THE KINGDOM-OF-GOD
SAYINGS IN MATTHEW
Mark Saucy
More than three decades ago Ridderbos made the
observation
that at the beginning of Jesus' ministry the kingdom
was
present (Matt. 4:17), but at the end of His ministry it was far
away,
almost "as if it had not yet come" (Matt. 28:19-20; Acts 1:6-
8).1
While many will see in this observation evidence for the
"already/not
yet" view in regard to the timing of the kingdom,
few
have considered Ridderbos's observation as a warrant
to say
much
else for the kingdom because of the narrative chronology he
has
assumed. Could the kingdom in the beginning of the Gospels
have
differed in nature from the kingdom at the end of the
Gospels?
This article proposes a yes answer to that question, as
seen
in the Gospel of Matthew.2 Kingdom sayings at the begin-
ning of Matthew's
Gospel should not be "leveled" with those of the
end
and vice versa. Such a procedure, when applied to the investi-
gation of the
Ridderbos's observation,
and also will yield helpful insights into
the
nature of the kingdom Jesus preached.
THE
JOHN
THE BAPTIST
Though Matthew is replete with
references to basilei<a
("kingdom"),
the phrase "
Mark
Saucy is Professor of Systematic Theology,
1
Herman
Ridderbos, The
Coming of the Kingdom (
and
Reformed, 1962), 469.
2 Important
resources for the kingdom theme specifically in the Gospel of
Matthew
are O. L. Cope, "`To the Close of the Age': The Role of Apocalyptic
Thought
in
the Gospel of Matthew," in Apocalyptic
in the New Testament, ed. J. Marcus and
M.
L. Soards (Sheffield: JSOT, 1989), 113-24; Jack Dean
Kingsbury, Matthew: Struc-
ture, Christology, Kingdom (Philadelphia:
Fortress, 1975); Georg Strecker, Der Weg
der Gerechtigkeit (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
1962), 166-72; Wolfgang
Trilling,
Das Wahre
176 BIBLIOTHECA SACRA / April-June 1994
compared
with "kingdom of heaven," which is more than eight
times
as frequent.3 As the synonymity of the two
forms in
Matthew
has been upheld by exegetes since Dalman,4 in this arti-
cle "
The
wilderness
proclamation of John the Baptist: metanoei?te h@ggiken
ga>r h[ basilei<a tw?n ou]ranw?n ("Repent,
for the kingdom of heaven
is
at hand," 3:2). Several observations about the kingdom are im-
portant here. First,
the activity associated with the kingdom is
"preaching"
or proclamation (khru<sswn, 3:1). The
kingdom is
proclaimed
from the herald's mouth. "He cries aloud so that all
who
wish to hear may do so, and his summons is ‘Repent.’"5
Though
more will be said about this later in conjunction with the
"evangelizing"
(eu]aggeli<zw),
"teaching" (dida<skw), and
"preach-
ing" (khru<ssw) activities of
Jesus relative to the kingdom, it is
important
to note that at the outset of Matthew the kingdom is the
subject
of a "herald's proclamation."
Second, in John's preaching, the
kingdom is related in a for-
mulaic way to the
message of Jesus and the disciples. In this first
portion
of Matthew, John's proclamation is repeated verbatim in
the
proclamation of Jesus (4:17) and the disciples (10:7). "John the
prototype,
Jesus the teacher, the twelve disciples—all preach the
same
message."6
3
Matthew
used kingdom vocabulary more than any other Gospel (53 times; Mark,
18
times; Luke, 45 times; John, 4 times). Matthew used "
with
the probable addition of a fifth occurrence in 6:33—note the comment by Bruce
M.
Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the
Greek New Testament (
lia-Druck, 1975),
18-19—and "kingdom of heaven" 33 times.
4 Gustaf H. Dalman, The Words of Jesus, trans. D. M. Kay (
1909)
has been a 20th-century benchmark for the
particularly
on the question of the kingdom as a dynamic rule versus a territorial
realm.
On the question of the synonymity of "
heaven"
in Matthew, see ibid., 93. Trilling summarizes, "That the expression
basilei<a tw?n ou]ranw?n has been introduced for basilei<a tou? qeou? by Matthew into
the
synoptic tradition belongs to the most assured results of Matthean
exegesis"
(Das Wahre
Kingdom, 134; Strecker, Der Weg der
Gerechtigkeit, 17; Theological Dictionary of
the New
Testament,
s.v. "basilei<a," by Karl
Ludwig Schmidt, 1:582; Herman L.
Strack and Paul Billerbeck, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud and
Midrasch (Munich: Becksche, 1969), 1:172. Some raise the possibility of a
differ-
ence in the two
since both forms are found in the Gospel. See for example Armin
Kretzer, Die Herrschaft der Himmel and die Sohne des Reiches (
Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1971), 21-31, who denies a strict substitution
and sees
Matthew's
"kingdom of heaven" emphasizing the dynamic of the divine kingdom's
in-breaking
rule toward earth.
5 Theological Dictionary of the New Testament,
s.v. "khru<ssw,"
by Gerhard Friedrich, 3:706.
6
Robert
H. Gundry, Matthew: A Commentary on His
Literary and Theological
Art (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982), 43.
The Kingdom-of-God Sayings in
Matthew 177
Third, the message of John, Jesus, and
the disciples associ-
ated the kingdom
with a demand. Given the coming lordship of
God
in judgment, there is only one task for humanity: repent.
The
heralds' call for repentance demands nothing less than gen-
uine conversion. The
hearers must return to the prophetic piety of
the
Old Testament and surpass that of their Jewish contempo-
raries.7
proclamation
of the kingdom indicates that repentance condi-
tioned the whole
kingdom proclamation.
The whole proclamation of Jesus, with
its categorical demands for
the sake of God's kingdom, is a
proclamation of meta<noia even
when the term is not used. It is a
proclamation of unconditional
turning to God, or unconditional
turning from all that is against
God, not merely that which is
downright evil, but that which in a
given case makes total turning to God
impossible.8
Fourth, the kingdom Jesus announced is
in vital nexus with
the
one John announced. For Matthew the ministry and message
of
both John and Jesus came in fulfillment of the Old Testament
prophetic
promise.9 John was referred to by Isaiah as "the voice of
one
crying in the wilderness" (Matt. 3:3; Isa. 40:3). John is the
one
who carried on the line of the Old Testament prophets as their
fulfillment
(Matt. 11:13), and he is the one whom Jesus specifi-
cally identified as
Elijah "who was to come" according to the pre-
diction
of the prophet Malachi (Matt. 11:14; 17:12; Mal. 3:1; 4:5).
John's
position as herald and fulfillment of the prophetic voice
7 Behm notes that the traditional Jewish forms of expressing
repentance
(feelings
of remorse, gestures of sorrow, works of penance, or self-mortification)
have
no value in John's announcement. "God's definitive revelation demands
final
and
unconditional decision on man's part. It demands radical conversion, a
transformation of
nature,
a definitive turning from evil, a resolute turning to God in total
obedience" (Theological
Dictionary of
the New Testament,
s.v., "metanoe<w," by J. Behm, 4:1002).
8 Ibid.
9 Matthew's
stress on the fulfillment theme for Jesus is well known from his
formulaic
usage of plhro<w
in 1:22; 2:15, 17, 23; 4:14; 8:17; 12:17; 13:35; 21:4; and 27:9.
John's
nexus with Jesus also placed him in the time of fulfillment. In 3:15 Jesus
and
John participated in the fulfillment of the Old Testament righteousness at Je-
sus' baptism. In 21:23-27 Jesus and
John had the same divine authority. Filson
notes
that Jesus' answer to the challenge of the chief priests and elders about His
authority
comes from the fact that "Jesus knows that his work and John's are con-
nected, and that the
Jewish leaders, in failing to see that God had sent John, had
forfeited
their right to judge John's successor" (Floyd V. Filson,
A Commentary on
the Gospel
according to St. Matthew, 2d ed. [
("the
time is fulfilled [peplh<rwtai], and the
the
fulfillment theme as part of the proclamation itself, setting a precedent for
New
Testament literature in joining a kingdom-of-God saying with such a time el-
ement (Werner H. Kelber, The Kingdom
of God in Mark [
1974],
10-11).
178 BIBLIOTHECA SACRA / April-June 1994
means
he himself proclaimed the nearness10 of the Old Testa-
ment messianic hope.
