Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadPaul Kretzmann Commentary - Matthew 10:17 - 10:18
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
The enmity of men:
v. 17. But beware of men; for they will deliver you up to the councils, and they will scourge you in their synagogues.
v. 18. And ye shall be brought before governors and kings for My sake, for a testimony against them and the Gentiles.
Be on your guard against such men as might turn out to be wolves in disguise. Do not, in general, trust yourselves to men, beware of confiding trustfulness, which delivers you into their power, Joh_2:24. A cordial aloofness may sound like a paradox, but describes the proper attitude. Upon occasion and with the slightest excuse, the enmity of men, directed in reality against the Word, will find its outlet in persecution of the hearers of the Word. Both the higher tribunals of justice, where the punishment might take a very serious form, and the synagogues, whose assemblies, as lower courts, exercised discipline and inflicted penalties, such as scourging, would be used by the enemies. Act_22:19; 2Co_11:24. In the present instance even the civil courts may be called upon to pronounce judgment against the servants of Christ on all kinds of trumped-up charges. The Lord refers not only to the provincial governors of Palestine, but, by His omniscience, He looks far forward into the future, where He sees His confessors cited to appear before the mightiest rulers of the world. A tribulation, indeed, but also an honor, since it is for His sake, on His account. And theirs will be the glorious opportunity of witnessing for the Master, of declaring His testimony in the midst of such adverse circumstances to the enemies, who, in the earlier period, were Jews, and to the Gentiles, such as the governors and the court officers and attendants would usually be. This testimony would, as always, have the purpose of calling the sinners to repentance and of hardening the deliberately obstinate to their own damnation.