6:20-26 Here begins a discourse of Christ, most of which is also found in Mt 5; 7. But some think that this was preached at another time and place. All believers that take the precepts of the gospel to themselves, and live by them, may take the promises of the gospel to themselves, and live upon them. Woes are denounced against prosperous sinners as miserable people, though the world envies them. Those are blessed indeed whom Christ blesses, but those must be dreadfully miserable who fall under his woe and curse! What a vast advantage will the saint have over the sinner in the other world! and what a wide difference will there be in their rewards, how much soever the sinner may prosper, and the saint be afflicted here!

Verse 22. - Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man's sake. An onlook into the yet distant future. These words would be repeated by many a brave confessor in the days when persecution, at the hands of a far stronger and more far-reaching government than that of Jerusalem, should be the general lot of his followers. We find from pagan writers of the next age that Christians were charged with plotting every vile and detestable crime that could be conceived against man-. kind (see, for instance, the historian Tacitus, 'Annal.,' 15:44; Suetonius, 'Nero.,' 16).

Blessed are ye when men shall hate you,.... For the sake of Christ, and his Gospel:

and when they shall separate you from their company; either from civil conversation with them, as if they were Gentiles and uncircumcised persons; or from their religious assemblies, and so may have respect to that sort of excommunication in use, among the Jews, called or "separation": by which persons were not only excluded from the congregation, but from all civil society and commerce: such a person might not sit nearer to another than four cubits, and this continued for thirty days; and if not discharged then, he continued thirty more (t):

and shall reproach you: as heretics, apostates, and enemies to the law of Moses, as the Jews did reproach the Christians;

and cast out your name as evil; or "as of evil men": as the Syriac and Arabic versions render it: this may have respect to the greater sorts of excommunication, used among them, called "Shammatha" and "Cherem", by which a person was accursed, and devoted to destruction; so that our Lord's meaning is, that the should be esteemed and treated as the worst of men, and stigmatized in the vilest manner they were capable of:

for the son of man's sake; not for any immorality committed by them, but only for professing and, preaching that the Messiah was come in the flesh, and that Jesus of Nazareth was he; and that he who was the son of man, according to his human nature, was, the Son of God according to his divine nature.

(t) Vid. Maimon. Talmud Tora, c. 7. sect. 4, 5, 6.

22. separate you—whether from their Church, by excommunication, or from their society; both hard to flesh and blood.

for the Son of man's sake—Compare Mt 5:11, "for My sake"; and immediately before, "for righteousness' sake" (Lu 6:10). Christ thus binds up the cause of righteousness in the world with the reception of Himself.

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