NOTES for Luk 7:31-35

The words of Jesus, addressed by Him to the Pharisees listening to Him, briefly and precisely describe the real reasons His listeners rejected both Jesus Himself and His testimony. Their meaning is simple: "wisdom" is justified by her children, that is, by those who invented this wisdom, as well as by those who support and defend it, relying on it and building their worldview on it. The Savior compares such "wise men" to children playing in the street, whose game consists of guessing what melody will sound next: a cheerful one or a sad one. The one who guessed won, and the one who guessed wrong lost.

It is completely obvious that such games had no relation to music as a high art. And the "wisdom" of the Pharisees who were always objecting to Jesus, judging by the example He gave, had no more relation to wisdom than the children's games He mentioned had to musical art. A serious, thoughtful search for truth often leads to mistakes, and not everyone who meets Jesus can easily see the Messiah in Him. But in this case there was no search at all. There was only a game of words, of quotations from the Torah and from theological writings widespread in rabbinic circles at that time.

The game was by no means harmless: the Pharisees arguing with Jesus were not playing it for the sake of intellectual exercise, but in order to preserve intact their native and familiar worldview, so that the religiosity so dear to them would not collapse. They needed "wisdom" so as not to accept what was unacceptable to their theological concepts. And they were ready to accept Jesus only on their own terms, if He agreed to correspond to their ideas about what the Messiah should be and what He should do.

They were also ready to enter the Kingdom, but on their own terms. Jesus, as can be seen, refuses them this with complete decisiveness. Not because there is no place for religion in the Kingdom, but because, when entering the Kingdom, one will have to change, to become another, new person. To do what many leaders of the Pharisaic movement feared so much. They feared it so much that they preferred to refuse the Kingdom, if only they could remain as they were.