There is here a lesson for anyone who would become his disciple: ‘Beware of the scribes.’ It is a lesson about what not to do, based on the terrible example of the scribes.
We shouldn’t read this passage, even in the longer form in Matthew’s Gospel, as just a denunciation of the clergy of the times. ‘Oh, they were terrible people weren’t they, when we read what Christ has to say about them?’ We should see this in a different light. Christ is primarily instructing the disciples. Don't let the church of Jesus Christ ever resemble this. We say it of ourselves – don't let my heart ever resemble that of the scribes and the Pharisees. Apply this warning to our church and to ourselves. It's what God feels about the self-seeking, the self-love, and the self-advertisement of the scribes and the Pharisees. Christ is warning us that self-love must be executed, mortified, got rid of. ‘He said unto them in his doctrine, Beware.’ Today, we might say be vigilance; watch out; guard carefully against the encroachment of this.