Bible Truth #156 - Matthew 23:37

Matthew 23:37

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.

This passage is used by those who believe in free will, along with their misunderstanding of 1 Timothy 2:4 and 2 Peter 3:9, as evidence that it is God's desire to save every person who ever lived. This is also despite the fact that their interpretation contradicts hundreds of other passages.

When determining what a passage of Scripture is telling us one of the first things that must be established is its context. The words of our Lord here come right in the middle of the proclamation of judgment upon the Jewish leaders. Matthew 23 contains the strongest condemnations of the Scribes and Pharisees in all of the Gospels. Now instead of simply stating a conclusion without a scintilla of exegesis, let's take an exegetical look at this passage.

Who is Jerusalem? It is certainly not individual Jews because Jesus is condemning the Jewish leaders and HAS been condemning the Jewish leaders throughout practically the entire 23rd chapter of Matthew. It is to the Jewish leaders that God sent prophets; it was the Jewish leaders who killed the prophets and those sent to them; (it was the Jewish leaders that crucified Jesus); Jesus speaks of “your children,” differentiating those to whom He is speaking from those that the Lord desired to gather together. Proper conclusion: the context refers to the Jewish leaders, scribes and Pharisees.

An important point to consider is that the ones Jesus "often desired to gather together" are NOT the ones who "were not willing." Jesus is speaking to the leaders about their children that they, the leaders, would not allow Him to gather. Jesus was not longing to gather the leaders but their children. That alone renders the passage meaningless for the Arminian trying to establish the heretical doctrine of "free-willism." Verse 37 then is speaking to the same issues Christ raised earlier in Matthew 23:13:

"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men's faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.

As with ALL men who are lost, of course the Jewish leaders were not willing because that is the natural state of man. He is spiritually dead (Ephesians 2:1, 2:5, Colossians 2:13), every imagination and thought he has is only evil, continually (Genesis 6:5), he will not come into the Light (John 3:20), he does not understand what Jesus says because he is not of his Father God but of his father the devil (John 8:43-44), he is an enemy of God (Romans 8:7), he can not please God which includes the fact that he can not believe because believing would please God (Romans 8:8), and he understands nothing from the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 2:14).

Bottom Line - Jesus wanted to gather the children (individual Jews) but the Jewish leaders were not willing. However, did the attitude of the Jewish leaders stop God from saving those He had chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4)? NO!