“By What Authority?”
“BY WHAT AUTHORITY?”
MATTHEW 21:23-32
Unbelief blinds us and steals the truth from us.
While Jesus spent the nights in Bethany, he spent the days teaching in the temple area. The “chief priests and the elders” would be members of the Sanhedrin, the supreme court of Israel (cf. 26:3,47; 27:1-3,12-20); in particular, the ultimate responsibility for maintaining order within the sacred precincts lay with the captain of the temple, who was a member of one of the chief-priestly families and ranked next to the high priest. Hence the question of 21:23, which related not only to his teaching and healing (21:15) but perhaps especially to his expulsion of the traders (21:12). But what answer would have satisfied them? If spiritual authority—the kind of authority by which the prophets spoke and acted—is not recognized as self-authenticating, no amount of argument, not even a sign from heaven (cf. 12:38; 16:1), will validate it. The questioners perhaps suspected that he did these things because he claimed to be the Messiah, but at this stage he does not voice such a claim. Instead, he asks them what they thought of the authority of John the Baptist—was it derived from God or self-assumed? The true answer, of course, was “From God”—and even more evidently this was the true answer regarding the authority of him whose forerunner John was. But they would not commit themselves to this course of reasoning and so their question remained unanswered.
The next episode, in which Jesus asks the opening question, also involves an appeal to John. (The variant, but inferior, reading in 21:31, where the answer given is “The last,” may point to a society in which politeness is more important than obedience.) John’s “way of righteousness” (21:32) required “fruit that befits repentance” (3:8), and this was produced by those who at first said “1 will not” (the tax collectors and harlots) rather than the religious leaders who undertook to do God’s will but did not carry out their undertaking. Is there a counterpart to this situation in our own religious life?