THE TWO SONS
“Repent, return, and live!
He who no penitent disdains
New heavens, new earth can give.
Simple obedience shall restore
Green fields and sunny skies;
And, hearkening to his voice, bring more
Than Eden to their eyes.”
28 But what think ye? A certain man had two sons; and he came to the first, and said, Son, go work to-day in my vineyard. 29 He answered and said, I will not: but afterward he repented, and went. 30 And he came to the second, and said likewise. And he answered and said, I go, sir: and went not. 31 Whether of them twain did the will of his father? They say unto him, The first. Jesus saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, That the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you. 32 For John came unto you in the way of righteousness, and ye believed him not: but the publicans and harlots believed him: and ye, when ye had seen it, repented not afterward, that ye might believe him.
MATT. 21:28–32.
The Saviour’s parables relate impartially a few circumstances which awaken the moral sense, and then leave the mind to its own conclusions. Our eyes, as we read them, are turned unawares upon our temper and behavior. We make the application for ourselves, where another would not be allowed to make it, and fix the guilt where it is due. The duties of self-examination and amendment are thus most skillfully and agreeably taught, and the divine instructions of our heavenly Teacher become the crucible in which our thoughts and affections may be poured, and from which they must issue refined and purified.
The peculiarity of our Lord’s teachings, just stated, comes forward with unusual prominence in the parable now before us. Look at the position he then occupied. The priests and the elders of the people, who were both authorized and bound to take cognizance of all religious pretensions, had asked Jesus, while he taught in the temple, as though he had not given sufficiently clear proof that his mission was from God, “By what authority doest thou these things? And who gave thee this authority?”
In answer to these questions, which were so unreasonable, the Saviour asked them, “Whence was the baptism of John? Was it from heaven or of men?”—a merely human work, or one with divine authority? The answer to this, according to the condition which was stated, would have, at the same time, furnished an answer to their own question.
They clearly foresaw that if they should admit the divine character of John’s baptism, they would lay themselves open to the charge of gross inconsistency in not having believed him, and in denying the Messiahship of Him whom he heralded. Equally well were they aware that if they should declare John’s baptism to have been of men, they would excite the multitude against themselves, inasmuch as the people held the Baptist for a prophet. They were, consequently, in a dilemma, and in the circumstances considered it better to say, “We cannot tell.”
This ignorance, however, which they avowed, was not real, but feigned for the occasion. The two possible cases lay open to their discernment, but in their depravity they could not bring themselves to give honor to the generally admitted truth. They uttered the opposite of what they both thought and felt; their internal thoughts and outward conduct were in opposition to each other, which is the essence of hypocrisy.
It therefore became necessary for our Lord to rebuke this mastervice of the priests, elders and Pharisees, and to exhibit to them the impurity of their hearts, notwithstanding the high pretensions to zeal and sanctity which they made. Such a rebuke was administered in this parable, and yet it was done in so tender a manner that, whilst those to whom it was directed would feel its power, they still would not be likely to despair of salvation.
Under the image of two sons of one father two great moral divisions of men are described, in one or other of which might be ranged almost all with whom our blessed Lord came in contact.
Go work. God assigns the sphere of our spiritual action and prescribes the nature of our employment. He calls us to our salvation-work.
Though it is true that “he worketh in us both to will and to do of his own good pleasure,” yet are we to remember that whilst he works in us, he also works by us. He saves us, but he effects our salvation by giving energy and application to our own powers. We are not to sit still or stand idle, but to work. The principle of life, light and influence is sovereign in its communication, yet it is a principle of action.
God has assigned us providential work. It has pleased him to make us the instruments of his goodness. We must “serve our generation according to his will.” We must care for the suffering, the poor, the fatherless, orphans, widows, the afflicted and the oppressed—all classes and conditions of men—to promote their bodily comfort, their mental improvement, and especially their spiritual welfare.
The command to work, it will be observed, was affectionate. Here was nothing harsh or tyrannical. The precept was given with authority, but it is the authority of a parent. He addresses him as his “Son,” and thus conveys the idea of relationship between them, as well as of community of interest. This endearing address indicates the fatherly affection of God with which he would exhort careless sinners to repentance.
Notice next the period of labor required: “Go work to-day.” The word to-day does not imply that God’s service is to be of limited duration, but conforms simply to what actually takes place in human affairs.
