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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadPaul Kretzmann Commentary - Matthew 8:18 - 8:20
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The Discipleship of Christ.
Preparations for departure:
v. 18. Now when Jesus saw great multitudes about Him, He gave commandment to depart unto the other side. It was getting late in the evening. Jesus had spent a very busy day teaching and healing. And still great multitudes pressed about Him.
He was now on the shore of Lake Gennesaret. To escape the importunity of the crowd and to avoid an outburst of false enthusiasm which might spoil the work of His ministry, Joh_6:3-15, He ordered departure unto the other side. An interruption:
v. 19. And a certain scribe came, and said unto Him, Master, I will follow Thee whithersoever Thou goest.
v. 20. And Jesus saith unto him, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head.
There were others besides His disciples in His immediate vicinity. One of these, a scribe, plucked up enough courage to speak to Him. A strong testimony for the power of Christ's preaching and of the magnetism of His personality that one of the scribes, who, as a class, were utterly opposed to the ways of Jesus, could be carried away by his enthusiasm and ask to be admitted to the inner circle of the apostles. But it is ignorant presumption to think of being able to follow Christ in any way which he should choose or be obliged to go. He had no conception of the cost of being a disciple of Christ. So the Lord shows him the true meaning of discipleship, what it implies and what it demands. The foxes have dens, where they may rest in safety, the birds of the heaven have roosts, most of them resorting to the same tree night after night for shelter, but the Son of Man, Jesus, in His state of humiliation, is burdened with a poverty, with a homelessness, which to Him is a willing burden, but which might become a galling irritation to one that does not realize what might be demanded of the followers of the lowly Nazarene. Under certain circumstances poverty, privations, persecutions may, by God's permission, be the lot of the Christians. "So all true Christians do: They use their goods, they have nests and dens; but when necessity demands leaving them for the sake of Christ, they do it, and gladly even move from the place where they may lay their head, as on their possession. And they are glad to be foreigners in the world and say: I am a guest upon earth; and again: I am a pilgrim, as were all my fathers."
The "Son Of Man."
This expression, which occurs eighty-four times in the New Testament, has almost become a touchstone, or shibboleth, by which the attitude of a theologian toward the person and work of Christ may be characterized. The many commentaries and books on the person of Jesus reflect, in a most remarkable way, the personal faith of the writers.
In the majority of cases, critics have reached the point at which they deny any special significance in the peculiar phrase. The "Son of Man," in their opinion, simply means the ideal man, the original man, the normal human being, the man in whom the entire human history and destiny is realized. It is used, according to the idea of many, merely to express the weakness and humility of Christ, or to designate the second or heavenly man, the Pauline second Adam, the preexistent heavenly type of humanity, the ideal of the beyond. Its definition is said to be simply man, the unprivileged Man: not only no exception to the rule of ordinary human experience in the way of being better off, but rather an exception in the way of being worse off.
Other critics there are that earnestly endeavor to give the expression, as found in the gospels, its full value and strength. "In all probability, Jesus chose this particular Old Testament designation of the Messiah, Dan_7:13, because, unlike the others, it had not been grossly perverted to foster the carnal expectation of the Jews. Thus our Lord met the morbid and fantastic expectations of His contemporaries—and among them, apparently, those also of the scribe in the text—by laying emphasis on His genuine and true humanity as the Messiah. His great aim was that the people should view Him as true man—in the lowliness of His outward appearance, but also at the same time in His high character, as the Son of Man, that is, the ideal man, the second Adam from heaven (1 Corinthians."
But these explanations are either entirely beside the mark, or they do not go far enough; they do not cover the full significance of the expression. A mere ideal man is surely not the Lord of the Sabbath, Mat_12:8. If any one assumes the right to change the Old Testament institutions according to His will, as Lord in His own right. He must have divine authority. A mere ideal man cannot usurp the exclusive right of God to forgive sins on earth, Mat_9:6. To forgive sins is God's prerogative, and if Christ assumes this power, He is arrogating to Himself a divine right, as "the Son of Man. " A mere ideal man could not speak of the last days of the world as the days of the Son of Man, Luk_17:22-30. But it is said of the Son of Man that He will come in the clouds of heaven to hold judgment, with all the majesty of the Father and accompanied by all the holy angels. And a careful comparison of the other passages containing this expression will only serve to strengthen this impression that more than mere humanity, more than mere ideality, is implied.
Jesus is "the Son of Man in an extraordinary and singular sense. He evidently intends, with this name, to distinguish two forms of existence, His existence before the beginning of time as the eternal Word of God, and His form of existence in time as Jesus of Nazareth. He confesses and means to convey with this appellation the fact that He, the eternal Son of God, became flesh, entered into a true humanity, for the sake of redeeming mankind. It is a description of His wonderful, mysterious person according to His divine and according to His human nature. " "It is not from mere humility that He calls Himself the Son of Man, as though the name Son of God did not pertain to Him in His present state of humiliation, and that He would adopt that title only by and through His exaltation. Indeed not; but He wants to lead to the mystery of His person, that the Son of Man in His humiliation is at the same time the true Son of God, as Peter formerly made confession of Him, Mat_16:13-16. And it behooved such a person also to be the Mediator between God and men. It was necessary that He be a man in order to suffer, and God, in order to transmit to His sufferings an eternal value; a man, in order to humiliate Himself to the earth, and God, to lift us up into heaven; a man, in order to become a substitute for men, in their stead, and God, in order that He might reconcile and satisfy the outraged righteousness of God by a proportional satisfaction; God and man in one person, in order to unite God and men into one spirit."