Matthew 11:13 Commentary and Bible Study

The whole nation was made ready for the coming of Messiah by John, as God had said through Malachi, ‘Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD: ⁶ And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse’ (Malachi 4:5-6). When questioned about his Biblical identity, John denied that he was Elijah (John 1:21), for he knew that the questioners were asking whether he was literally Elijah, and to answer ‘Yes’ would have been to confirm a false understanding of Malachi. The Scripture nowhere teaches reincarnation (Hebrews 9:27). But in the sense which God intended when he gave this prophecy to Malachi, John the Baptist was indeed Elijah. He came living the same strict lifestyle as Elijah (2 Kings 1:8; Matthew 3:4); and his ministry called the nation to repentance (1 Kings 18:21; Matthew 3:2). He came ‘in the spirit and power of Elias’ (Luke 1:17) – Luke interprets Malachi – not as Elijah literally. So Christ says ‘If you will receive it’, for the understanding of Malachi requires a spiritual interpretation. Elijah was to come, and prophecy must be fulfilled. He came ‘before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord’, so his coming cannot be understood as something which is yet future and literal, as some see it. Christ says later, ‘I say unto you, That Elias is come already, and they knew him not … then the disciples understood that he spake unto them of John the Baptist’ (Matthew 17:12, 13). ‘He that has ears to hear,’ – who is able to interpret Scripture as God intends it to be interpreted – ‘let him hear.’ The language or prophecy should not be something strange to the Christian; its symbolism is not complex or arbitrary, but straightforward.