Post by Lee on Mar 19, 2014 2:48:53 GMT
Why should Christ reprove in the disciples what was commendable in Elijah?
This problem resolves itself into a simple question of fitness of time. For everything there is a season and a time. Elijah, as the appointed avenger of a nation’s apostacy, was in place in imprecating destruction on a band of troops sent to arrest his work. Jesus, as the appointed treader of “the winepress of Jehovah’s anger” in “the day of vengeance and the year of recompenses,” will be equally in place when “he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked;” but that will not be till the day when “he shall be revealed from heaven in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.” That time had not come when he walked through Israel’s coasts as a suffering teacher of righteousness, and a healer of diseases, in preparation for the final service of meekness and love in laying down his life for the sins of the world. The disciples, on the contrary, “thought the kingdom of God should immediately appear,” and were busy sometimes speculating on who of them should fill the highest station in “the execution of the judgment written.”
That Jesus should rebuke them is perfectly intelligible in the circumstances: “Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of.” That is, they did not understand the spirit applicable to that phase of the work to which they had been called, which was one, not of executing judgment, but of offering salvation:—“The Son of Man is not come to destroy men’s lives but to save them.” The “spirit” pertaining to such a work was that of “giving place to wrath,” “enduring grief,” “suffering wrongfully,” threatening not when abused; reviling not again when reviled, rather turning the cheek to the smiter, than calling fire from heaven upon him—as was afterwards abundantly indicated by the teaching of the Spirit of God in the apostolic writings. This does not preclude the divinely revealed determination, that when the time arrives, for which all this patient submission to evil is a preliminary discipline, the saints will take the sword in hand and inflict long-slumbering retribution, and break in pieces the institutions of the present evil world and rule the nations with a rod of iron.
Roberts, R. (1983). Nazareth Revisted
This problem resolves itself into a simple question of fitness of time. For everything there is a season and a time. Elijah, as the appointed avenger of a nation’s apostacy, was in place in imprecating destruction on a band of troops sent to arrest his work. Jesus, as the appointed treader of “the winepress of Jehovah’s anger” in “the day of vengeance and the year of recompenses,” will be equally in place when “he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked;” but that will not be till the day when “he shall be revealed from heaven in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.” That time had not come when he walked through Israel’s coasts as a suffering teacher of righteousness, and a healer of diseases, in preparation for the final service of meekness and love in laying down his life for the sins of the world. The disciples, on the contrary, “thought the kingdom of God should immediately appear,” and were busy sometimes speculating on who of them should fill the highest station in “the execution of the judgment written.”
That Jesus should rebuke them is perfectly intelligible in the circumstances: “Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of.” That is, they did not understand the spirit applicable to that phase of the work to which they had been called, which was one, not of executing judgment, but of offering salvation:—“The Son of Man is not come to destroy men’s lives but to save them.” The “spirit” pertaining to such a work was that of “giving place to wrath,” “enduring grief,” “suffering wrongfully,” threatening not when abused; reviling not again when reviled, rather turning the cheek to the smiter, than calling fire from heaven upon him—as was afterwards abundantly indicated by the teaching of the Spirit of God in the apostolic writings. This does not preclude the divinely revealed determination, that when the time arrives, for which all this patient submission to evil is a preliminary discipline, the saints will take the sword in hand and inflict long-slumbering retribution, and break in pieces the institutions of the present evil world and rule the nations with a rod of iron.
Roberts, R. (1983). Nazareth Revisted