Matthew 23:3

Matthew 23:3. All things therefore whatsoever they bid you, these do and observe. Their official position and authority are respected, because the law was still an element in their teaching. The office did not sanctify the officer. Men's official utterances are often vastly superior to their lives. The verse has a special application to the Jew's, still under the Mosaic law, but a wider one in the Christian dispensation. There is always a tendency to Pharisaism in public, especially hierarchical teachers. The extremes of slavish subjection and of revolution, in both church and state, are here forbidden.