Matthew 20:23

Matthew 20:23

I. These words contain, first, the principle that some will be nearer Christ than others in the heavenly kingdom. The words of our Lord do not merely imply, by the absence of all hint, that these men's petition was impossible, the existence of degrees among the subjects of His heavenly kingdom, but articulately affirm that such variety is provided for by the preparation of the Father. Does not the very idea of an endless progress in that kingdom involve this variety in degree? We do not think of men passing into the heavens and being perfected by a bound, so that there shall be no growth. And if they each grow through all the ages, and are ever coming nearer and nearer to Christ, that seems necessarily to lead to the thought that this endless progress, carried on in every spirit, places them at different points of approximation to the one centre. "Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us," is the law for the incompleteness of earth: "Having then gifts differing according to the glory that is given to us," will be the law for the perfection of the heavens.

II. These words rightly understood assert the truth that Christ is the Giver of each of these various degrees of glory and blessedness. To deny or to doubt that Christ is the Giver of the blessedness, whatsoever the blessedness may be, that fills the hearts and souls of the redeemed, is to destroy His whole work, to destroy all the relations upon which our hopes rest, and to introduce confusion and contradiction into the whole matter. There is nothing within the compass of God's love to bestow of which Christ is not the Giver. He is the Giver of heaven and everything else which the soul requires.

III. The words lead us to the further thought, that these glorious places are not given to mere wishing, nor by mere arbitrary will. Christ could not, if He would, take a man to His right hand whose heart was not the home of simple trust and thankful love, whose nature and desires were unprepared for that blessed world.

IV. These glorious places are given as the result of a Divine preparation. "To them for whom it is prepared of My Father." There is a twofold Divine preparation of the heavens for men. (1) One is from of old, in the eternal counsel of the Divine love. (2) The other is the realization of that eternal purpose in time through the work of Jesus Christ our Lord.

A. Maclaren, Sermons preached in Manchester,3rd series, p. 351.

References: Matthew 20:24. F. W. Robertson, The Human Race and Other Sermons,p. 31; H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xvii., p. 20. Matthew 20:25. J. M. Wilson, Ibid.,vol. xxxi., p. 72.