Barclay on the Lectionary: Matthew, Year A

Matthew: Year A

William Barclay

• Publisher: Saint Andrew Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780715209721
• eBook ISBN: 9780861537808
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

Based on the Sunday Lectionary, these inspiring and deeply insightful Barclay readings are ideal for worship leaders, individuals and groups. They are drawn from William Barclay's much-loved and ever-popular comprehensive commentary on the New Testament.

The Sunday between 25 September and 1 October

The Cure for Disunity and The Expedient Ignorance

Philippians 2:1–13

The one danger which threatened the Philippian church was that of disunity. There is a sense in which that is the danger of every healthy church. It is when people are really serious and their beliefs really matter to them that they are apt to come into conflict with one another. The greater their enthusiasm, the greater the danger that they may collide. It is against that danger Paul wishes to safeguard his friends.

In verses 3–4, he gives us the three great causes of disunity. There is selfish ambition. There is always the danger that people might work not to advance the work but to advance themselves.

There is the desire for personal prestige. Prestige is for many people an even greater temptation than wealth. To be admired and respected, to have a seat on the platform, to have one’s opinion sought, to be known by name and appearance, even to be flattered, are for many people most desirable things. But the aim of Christians ought to be not self-display but self-obliteration. We should do good deeds, not in order that others may glorify us, but that they may glorify our Father in heaven. Christians should desire to focus people’s eyes not upon themselves but on God.

There is concentration on self. If we are always concerned first and foremost with our own interests, we are bound to come into conflict with others. If for us life is a competition whose prizes we must win, we will always think of other human beings as enemies or at least as opponents who must be pushed out of the way. Concentration on self inevitably means elimination of others, and the object of life becomes not to help others up but to put them down.

Faced with this danger of disunity, Paul sets down five considerations which ought to prevent disharmony.

(1) The fact that we are all in Christ should keep us in unity. No one can walk in disunity with other people and in unity with Christ. If we have Christ as a companion on the way, we inevitably become companions of others. The relationships we hold with other people are no bad indication of our relationship with Jesus Christ.

(2) The power of Christian love should keep us in unity. Christian love is that unconquered goodwill which never knows bitterness and never seeks anything but the good of others. It is not a mere reaction of the heart, as human love is; it is a victory of the will, achieved by the help of Jesus Christ. It does not mean loving only those who love us, or those whom we like, or those who are lovable. It means an unconquerable goodwill even to those who hate us, to those whom we do not like, to those who are unlovely. This is the very essence of the Christian life; and it affects us in the present time and in eternity.

(3) The fact that they share in the Holy Spirit should keep Christians from disunity. The Holy Spirit binds individuals to God and to one another. It is the Spirit who enables us to live that life of love, which is the life of God; if we live in disunity with others, we thereby show that the gift of the spirit is not ours.

(4) The existence of human compassion should keep people from disunity. As Aristotle had it long ago, human beings were never meant to be snarling wolves but were meant to live in fellowship together. Disunity breaks the very structure of life.

(5) Paul’s last appeal is the personal one. There can be no happiness for him as long as he knows that there is disunity in the church which is dear to him. If they want to bring him perfect joy, they must perfect their fellowship. It is not with a threat that Paul speaks to the Christians of Philippi but with the appeal of love, which ought always to be the tone used by the pastor, as it was the tone of our Lord.

The appeal that Paul makes to the Philippians is more than an appeal to live in unity in a given situation; it is an appeal to live a life which will lead to the salvation of God in time and in eternity. Nowhere in the New Testament is the work of salvation more succinctly stated. As the Revised Standard Version has it in verses 12–13, ‘Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.’ As always with Paul, the words are meticulously chosen.

Work out your own salvation; the word he uses for work out is katergazesthai, which always has the idea of bringing to completion. It is as if Paul says: ‘Don’t stop half-way; go on until the work of salvation is fully achieved in you.’ No Christian should be satisfied with anything less than the total benefits of the gospel.

‘For God is at work in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.’ The word Paul uses for work is the verb energein. There are two significant things about it; it is always used of the action of God, and it is always used of effective action. God’s action cannot be frustrated, nor can it remain half-finished; it must be fully effective.

