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In Matthew 17:24-26 Christ is revealed as the Son of God. Verse 24 says, “When they came to Capernaum, those who take up the temple tax came to Peter and said, Does not your Teacher pay the temple tax?” To this question Peter said, “Yes” (v. 25a). The temple tax was a Jewish poll tax for the temple, equal to half a shekel (Exo. 30:12-16; 38:26). Peter had received the revelation concerning Christ’s being the Son of God (Matt. 16:16-17), and he had seen the vision of the Son of God (17:5). But here, in application, he was put to the test by the temple-tax gatherers’ question. He failed in his answer by forgetting the revelation he had received and the vision he had seen. He forgot that the Lord was the Son of God who did not need to pay the temple tax for His Father’s house.
When Peter came into the house, “Jesus anticipated him, saying, What do you think, Simon? From whom do the kings of the earth receive custom or poll tax, from their sons or from strangers? And when he said, From strangers, Jesus said to him, So then the sons are free” (vv. 25b-26). The sons of kings are always free from paying custom or poll tax. The temple tax was not a tax paid to the secular government. It was collected for the purpose of meeting the expenses of the temple of God, God’s house on earth. According to Exodus 30 and 38, every Israelite had to pay a half shekel to care for the Lord’s house. Because Jesus is the Son of God, there was no need for Him to pay this tax. When the Lord Jesus said that the sons are free, He was indicating that He, as the Son of God, was free from paying the temple tax.
The Son of God frees the believers from the obligation of keeping the law. Apart from Christ, the Son of God, we are under the obligation to keep the law. But since we now have the Son of God and are in Him, He sets us free from the obligation of the law.
Galatians 2:4b and 5:1 speak of the believers’ freedom from the law. In Galatians 2:4b Paul refers to “our freedom which we have in Christ Jesus.” Freedom here is freedom from the bondage of the law. Because we are free in Christ, we are no longer obligated to the law and its ordinances, practices, and regulations. Those who try to keep the law place themselves under slavery and thus serve the law as slaves. The Son of God has freed us from all such obligation.
In 5:1 Paul says, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not be entangled with a yoke of slavery again.” The freedom here also denotes freedom from the slavery of the law. Christ has set us free through His redeeming death and life-imparting resurrection that we may enjoy this freedom and grace. To “stand fast” is to stand fast in the freedom from the slavery of the law, not deviating from Christ. The Greek word here translated entangled may also be rendered “held ensnared.” To deviate from Christ to the law is to be entangled or held ensnared. The “yoke of slavery” is the bondage of law, which makes the law-keepers slaves under a binding yoke. Christ, the Son of God, has set us free from this yoke.
It is by being in Christ as sons of God that the believers are freed from the obligation of the law. We are sons of God in Christ, the Son of God. Because we are in Him, we are freed from the law.
Galatians 3:26 and 27 indicate that the believers are sons of God by being in Christ. “You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” To believe is to believe into Christ (John 3:16), and to be baptized is to be baptized also into Christ. Faith in Christ brings us into Christ and makes us one with Christ, in whom is the sonship. We must be identified with Christ through faith so that in Him we may be sons of God. By both faith and baptism we have been immersed into Christ; we have thus put on Christ; and we have become identified with Him. We and Christ have been joined in a marvelous organic union. Because of this union, we are sons of God.
The Lord Jesus Christ is the One into whose name the believers are gathered together. Concerning this, Matthew 18:20 says, “Where there are two or three gathered into My name, there am I in their midst.” The Lord Jesus gathers us not in His name but into His name. In the principle of the New Testament, the name denotes the person. Since the name is the person, to be gathered into the Lord’s name is to be gathered into the Lord Himself. Furthermore, the name of the Lord Jesus is very much linked to the Holy Spirit. Actually, the Spirit is the reality of the Lord’s name. The Lord’s name denotes His person, and the reality of the Lord’s person is the Spirit. This means that to be gathered into the name of the Lord, that is, into the Lord Himself, is to be gathered into the Spirit.
Our being gathered together by the Lord into His name is for the purpose of meeting. The basic principle of the meetings of the church is that the meetings are a gathering of the believers by the Lord into His name. The most crucial thing in the believers’ meeting is to be gathered into the Lord’s name. Because we are the Lord’s and have been saved by His name, we should gather only in that name and meet only in that name. We must not gather into and meet in any other name.
For the meetings we need to be gathered out of so many other things into the Lord’s name, into His person. We especially need to be brought out of the self. We cannot be gathered together into the Lord’s name if we stay in the self. For every church meeting we need the Lord to bring us out of everything other than Himself and to gather us together into His name.
Matthew 18:20 says that where there are two or three gathered into the Lord’s name, He is in their midst. The Lord Jesus gathers us into His name so that we may enjoy His presence in our midst. His presence is our enjoyment. Whenever we are gathered into the Lord’s name, into His person, we enjoy His presence in a special way, and His presence brings us enlightenment, grace, supply, and all kinds of blessing.
In Matthew 21:1-11 Christ is presented as the King, in particular, as the meek King. Shortly before the end of His life, the Lord Jesus entered Jerusalem as the King. Even though the people despised Him and rejected Him, He came to them as the King.
Verse 5 says, “‘Say to the daughter of Zion, Behold, your King is coming to you, meek and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, a foal of a beast of burden.’” This signifies the humble and lowly state in which the Lord Jesus was willing to be, for the donkey and the colt together give an impression of meekness and humility. The heavenly King did not come with haughty splendor but with gentle, humble meekness.