Nothing is more common than for the head of a family to say to his sons, Go and do such a piece of work to-day, and to-morrow do so and so. Daytime is working time. Life is the day for religious working. Jesus said, “I must work the works of Him that sent me while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.” As the day is divided into twelve hours, so life is distributed into different ages—childhood, youth, manhood, middle age, declining years, old age. Each period requires from us different duties or kinds of work. There are in life also different states and conditions—a single, a married state, that of children, parents, servants, masters, the condition of poverty or wealth, of dependence or power. And from these, too, arise various duties.
There are also different advantages, opportunities and means for acquiring knowledge and grace and becoming holy and useful, occasioning increased obligations. What a transient period is the day of life! How soon it passes away! How often interrupted and frequently curtailed by sudden and early death! How important that we should improve it, and improve it at once, for the great purpose for which it has been given!
In noticing the reception which the command of the father has, we shall consider separately the cases of the two sons, beginning with that of the second.
“And he answered, and said, I go, sir.” This answer he had ready, and it was sound in substance and smooth in form. It was a model answer from a son to his parent: “I go, sir”—without hesitation or complaint. “I am not sure,” says one, “that the father was overjoyed at the promptness and politeness of this reply: probably he had received as fair promises from the same quarter before, and seen them broken.
At all events, this young man’s fair word was a whited sepulchre; he did not obey his father. Whether he fell in with trivial companions on his way to the vineyard, and was induced to go with them in another direction, or thought the day too hot and postponed the labor till the morrow, I know not; but he said, and did not. It was profession without practice. The tender vine-shoots might trail on the ground for him till their fruit-buds were blackened; he would not put himself to the trouble of tying them up to the stakes, although the food of the family should be imperiled by his neglect.”
Among those whom this second son represents are those who have a warmth of natural feeling and a great susceptibility of impression, which make them promising subjects for any stirring and touching appeal. Such persons are easily excited, and both their fears and sympathies will readily answer to a powerful address or a sorrowful narrative.
They are not made of that harsh stuff which seems the predominant element in many men’s constitutions, but are yielding and malleable, as though the moral artificer might work them without difficulty into what shape he would. There are many who answer this description in every congregation. It cannot but be believed that when the minister puts forth all his earnestness in some appeal to the conscience these persons will accept the deliverance proposed by the gospel, with so much interest do they listen to all that is said. What is done by a faithful sermon is done also by providential dispensations when God addresses them through some affliction.
If we visit them when death has entered their households, we find nothing of the harshness and reserve of sullen grief, but all that openness to counsel and all that readiness to own the mercy of the judgment which seem indicative of such a softening of the heart as promises to issue in its genuine conversion. If we treat the chastisement under which they labor as a message from God, and translate it thus into common language, “Son, go work to-day in my vineyard,” we meet with no signs of reluctance, but rather with a ready assent that we give the true meaning, and with a frank resolution that God shall not speak in vain. But what do we see as we follow these excited listeners from the place of assembling and these subdued mourners from the scene of affliction?
Alas! how soon it is apparent that what is easily roused may be as easily lulled! The men who have been all attention to the preacher, and whom he seemed to have brought completely under command, so that they were ready to follow him whithersoever he would lead, settle back into their listlessness when the stimulant of the sermon is withdrawn; and those whom the fires of calamity appeared to have melted harden rapidly into their old constitution when time has somewhat damped the intenseness of the flame.
Those who are possessed of a good moral character, and trust in it, are represented by the second son. The Pharisees, to whom the parable had an application, were not, as many are accustomed to think, without a certain “righteousness.” By warning us that our “righteousness” must exceed theirs the Saviour implies that they had a righteousness of some sort. Their righteousness consisted in strict attention to the letter of God’s law and the observance of the outward parts of religion. They abstained from open acts of vice, and practiced strictly such religious duties as were open to man’s notice. They fasted often, they made long prayers, they were strict observers of the Sabbath. They were so punctual in the payment of the temple-dues that they “tithed even mint, rue, and all manner of herbs.” They made their offerings regularly at God’s altar; they gave much alms.
It is true, indeed, that their righteousness was in many respects deficient; it was external. They made void the moral law by their traditions, teaching that the mere letter of the law was all that men need attend to, without troubling themselves about its spiritual meaning. It was extremely partial. They made a selection among the divine precepts, and while they scrupulously obeyed some—and those chiefly of secondary importance—they systematically violated others, and those of prime importance. It was ostentatious. All they did was “to be seen of men;” an evil motive tainted all their religious and moral duties. Still, they established a high character for being righteous—so much so as to put to shame the lax and careless lives which too many professors of Christianity lead, and the neglect which is so common even of the letter of God’s commandments.