Salvation is of God. It is God who works in us the desire to be saved. Without his help, there can be no progress in goodness; without his help, no sin can be conquered and no virtue achieved. The end of the process of salvation is with God, for its end is friendship with God, in which we are his and he is ours. The work of salvation is begun, continued and ended in God.

(For the discussion of verses 5–11, see Palm Sunday, p. 109.)

Matthew 21:23–32

When we think of the extraordinary things Jesus had been doing, we cannot be surprised that the Jewish authorities asked him what right he had to do them. At the moment, Jesus was not prepared to give them the direct answer that his authority came from the fact that he was the Son of God. To do so would have been to precipitate the end. There were actions still to be done and teaching still to be given. It sometimes takes more courage to bide one’s time and to await the necessary moment than it does to throw oneself on the enemy and invite the end. For Jesus, everything had to be done in God’s time; and the time for the final crisis had not yet come.

So he countered the question of the Jewish authorities with a question of his own, one which placed them in a dilemma. He asked them whether John’s ministry came ‘from heaven or from men’, whether it was divine or merely human in its origin. Were those who went out to be baptized at the Jordan responding to a merely human impulse, or were they in fact answering a divine challenge? The dilemma of the Jewish authorities was this. If they said that the ministry of John was from God, then they had no alternative to admitting that Jesus was the Messiah, for John had borne definite and unmistakable witness to that fact. On the other hand, if they denied that John’s ministry came from God, then they would have to bear the anger of the people, who were convinced that he was the messenger of God.

For a moment, the Jewish chief priests and elders were silent. Then they gave the lamest of all lame answers. They said: ‘We do not know.’ If ever anyone stood self-condemned, these men did. They ought to have known; it was part of the duty of the Sanhedrin, of which they were members, to distinguish between true and false prophets; and they were saying that they were unable to make that distinction. Their dilemma drove them into a shameful self-humiliation.

There is a grim warning here. There is such a thing as the deliberately assumed ignorance of cowardice. If we consult expediency rather than principle, our first question will be not ‘What is the truth?’ but ‘What is it safe to say?’ Again and again, the worship of expediency will drive us to a cowardly silence. We will lamely say: ‘I do not know the answer,’ when we know perfectly well the answer, but are afraid to give it. The true question is not ‘What is it safe to say?’ but ‘What is it right to say?’

The deliberately assumed ignorance of fear and the cowardly silence of expediency are shameful things. If we know the truth, we are under obligation to tell it, though the heavens should fall.

The meaning of the parable that follows is crystal clear. The Jewish leaders are the people who said they would obey God and then did not. The tax-gatherers and the prostitutes are those who said that they would go their own way and then took God’s way.

The key to the correct understanding of this parable is that it is not really praising anyone. It is setting before us a picture of two very imperfect sets of people, of whom one set were nonetheless better than the other. Neither son in the story was the kind of son to bring full joy to his father. Both were unsatisfactory; but the one who in the end obeyed was incalculably better than the other. The ideal son would be the son who accepted the father’s orders with obedience and with respect and who unquestioningly and fully carried them out. But there are truths in this parable which go far beyond the situation in which it was first spoken.

It tells us that there are two very common classes of people in this world. First, there are the people whose promises are much better than their practice. They will promise anything; they make great protestations of piety and fidelity; but their practice lags far behind. Second, there are those whose practice is far better than their promises. They claim to be tough, hard-headed materialists, but somehow they are found out doing kindly and generous things, almost in secret, as if they were ashamed of it. They profess to have no interest in the Church and in religion, and yet in reality they live more Christian lives than many professing Christians.

We have all of us met these people, those whose practice is far away from the almost sanctimonious piety of their professed beliefs, and those whose practice is far ahead of the sometimes cynical, and sometimes almost irreligious, declarations which they make about what they believe. The real point of the parable is that, while the second class are infinitely to be preferred to the first, neither is anything like perfect. The really good man or woman is the one in whom professed belief and practice meet and match.

Further, this parable teaches us that promises can never take the place of performance, and fine words are never a substitute for fine deeds. The son who said he would go, and did not, had all the outward marks of courtesy. In his answer, he called his father ‘sir’ with all respect. But a courtesy which never gets beyond words is a totally illusory thing. True courtesy is obedience, willingly and graciously given.