Gowan has
well summarized the Old Testament prophetic
hope
for
new
heart and a new spirit.... God must transform human so-
ciety; restore
make
must
transform nature itself."11 Because historically the king-
ship
of God in the Old Testament had been closely connected with
and
reign of God in physical and national terms for
world
events had caused her national life to decline. The coming
manifestation
of God's kingship was "the center of the whole Old
Testament
promise of salvation" (Isa. 24–27; 40–55, esp. 40:9-11;
10 Kummel's
discussion of the linguistic differences between h@ggiken (3:2) and
e@fqasen (12:28) is largely
thought to have laid to rest the contention of realized es-
chatology that equated
the two words and would have meant that John, Jesus, and
the
disciples here announced that the kingdom had come in its fullness (W. G.
Kummel,
Promise and Fulfillment, trans.
Dorothea M. Barton [
lenson, 1957], 105-9).
On the strength of Kammel's observations most
interpreters
see
a difference between the kingdom's near approach (h@ggiken) and its arrival
(e@fqasen). See Ladd's
discussion and bibliography in The
Presence of the Future
(Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974), 138-45; G. W.
Beasley-Murray, Jesus and the
Kingdom of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 75-80; Filson, A Commentary on
the Gospel
according to St. Matthew, 73; and Gundry, Matthew:
A Commentary on
His Literary and
Theological Art,
43-44. See, however, an attempt at equating the
two
words in Richard H. Hiers, The Historical Jesus and the
(Gainsville, FL: University of Florida Press, 1973), 61-63.
11 Donald E. Gowan, Eschatology in
the Old Testament (
1986),
2. Sigmund Mowinckel concurs, noting the prophetic
hope was "always a
hope
of restoration," and that the chief features in the hope are "in the
main con-
stant" (He That Cometh, trans. G. W. Anderson [
137).
Mowinckel himself summarized the hope this way: (1)
Yahweh will achieve
the
ultimate goal of the glory of His name in
then
be established in its ancient glory. (3) The exiles will return and
united
with
God.
(5) Pilgrims will stream to
and
produce from all the earth will be amassed at
tility, and well-being
will prevail in the land. (8) Disease and misfortune will be
banished.
(9) Everyone will enjoy the fruit of his labor, peace, and safety. (10) All of-
fenders
and sinners will be rooted out of Yahweh's people (ibid., 137). Also see
Ladd, The Presence of the Future, 45-75. Cf.
the discussion of the expression of this
messianic
hope during first-century Judaism in Emil Scharer, The History of the
Jewish People in
the Age of Jesus Christ (175 B.C.-A.D. 135), rev. and ed. Geza Ver-
mes, Fergus Millar, and Matthew
Black, 3 vols. (Edinburgh: Clark, 1979), 2:488-554).
12 Von Rad makes the lexical observations that tUkl;ma originally was used only in
reference
to a "concrete sphere of power" and that Yahweh is never called
"king"
before
the monarchy (Theological Dictionary of
the New Testament, s.v. "basileu<j,"
by
Gerhard von Rad, 1:570). Patrick also notes that
"the Kingdom language of the OT
is
historical and contains an irreducibly national strain" (Dale Patrick,
"The King-
dom of God in the Old
Testament," The
The Kingdom-of-God Sayings in
Matthew 179
52:7;
Obad. 21; Mic. 4:3; Zeph. 3:15; Zech. 14:16-17).13
Since the kingdom of the prophetic
hope was to take a political
and
national form for
ment of that same
hope has bearing on the kingdom he preached.
This
is especially noteworthy when one considers that neither
John,
Jesus, nor the disciples defined the kingdom at the outset of
their
ministry. They simply proclaimed it.
Jesus uses "
knew about the coming intervention of
God to redeem his people
and pacify the world. . . . The
expression itself gives a particular
coloring to the denouement of history,
namely, a political and le-
gal coloring. The whole of the
Scripture and tradition prepare for and are
completed in a political state in
which God alone exercises sovereignty.14
JESUS
As John before him, Jesus also
proclaimed, metanoei?te h@ggiken
ga>r h[ basilei<a tw?n ou]ranw?n ("Repent,
for the kingdom of heaven is
at
hand," 4:17). Jesus' message and ministry, like that of John,
were
in fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. However,
Matthew
gave additional indications of the necessary connection
between
the message of Jesus and that of the Old Testament.
First, alongside the preaching (khru<sswn) of Jesus, the
"gospel"
(eu]agge<lion) is associated with the kingdom (4:23).
In
fact
twice in the first nine chapters of Matthew Jesus' ministry is
summarized
as teaching in the synagogues, preaching the
"gospel
of the kingdom," and healing every disease and infir-
mity (4:23; 9:35).
The "gospel of the kingdom," which is idiomatic
to
Matthew, inherently ties Jesus' good news about the kingdom15
to
the promised hope of the Old Testament.
Most significant for the NT concept of
eu]agge<lion is Deutero-Isa-
iah and the
literature influenced by it (Is 52:7; 61:1; 40:9; 41:27;
Nah 2:1). . . . The close connection
between this whole circle of
thought and the NT is evident. The
eschatological expectation,
the proclamation of the basilei<a tou? qeou?, the
introduction of the
Gentiles into salvation history, the
rejection of the ordinary religion of cult
and Law (Ps 40), the link with the
terms dikaiosu<nh (Ps 40:9), swthri<a
(Is 52:7; Ps 95:1), and ei]rh<nh (Is 52:7)—all
point us to the NT.16
terpretation, ed. Wendell
Willis [
13 Ridderbos, The Coming
of the Kingdom, 5.
14 Patrick,
"The
Coming of the
Kingdom,
3.
15 The form is an
objective genitive. See Jack Dean Kingsbury, The Parables of Je-
sus in Matthew Thirteen (London: SPCK,
1969), 19; cf. idem, Matthew: Structure,
Christology,
Kingdom,
128-29.
16 Theological Dictionary of the New Testament,
s.v. "eu]agge<lion," by
Gerhard
Friedrich,
2:708-9.
180
BIBLIOTHECA SACRA / April—June 1994
Second, Jesus' healing ministry was in
fulfillment of the Old
Testament
messianic hope.17 Jesus Himself noted the signifi-
cance of His miracles
in light of His mission. In Matthew 11:5
Jesus'
response to John's disciples summarizes His ministry ac-
tivity up to that
time. Quoting from Isaiah 35:5-6 and 61:1, Jesus
told
the disciples to report to John that "the blind receive sight and
the
lame walk, the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the
dead
are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to
them."18
Matthew 8 and 9 chronicle the details of Jesus' healing a
leper
(8:3), a centurion's paralyzed servant (8:13), Peter's ill
mother
(8:15), the two demoniacs of the Gadarenes (8:32), a para-
lytic (9:7), a woman
with a hemorrhage (9:22), a synagogue offi-
cial's daughter who
had died (9:25), two blind men (9:30), and a
demonized
dumb man (9:33). Therefore, as Matthew wrote, the
words
of Isaiah 53:4 were fulfilled: "He Himself took our infir-
mities, and carried
away our diseases" (Matt. 8:17). The physical
nature
of the miracles points to the physical dimension of the
kingdom.
The kingdom Jesus announced was not a spiritual ful-
fillment of the promises
to the lame, sick, and demonized; there-
fore
one cannot assume that the promises to the nation of
were
given a spiritual fulfillment.19
17
Some
have used rabbinic sources to dispute that the Messiah was expected to
work
miracles in the first century. "The Messiah is never mentioned anywhere in
the
Tannaitic literature as a wonder-worker per se"
(Joseph Klausner, The
Mes-
sianic Idea in Israel, trans. W. F. Stinespring
[
However,
Matthew (and other Gospel writers; see Luke 7:22; John 7:31) believed the
Messiah
would prove His identity by means of miracles (cf. Schurer,
The History
of the Jewish
People in the Age of Jesus Christ [175 B.C.-A.D. 135], 2:525). In re-
sponse to Klausner and the many scholars who lean on him (e.g., G. Delling, "Das
Verstandnis des Wunders im Neuen
Testament," Zeitschrift fur systematische
Theologie 24 [1955]: 274, n. 18, and Rudolf Pesch, Jesu Ureigne Taten? [
Herder,
1970], 151), it should be noted that the rabbinic sources are notably anti-
Christian
(cf. the portrayal of Jesus as a sorcerer) and considerably later than the
first
century. The pseudepigrapha are somewhat ambivalent
about a miracle-work-
ing Messiah. On one hand there are
no explicit statements for or against the Mes-
siah working
miracles. On the other hand the portrait of the messianic age as a
time
of miracles, the affirmation of the Messiah as a type of Moses and Bearer of
the
miracle-working Holy Spirit all make a miracle-working Messiah compatible
with
the pre-Christian messianic hope. See Theological
Dictionary of the New Tes-
tament, s.v. "Mwus^?," by Joachim
Jeremias, 4:863; A. Kolenkow,
"Relationship be-
tween Miracle and
Prophecy in the Greco-Roman World and Early Christianity,"
in
Aufstieg and Niedergang der Romischen Welt (Berlin:
de Gruyter, 1980),
23:2:1471;
P. W. Barnett, "The Jewish Sign Prophets 40-70 A.D.," New Testament
Studies 27 (1981):
682-83; Dictionary of Jesus and the
Gospels (1992), s.v.
