Matthew 10:41

Matthew THE GREATEST IN THE KINGDOM, AND THEIR REWARDMatthew 10:41 - Matthew 10:42 . There is nothing in these words to show whether they refer to the present or to the future. We shall probably not go wrong if we regard them as having reference to both. For all godliness has ‘promise of the life that now is, as well as of that which is to come,’ and ‘ in keeping God’s commandments,’ as well as for keeping them, ‘there is great reward,’ a reward realised in the present, even although Death holds the keys of the treasure-house in which the richest rewards are stored. No act of holy obedience is here left without foretastes of joy, which, though they be but ‘brooks by the way,’ contain the same water of life which hereafter swells to an ocean. Some people tell us that it is defective morality in Christianity to bribe men to be good by promising them Heaven, and that he who is actuated by such a motive is selfish. Now that fantastic and overstrained objection may be very simply answered by two considerations: self-regard is not selfishness, and Christianity does not propose the future reward as the motive for goodness. The motive for goodness is love to Jesus Christ; and if ever there was a man who did acts of Christian goodness only for the sake of what he would get by them, the acts were not Christian goodness, because the motive was wrong.

But it is a piece of fastidiousness to forbid us to reinforce the great Christian motive, which is love to Jesus Christ, by the thought of the recompense of reward. It is a stimulus and an encouragement of, not the motive for, goodness. This text shows us that it is a subordinate motive, for it says that the reception of a prophet, or of a righteous man, or of ‘one of these little ones,’ which is rewardable, is the reception ‘in the name of’ a prophet, a disciple, and so on, or, in other words, is the recognising of the prophet, or the righteous man, or the disciple for what he is, and because he is that, and not because of the reward, receiving him with sympathy and solace and help. So, with that explanation, let us look at these very remarkable words of our text. I. The first thing which I wish to observe in them is the three classes of character which are dealt with-’prophet,’ ‘righteous man,’ ‘these little ones.’ Now the question that I would suggest is this: Is there any meaning in the order in which these are arranged? If so, what is it? Do we begin at the bottom, or at the top? Have we to do with an ascending or with a descending scale? Is the prophet thought to be greater than the righteous man, or less? Is the righteous man thought to be higher than the little one, or to be lower? The question is an important one, and worth considering.