NOTES for Mat 8:10-23
It is interesting: whom, after all, does Jesus call “sons of the Kingdom”? In traditional Semitic usage, whether Hebrew or Aramaic, this expression denotes those who belong to the Kingdom. If so, judging by the context of the saying, one must conclude that Jesus is speaking about His own people, about the Jews, about the people of God. It is clear that belonging to the Jewish people does not in itself guarantee salvation or entry into the Kingdom: it is only a good foundation on which one can build one’s salvation. Yet the meaning of the Saviour’s words seems to be that He speaks of those who belong to the Jewish people as already possessing the Kingdom, but as capable of losing it under certain conditions. What, then, does He mean? And what Kingdom could have been spoken of before His coming into the world? Perhaps the answer lies in the very history of the covenant—the history of God’s relationship with His people. From the beginning, that history implied not only a beginning but also an end, a fulfilment, and therefore the Kingdom. According to the Creator’s design, the destiny of everyone who belongs to the people of God should be fulfilled in the Kingdom. The whole history of the covenant has meaning only in this context. And the Kingdom embraces not only our present but also our past and our future; it includes the fullness of the ages and all existing time. For the Kingdom, apparently, there is no past, present and future in our sense: what is real for it is only what forms part of it, and from the Kingdom’s point of view the whole world is divided into what belongs to the Kingdom and what does not. The time of our world plays no special role here, so that if someone or something is related to the Kingdom, even potentially, then from the point of view of those who dwell in the Kingdom, that person or thing also belongs to it. Our untransformed world begins to perceive their belonging to the Kingdom only when the Kingdom is revealed to it in the fullness necessary for such understanding. It is therefore not surprising that Jesus, looking at the situation precisely from within the Kingdom, sees the whole people of God, and each of its members individually, as belonging to the Kingdom. Yet, on the other hand, the history of this people also unfolds in our untransformed world; in essence, it is—or at least ought to have been—the history of that people’s transformation. As long as this process is not complete, the journey into the Kingdom is not complete either. This means that it is still possible to turn away from this path and not enter the place to which it led.