"Miracles,"
by B. Blackburn, 558; and James H. Charlesworth,
"Messiah in the
Pseudepigrapha," in Aufstieg and Niedergang der Romischen Welt, 19:1:188-218.
18 O. Betz and
Werner Grimm note how the Gospel miracle accounts typified in Matthew 11:5 are
clearly
related to the new age promises of Isaiah 26:19; 29:18; 35:4-6; 42:18; and
61:1-2 (Wesen
and Wirklichkeit der Wunder Jesu [
19
It
would be a mistake to conclude that since Jesus did not fulfill all the na-
The
Kingdom-of-God Sayings in Matthew 181
Third, Matthew also shows that Jesus
is the eschatological
fulfillment
of the prophetic hope by pointing up the ethnic aspect of
His
ministry. Jesus' heralding the good news of the kingdom to
the
Jewish people places Him squarely within the Old Testament
prophetic
hope for a restored nation of Israe1.20 Jesus' taught in
their
synagogues (Matt. 4:23; 9:35), thus revealing the Jewishness
of
His itinerary. Also at the outset of His ministry, Jesus selected
12
disciples—a number suited for the ultimate task of judging the
12
tribes of
missioned the disciples
to proclaim the kingdom (which message
was
identical to His and John's, 10:5-7), He instructed them to go
not
to Gentiles or Samaritans, but only to "the lost sheep of the
house
of
SUMMARY
For Matthew, then, the antecedent of
Jesus' original message
and
ministry is clear. In every way Jesus' "gospel about the
kingdom"
was the gospel of the Old Testament prophets. In word
and
miracle, proclamation and raising the dead, the longed-for
tional promises of the
Old Testament, those promises are to be spiritually realized
only.
First, as Horsley and others show, Jesus' ministry was very politically
charged
in His opposition to the temple cult of the day (Richard A. Horsley, Jesus
and the Spiral
of Violence [
Berger,
"Jesus als Pharisaer
and Fruhe Christen als Pharisaer," Novum Testamen-
tum 30 [1988]:
231-62; Ben F. Myers, The Aims of Jesus
[
E.
P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism [
and
the Kingdom: The Restoration of
the Gospels, and
the Church,
ed. E. P. Sanders [
the
complete establishment of the kingdom was conditioned on the spiritual
requirement
of repentance. Too much physical, political action would have
subverted
the demand for spiritual humility.
20 Though the
universality of the kingdom seen in apocalyptic literature (i.e.,
Daniel
and noncanonical apocalyptic literature which is
doubtless influential in
Matthew,
e.g., the two-age doctrine in 12:32) is often thought to argue against the
Jewishness of the kingdom,
it should be noted that universality does not necessi-
tate nonethnicity. In the prophetic literature of the Old
Testament, the kingdom
(with
will
cast influence over the lands and peoples of the earth as they learn the ways
of
or
in the Pharisaic Psalms of Solomon from the first century BCE is universal in
scope,
yet no less Jewish for all its universality. It is the Kingdom of God, and at
the
same time the
"The
Kingdom of God and the Historical Jesus," in The
eth Century
Interpretation,
114). Psalms of Solomon 17:3-4 reads, "But we will hope
in
God our saviour; For the might of our God is for ever
with mercy, and the King-
dom of our God is for ever over the
nations in judgment. Thou, Lord, didst choose
David
as king over
Testament, ed. H. F. D.
Sparks, trans. S. P. Brock [
182
BIBLIOTHECA SACRA / April-June 1994
promise
for
dom the implications are apparent.
Matthew's vital connection
between
the ministries of John and Jesus, coupled with their lit-
eral fulfillment of
the Old Testament at all other points physical
and
spiritual, warrants a similar conclusion for the kingdom:
the
kingdom message of John, Jesus, and the disciples in
Matthew
1-10 was the same kingship of Yahweh called for in the
Old
Testament. This included not only the dynamic rule of Yah-
weh's sovereignty,
but also the sphere or realm of a restored na-
tion of
THE
REJECTION OF THE KINGDOM IN MATTHEW 11-12
The next movement in Matthew's Gospel
demonstrates the
response
of Jesus' audience to His proclamation of the kingdom of
God.
After the formulaic, "And it came about when Jesus had fin-
ished" (in
11:1), which divides the book into its larger divisions
(cf.
also 13:53),22 Matthew 11 and 12 continue the narrative with a
series
of Streitgesprciche
between Jesus and His opponents. These
two
chapters lay a foundation for the discourse of parables in
chapter
13, in which the
a
"mystery."
Matthew 11 and 12 show that the King
and His kingdom were
rejected
by most of those to whom Jesus ministered. This is not to
say
opposition had not been experienced earlier,23 but in these
21 Many New
Testament scholars view the
Yahweh
(see the bibliography in Ladd, The
Presence of the Future, 127, n. 11). It
would
be incorrect, however, to say that basilei<a language is
completely devoid of
the
physical element of a sphere or realm in which the rule is exercised. While the
emphasis
of the term may be on the reign, one can hardly imagine a reign that has
no
realm. As Ridderbos wrote, "In the nature of the
case a dominion to be effective
must
create or maintain a territory where it can operate. So the absence of any idea
of
a spatial Kingdom would be very strange" (The Coming of the Kingdom, 26).
Michaels
considers that the first meaning of kingdom is abstract, but he adds that
this
of necessity requires the concrete ("The Kingdom of God in the Historical
Je-
sus," 114). Ridderbos
also thinks it is difficult to deny the "territorial" connota-
tions for a kingdom
that is possible to "enter " (Matt. 5:20), to be "in"
(11:11), and to
"shut
off” (23:13) (The Coming of the Kingdom,
343-44).
22
Whether
one commits Matthew to the traditional five-division scheme for the
Gospel
(e.g., Benjamin W. Bacon, "The Matthean
Discourse in Parables," Journal of
Biblical
Literature
46 [1927]: 237-38; and Edward F. Siegman,
"Teaching in Parables
[Mk
4, 10-12; Lk 8, 9-10; Mt 13, 10-15]," Catholic Biblical Quarterly 23 [1961]:
161-81)
or
some other configuration (Kingsbury, e.g., sees only three divisions [Matthew:
Structure,
Christology and Kingdom, 25), all agree that chapters 11–13 mark off one
narrative
unit.
23 Opposition to
Jesus began early in Matthew's chronology. Chapter 2 records
Herod's
attempt to murder the baby Jesus. Chapter 3 records the ministry of John,
who,
Jesus later said was rejected by the religious officials (21:23-26). In Matthew
The Kingdom-of-God Sayings in
Matthew 183
chapters
there is a particular climax of rejection of Jesus, which
evoked
a corresponding climax in His public rebuke. Chapter 11
opens
with Jesus still teaching (dida<skein) and preaching
(khru<ssein) in their
cities. In this context the disciples of John,
who
was imprisoned, asked Jesus if He was the "Expected One"
(11:3),
and Jesus answered from the prophets (vv. 4-5). With this
introduction
Jesus then set the tone for what was to follow. "And
blessed
is he who keeps from stumbling over Me" (v. 6). Then Je-
sus reproached His
"generation" (i.e., the crowds in His pres-
ence; cf. v. 7) for
its rejection of John the Baptist and the Son of
Man
(vv. 16-19), and the cities that had witnessed His miracles,
because
they did not repent in response to His proclamation (vv.
