NOTES for Mat 23:29-39

With each new word, the denunciation of the scribes and Pharisees becomes harsher, and now Christ reproaches them not only for hypocrisy and sinfulness; He accuses the religious leaders of the people of resisting God. Every sin leads away from God, but here sin is made worse by an unwillingness to repent, and enmity with God becomes conscious resistance to His will.

An unwillingness to repent can be covered by pseudo-pious self-deception, when a person does not want not only to admit his own sins but even to see them, while at the same time very much wanting to look respectable. If that is so, then denunciation of other people's sins and outward reverence for righteous people of former years become a very convenient way to show off one's imagined righteousness.

But Christ sees more deeply and directly shows us that both the long-ago crimes themselves and today's loud condemnation of them can be links in one and the same chain. How often His words about the tombs of the prophets and the monuments of the righteous have been remembered in recent years, when the names of the tortured were invoked in vain and their memory was exploited. If there is no true repentance, but only a replacement of it with outward forms, then there is always the danger that, when circumstances change, new Pharisees will again be ready to become persecutors.