make use of what he receives. \"If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering (undecided whether to be altogether on the Lord's side). For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord\" (Jam 1:5-7). Hence, \"Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts\" (Jam 4:3).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":9,"content":["Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread--a loaf. \n\nwill he give him a stone?--round and smooth like such a loaf or cake as was much in use, but only to mock him.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":10,"content":["Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent?--like it, indeed, but only to sting him.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":11,"content":["If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him!--Bad as our fallen nature is, the father in us is not extinguished. What a heart, then, must the Father of all fathers have towards His pleading children! In the corresponding passage in Luke (see on Luk 11:13), instead of \"good things,\" our Lord asks whether He will not much more give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him. At this early stage of His ministry, and before such an audience, He seems to avoid such sharp doctrinal teaching as was more accordant with His plan at the riper stage indicated in Luke, and in addressing His own disciples exclusively.\n\nGolden Rule (Mat 7:12).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":12,"content":["Therefore--to say all in one word. \n\nall things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them--the same thing and in the same way. \n\nfor this is the law and the prophets--\"This is the substance of all relative duty; all Scripture in a nutshell.\" Incomparable summary! How well called \"the royal law!\" (Jam 2:8; compare Rom 13:9). It is true that similar maxims are found floating in the writings of the cultivated Greeks and Romans, and naturally enough in the Rabbinical writings. But so expressed as it is here--in immediate connection with, and as the sum of such duties as has been just enjoined, and such principles as had been before taught--it is to be found nowhere else. And the best commentary upon this fact is, that never till our Lord came down thus to teach did men effectually and widely exemplify it in their practice. The precise sense of the maxim is best referred to common sense. It is not, of course, what--in our wayward, capricious, gasping moods--we should wish that men would do to us, that we are to hold ourselves bound to do to them; but only what--in the exercise of an impartial judgment, and putting ourselves in their place--we consider it reasonable that they should do to us, that we are to do to them.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":13,"content":["CONCLUSION AND EFFECT OF THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. (Mat. 7:13-29)\n\nEnter ye in at the strait gate--as if hardly wide enough to admit one at all. This expresses the difficulty of the first right step in religion, involving, as it does, a triumph over all our natural inclinations. Hence the still stronger expression in Luke (Luk 13:24), \"Strive to enter in at the strait gate.\" \n\nfor wide is the gate--easily entered. \n\nand broad is the way--easily trodden. \n\nthat leadeth to destruction, and--thus lured \"many there be which go in thereat.\"\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":14,"content":["Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life--In other words, the whole course is as difficult as the first step; and (so it comes to pass that). \n\nfew there be that find it--The recommendation of the broad way is the ease with which it is trodden and the abundance of company to be found in it. It is sailing with a fair wind and a favorable tide. The natural inclinations are not crossed, and fears of the issue, if not easily hushed, are in the long run effectually subdued. The one disadvantage of this course is its end--it \"leadeth to destruction.\" The great Teacher says it, and says it as \"One having authority.\" To the supposed injustice or harshness of this He never once adverts. He leaves it to be inferred that such a course righteously, naturally, necessarily so ends. But whether men see this or no, here He lays down the law of the kingdom, and leaves it with us. As to the other way, the disadvantage of it lies in its narrowness and solicitude. Its very first step involves a revolution in all our purposes and plans for life, and a surrender of all that is dear to natural inclination, while all that follows is but a repetition of the first great act of self-sacrifice. No wonder, then, that few find and few are found in it. But it has one advantage--it \"leadeth unto life.\" Some critics take \"the gate\" here, not for the first, but the last step in religion; since gates seldom open into roads, but roads usually terminate in a gate, leading straight to a mansion. But as this would make our Lord's words to have a very inverted and unnatural form as they stand, it is better, with the majority of critics, to view them as we have done. But since such teaching would be as unpopular as the way itself, our Lord next forewarns His hearers that preachers of smooth things--the true heirs and representatives of the false prophets of old--would be rife enough in the new kingdom.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":15,"content":["Beware--But beware. \n\nof false prophets--that is, of teachers coming as authorized expounders of the mind of God and guides to heaven. (See Act 20:29-30; Pe2 2:1-2). \n\nwhich come to you in sheep's clothing--with a bland, gentle, plausible exterior; persuading you that the gate is not strait nor the way narrow, and that to teach so is illiberal and bigoted--precisely what the old prophets did (Eze 13:1-10, Eze 13:22). \n\nbut inwardly they are ravening wolves--bent on devouring the flock for their own ends (Co2 11:2-3, Co2 11:13-15).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":16,"content":["Ye shall know them by their fruits--not their doctrines--as many of the elder interpreters and some later ones explain it--for that corresponds to the tree itself; but the practical effect of their teaching, which is the proper fruit of the tree. \n\nDo men gather grapes of thorns--any kind of prickly plant. \n\nor figs of thistles?--a three-pronged variety. The general sense is obvious--Every tree bears its own fruit.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":17,"content":["Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit: but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":18,"content":["A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit--Obvious as is the truth here expressed in different forms--that the heart determines and is the only proper interpreter of the actions of our life--no one who knows how the Church of Rome makes a merit of actions, quite apart from the motives that prompt them, and how the same tendency manifests itself from time to time even among Protestant Christians, can think it too obvious to be insisted on by the teachers of divine truth. Here follows a wholesome digression.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":19,"content":["Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire--(See on Mat 3:10).