21-24).
In chapter 12 the rejection of Jesus
reached a high point as the
religious
leaders and His own family opposed Him. Jesus con-
tended
with the Pharisees about the Sabbath, a confrontation in
which
He rebuked them for not understanding the Law (12:1-8).
Their
opposition to Him intensified in the following scene when,
after
Jesus healed a man's withered hand on the Sabbath, they
"counseled
together against Him, as to how they might destroy
Him"
(v. 14). The zenith for both the leaders and Jesus was
reached
with the charge from the Pharisees that Jesus cast out
demons
because He was in league with Beelzebul, the ruler of
the
demons
(v. 24). Jesus responded with the most serious invective
thus
far in Matthew's report. (1) He told them they were guilty of
an
unpardonable sin (vv. 31-32). (2) He affirmed their evil and
adulterous
nature because of their sinful deeds (vv. 33-37; cf. v.
39).
(3) For the first time since John the Baptist, Jesus spoke of
them
contemptuously as a "brood of vipers" (v. 34).24
Matthew 12:46-50 continues and
concludes the same theme
("While
He was still speaking to the multitudes"), with even Je-
sus' own family rejecting Him.
Though the Marcan parallel to
this
incident (3:20-21, 31-35) gives the reason for the family's ap-
pearance ("they
were saying, ‘He has lost his senses,’ 3:21), sim-
ilar conclusions are
forthcoming from Matthew's record. (1) The
context
of the incident plus Jesus' answer implies that His family
8–11
there are also hints of resistance to Him. In 8:10-12 Jesus chided the meager
faith
of
of
the Gadarenes begged Jesus to leave. Matthew 9:3
records the first charge of
blasphemy
by the scribes. In 9:15 Jesus gave a veiled comment about His death and
in
9:34 the Pharisees first charged Jesus with casting out demons because He Him-
self
was demonized.
24 As Filson explains, vipers are "low, poisonous creatures
who flee in haste be-
fore
the onrushing fire that sweeps across the wilderness" (The Gospel according
to St. Matthew, 65).
184
BIBLIOTHECA SACRA / April–June 1994
was
not in sympathy with Him. (2) They were not His active fol-
lowers,
for they seemingly made a special trip to see Him. (3) Je-
sus' answer about the identity of
His true family (Matt. 12:50)
shows
His ties to the disciples were stronger than to His immedi-
ate
relatives.25
The rejection of Jesus by these three
groups (the crowds, the
leaders,
and His family) is related to the subject of the kingdom
through
His discussion about the Holy Spirit. In the episode of the
demon
exorcism, Jesus related the kingdom to Himself because
of
His unique status as the Spirit-bearer. "If I cast out demons by
the
Spirit of God, then the
upon
you" (12:28). Where the Spirit of God is, there is the kingdom
of
God. Jesus, as the One on whom the Spirit descended (3:16-17),
manifested
the kingdom when He manifested the Spirit's
power.26
Jesus, then, in Matthew was not simply the Herald of the
kingdom;
He was also the Bearer of the kingdom, and His min-
istry would thereby
chart the course of the kingdom.
The kingdom's presence through the
Spirit in Jesus also helps
explain
the meaning of its nearness (h@ggiken). Up to this
point in
Matthew
the proclamation by Jesus (4:17) and His disciples (10:7)
had
been that the
Yet
contemporaneous with this proclamation were Jesus' mani-
festations of
Spirit-power, which individually and locally dis-
played
the kingdom's presence (e@fqasen). So while
there seems to
be
reason to separate the two notions linguistically, as do most
scholars
(see note 10), on another level the two terms must be al-
lowed
the same conceptual domain. That is, the kingdom's pres-
ence through the
Holy Spirit's power constituted its nearness to
His
audience.27 However, the presence of the kingdom in Jesus
established
only the kingdom's nearness, not its complete ful-
fillment. The
25 See ibid., 154;
and Gundry, Matthew: A Commentary on His
Literary and Theo-
logical Art, 248.
26 As James Dunn
has noted, "the Kingdom is present in Jesus only because He
has
the Spirit. It is not so much the case of Where Jesus is there is the Kingdom,
as
Where
the Spirit is there is the Kingdom" ("Spirit and Kingdom," Expository
Times 82 [October
1970–September 1971]: 38 [italics his]).
27 The two terms
seem to demand an overlap in meaning, though many commenta-
tors appear to leave
them in tension or to subsume one under the other. Strecker's
comment
on Matthew 12:28 reflects the opinion of the majority of commentators and
leans
most heavily toward the kingdom's presence at the expense of its nearness:
"’The
reign of God has come to you.’ Thus not only the ‘inbreaking’
of the reign of
God
is announced as in the case of ‘nearness,’ also not only are the signs of the
Kingdom
present, rather the powerful acts of Jesus are to be understood as signs of
the
presence of the reign of God; but that means the kingdom is not only signified,
but
actually present" (Der Weg der Gerechtigkeit, 169).
The Kingdom-of-God Sayings in
Matthew 185
the
Spirit manifestations of Jesus. Miracles were still "signs" of
the
kingdom.28
The Spirit's relationship to Jesus
confirms that in Matthew
Jesus
and the kingdom He announced are meant as a literal ful-
fillment of the Old
Testament prophesied hope. The Spirit's func-
tion in the
messianic age was well known from the Old Testa-
ment in Jesus' day,
as is apparent from Matthew's own applica-
tion of Isaiah to
Jesus: "Behold My Servant whom I have chosen;
My
beloved in whom My soul is well pleased; I will put My Spirit
upon
Him" (12:18).29 Also, much earlier in the Gospel, John the
Baptist
alerted his audience to Jesus' eschatological significance:
"He
will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire" (3:11).30
It is important to note that Jesus
condemned His generation
and
its leaders because of their lack of repentance (11:20-21). The
people
failed to turn to God. This was serious, given the demand
of
the kingdom accompanied by evidence of the kingdom's power
in
Jesus' miracles.31 He did not condemn the crowds because of
political
or national notions about the kingdom. Instead, His
condemnation
was because they had failed to meet the spiritual
demand
of the kingdom by repenting. The contention of many
scholars
that Jesus condemned the particularly Jewish-political
messianic
kingdom from the beginning of His ministry seems to
outrun
Matthew at this point of the narrative. Instead, Jesus con-
demned the lack of a
change of heart which is to accompany the
kingdom.32
28
Ridderbos has correctly
noted the kingdom's presence in Jesus' miracles as
only
signatory and provisional. They are not the kingdom; they are signs of the
kingdom.
For example despite kingdom presence in exorcism, Satan was allowed
further
activity and demons were allowed to escape because it was "before the
time"
(Matt.
8:29). Those healed by Jesus would yet experience death (Ridderbos,
The
Coming of the
Kingdom,
113, 115-21).
29 That the
Messiah will possess the Spirit of God is an Old Testament idea,
which
Sjoberg says lived on in Judaism according to the
apocryphal, pseude-
pigraphal, and rabbinic
literature (Theological Dictionary of the
New Testament,
s.v. "pneu?ma," by Eric Sjoberg, 6:384). On the Spirit in the last times see D.
Wilhelm
Michaelis, Reich Gottes and Geist Gottes nach
dem Neuen Testament (
Reinhardt,
n. d.), 3-6; Walther Eichrodt, Theology of the Old Testament, trans. J. A.
Baker
(Philadelphia: Westminster, 1967), 57-60; and New International Dictionary
of New Testament
Theology,
s.v. "Spirit," by Eberhard
Kamlah, 3:692.
30 From the
perspective of the Old Testament, the new relationship between man
and
God through the Spirit is the "central miracle of the new age" (Eichrodt, The
Theology of the
Old Testament,
57).
31 Behm is correct in observing that the presence of the
kingdom in Jesus (as
demonstrated
by His miracles) increased the urgency and imperative of Jesus'
proclamation
as compared to John (Theological
Dictionary of the New Testament,
s.v. "metanoe<w,"
4:1001).
32 That the people
did not meet the spiritual requirement for the kingdom does
not
mean they did not have political or nationalistic hopes for the messianic age.
