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In Matthew 9:20-22 Christ is revealed as the One with heavenly-ruled deeds — the fringe of His garment. Verses 20 and 21 say, “Behold, a woman who had been suffering from a hemorrhage for twelve years approached from behind and touched the fringe of His garment, for she said within herself, If only I touch His garment, I will be healed.” When the Lord Jesus turned and saw her, He said, “Take courage, daughter; your faith has healed you” (v. 22a).
The Lord’s garment signifies Christ’s righteous deeds, and the fringe signifies the heavenly ruling. According to Numbers 15:38-40, Israelite males had to wear a blue fringe on their garments, a ribbon in the color of blue. (Blue signifies heavenliness.) This meant that their lives, their walk, were restricted by a heavenly limitation. They were ruled, governed, and restricted by heavenly regulations. When the Lord Jesus was on earth, He probably dressed in this way. Garments signify virtue in human behavior. The Lord’s garments signify His perfect behavior in His humanity, His human virtuous perfection. In the human virtue of the Lord Jesus there was healing power. Therefore, when the sick woman touched the fringe of His garment, the power of His virtue went out to her, and she was healed. Out of Christ’s heavenly-ruled deeds comes the virtue that becomes the healing power (Matt. 14:36).
To touch the fringe of the Lord’s garment was to touch the Lord Himself in His humanity, in whom God was embodied (Col. 2:9). By such a touch His divine power was transfused into the touching one through the perfection of His humanity and became her healing. God, who dwells in unapproachable light (1 Tim. 6:16), became touchable in Christ through His humanity for her salvation and enjoyment.
As a pleasant person, Christ is not only the Forgiver, the Physician, the Bridegroom, the unshrunk cloth for making a new garment, and the new wine; He is also the One with healing power in the beauty of His human virtues. We who believe in Him, love Him, and read His word have been healed by His human virtue. The more we contact Him in prayer, the more we are healed. This healing is a matter of transformation. As we see Christ in His heavenly-ruled deeds and activities and contact Him, we are healed, transformed. This is our experience when we touch the fringe of the Lord’s garment. This fringe is the totality of all the Lord’s human virtues, and this totality issues in healing power. In this healing power there is a transforming element that changes our character.
The woman in Matthew 9:20-22 and the centurion in 8:5-10 both came to contact the Lord Jesus in the same way — with faith. This woman was healed through faith. Today the faith through which we are healed is the faith that is infused into us by Christ’s attractiveness. As we behold Him in His attractiveness, faith is infused into us.
“Seeing the crowds, He was moved with compassion for them, because they were harassed and cast away like sheep not having a shepherd” (Matt. 9:36). Here we see that the Lord Jesus considered the people as sheep and Himself as the Shepherd. When Christ came to the Jews the first time, they were like lepers, paralytics, demon possessed, and all manner of pitiful persons, because they had no shepherd to care for them. Therefore, He ministered to them not only as a Physician but also as a Shepherd, as prophesied in Isaiah 53:6 and 40:11. As such a Shepherd, the Lord Jesus did miracles to take care of the needy ones. He said, “The blind receive their sight and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; and the dead are raised and the poor have the gospel announced to them” (Matt. 11:5). This is the compassion exercised by the Lord as their Shepherd to take care of them. As a minister of the Lord, we should learn how to be concerned for the needy ones.
The Lord Jesus is the Shepherd of the sheep that were “harassed and cast away.” They were in difficulties and were constantly suffering. They were cast away and were wandering, not knowing where to go. To such ones Christ came as the Shepherd. As the Shepherd, the Lord is not rough but is very fine.
Matthew 9:36 tells us that when the Lord Jesus saw the crowds, He was “moved with compassion.” Compassion is deeper, finer, and richer than mercy. Mercy is somewhat outward, but compassion is inward. Furthermore, compassion is longer lasting than mercy. Compassion, therefore, is both deeper and longer lasting than mercy.
Matthew 11:19b indicates that Christ is wisdom. “Wisdom is justified by her works.” Wisdom is Christ (1 Cor. 1:24, 30). Whatever Christ did was done by the wisdom of God, which is Christ Himself. This wisdom was justified, vindicated, by His wise works, His wise deeds.
First Corinthians 1:30 tells us that Christ has become “wisdom to us from God.” For Christ to become wisdom to us from God indicates that there is a transmission of Christ as wisdom from God to us for our daily experience. Christ should continually become wisdom to us from God. Christ as wisdom should unceasingly flow from God to us to be our present and practical wisdom in our experience. If we are one with the Lord to receive His dispensing, He will be transmitted into us as wisdom. Day by day and hour by hour we should live in the spirit and exercise our spirit to call on the name of the Lord Jesus. If we do this, we will enjoy Christ and have Him as our wisdom. This is Christ as the wisdom from God to us.
In Luke 7:35 the Lord Jesus says, “Wisdom is justified by all her children.” Those who believe in Christ are the children of wisdom, those who justify Christ and His deeds and who follow Him as their wisdom.
Matthew 11:19b says that wisdom is justified by her works, and Luke 7:35 says that wisdom is justified by her children. We are the children of wisdom. Christ’s work is to produce us as the children of wisdom.
Matthew 11:28 and 29 reveal that Christ is rest. If we take Christ as our wisdom, we may become very busy. For this reason, taking Christ as our wisdom needs to be balanced by taking Him as our rest.
