Biblical commentary on the New Testament - The Christian ...

Matthew XI. 11, 12. 423
sented only as a righteous man, in the noblest legal sense,* as a
true representative of the law, but from whom was concealed the
higher life of the Spirit, such as was experienced by Abraham and
Israel, who appear far more as the representatives of the higher order
of the evangelical life which was hereafter to be revealed, than of
the legal state.
Ver. 12.—From the personal delineation of the Baptist, our
Kedeemer proceeds to describe the peculiar character of the time ;
and this leads him to the objurgatory discourse in verse 16. " As
the man is great whom God has raised as the precursor of the kingdom
of the Messiah, so the time also in which he works, is rich
in blessings : the more culjiable, therefore, are they who do not avail
themselves of it." The days of John, must be understood of the
time of his publicly ajjpearing to preach repentance (the terminus
a quo) ; in the words t'w^ ap-f, until noio, the terminus ad quern is
only in so far intimated as that the favourable time still lasted,
which must, however, be by no means considered as now brought to
a close. The conception of a season favourable to the growth of all
that is good, is expressed in a peculiar manner, by the words : The
kingdom of heaven suffereth violence (?) (iaoiXda ruJv ovQavCdv ftid^erai).
In Luke xvi. 16, a similar expression is found : The kingdom
of God is preached, and every man presseth into it (?) (3aotXeia rov
Qeov evayyeXi^erat Koi nag elg avTi]v (iid^eraL). With this thought cor-
responds entirely what follows in our passage, koX (3iaorai dgnd^ovaiv
avTTJv, and the violent seize upon if. No doubt the words of this
verse must be understood as presenting one aspect of the phenomena
of which the Lord speaks. In that time of powerful ex-
citement, there was manifested among mankind generally, but esspecially
among the Jews, a fervent longing, a desire after a change
of condition, which broke forth the more violently the longer it was
repressed. In so far as this longing was, in its ultimate principle,
really pure, so far the kingdom of God might be regarded as its object
; but, in so far as it contained a depraved element and was
blended with much that was erroneous, it is called ftcd^eadai, suffering
violence, and a dp-d^etv, seizing, is ascribed to it. For although
these terms are meant, in the first place, to express only the great-
ness of the zeal and earnestness for that which is divine, which act-
ed so powerfully at the time of our Lord, yet it is impossible not to
* Eengstenberg, in his Christology, vol. iii., p. 472, has misunderstood this my view,
as though I denied repentance and faith to the Baptist ; I only meant to say, that he does not
pre-eminently represent feith ; Paul could therefore not have used the Baptist as the representative
of the life of faith, as ho did Abraham in Rom. iv. We cannot conceive of any
righteous person of the Old Testament as being destitute of faith, according to Heb. xi.,
only, that Old Testament faith did not, like that of the New Testament, imply the pos-
session of divine things, but only the Afipe, as it is clearly expressed in the passages quoted,
(Heb. xi. 13; 1 Pet. i. 10, seq.)