186
BIBLIOTHECA SACRA / April-June
1994
The climax of popular and official
rejection of Jesus in
Matthew
11 and 12 yields several observations about the kingdom
of
God. First, the kingdom was again confirmed to be that of the
Old
Testament prophetic hope through the presence of the Holy
Spirit's
power in Jesus' working of miracles. The miracles inti-
mated
that the kingdom was physical as well as spiritual. Sec-
ond, the presence of the kingdom in
the Holy Spirit's power is not
the
presence of the kingdom itself; it is more properly the presence
of
the kingdom's power. In this way the localized and incomplete
nature
of the power Jesus exhibited was a sign that pointed to the
eschatological
kingdom's nearness. Third, the kingdom's ad-
vent
was conditioned on repentance. The humility demanded
was
to precede the complete establishment of the kingdom that
would
have ushered in the Old Testament hope in its entirety. Be-
cause
the people and their leaders refused this demand, a critical
point
had been reached in Jesus' proclamation of the kingdom.
THE KINGDOM-OF-GOD SAYINGS
AND REJECTION IN MATTHEW 13
On the very day in which the kingdom's
rejection reached its
zenith
(13:1), Jesus introduced for the first time in Matthew the
"parables"
of the kingdom, which He later also designated as re-
vealing the
"mysteries" of the kingdom (v. 11). This strange
fact—that
the kingdom, which was the public proclamation of the
herald,
is now a "secret," in addition to the proximity of these
parables
to the rejection of Christ—hints at a change in the king-
dom concept.
THE
PURPOSE OF THE PARABLES
With the advent of modern critical
parable study in Adolf
Julicher's Die Gleichnisreden
Jesu at the end of the 19th cen-
tury,33
one of the assured conclusions of scholars about the mean-
Oscar
Cullmann's discussion of the title "Christ"
in the Gospels is an example of
reading
into Matthew the false dichotomy between spiritual messianism
and polit-
ical messianism and reading the narrative without regard for its
own order. He
contends
that Jesus' refusal of the term "Christ" meant also His sweeping
denial of
all
the political expressions associated with it throughout His ministry (The
Christology of
the New Testament,
rev. ed., trans. Shirley C. Guthrie and Charles
A.
M. Hall [
that
Jesus' "messianic secret" in Matthew falls after chapter 13.
Therefore it is
wrong
to say Jesus condemned all the crowd's kingdom hopes.
33 For a survey of
the history of parable study see Robert H. Stein, An Introduc-
tion to the Parables of Jesus (Philadelphia:
Westminster, 1981), 53-71; Bastiaan
Van
Elderen, "The Purpose of Parables according to
Matthew 13:10-17," in New Di-
mensions in New Testament Study, ed. Richard N.
Longenecker and Merrill C.
Tenney (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1974), 180-81; and Ridderbos,
The Coming of the
Kingdom, 121-22.
The Kingdom-of-God Sayings in
Matthew 187
ing of parabolh< in the New
Testament is its derivation from the
Hebrew
lwAmA.34
Ironically in the Old Testament lwAmA has a broad
range
of applications. It can refer to a proverb (1 Sam. 10:12), a
satire
or taunt (Isa. 14:3-4), a riddle (Ps. 78:2), or an allegory
(Ezek.
24:2-5).35 In the New Testament parabolh< seems to have
inherited
an equally broad application. As Stein has categorized
the
forms, a parable may be a proverb, a metaphorical saying, a
similitude,
a story parable, an example parable, or an allegory.36
Again
a concise definition is not forthcoming. Similarly
Jeremias termed a
"fruitless labor" the work of the form critics
who
sought earlier in this century to classify the parables with
terms
such as "metaphor," "simile," "allegory,"
"similitude," or
"illustration."37
Not until Matthew 13 did this Gospel
writer refer to Jesus'
teaching
or preaching as parabolh<.
When the multitudes
ered to Him on the
shore soon after He had inveighed against
their
rejection, He spoke "many things to them in parables" (e]n
parabolai?j, 13:3). And yet
in the Gospel of Matthew there is an
abundance
of parablelike material before chapter 13.38
Some of
this
material is even labeled parabolai?j in parallel
accounts.39
Jesus told the disciples,
"Therefore I speak to them in para-
bles; because [o!ti40] while seeing they do not see, and
while hear-
ing they do not hear, nor do they
understand" (13:13). This was
Jesus'
response to the spiritual dullness of the people who had just
demonstrated
their rejection of His message.41 They had proved
34 The Septuagint
in all but two cases translates lwAmA with parabolh<.
35 Stein, An Introduction to the Parables of Jesus,15-21;
cf. Theological Dictio-
nary of the New
Testament,
s.v. "parabolh<)," by
Friedrich Hauck, 5:749.
36 Stein, An Introduction to the Parables of Jesus,18-21.
37 Joachim Jeremias, The
Parables of Jesus, rev. ed., trans S. H. Hooke (New
identifying
with any certainty the parables in the Gospels if a broad definition
from
lwAmA is used (An Introduction to the Parables of Jews,
22).
38 With a broad
understanding of parabolh<
Kingsbury
identifies the following ma-
terial as
"parabolic," though Matthew does not label it as such: 5:25-26; 6:19;
7:24-27;
9:16-17;
11:16-19 ff.; 12:34 ff.; 18:12 if., 23-35; 20:1-16; 21:28-32; 24:43-44, 45-51;
25:1-13,
14-30
(The Parables of Jesus in Matthew Thirteen, 30).
39 Jesus'
statement about the divided house (Matt. 12:25-26) is called a parabolh<
in
Mark
3:23.
40 Matthew's use
of ore need not be seen as different from Mark and Luke's i!na
(Mark
4:12; Luke 8:10), because within the New Testament and in extrabiblical
Greek
literature i!na may be causal
(F. Blass and A. Debrunner, A Greek Grammar
of the New
Testament
(
41 The idea that
Jesus used parables to conceal and confuse is not popular with
many
commentators who contend from rabbinic literature that parables are for en-
188
BIBLIOTHECA SACRA / April—June 1994
themselves
hardened and thus not suited to know the subjects
about
which He spoke in the parables. So Jesus obliged them ac-
cording
to their state and used the parables as tools to that end. Je-
sus' citation in verse 15 of Isaiah
6:10 from the Septuagint42 con-
firms
this. Their eyes and ears did not admit the truth because
they
had closed their eyes. Matthew 13:12, "whoever does not have,
even
what he has shall be taken away from him," is also best ex-
plained by seeing the
parables this way. As Via has noted, the
structure
of 13:10-13 suggests a causal and concealing under-
standing
of parables, by the pattern dia> ti< (v. 10), o!ti (v. 11), dia>
tou?to (v. 13), and o!ti (v.
13), implying that the o!ti in both cases
is
causal.43
While the parables functioned to
confound the crowds, they
revealed
truth to the disciples. "To you it has seen granted to know
the
mysteries of the kingdom of heaven" (13:11). This revelatory
purpose
is borne out in Jesus' change of attention from the crowds
to
the disciples in verses 15-16. "They [the people] have closed their
eyes
lest they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears,
and
understand with their heart and return. . . . But blessed are
your
eyes, because they see; and your ears, because they hear."
The
disciples' privileged status allowed them access to informa-
tion the prophets
and righteous men of old longed to see and hear
(a]kou?sai, v. 17). So
Jesus began to explain the parables with the
words,
"Hear [a]kou<sate] then the
parable of the sower" (v. 18).
lightenment and that Jesus
here used them out of pity for the dullness of the
crowds.
See, for example, D. E. Nineham, The Gospel of St. Mark (
bury,
1963), 128; and C. F. D. Moule, "Mark 4:1-20 Yet
Once More," in Neotestamen-
tica et Semitica, ed. E. E.
Ellis and M. Wilcox (Edinburgh: Clark, 1969), 95-113;
both
cited by J. W. Bowker, "Mystery and Parable:
Mark iv. 1-20," Journal of Theo-
logical Studies 25 NS (1974):
301. Others who deny a "hardening theory" of parables
for
other form critical reasons include Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus, 13-14;
Sherman
E. Johnson, "The Gospel according to St. Matthew," in The Interpreter's
Bible, ed. George A. Buttrick, 12 vols. (Nashville: Abingdon, 1951), 7:410, 636;
John
Knox,
"The Gospel according to St. Luke," in The Interpreter's Bible, 8:148; and C.
G.
Montefiore, The
Synoptic Gospels (London: Macmillan, 1909), 1:123, cited by J.