The scribes were looked up to by the Jewish people as the teachers of religious and moral duty, and the Pharisees were considered as the class which, in the most exemplary manner, reduced their lessons to practice. The highest idea which a carnal Jew could form of a religious man was a person who in his behavior conformed himself to the teaching of the scribes and to the example of the Pharisees. The first were considered as the best expounders of Scripture, the latter as the most illustrious patterns of holiness. It was a proverb among the Jews that if but two men were to enter the kingdom of heaven, the one would be a scribe and the other a Pharisee.
Now, in view of all this, what seemed more reasonable to expect than that the scribes and Pharisees would at once fall in with the divinely-appointed plan of salvation? Yet when John came to them in the way of righteousness, taught them the right way and showed them how a man can be righteous before God, they scornfully rejected the message and the mercy. As our Lord on a later occasion laid to their charge, “They said, and did not.”
These Pharisees have still, as to reliance upon works for salvation, their representatives on earth. We find them among those who are passing through life with an unblemished reputation, attentive to all the relative duties, taking generously the lead in efforts to ameliorate the condition of their fellows, and therefore, apparently, the most likely to identify themselves with God’s people, but who, all the while, have no consciousness of their own sinfulness, and therefore rest on their own works and not on Christ’s merits.
Let us consider now the case of the first son: “He answered and said, I will not, but afterward he repented, and went.”
The rudeness of this answer, the total absence of any attempt to excuse his disobedience, are both characteristic; he does not take the trouble to say, like those invited guests, “I pray thee have me excused,” but flatly refuses to go. It is probable that the husbandman had received a similar answer from the same quarter more than once before. This was not the first unseemly word which the young man had spoken to his father; neither himself nor his wickedness had grown to maturity in a day. The habit of dishonoring his parents had sprung from a seed of evil in his infancy, and grown with his growth until he and it had reached full stature.
“I will not.” No sooner does the son hear the command of his father than he thus answers and walks off, rebellious and insulting. To such a length of rudeness, insolence and presumption does sin sometimes carry men. Many persons, though not prepared to deny the reality of religion, yet live as if it were a falsehood or a fable. They scorn being identified with the atheist or infidel, and yet their life practically exhibits atheism or infidelity. They have cast off the shackles and restraints which a sense of their relation to God once imposed. They peremptorily “refuse Him that speaketh from heaven.” Their language is, “With our tongues will we prevail; our lips are our own; who is Lord over us?”
Who says this? Yonder swearer, who never opens his mouth but to express the abomination of his heart; that drunkard, whose insatiable appetite, like the horseleech, cries, “Give, give, and never saith, It is enough;” the fornicator, who lives in chambering and wantonness; the man who neglects all the ordinances of religion, who never calls upon the name of God, never hears his word, never honors his Sabbaths. These make no pretence to godliness, embarrass themselves with no formality, wear no disguise, use no hesitation. They openly show the image of their master impressed upon their foreheads. Actions speak louder than words, and nothing less than this is the dreadful language of their lives: “I will run the downward road; I am resolved to perish.”
What then? Must it be believed that over all such spreads a dark and dismal firmament, whose gloom is not broken by the twinkling of a single star of hope? Must it be accepted as a fixed fact that these distant and obstinate wanderers from God cannot, and never may, be brought back to him and crowned with his benediction? No! Even this son “afterward repented and went.” He came to himself; reflection returned. Looking back, he saw the old man lifting up his hands to Heaven, and then wiping his eyes from tears. He cried, “What have I done? Is he not my father? Has he suffered me to want any proof of tenderness which he could show me? Do I thus requite his kindness and love?
What was there unreasonable in the command I rejected? He that will not work should not eat. What is it for a son to work in a father’s vineyard? Is it not laboring for himself? Mine is the expectation. I will go.” And he did go. Nor was he satisfied merely with returning and confessing his offence. He proved his repentance; no sooner was he reclaimed than he was employed.
The same manifestation has often since been repeated. Caviling skeptics, scoffers, the openly profane, have heard and believed the gospel to the salvation of their souls. The chief of sinners have been brought to Christ—Zaccheus the tax-gatherer, the woman who was a sinner, the dying thief, the Corinthian converts, John Bunyan the swearing tinker, and myriads of like character and condition.
“Whether of them twain did the will of his father? They say unto him, The first.” The answer to this sharp question is all too easy. The light is stronger than is comfortable for those owl-eyed Pharisees, who were prowling about like night-birds in search of their prey. They cannot profess inability to solve this question, as they had done that other (ver. 27).
