Matthew 10:40 Commentary and Bible Study

(Synoptics: Matthew 10:40-11:1) It would be our normal way of thinking, and a right way of thinking, to measure the value of an act of hospitality by the dignity of the guest. The honour and dignity of a king is greater than that of his servant. The one who entertains the king will receive a greater reward than the one who entertains the king’s servant. That holds true unless we wish to abandon all status in society and treat everyone as the same, and that most certainly will not happen in the kingdom of heaven where worthy and dignity are real and not symbolic or nominal. When a country receives a foreign king on a state visit, he is received with lavish attention. Correspondingly greater preparations are made for the king than for his representative. If this rule of protocol were not followed, it would be looked on as an affront to the king. But it is also true that the king’s representative must be honoured for the sake of the king. David felt the insult when his officers were treated shamefully (2 Samuel 10:4-7). So Christ lends his honour to his disciples in their mission to the world. This, as Calvin says, is about the man not the message (though he admits it is on account of the message). God scrutinises all that occurs in this world, especially when it has to do with the reception those bearing the gospel. The Lord notes those who receive his people, and they too will receive their reward. God’s word will not return unto him void. This is said for the encouragement of the disciples as well as for the encouragement of those who receive them. There will be those who welcome the gospel and recognise the supreme value of what they hear. Their hosts do not treat the disciples as if they have come in their own name, but they receive them into their homes because they know and honour the one who sent them. They cannot entertain the Lord, but they can entertain the ones he has sent in his place. So it was at the time of this mission, and so it is throughout the gospel age. ‘Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me’ (Matthew 25:40). Christ interprets this act of hospitality in the most generous way possible. He sees it as substituting for an act of kindness done to him personally if the opportunity had arisen. He is bountiful in his recognition of love expressed towards him. But the argument doesn’t stop there. Those who host the apostles have received God the Father into their homes, for in receiving the Son, they receive the Father who sent him. The Father reasons in the same way as the Son. How wonderful this is, that the Father has made it possible for simple, lowly human beings on earth to do something which he is prepared to interpret as an act of kindness done to him personally. Of course it is impossible for us to do anything to benefit the Father or the Son, but Father and Son are indulgent towards us as a man would be to his children when he treats their token responses as if they were lavish gifts.He is about to send them out in his name, and they have good reason to think they are nothing compared to him, but he will not have it so. He clothes them in his own honour, and will have those who receive them to treat them with all the honour normally reserved for himself. And this certainly happened, so that that the apostle Paul could say of the Galatians, ‘Ye know how through infirmity of the flesh I preached the gospel unto you at the first. ¹⁴ And my temptation which was in my flesh ye despised not, nor rejected; but received me as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus’ (Galatians 4:13-14).Luke includes the other side of this (Luke 10:16) in the parallel instructions given to the seventy.