The presence of the colt testified that the Lord Jesus did not come to Jerusalem to fight or to compete. Rather, He was meek and lowly. This, I believe, was the impression that He wanted to convey to the people. Yes, the Lord Jesus was the heavenly King, but He did not have the intention to come as a great King fighting or competing with others. He came as a meek, lowly King who did not fight against anyone or compete with anyone.
Matthew 21:9 says, “The crowds who went before Him and those who followed cried out, saying, Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” The Hebrew word hosanna means “save now” (Psa. 118:25). The title Son of David was the royal title of the meek, lowly King. In their warm welcome of the heavenly King, the people shouted out a quotation from Psalm 118: “Blessed is He who comes in the name of Jehovah” (v. 26). According to this psalm, only the One who came in the name of the Lord was qualified to be praised in this way. Thus, the spontaneous praise of the people sovereignly indicated that this meek King did not come in His own name but in the name of Jehovah. (Here Lord equals Jehovah.) Those who welcomed the Lord Jesus as the King indicated through their praise that He was the One sent by the Lord, thus the One who came in the name of the Lord.
In Matthew 21:42 and 43 we see that Christ is the cornerstone of God’s building. In verse 42 Jesus said to the Jewish leaders, “Have you never read in the Scriptures, ‘The stone which the builders rejected, this has become the head of the corner. This was from the Lord, and it is marvelous in our eyes’?” The stone here is Christ for God’s building (Isa. 28:16; Zech. 3:9; 1 Pet. 2:4). Christ is not only the foundation stone (Isa. 28:16) and the topstone (Zech. 4:7) but also the cornerstone. In Matthew 21:42 Christ is referred to as the cornerstone, not as the foundation, because the emphasis here is on the cornerstone that joins the two main walls: the wall of the Jewish believers and the wall of the Gentile believers.
The builders in Matthew 21:42 are the Jewish leaders, who were supposed to work on God’s building. The Lord’s word here unveiled the Jewish leaders’ rejection of Him and God’s honoring of Him for the building of His habitation among His people on earth. When the Jewish builders rejected Christ, they rejected Him as the cornerstone which joins the Jews and the Gentiles for the building of God’s house.
Whereas Christ was rejected by the Jewish builders, He is trusted by the church for the producing of fruit. This is indicated by the Lord’s word in Matthew 21:43. “Therefore I say to you that the kingdom of God shall be taken from you and shall be given to a nation producing its fruit.” This nation is the church, which trusts in the Lord as the cornerstone (1 Pet. 2:6).
In Matthew 23:37 the Lord Jesus likens Himself to a hen.
In verse 37 the Lord, speaking to Jerusalem, says, “How often I desired to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!” It has always been God Himself who cared for Jerusalem, like a bird fluttering over her young (Isa. 31:5; Deut. 32:11-12). Hence, when the Lord spoke these words, He was indicating that He was God Himself. The Lord is like a loving bird, fluttering, brooding, over her young.
Often the Lord desired to gather the children of Jerusalem together, but they were not willing. As He was declaring a final word to them, He was still like a loving hen, stretching out her wings to brood over the little ones. But they were not willing to be gathered under His wings.
Although the Lord was rejected by the Jews, He is received by the believers.
At the end of the Gospel of Matthew, a book on the kingdom of the heavens, the Lord Jesus presents Himself as the One given all authority in heaven and on earth (Matt. 28:18-20). Matthew 28:18 says, “Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.” In His divinity as the only begotten Son of God, the Lord had authority over all. However, in His humanity as the Son of Man to be the King of the heavenly kingdom, all authority in heaven and on earth had to be given to Him after His resurrection.
The Lord’s being given all authority is for the believers to disciple all the nations, baptizing them into the Triune God. In 28:19 and 20a the Lord Jesus tells us, “Go therefore and disciple all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have I commanded you.” Because all authority had been given to Him, the heavenly King sent His disciples to go and disciple the nations. They go with His authority to disciple the nations. To disciple the nations is to make the heathen the kingdom people for the establishment of God’s kingdom, which is the church, even today, on earth.
The believers have not yet fulfilled adequately the commandment, the charge, given by the Lord Jesus in verse 19. To bring people to Christ and to make them believers is one thing, but to disciple them is another thing. Among Christians today we can see the making of sinners into believers, but we cannot see much discipling of the nations. The Lord, however, has commanded us to disciple the nations, to disciple the Gentiles. To disciple others is to make them genuine subjects of the heavenly kingdom. This is the goal that we want to carry out in our practice of the God-ordained way. Our goal is not simply to bring sinners to the Lord so that they may be saved and become believers. Our aim is to follow the Lord’s charge to disciple people, to make them the proper subjects of the heavenly kingdom.
If we are to disciple the nations, we must baptize those who receive our gospel preaching into the name, the person, of the Triune God. The Lord charges us to baptize the believing sinners into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Since the name signifies the person, to baptize the believers into the name of the Triune God is to baptize them into the person of the Triune God, into the living person of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, so that they may have an organic union with the Triune God. When we baptize others, we are actually putting them into the Triune God.
After charging us to disciple the nations, baptizing them into the Triune God, the Lord Jesus goes on to say, “Behold, I am with you all the days until the consummation of the age” (v. 20b). Christ, the heavenly King, is Emmanuel, God with us (Matt. 1:23). Here He promises to be with us until the consummation of the age, that is, until the end of this age, which will be the time of His parousia (coming).
When we go and disciple the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, we enjoy the Lord’s presence all the days. We will enjoy His presence every day until the consummation of the age. As we approach the consummation of the age, we enjoy the presence of the Lord Jesus, the One who is the embodiment of the Triune God.
