The chief feature of the Kingdom of Heaven revealed in the parables of today's Gospel reading is that it is hidden from human sight and acts unobtrusively. The seed sprouts unnoticed, the leaven works unnoticed, and no one can see the treasure found...
The chief feature of the Kingdom of Heaven revealed in the parables of today's Gospel reading is that it is hidden from human sight and acts unobtrusively. The seed sprouts unnoticed, the leaven works unnoticed, and no one can see the treasure found by a man in a field. Moreover, the seed and the treasure are placed within the earth, and the leaven within the flour. Later Jesus will tell the Pharisees plainly: “The kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21). This is important, because we murmur and claim that God has abandoned us, is absent from among us, or does not exist at all, since His actions cannot be seen. The whole problem is that we are looking in the wrong place.
The Kingdom of Heaven is not found in society or the state: it is impossible to imagine a state as a seed cast into the earth. The Jews greatly wanted to see God's Kingdom in the power and prestige of their state, since they were the God-bearing people. The result: “Behold, your house is left unto you desolate” (Matt. 23:38, Luke 13:35). The First, Second, and Third Romes placed their hope in the manifestation of the Kingdom of Heaven through Orthodoxy, autocracy, and other forms of national identity—where are they now?
The Kingdom's place is within human life. Like leaven, it gradually transforms your will so that it obeys the laws of the Kingdom. Like a seed, it grows gradually, imperceptibly giving you life so that you bear fruit for others and not for yourself alone. Like hidden treasure, it is a joy that no one will take from you.
Outwardly, the Kingdom of Heaven is manifested and acts through people—not through someone else, but only through you. To see this Kingdom, you must begin to fulfill its laws without expecting those around you to do so. And there is one more essential detail: the Kingdom of Heaven permits no dual citizenship. Either you agree to become a subject of the heavenly King and gradually become godlike—or you do not.
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3:15 I speak after the manner of men - I illustrate this by a familiar instance, taken from the practice of men.Though it be but a man's covenant, yet, if it be once legally confirmed, none - No, not the covenanter himself, unless something unforeseen occur, which cannot be the case with God. Disannulleth, or addeth thereto - Any new conditions.
3:16 Now the promises were made to Abraham and his seed - Several promises were made to Abraham; but the chief of all, and which was several times repeated, was that of the blessing through Christ. He - That is, God.Saith not, And to seeds, as of many - As if the promise were made to several kinds of seed. But as of one - That is, one kind of seed, one posterity, one kind of sons. And to all these the blessing belonged by promise. Which is Christ - including all that believe in him. Gen 22:18.
3:17 And this I say - What I mean is this. The covenant which was before confirmed of God - By the promise itself, by the repetition of it, and by a solemn oath, concerning the blessing all nations. Through Christ, the law which was four hundred and thirty years after - Counting from the time when the promise was first made to Abraham, Gen 12:2,$3.Doth not disannul, so as to make the promise of no effect - With regard to all nations, if only the Jewish were to receive it; yea, with regard to them also, if it was by works, so as to supersede it, and introduce another way of obtaining the blessing.
3:18 And again - This is a new argument. The former was drawn from the time, this from the nature, of the transaction. If the eternal inheritance be obtained by keeping the law, it is no more by virtue of the free promise - These being just opposite to each other. But it is by promise.Therefore it is not by the law.
3:19 It - The ceremonial law. Was added - To the promise.Because of transgressions - Probably, the yoke of the ceremonial law was inflicted as a punishment for the national sin of idolatry, Exo 32:1, at least the more grievous parts of it; and the whole of it was a prophetic type of Christ. The moral law was added to the promise to discover and restrain transgressions, to convince men of their guilt, and need of the promise, and give some check to sin. And this law passeth not away; but the ceremonial law was only introduced till Christ, the seed to or through whom the promise was made, should come. And it was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator - It was not given to Israel, like the promise to Abraham, immediately from God himself; but was conveyed by the ministry of angels to Moses, and delivered into his hand as a mediator between God and them, to remind them of the great Mediator.
3:20 Now the mediator is not a mediator of one - There must be two parties, or there can be no mediator between them; but God who made the free promise to Abraham is only one of the parties. The other, Abraham, was not present at the time of Moses. Therefore in the promise Moses had nothing to do. The law, wherein he was concerned, was a transaction of quite another nature.
3:21 Will it follow from hence that the law is against, opposite to, the promises of God? By no means. They are well consistent. But yet the law cannot give life, as the promise doth. If there had been a law which could have given life - Which could have entitled a sinner to life, God would have spared his own Son, and righteousness, or justification. with all the blessings consequent upon it, would have been by that law.
3:22 But, on the contrary, the scripture wherein that law is written hath concluded all under sin - Hath shut them up together, (so the word properly signifies,) as in a prison, under sentence of death, to the end that all being cut off from expecting justification by the law, the promise might be freely given to them that believe.