When speaking of the Kingdom, Jesus never tires of reminding His listeners that they still have to enter it and that this will not happen by itself. For the sake of the Kingdom one must leave everything behind and be ready to take up the cross. These words of the Saviour were perfectly clear: His listeners still remembered how...
When speaking of the Kingdom, Jesus never tires of reminding His listeners that they still have to enter it and that this will not happen by itself. For the sake of the Kingdom one must leave everything behind and be ready to take up the cross. These words of the Saviour were perfectly clear: His listeners still remembered how, a little over a century before the events of the Gospel, during the reign of Alexander Jannaeus in the then independent Judea, those who took part in an uprising against the government and demanded that the authorities strictly observe the norms of the Torah in the country were crucified. The rebels wanted one thing: the Kingdom, the kind they knew about, of course. And for its sake they gave up everything. Their ideas about it bore little resemblance to what Jesus speaks of, but He holds up their determination as an example to His listeners. They truly did leave everything behind.
Not like the characters in Jesus' parable who refuse to come to the feast, for reasons that might seem perfectly reasonable, but still refuse and lose what matters most. Their places are taken by those who have nothing in this world and no reason to decline. Is it a matter of priorities? Yes, of course, priorities too, but not priorities alone. It is no accident that Jesus speaks of a feast, of the first and the last, and of the places that many strive to occupy even at the risk of being driven from them.
The Kingdom is not a place, a structure or a hierarchy. The Kingdom is a state in which one can abide, but which one absolutely cannot, so to speak, fix in place, however much one may wish to do so. The desire to occupy better or worse places comes from this. For in the Kingdom there are, in fact, no good or bad places. There is only one criterion: is a person in his or her own place, in the very place God intended, or in one chosen personally because it seemed more suitable?
This also gives rise to the question: should one go to the feast or to the field just purchased? The wedding feast is a symbol of the Kingdom. If a person does not know which to choose, it means that he does not know what the Kingdom is. If he did know, it would never occur to him to compare the importance of the life he lives with anything he owns. Life is fullness, whereas a purchased field, possessions and even family are merely derivatives of that fullness. What matters here is not to confuse the part with the whole or the principal with the secondary. Only one thing can help us do this: the experience of the true life of the Kingdom, that very life which is salvation.
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1:18 In pretence - Under colour of propagating the gospel.In truth - With a real design so to do.
1:19 This shall turn to my salvation - Shall procure me an higher degree of glory. Through your prayer - Obtaining for me a larger supply of the Spirit.
1:20 As always - Since my call to the apostleship. In my body - however it may he disposed of. How that might be, he did not yet know. For the apostles did not know all things; particularly in things pertaining to themselves, they had room to exercise faith and patience.
1:21 To me to live is Christ - To know, to love, to follow Christ, is my life, my glory, my joy.
1:22 Here he begins to treat of the former clause of the preceding verse. Of the latter he treats, Php 2:17.But if I am to live is the flesh, this is the fruit of my labour - This is the fruit of my living longer, that I can labour more. Glorious labour! desirable fruit! in this view, long life is indeed a blessing. And what I should choose I know not - That is, if it were left to my choice.
1:23 To depart - Out of bonds, flesh, the world. And to be with Christ - In a nearer and fuller union. It is better to depart; it is far better to be with Christ.
1:25 I know - By a prophetic notice given him while he was writing this. That I shall continue some time longer with you - And doubtless he did see them after this confinement.