Matthew 8:22

Follow me.

The highest of all duties, now discharged by becoming his disciple, obeying him and making his life our example. It, also, when he was on earth in person implied to follow his footsteps and attend upon his person. As the Twelve were his personal companions this disciple was probably one of the twelve.

Let the dead bury their dead.

Like all the other paradoxical sayings of our Lord, the key to it is the different senses--a higher and. lower--in which the same word "dead" is used; there are two kingdoms of God in existence upon earth: the kingdom of nature and the kingdom of grace; to the one kingdom all the children of this world, even the most ungodly, are fully alive; to the other only the children of light. The reigning irreligion consists not in indifference to common humanities of social life, but to things spiritual and eternal: fear not, therefore, that your father will in your absence be neglected, and that when he breathes his last there will be no relatives and friends ready enough to do to him the last offices of kindness. Those spiritually dead will attend to the last rites of those among them who have died naturally. Let the dead bury their dead.