Arthur
Baird, "A Pragmatic Approach to Parable Exegesis: Some New Evidence on
Mark
4:11, 33-34," Journal of Biblical
Literature 76 (1957): 201-2. Some of those who
see
the parables as a judgment for hardness are Ladd, The Presence of the Future,
226-27;
Kingsbury, The Parables of Jesus in
Matthew Thirteen, 48-49; Van Elderen,
"The
Purpose of Parables according to Matthew 13:10-17," 188; Rudolf Schnacken-
burg,
God's Rule and Kingdom, trans. John
Murray (
Herder,
1963), 187; Dan O. Via, "Matthew on the Understandability of the
Parables,"
Journal of
Biblical Literature
84 (1965): 430-32; and Bowker, "Mystery and
Parable," passim.
42 The Septuagint
is significant also in that the verbs in Isaiah 6:10 are in the
aorist
tense and indicative mood, compared to the imperative of the Hebrew. The
Septuagint
therefore describes more of the people's existing condition (Van El-
deren, "The
Purpose of Parables according to Matthew 13:10-17," 188).
43 Via,
"Matthew on the Understandability of the Parables," 431.
The Kingdom-of-God Sayings in
Matthew 189
THE
CONTENT OF THE PARABLES
Closely related to one's understanding
of the purpose of the
parables
is the question of what they teach, which of necessity also
entails
the meaning of the "mysteries [musth<ria]
of the kingdom
of
heaven" (13:11). If these parables were given to conceal infor-
mation from those who
had heard the proclamation of the king-
dom but rejected it, then one may
ask what information
(mysteries)
was now being withheld from the crowds and re-
vealed to the
disciples. If, on the other hand, these parables were
meant
to illustrate the spiritual dullness of the crowds and have
little
or no connection with their rejection (in chap. 12), then the
information
(mysteries) they contained was not necessarily
new.
In that case the parables only represented in different form
what
Jesus had been saying all along, which had always been a
"mystery"
to those outside. The crowds still did not understand
the
"mystery" announced from the beginning, namely, that the
Several writers suggest a number of
lines of support to show
that
the parables and "mysteries" of Matthew 13 presented no new
information,
but broad categories about the dawn of the messianic
age
in Jesus. (1) Dunn, for example, leans heavily on the state-
ment of Jesus about
parables in Mark 4:11, "but those who are out-
side
get everything (ta> pa<nta) in
parables." That is, for the unbe-
lieving, everything
spiritual has always been and always will be
an
enigma (cf. Matt. 13:34, "He did not speak to them without a
parable").45
(2) The secretive content of the parables would support
the
messianic secret theme in which Jesus supposedly had been
involved
since the beginning of His ministry.46 (3) The under-
standing
of parables in Matthew and Mark as enigmatic speech,
or
a type of riddle, suggests that the unbelieving crowds never un-
derstood Jesus'
parables.47 (4) The plural musth<ria
denotes all that
44 Beasley-Murray
has a full listing of many scholars who hold this position
(Jesus and the Kingdom of God, 364, n.
169), to which should be added Ridderbos,
The Coming of
the Kingdom,
125; New International Dictionary of New
Testament
Theology, s.v. "Secret," by G. Finkenrath,
3:503; Van Elderen, "The Purpose of Para-
bles," 184; and
Schnackenburg, God's
Rule and Kingdom, 188.
45 James D. G.
Dunn, "The Messianic Secret in Mark," Tyndale Bulletin 21 (1970):
113;
also Beasley-Murray, Jesus and the
Kingdom of God, 105; for others see ibid.
365,
n. 178.
46 Bornkamm, who advocates this view, reveals its heritage in
Wilhelm Wrede
(Das Messiasgeheimnis
[19011, 58-59), the father of the Messiasgeheimnis in mod-
ern study (Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, s.v.
"musth<rion," by
Bornkamm, 4:819, n.
130). For others in agreement with Bornkamm and Wrede see
New
International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, s.v. "Messianic Secret,"
by
Colin Brown, 3:507; and Dunn, "The Messianic Secret in Mark," 95.
47 Kingsbury, The Parables of Jesus in Matthew Thirteen,
30.
190
BIBLIOTHECA SACRA / April-June 1994
Jesus
taught about the kingdom's laws, conditions of entrance,
and
related information.48 (5) Critical methodologies demand
the
artificial grouping of the parables found in Matthew 13. To
these
critics this chapter is useless as a guide to understanding its
own
parables. Jeremias, for example, believes Mark
4:11-12
(=Matt.
13:11, 13) was inserted into the passage from a misun-
derstanding and has nothing
to do with the parables' true teach-
ing. Jesus announced "no
special ‘secrets,’ but only the one ‘secret
of
the
the
words and works of Jesus."49
Compelling as these arguments may
seem, when Matthew 13
is
carefully read,50 a strong case can be made that something new
was
then happening to the kingdom. For one thing, the parables of
this
chapter are new on two counts: (a) as already noted, only here
in
Matthew did Jesus begin teaching e]n parabolai?j, and no ear-
lier literary form
in Matthew gets this title; and (b) these parables
are
specifically designated as ones whose content concerns the
This second point is significant in
chapter 13 because it re-
lates directly to
Jesus' point that "parables" are enigmatic to those
whose
hearts He had said were spiritually hardened (13:11-13).
Baird
examines the subsequent practice of Jesus relative to His
professed
enigmatic intent and the parables.51 His premise is that
if
the parables of the kingdom were meant to conceal information
from
the crowds, then that intent would be borne out in Jesus' sub-
sequent
practice in the Gospels. Baird noted that though Jesus told
many
parables to the crowds, only a few of them were explained.
Of
those explained, none deals specifically with the kingdom of
God.52
This implies two things for the kingdom. First, through
48 Alan Hugh McNeile, The Gospel
according to St. Matthew (
lan, 1915; reprint,
49 Jeremias, The
Parables of Jesus, 18; cf. Siegman,
"Teaching in Parables," 181.
50 Much of the
force of the preceding arguments is tied to a theory of Marcan
pri-
ority (which is not
without its own detractors), which does not necessarily take
into
account the argument of Matthew. For example the messianic secret is virtu-
ally
nonexistent in Matthew 1-12. The one exception could be Matthew 8:4, but when
Jesus
instructed the healed man to tell no one, the miracle had already occurred in
the
sight of "great multitudes" (v. 1) and was hardly a secret. The
intent of the in-
struction is elsewhere.
See for example Gundry, Matthew: A
Commentary on His
Literary and
Theological Art,
140. If anything the very opposite for Matthew is
true,
considering the "herald" quality of the proclamation, the large
crowds, and
the
public displays of miracles. On the overinflated importance of the messianic
secret
in general, see Dunn, "The Messianic Secret in Mark."
51 J. Arthur
Baird, "A Pragmatic Approach to Parable Exegesis: Some New Evi-
dence on Mark 4:11,
33-34," Journal of Biblical
Literature 76 (1957): 201-7.
52 Ibid., 206-7.
Cf. Raymond E. Brown, The Semitic
Background of the Term
"Mystery"
in the New Testament
(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1968), 35, n. 110. Brown
The Kingdom-of-God Sayings in
Matthew 191
certain
"kingdom" parables Jesus did in fact deny understand-
ing to the crowds in response to
their rejection (Matt. 13:11).53
Second,
since Jesus explained some parabolic teaching to the
crowds,
a distinction seems to exist between specific "kingdom"
parables
and the other parables Jesus may have spoken in His
general
ministry. Thus it is wrong simply to say that the myster-
ies of the kingdom are synonymous
with everything Jesus said
and
did (e.g., Kingsbury54).55
By extension, another possible
implication concerns the point
at
which the mysteries of the kingdom were enigmatic to the
crowds.
Were the mysteries enigmatic when they were joined to
the
parables, which Jesus did not explain, or were they enigmatic
to
the hard-hearted crowds from the beginning of Jesus' min-
istry? Baird's
findings argue for the former. Since according to
concurs
with Baird's conclusions.
