Matthew 23:34-36: His Blood: Our Guilt and Our Salvation

“…I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify…” Jesus in Matthew 23:34

 “If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” (Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago: 1918-1956)

Jesus continues in His revealing of the hearts of the scribes and Pharisees.   Jesus receives no points for political correctness. Rather, He peers deeply into human hearts and proclaims the truth about man.  Jesus can do this; He is the Judge who will preside over the final judgment (Revelation 20:11-15).   We as humans must take a backseat when it comes to judging the hearts of others.  Discern, yes; judge, no.

Jesus says, “Therefore I send you  prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town” (v. 34).    This is fulfilled with John the Baptist (Matthew 14:10) and in the Book of Acts:  Peter and the Apostles (5:40), Stephen (7:60), the church (9:2), James (12:2), Paul (14:19, 2 Corinthians 11:23-27), etc.  And it will be fulfilled when they deliver up the King of Glory to be crucified. 

Also, notice the Christology of Jesus’ words “I send you” (v. 34).  If our Lord was a mere man, He could not have uttered those words.   Yet our Lord reveals He is beyond human, beyond space and time, with those simple words:  I send you.

Even though the scribes and Pharisees thought they were so righteous that they would never shed blood (23:30), they were guilty of the blood of a whole generation of prophets, including the Prophet, Priest and King.   Therefore on them will come all the righteous blood shed on earth (v. 35).   From A to Z, from Abel to Zechariah (v. 35), from the first murder (Genesis 4:8-11) to the last murder recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures (2 Chronicles 24:20-22), they are guilty.  

The phrase son of Barachiah (v. 35) is a difficulty since the Zechariah who was recorded as murdered in the court of the house of the Lord (2 Chronicles 24:21) is listed as the son of Jehoiada, not Barachiah.   A different Zechariah is recorded as the son of Barachiah (Zechariah 1:1).   Bible scholars have many possible solutions to this difficulty.   One of them is that Zechariah was a popular name in Biblical times.  Unger lists twenty-nine different Old Testament characters that had the name” Zechariah” (The New Unger’s Bible Dictionary, pp. 1380-1381).  Also, one of the oldest and most reliable manuscripts of Matthew (i.e., Sinaiticus) omits son of Barachiah, giving possible evidence of a later scribal error. 

And just days later when the people of Jerusalem cried, “His blood be upon us and on our children” (Matthew 27:25), they prophesied against themselves.  For a generation later the Roman siege of Jerusalem killed over 1 million people, according to the Jewish historian Josephus.   Those things did come upon this generation (v. 36), just as Jesus said.

Rembrandt’s (1606-1669) masterpiece, The Raising of the Cross, hangs in the museum Alte Pinakothek in Münich.   This painting depicts the crucifixion of Christ.  Interestingly out of place, Rembrandt painted into this picture a man in a blue painter’s hat raising the cross.   Francis Schaeffer in How Should We Then Live?  (p. 98) explains:  “That man is Rembrandt himself – a self-portrait.  He thus stated for all the world to see that his sins had sent Christ to the cross.” 

This passage from Matthew 23 has been the basis for much heretical hostility toward the Jewish people over the centuries.   But all of us are guilty of the blood of Jesus.   If we blame others for the crucifixion of Jesus without implicating ourselves, then we prove we are in darkness and outside of His salvation.   Like Rembrandt, may we all humble ourselves before the cross, realizing that His blood is on us.   As we acknowledge our culpability, His blood on us no longer condemns us; rather it justifies us before God (Romans 5:9).   What an awesome God we serve!

Rembrandt's "Raising of the Cross"