They could not but answer, “The first,” because, though the other was false and he rude, yet his actions were better than his words, and his latter end than his beginning. And this answer suggests to us a special characteristic in the relationship between God and man. When God commands man, it is not merely such a commandment as that if man fails in his obedience to it he may yet hope to change his Father’s purpose in issuing it. It is his will equally as his command, and it is at man’s peril that this will be neglected. Nothing but misery must follow such neglect.
No happiness is there but in submission to it. This view of repentance it is vastly important to observe. When the sinner truly repents before God, his mind is altered regarding this great truth. He had hitherto thought Jehovah very much such an one as himself. He measured the Infinite by his own puny standard. So it was a matter of indifference to him to pay much attention to this or that commandment, as, after all, disobedience to it might not involve so very much. But now he knows better. God’s commandment is his will, and he now knows that resistance to that will inevitably perils the interests of his soul for ever. His mind is not only changed as to the propriety of his fulfilling a duty imposed on him, but it is also changed so as to receive the conviction that there lies in that commandment such a potency and immutability of will that eternal life or eternal death are, and must be, the alternatives of reception or refusal.
The nature of true piety is obedience to the revealed will of God; and this obedience can be compensated by nothing else. The observance of all devout forms and solemnities, the most religious discourse, the most sanctimonious appearance, the most thorough and extensive acquaintance with Scripture, without this obedience is only a saying, but no true fear of God.
“Verily, I say unto you, That the publicans and harlots go into the kingdom of God before you.” “The publicans and harlots were excommunicated from the Jewish Church: the last word specializes the usual expression, sinners. They are represented by the first son. Their earlier relation to the requirements of the law and the prophets was a virtual no, which often, in the expression of unbelief, had become an actual no. But since the coming of John the Baptist they had repented.
The contrast to them is the Sanhedrin. By their hypocritical piety they had exhibited themselves as the obedient ones, yet with a boastful I will, sir, and with a contemptuous look upon the disobedient son. But they were the disobedient in relation to the Baptist and the Christ; they would not be influenced even by the example of the publicans’ repentance.”
It should be noted, however, that the words “go … before you” indicate that the door of hope was not yet shut upon those to whom they were addressed—that they were not yet irreversibly excluded from that kingdom; the others, indeed, had preceded them, but they might still follow if they would.
“For John came unto you in the way of righteousness”—taught you the right way, showed you how a man can be righteous before God, and was himself also a pattern of a holy life—“and ye believed him not”—were not made better by his ministry; “but the publicans and harlots believed him,” and were many of them thoroughly reformed; “and ye, when ye had seen it”—had witnessed this wondrous reformation—still remained obstinate and impenitent. Their repentance added greatly to the guilt of the Pharisees, for the very sight of these penitents ought to have convinced them of their own need of repentance.
There is no sin that hardens the heart so much as pride. Let us beware of it. It is Satan’s first-born. It possesses the wonderful faculty of occupying the space of any other sin which is cast out of the heart. Most of all, pride dreads the entrance of the Son of God into the heart. Then it knows its reign will be at an end. How it bars and bolts the doors of the heart against the rightful Owner! Even the word of God and good example are not able to overcome it.
And are we to regard the most worthless and despised men as patterns for imitation to the self-righteous and highly-esteemed Pharisees? God forbid that we should ever plead for wickedness or intimate that immorality is preferable to morality! Our Lord intended to establish no such principle by these examples. He does not view these things as they are in their own nature, but as they are frequently found in their accidental relations and consequences.
“And is it not undeniable,” asks an eminent divine, “that persons possessed of distinguishing privileges and moral endowments are too often filled with pride, wrapped up in self-righteousness, lulled to sleep by carnal security, deeming themselves safe from comparisons with those who are profligate? Are they not too often offended when told that they must be indebted for salvation to grace perfectly free and unmerited, that they must be accepted on the same terms with the most vile, and that, however these things may be in themselves, they afford them no ground of dependence, yield them no claims whereof they may glory before God?
An attempt to couch the eyes of those who say ‘We see,’ an offer of pardon to the innocent, a communication of alms to the wealthy, would only exasperate and disgust. But would this be the case with the blind, the guilty and the poor? It is comparatively easy to convince the more criminal—how can they deny the charge? to alarm them—how can they deny the danger? Having no armor of defence, they can sooner receive a wound which will make them cry for mercy.
Conscious that they have no righteousness of their own, they more readily admit that if saved at all it must be by grace. Having no shelter in which to hide, when they see the storm approaching they willingly flee for refuge to the hope set before them in the gospel.”
The Parables of Jesus
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