“Come to Me all who toil and are burdened, and I will give you rest” (v. 28). Here the Lord Jesus sounds out a call to come to Him for rest from being burdened to toil. The toil mentioned in this verse refers not only to the toil of striving to keep the commandments of the law and religious regulations but also to the toil of struggling to be successful in any work. Whoever toils thus is always heavily burdened. Thus, the Lord calls the toiling ones to come to Him for rest. Rest refers not only to being set free from the toil and burden under the law and religion or under any work and responsibility but also to perfect peace and full satisfaction.
In Matthew 11:29 the Lord Jesus gives us the way to rest: “Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” The Lord’s yoke, His way of living, is a rest, but our yoke is a burden. Therefore, we should not take our yoke. Rather, we should take the Lord’s yoke, His way of living.
The Lord’s yoke is to take the will of the Father. It is not to be regulated or controlled by any obligation of the law or religion or to be enslaved by any work, but to be constrained by the will of the Father. The Lord Jesus lived such a life, caring for nothing but the will of His Father (John 4:34; 5:30; 6:38). He submitted Himself fully to the Father’s will (Matt. 26:39, 42). Therefore, He asks us to learn from Him. To learn from Him is not to imitate Him outwardly but to copy the Lord in our spirit by taking His yoke — God’s will (11:29a; 1 Pet. 2:21). God’s will has to yoke us, and we have to put our neck into this yoke.
The Lord Jesus said that if we take His yoke and learn from Him, we will find rest for our souls. The rest we find by taking the Lord’s yoke and learning from Him is for our souls. It is an inward rest, not anything merely outward in nature. The hardest thing is to rest in our souls. People lose sleep because their soul is bothered. Yet by taking the Lord’s yoke and learning from Him, we share in our soul His rest in satisfaction (Matt. 11:28b, 29b, 30).
Christ is the One greater than the temple (Matt. 12:6). In the Old Testament the temple was the house of God (1 Kings 6:1). The temple was founded upon a foundation of stone (5:17; 6:37), and it was built of stone, cedar, and cypress overlaid with gold (vv. 7, 9, 15-16, 18, 20-22). Stone signifies transformed humanity; cedar, humanity in resurrection; cypress, humanity through death; and gold, divinity. Therefore, with the temple we see the mingling of humanity with divinity through death and in resurrection and transformation. The temple built of these materials was a type of Christ as the real temple, as the One greater than the temple.
In Matthew 12:6 the Lord Jesus declared, “I say to you that something greater than the temple is here.” This word was spoken in reference to the historical instance mentioned in verses 3 and 4. David and his followers were not priests, but they entered into the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence. They were justified in doing this because they were in the house of God. This instance illustrates an important principle: outside the temple everything was common, but when something was brought into the temple, it was sanctified by the temple. Everything, every day, every matter, and everyone in the temple was holy. The principle is the same with Christ as the One who is greater than the temple. Whatever we do outside of Christ is illegal, but whatever we do in Christ is legal.
Christ is the One greater than the temple for feeding His followers. When the Pharisees criticized the Lord’s disciples for picking ears of grain on the Sabbath, He said, “Have you not read what David did when he became hungry, and those who were with him; how he entered into the house of God, and they ate the bread of the Presence, which was not lawful for him to eat, nor for those who were with him, except for the priests only?” (vv. 3-4). Just as David and his followers were hungry, so Christ and His disciples were hungry. The context, therefore, clearly indicates that Christ is the real temple, the One greater than the temple, for the feeding of those who follow Him.
As the One greater than the temple, Christ feeds us with Himself as the holy food — the bread of the Presence (v. 4). The bread of the Presence in verse 4 refers to the holy food, the bread on the table in the temple. The bread of the Presence signifies Christ as our life supply (John 6:35, 57). In a more particular way, it signifies Christ as the food for God’s priests, since only priests were qualified to be in the Holy Place. Today all believers in Christ are priests, and in Him as the real temple we may enjoy Him as the holy food.
On the table of the bread of the Presence twelve loaves of bread were displayed. The number twelve signifies eternal completion and perfection. Christ is our eternal bread, and our enjoyment of Him as the bread of Presence, the holy food, is eternal.
To the children of Israel the temple was a great thing, and the Sabbath was a great matter. But One came on the scene who was so great that He could declare that He was greater than the temple and assert that He was Lord of the Sabbath. He boldly said to the Pharisees, “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath” (Matt. 12:8).
In Matthew 12:6 there is a type-fulfilling change from the temple to the person of the Lord Jesus. Now in verse 8 there is a right-asserting change from the Sabbath to the Lord of the Sabbath. As the Lord of the Sabbath, Christ had the right to change the regulations concerning the Sabbath. He could do whatever He liked on the Sabbath, and whatever He did was justified by Himself. He was above all rituals and regulations, and since He was present, no attention should have been paid to such things.
The Lord’s word, “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath,” indicates His deity in His humanity. He, the Son of Man, was the very God who ordained the Sabbath, and He had the right to change what He had ordained concerning the Sabbath. It is in His humanity that Christ, the Son of Man, is Lord of the Sabbath.
Since the Lord is the Lord of the Sabbath, He has the full right to annul it, just as He had the full right to ordain it. Furthermore, the Lord Himself is the rest, the Sabbath, to us. Because we have Him as our rest and we are resting in Him all the time, the ritual of keeping the Sabbath is no longer needed. In Him and with His presence such a ritual is spontaneously annulled.
