Matthew 23:18 Commentary and Bible Study

A second example of the Lord also shows their confused evaluation of things. According to them, some oaths were binding, and some were not. What did they choose to treat as a binding oath? Just as they treated the temple as nothing and the gold of the temple as significant, so they treated the gift on the altar as significant and the altar itself as nothing. In their foolishness, they turned upside down the value of things. If a man swore by the gift on the altar then if he broke his oath he was guilty, but if he swore by the altar he was free from guilt. The scribes and Pharisees erred in making these oaths in the first place. Oaths are for very special occasions; they are not substitutes for basic honesty. A man who resorts to an oath too easily shows that he believes his ordinary word is not worthy of trust, and that sense within him usually arises from his awareness of his own lack of integrity. The solution to that is to speak with more basic honesty. But the point of what Christ says is to highlight the foolishness of what they chose to swear by, and to demonstrate their deranged value system. It was that which resulted from their hypocrisy, for hypocrisy always does damage to a man’s understanding. As his mind moves away from what is invisible to what is visible, he forgets that the things which are unseen are more real than the things which are seen. He forgets that it is God who is the source of all value, and the temple and the altar, and the ordinances all derive their value from him. It was because he commanded the temple to be constructed in a certain way that he acknowledged the rituals performed there as acceptable. It was because he commanded Israel to offer sacrifices that atonement was available to Israel as the priests offered them up. But while the nation continued under the shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things (Hebrews 10:1), they were required to remember what God had promised to do in the future. All the ceremonies carried out in the temple only had value because the Messiah would one day come and fulfil them all. The true worshipper in the times of types and shadows knew that the power in these things lay in the Lord’s anointed who would one day live them out in his own life and redemptive work.