53 After the
crowds rejected Jesus (Matt. 12), they (and the leaders) understood
only
three parables specifically about the kingdom (21:27-32; 21:33-44; 22:1-14),
each
of
which explains how the kingdom had been taken from them. Matthew 13:34
seems
to indicate that Jesus told more kingdom parables to the crowds but that
they
were unexplained and still enigmatic. Thus no positive information about the
disciples
were privy to every kingdom parable that followed. In addition to the
three
parables noted above, the only public statement about the kingdom from Jesus
is
in 23:13 ("But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you
shut off
the
kingdom of heaven from men; for you do not enter in yourselves, nor do you
allow those who
are
entering to go in"), which again was addressed to the leaders and is also
negative.
54 The Parables of the Kingdom in Matthew
Thirteen, 44-45.
55 Another
argument against such a broad understanding of the mysteries is the
background
of the term itself. Many scholars believe mosth<rion
in the Gospels is
derived
from the Hebrew word zrA in canonical
(Dan. 2:18-19, 27-30, 47; 4:6) and non-
canonical
literature. It is a designation for the plan of God for the unfolding of the
events
of history hidden from human eyes and disclosed only by divine revelation.
According
to Bornkamm the term in the New Testament
"always has an eschatolog-
ical sense"
which would seem to be different from other subjects Jesus addressed,
such
as ethics (Theological Dictionary of the
New Testament, s.v. "musth<rion,"
4:822).
On mysteries as essentially eschatological topics see also
"Matthew,"
308; Ladd, The Presence of the Future,
222; and Cope, "’To the Close of
the
Age,’" 20. Cope argues for the eschatological emphasis for mystery rather
than
Christological,
ethical, or catechetical in the
of
mystery in the Old Testament, apocryphal, and pseudepigraphal
literature, see
Beasley-Murray,
Jesus and the
ground of the
Term "Mystery" in the New Testament, 2-22; Lucien Cerfaux, "La
Connaissance des Secrets du Royaume D'Apres Matt XIII. 11 et Paralleles," New
Testament
Studies
2 (1956): 238-49; and G. Minette deTillesse, Le Secret Messian-
ique dan L'Euangile
de Marc,
Lectio Divina 47 (Paris:
Cerf, 1968), 194-98. For the
concept
of mystery in
of His Theology, trans. John
Richard De Witt (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), 46-
47;
Brown, The Semitic Background of the Term
"Mystery" in the New Testament,
22-30;
Siegman, "Teaching in Parables," 172; Cope,
"’To the Close of the Age,’" 17;
and
Van Elderen, "The Purpose of Parables according
to Matthew 13:10-17," 184-85.
192
BIBLIOTHECA SACRA / April—June 1994
Matthew's
chronology, the mysteries of the kingdom are cotermi-
nal with the parables of the kingdom
(which Jesus also never ex-
plained in response to
the rejection of chap. 12), it would follow
that
the mysteries were not present in Jesus' ministry before that
time
of rejection. In other words for Matthew the locus of the
enigma
of the mysteries comes in the kingdom parables after the
rejection,
not before.
A second argument suggesting that
after the crowd rejected
Jesus
the kingdom was different is the stated content of the king-
dom parables in Matthew 13. Many
commentators maintain the
only
difference in the mysteries of the kingdom before and after
the
rejection by the people is whether the mysteries were ex-
plained. However, a
surprising discontinuity exists between
what
the parables themselves reveal about the kingdom and the
substance
of Jesus' ministry before. For example, since Jesus and
John
came in fulfillment of the Old Testament promise includ-
ing its physical kingdom notions for
tion of that picture
of the kingdom with the kingdom in Matthew
13?
Many scholars speak only in broad terms about the content of
the
parables (i.e., mysteries) regarding the kingdom in chapter
13.
Kingsbury, for example, speaks of the parabolic message as
the
"present reality" of the kingdom.56 Yet the parables them-
selves
say more, and they clearly portray the presence of the
kingdom
as secret and hidden—far different from the kingdom
expected
by the messianic hope, the kingdom that would break
forth
apocalyptically and conquer political systems.57 Beasley-
mysteries
under the Christological cloak. "The secret of the
kingdom
given to the disciples relates to the realization in and
through
Jesus of God's purpose in the establishment of his saving
rule."58
Yet in these parables Jesus' presence is only one of sev-
eral facts taught
about the kingdom. These other points include
the
different responses to the word in the kingdom (Sower),
the
future
judgment of the kingdom (Wheat and Tares, and Drag-
net),
the initial insignificance and great growth of the kingdom
(Mustard
Seed, and Leaven), and the great value and sacrifice
56 The Parables of Jesus in Matthew Thirteen,
20.
57 Ladd (The Presence of the Future, 225) and
Carson ("Matthew," 307-8) have
noted
the discontinuity between the Old Testament kingdom and the kingdom of
the
parables. Ladd observes, "That there should be a coming of God's Kingdom
in
the
way Jesus proclaimed, in a hidden, secret form, working quietly among men,
was
utterly novel to Jesus' contemporaries. The Old Testament gave no such
promise"
(ibid.).
58 Beasley-Murray,
Jesus and the
The Kingdom-of-God Sayings in
Matthew 193
required
for the kingdom (Treasure, and
of
the mysteries of the kingdom show that differences existed be-
tween Jesus' kingdom
message before and after His rejection.
Those who make little of the details
of the kingdom parables,
when
put in terms of kingdom "mysteries," also seek to apply
those
details to the whole of Jesus' proclamation. Yet in Matthew
this
is not so easily done. For example Beasley-Murray, speak-
ing of the kingdom mysteries,
writes, "The fact that it [the king-
dom] continues to be a secret in
spite of Jesus' proclamation is tied
to
the nature of the kingdom he brings."60 Evidently he is saying
that
the hidden, steadily growing, initially tiny kingdom of the
parables
was the kingdom Jesus proclaimed all along. This posi-
tion has two
weaknesses. First, if Jesus intended from the begin-
ning to proclaim a
kingdom different from the one presented in
the
Old Testament, He greatly confused His audience by speak-
ing and acting solely as if His
ministry was in fulfillment of the
Old
Testament prophetic hope. Second, since Jesus presented the
enigmatic
parables as judgment because of the people's rejection
of
Him, on what grounds could Jesus condemn them for their
hardness
toward something in which He had misled them?
SUMMARY
Matthew 13 occupies a pivotal position
in the presentation of
the
kingdom in Matthew's Gospel. The fact that this chapter fol-
lows
the people's rejection and Jesus' condemnation in chapters
11–12
makes the kingdom sayings of chapter 13 stand out in bold
relief.
What was before proclaimed by the Herald has now be-
come
a secret. Matthew 13 is seen as a turning point in the narra-
tive. The content of
the musth<ria and parabolh<
indicates the nov-
elty of something
besides Jesus' methodology where the kingdom
of
God is concerned. The parables about the kingdom are distinct
from
everything Jesus had said to that point. The parables and the
"mysteries"
of the kingdom cannot be considered synonymous
with
what Jesus had already proclaimed. The new enigma that
the
parables represent (because they are judgment for rejection)
means
by extension that the mysteries of the kingdom are a new
enigma.
Also the kingdom content in the parables points to dis-
continuity
with the kingdom Jesus announced at the beginning of
His
ministry.
59 These are the
interpretations given by Stein, An
Introduction to the Parables,
95,
105, 140, 142.
60 Beasley-Murray, Jesus and the
194 BIBLIOTHECA SACRA / April-June 1994
THE
KINGDOM-OF-GOD SAYINGS AFTER MATTHEW 13
If it is correct that in Mathew 13
Jesus changed His method of
presentation
and the content about the kingdom, one would expect
to
find indications of such a change in the narrative that follows.
One
change that points in this direction has already been noted in
conjunction
with the audience of the basilei<a
sayings. Starting
in
Matthew 13 Jesus did not tell or explain any positive kingdom
information
through parables to anyone except the disciples. The
only
information related in basilei<a
language to the crowds is
negative,
namely, the kingdom would be taken from them and
they
are not its citizens. This provides the first clue to the change
in
the kingdom's content, a change that may be pursued along
several
lines.
First, Jesus no longer spoke of the
nearness of the kingdom.
In
the first 10 chapters the message, "Repent, for the kingdom of
heaven
is at hand [h@ggiken]," was
repeated verbatim by John, Je-
sus, and the disciples (3:2; 4:17;
10:7). After the nation's rejection
of
Jesus in Matthew 11–12, this was no longer proclaimed. Rather
than
being "near," the kingdom, Jesus said, will appear in the
future
in association with His Second Coming and related events
(Matt.