On the other hand, the parable teaches us that a good thing can easily be spoiled by the way it is done. A fine thing can be done with a lack of graciousness and a lack of charm which spoil the whole deed. Here, we learn that the Christian way is in performance and not promise, and that the mark of a Christian is obedience graciously and courteously given.

The Sunday between 2 and 8 October

What it Means to Know Christ and The Vineyard of the Lord

Philippians 3:4b–14

Paul first states the privileges which came to him by birth and goes on to state his achievements in the Jewish faith. All these things Paul might have claimed to set down on the credit side of the balance; but, when he met Christ, he wrote them off as nothing more than bad debts. The things that he had believed to be his glories were in fact quite useless. All human achievement had to be laid aside, in order that he might accept the free grace of Christ. He had to strip himself of every human claim of honour in order that he might accept in complete humility the mercy of God in Jesus Christ.

So he says: ‘Out of my experience I tell you that the Jewish way is wrong and futile. You will never get into a right relationship with God by your own efforts in keeping the law. You can get into a right relationship with God only by taking Jesus Christ at his word, and by accepting what God himself offers to you.’ Paul had discovered that a right relationship with God is based not on law but on faith in Jesus Christ. It is not achieved by any individual but given by God, not won by works but accepted in trust. The basic thought of this passage is the uselessness of law and the sufficiency of knowing Christ and accepting the offer of God’s grace.

Paul then defines more closely what he means by the supreme value above all else of the knowledge of Christ. It is important to note the verb which he uses for to know. It is part of the verb ginōskein, which almost always indicates personal knowledge. It is not simply intellectual knowledge, the knowledge of certain facts or even principles. It is the personal experience of another person. We may see the depth of this word from a fact of Old Testament usage. The Old Testament uses to know of sexual intercourse. ‘Now the man knew his wife Eve, and she conceived and bore Cain’ (Genesis 4:1). In Hebrew, the verb is yada, and in Greek it is translated by ginōskein. This verb indicates the most intimate knowledge of another person. It is not Paul’s aim to know about Christ, but personally to know him. To know Christ means for him ...

Table of contents

• Barclay on the Lectionary
• Contents
• Publisher’s Introduction
• The First Sunday of Advent
• The Second Sunday of Advent
• The Third Sunday of Advent
• The Fourth Sunday of Advent
• The First Sunday of Christmas
• The Second Sunday of Christmas
• The First Sunday of Epiphany (The Baptism of Christ)
• The Second Sunday of Epiphany
• The Third Sunday of Epiphany
• The Fourth Sunday of Epiphany
• Sunday between 3 and 9 February
• Sunday between 10 and 16 February
• Sunday between 17 and 23 February
• The Second Sunday before Lent
• The Sunday next before Lent
• The First Sunday of Lent
• The Second Sunday of Lent
• The Third Sunday of Lent
• The Fourth Sunday of Lent
• The Fifth Sunday of Lent
• Palm Sunday
• Easter Day
• The Second Sunday of Easter
• The Third Sunday of Easter
• The Fourth Sunday of Easter
• The Fifth Sunday of Easter
• The Sixth Sunday of Easter
• The Seventh Sunday of Easter
• Pentecost
• Trinity Sunday
• The Sunday between 29 May and 4 June
• The Sunday between 5 and 11 June
• The Sunday between 12 and 18 June
• The Sunday between 19 and 25 June
• The Sunday between 26 June and 2 July
• The Sunday between 3 and 9 July
• The Sunday between 10 and 16 July
• The Sunday between 17 and 23 July
• The Sunday between 24 and 30 July
• The Sunday between 31 July and 6 August
• The Sunday between 7 and 13 August
• The Sunday between 14 and 20 August
• The Sunday between 21 and 27 August
• The Sunday between 28 August and 3 September
• The Sunday between 4 and 10 September
• The Sunday between 11 and 17 September
• The Sunday between 18 and 24 September
• The Sunday between 25 September and 1 October
• The Sunday between 2 and 8 October
• The Sunday between 9 and 15 October
• The Sunday between 16 and 22 October
• The Sunday between 23 and 29 October
• The Last Sunday after Trinity (Bible Sunday)
• The Fourth Sunday before Advent
• The Third Sunday before Advent
• The Second Sunday before Advent
• The Sunday next before Advent