Matthew 23:32 Commentary and Bible Study

If you call the persecutors of the prophets your fathers, stop trying to pretend you are different from them. Be what you really are and let sham and hypocrisy be set aside. At the final judgment God will expose the wickedness that is in your hearts, so stop this masquerade and let evil be seen to be evil, as it is in truth. Christ is not encouraging them to do evil, but saying that it is inevitable, given their nature. Each one is responsible for his own nature, and God has no part in the evil that men do, but he nevertheless maintains that evil nature in existence and uses even evil acts to fulfil his purposes. What the fathers had started – the persecution and murder of the prophets – those of Christ’s generation will continue to do. They will murder the Holy One of Israel sent from heaven to be the Saviour of the world. That final act of wickedness will mark the end of God’s patience towards the nation, and although elect Jews will be saved, the national covenant and the Old Testament form of worship will come to an end. These men have passed the point at which God is willing to deal with them, and they are now bound for hell. Nothing can change that. They are still alive, and they will live out their days on earth, but they will never again be called. This was not true of all the nation, and even some of the Pharisees, including Nicodemus, had believed (John 12:42), though it is not clear whether in every case their faith was genuine. But many were now judicially hardened by God and Christ tells them so. They were addressed in the same strong terms that John the Baptist had used (Matthew 3:7). They had had three years to respond to the ministry of Christ, and to repent and seek the Lord, and they had only become harder in their hearts.Though Christ is about to hand himself over to their power to put him to death, he has no fear of them and does nothing to moderate the terms in which he speaks to them. He has no fear of them, and he speaks the truth about them in exactly the same way, whether he is subject to their judgment in a mockery of a trial, or whether they are subject to his judgment at the last day. The time had come for him to give this clear testimony. He came into the world to bear witness to the truth. In this he sets his people an example that they should fear no man, whether that man has power over us or not, but resign all things into the hand of our heavenly Father who will shortly establish justice in the earth.