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":20,"content":["Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them--that is, But the point I now press is not so much the end of such, as the means of detecting them; and this, as already said, is their fruits. The hypocrisy of teachers now leads to a solemn warning against religious hypocrisy in general.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":21,"content":["Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord--the reduplication of the title \"Lord\" denoting zeal in according it to Christ (see Mar 14:45). Yet our Lord claims and expects this of all His disciples, as when He washed their feet: \"Ye call me Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am\" (Joh 13:13). \n\nshall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven--that will which it had been the great object of this discourse to set forth. Yet our Lord says warily, not \"the will of your Father,\" but \"of My Father\"; thus claiming a relationship to His Father with which His disciples might not intermeddle, and which He never lets down. And He so speaks here to give authority to His asseverations. But now He rises higher still--not formally announcing Himself as the Judge, but intimating what men will say to Him, and He to them, when He sits as their final judge.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":22,"content":["Many will say to me in that day--What day? It is emphatically unnamed. But it is the day to which He had just referred, when men shall \"enter\" or not enter \"into the kingdom of heaven.\" (See a similar way of speaking of \"that day\" in Ti2 1:12; Ti2 4:8). \n\nLord, Lord--The reiteration denotes surprise. \"What, Lord? How is this? Are we to be disowned?\" \n\nhave we not prophesied--or, \"publicly taught.\" As one of the special gifts of the Spirit in the early Church, it has the sense of \"inspired and authoritative teaching,\" and is ranked next to the apostleship. (See Co1 12:28; Eph 4:11). In this sense it is used here, as appears from what follows. \n\nin thy name--or, \"to thy name,\" and so in the two following clauses--\"having reference to Thy name as the sole power in which we did it.\" \n\nand in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works--or, miracles. These are selected as three examples of the highest services rendered to the Christian cause, and through the power of Christ's own name, invoked for that purpose; He Himself, too, responding to the call. And the threefold repetition of the question, each time in the same form, expresses in the liveliest manner the astonishment of the speakers at the view now taken of them.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":23,"content":["And then will I profess unto them--or, openly proclaim--tearing off the mask. \n\nI never knew you--What they claimed intimacy with Christ, is just what He repudiates, and with a certain scornful dignity. \"Our acquaintance was not broken off--there never was any.\" \n\ndepart from me--(Compare Mat 25:41). The connection here gives these words an awful significance. They claimed intimacy with Christ, and in the corresponding passage, Luk 13:26, are represented as having gone out and in with Him on familiar terms. \"So much the worse for you,\" He replies: \"I bore with that long enough; but now--begone!\" \n\nye that work iniquity--not \"that wrought iniquity\"; for they are represented as fresh from the scenes and acts of it as they stand before the Judge. (See on the almost identical, but even more vivid and awful, description of the scene in Luk 13:24-27). That the apostle alludes to these very words in Ti2 2:19 there can hardly be any doubt--\"Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are His. And, Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity.\"\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":24,"content":["Therefore--to bring this discourse to a close. \n\nwhosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them--see Jam 1:22, which seems a plain allusion to these words; also Luk 11:28; Rom 2:13; Jo1 3:7. \n\nI will liken him unto a wise man--a shrewd, prudent, provident man. \n\nwhich built his house upon a rock--the rock of true discipleship, or genuine subjection to Christ.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":25,"content":["And the rain descended--from above. \n\nand the floods came--from below. \n\nand the winds blew--sweeping across. \n\nand beat upon that house--thus from every direction. \n\nand it fell not; for it was founded upon a rock--See Jo1 2:17.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":26,"content":["And every one that heareth these sayings of mine--in the attitude of discipleship. \n\nand doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand--denoting a loose foundation--that of an empty profession and mere external services.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":27,"content":["And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house--struck against that house; \n\nand it fell: and great was the fall of it--terrible the ruin! How lively must this imagery have been to an audience accustomed to the fierceness of an Eastern tempest, and the suddenness and completeness with which it sweeps everything unsteady before it!\n\nEffect of the Sermon on the Mount (Mat 7:28-29).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":28,"content":["And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine--rather, \"His teaching,\" for the reference is to the manner of it quite as much as the matter, or rather more so.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":29,"content":["For he taught them as one having authority--The word \"one,\" which our translators have here inserted, only weakens the statement. \n\nand not as the scribes--The consciousness of divine authority, as Lawgiver, Expounder and Judge, so beamed through His teaching, that the scribes teaching could not but appear drivelling in such a light.\n\n\n\n\nNext: Matthew Chapter 8\n\n"]}],"introduction":"MISCELLANEOUS SUPPLEMENTARY COUNSELS. (Mat 7:1-12)\n\nJudge not, that ye be not judged--To \"judge\" here does not exactly mean to pronounce condemnatory judgment, nor does it refer to simple judging at all, whether favorable or the reverse. The context makes it clear that the thing here condemned is that disposition to look unfavorably on the character and actions of others, which leads invariably to the pronouncing of rash, unjust, and unlovely judgments upon them. No doubt it is the judgments so pronounced which are here spoken of; but what our Lord aims at is the spirit out of which they spring. Provided we eschew this unlovely spirit, we are not only warranted to sit in judgment upon a brother's character and actions, but in the exercise of a necessary discrimination are often constrained to do so for our own guidance. It is the violation of the law of love involved in the exercise of a censorious disposition which alone is here condemned. And the argument against it--\"that ye be not judged\"--confirms this: \"that your own character and actions be not pronounced upon with the like severity\"; that is, at the great day.\n\n"},"thisChapterLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/MAT/7.json","thisChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"MAT","chapter":7},"nextChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/MAT/8.json","nextChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"MAT","chapter":8},"previousChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/MAT/6.json","previousChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"MAT","chapter":6},"numberOfVerses":28}