Matthew 11:23 Commentary and Bible Study

Christ knows the past – what would have happened in the past if God had acted differently – and he knows the future – not only what will happen in the future, but what would happen in the future as a result of changes to the past; he knows all things. He speaks of such fearful things, such deep things. We must be constantly stretching our minds to grasp the significance of what he says, for his ways are higher than our ways, and his thoughts than our thoughts.Again, the verse teaches that with increased light comes increased responsibility. Sodom is set forth in the Old Testament as an example of extreme sin and a warning to all subsequent generations, and nothing that Christ says here alters that. The shocking thing about these words is the unfavourable comparison made with the people of Capernaum. There are degrees of guilt, and Capernaum will be counted as more guilty on the day of judgment than Sodom. That is what takes us by surprise; that is what should have sobered up the people of Christ’s day. The lesson is that God does not judge as we judge, and we had better understand how he judges, because his judgment, not ours, will be the basis of our eternal state. We are inclined to look at Sodom and say, nothing could be worse, but that is not the way God sees it. Christ knows the state of the heart of all who live, and all who have ever lived. He knows how we will respond to all that happens. If the miracles which he has done in Capernaum had been done in Sodom, he knows that they would not have received them as the people of Capernaum did. They would have repented as Tyre and Sidon would have repented, and therefore they would not have been overthrown by a divine judgment which finally destroyed their city. God would have spared them and that city would have continued in existence to Christ’s own day. But Capernaum is more guilty than Sodom. What shall happen to Capernaum? The Lord describes her as ‘exalted to heaven.’ That either means that she is highly exalted because of the great privileges accorded to her – Christ made her his base during his Galilean ministries, and performed many wonderful miracles in her, maybe even more than in the other cities of Galilee; she was therefore exalted to heaven because heaven had, as it were, come down to her by Christ’s presence and work in her. If this is the meaning then she is genuinely exalted to heaven by virtue of the opportunity given her. Either that, or she is exalted to heaven in her own estimation, again because of the privileges given to her. She counts herself as special, and she thinks that she deserves this special treatment of having such wonderful miracles performed in her midst. Viewed this way, the saying can be seen as a reference to Isaiah 14:13-15, where speaking of the king of Babylon, who is a type of the antichrist, Isaiah says, ‘For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: ¹⁴ I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. ¹⁵ Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.’There are degrees of punishment in hell, and it will be more tolerable for Sodom than for Capernaum. There will be more anguish in the hearts of those who forfeited such great spiritual opportunities, and to whom Christ came so near, as well as other torments of hell, because they did not respond. The miracles which Christ did there were light from heaven. How many times human minds have imagined what it would be like to be able to overcome the limitations of nature, so called, and yet the world goes stubbornly on, relentlessly operating according to the same patterns. We are all so familiar with the orderly working of the laws by which the world operates under the government of God, that when there is a miraculous deviation from this, we know that God is at work. Capernaum had seen this, but their response was inadequate. These miracles were accompanied by the message of the gospel which commanded them to repent, but for the most part they did not. Why were they unable to understand grace? They were so proud, even proud of the miracles, though they rejected Christ. People can be proud about anything. In the UK, after the collapse of the USSR and the economic chaos that followed, people said, ‘We have justice, cohesion for society, welfare state’, and they forgot the gospel gave us all these things. We can imagine we did all this for ourselves. Pride ruins all possibility of understanding.