24–25; 26:29). The kingdom originally announced as
"near"
became far.
Second, before chapter 13, Matthew
twice (4:23; 9:35) summa-
rized Jesus' kingdom proclamation
in vocabulary that uniquely
tied
his message to the Old Testament hope (khru<ssw
and eu]-
agge<lion th?j basilei<aj).
Then after chapter 13 this "preaching"
of
the "gospel of the kingdom" was no longer part of the public dis-
courses
of Jesus. The phrase "gospel of the kingdom" is men-
tioned only as a
message by Jesus' followers in the future (Matt.
24:14).61
The verb khru<ssw ("to
preach") is no longer used in refer-
ence to Jesus'
activity despite its key presence in Matthean sum-
maries
of Jesus' activity before His rejection (4:17, 23; 9:35;
61 Kingsbury, Matthew: Structure, Christology and Kingdom,
128-29. The only
other
appearance of eu]agge<lion is in 26:13
where it is also associated with the an-
nouncement of those after
Jesus. All forms of the verb eu]aggeli<zw also vanish in
Matthew
after 11:5, in which Jesus referred to announcing the good news
(eu]aggeli<zontai) to the poor.
Similarly the Matthean use of the Old Testament ful-
fillment theme through
the plhro<w
("fulfill") language and other expressions that
associate
Jesus with the Old Testament prophets (1:22; 2:15, 17, 23; 3:3 [of John];
4:14;
8:17; 11:5, 9; 12:17; 13:14, 17, 35) drops off after 13:35. This theme is not
men-
tioned again until
21:4, which speaks of Jesus' fulfillment of an Old Testament
prophecy
when He approached
Matthew
intentionally distanced Jesus from the Old Testament hope for
during
the intervening part of Jesus' ministry.
The Kingdom-of-God Sayings in Matthew 195
11:1).62
However, khru<ssw is used of
those who in the future will
follow
Jesus (24:14; 26:13).
Third, Matthew's summaries of Jesus'
ministry that do ap-
pear
after chapter 13 argue that the kingdom message was modi-
fied. In 13:34
Matthew noted the enigma of Jesus' message of the
kingdom
through His parables, but in chapter 16 something new
was
noted. After a significant encounter with the disciples at
Caesarea
Philippi, in which Jesus was reminded of His rejection
by
the crowds (only Peter understood who He really is, 16:13-15),
Matthew
summarized, "From that time Jesus Christ began to
show
His disciples that He must go to
many
things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be
killed,
and be raised up on the third day" (16:21). That is, accord-
ing to Matthew (and Mark and Luke,
as well) Jesus did not make
His
sufferings on the cross a central feature of His message until
after
the rejection. Before chapter 13 Jesus made veiled allusions
to
His awareness of His mission and death (9:15, the bridegroom
being
taken away; 12:40, the sign of Jonah being three days in the
sea),
but His death was not a featured element of His kingdom
proclamation
of good news. This is significant because 12:28 ties
the
kingdom directly to Jesus' ministry by the Spirit. Before His
rejection
Jesus' working of miracles by the power of the Holy
Spirit
signified the kingdom's nearness. Afterward, as He fo-
cused on His suffering
and "absence," He also spoke of the
"distancing"
of the kingdom (Matt. 24–25). This seems to indi-
cate that the
powerful, glorious, world-changing kingdom, pre-
sented in the Old
Testament and announced by Jesus, is yet fu-
ture. Just as His
rejection points to His own future sufferings and
absence
until His glorious return, in like manner His rejection
points
to the kingdom's absence until His glorious return. Be-
cause
He is absent, the kingdom is absent, though where the Spirit
is
there is kingdom signatory power (12:28).
Fourth, after Matthew 13 the kingdom
is no longer related
specifically
to ethnic
messianic
hope, now the kingdom parables state that the kingdom
was
taken from
given
to another nation (21:43). Also in this postrejection
period
Jesus
introduced for the first time the fact of the e]kklhsi<a (the
62 In conjunction
with the use of lale<w
in 13:3, Kingsbury argues for the cessation
of
both the preaching (khru<ssw) and teaching (dida<skw) activities of
Jesus to Jews
after
11:1 (The Parables of Jesus in Matthew
Thirteen, 29). Though dida<skw ap-
pears
after 11:1, Kingsbury (ibid.) notes that it is never used positively of Jesus'
message,
but is always used in the "scenic framework" of a pericope
(13:54; 21:23;
22:16;
26:55), or employed negatively in a denunciation of Jewish doctrine (15:9;
16:12),
or in reference to His debate with His opponents (22:33).
196
BIBLIOTHECA SACRA / April—June 1994
church,
16:18), a designation of Jesus' followers. To Peter, the
foundation
of the church, were given the "keys of the kingdom of
heaven"
(16:19) with power to "bind" or "loose" accordingly
(18:18).63
Commentators have long recognized that
Matthew 13 is a crit-
ical turning point
in Matthew's presentation of Jesus" ministry.64
The
force of these arguments suggests it is also a turning point for
the
nature of the
in
Matthew 13 and following suggest a change in the nature of the
kingdom.
It is "far" rather than near, nonracial rather than eth-
nic, related to suffering rather
than overtly powerful, and se-
cretly disclosed to
insiders rather than proclaimed to all.
CONCLUSIONS
When the kingdom-of-God sayings in
Matthew are inter-
preted in view of the
chronology of Jesus' career, much light is
thrown
on the kingdom itself. Grouping and "leveling" all the
kingdom-of-God
sayings in Matthew tends to relegate the king-
dom to vague terms (e.g., present
and future) as the seemingly
contradictory
sayings are played off against one another (e.g.,
the
mystery parables versus the ethnic Old Testament kingdom
and
realm of
inator. A recognition
of the sequence of the kingdom-of-God say-
ings in Matthew
reveals three major points. First, at the begin-
ning of Jesus'
career He proclaimed and offered to
restoration
of the rule of Yahweh in their land, which would bring
His
peace and righteousness, and through which they would be a
blessing
to the rest of the world. This kingdom of which He spoke
is
physical, glorious, and powerful, compelling the wicked either
to
repent or to feel its wrath.
Second,
signs
of its nearness, heard the voice of its forerunner prophet,
and
rejected the King and His kingdom (Matt. 11-12).
Third, in response to their hardness
of heart, Jesus withdrew
His
offer of the full manifestation of the Old Testament prophe-
sied kingdom (Matt.
13:11-17). It was taken from them and given
63 Jesus' answer
to the Canaanite woman in 15:24 ("I was sent only to the lost
sheep
of
shows
that after the nation's rejection of Jesus, His career demanded that He pre-
sent
Himself to
same
is true for Jesus' miracles, which also continue after chapter 13, as well as
the
politically charged Triumphal Entry (Matt. 21). Also see note 65.
64 See, for
example, Kingbury, The Parables of Jesus in Matthew Thirteen, 31; and
Schnackenburg, God's Rule and Kingdom, 188.
The Kingdom-of-God Sayings in
Matthew 197
to
another until it will appear in the future. In the present interim
period
the kingdom is secret, hidden, and unknown to the world,
as
seen in the kingdom parables and mysteries (Matt. 13). Its
power
is not seen now in nationalistic forms (hence the mes-
sianic secret), and
when its spiritual power is manifested physi-
cally in the present
age it does not so much speak of the kingdom's
temporal
nearness as testify to its messengers.65 During this in-
terim the kingdom is
still future, but it is still intact in its spiri-
tual and physical
character (the disciples can still expect one day
to
judge the 12 tribes of
righteous
judgment, He will restore
prophetic
voice completely.
65 Though Jesus
continued to perform miracles after His rejection, their effect
was
different for those who had rejected Him and those who were receptive to Him.
By
their nature as mute witnesses, the miracles served to further harden those in
rejection
and to deliver the revelation of their fate (the withered fig tree is typical
of
more
works of a sorcerer who was dangerous to the people and who ultimately must
be
done away with. For insiders, the miracles served to confirm the messianic
Messenger
and His message. Ladd (The Presence of
the Future, 227) notes how both
the
Old and New Testaments confirm this idea that the same revelation can be both
light
and judgment, depending on the people's decision (Isa. 28:13; Jer. 23:29; John
12:40;
Acts 28:26; Heb. 4:12; 1 Pet. 2:8).
: x
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