Matthew Chapter 19 verse 25 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 25. - Exceedingly amazed. The stern teaching of vers. 23 and 24 thoroughly dismayed and perhaps offended them. Temporal prosperity had in their Law been held forth as the reward of righteousness and obedience, a foretaste of future happiness. They must unlearn this principle. Here, as they understood it, was a doctrine novel, unheard of, unnatural! Fancy the astonishment that would be displayed nowadays if such a sentiment were solemnly propounded in the Stock Exchange, the bank, the market! The apostles could not minimize its import, or say that it might suit other days and other states of society, but was inapplicable to their age and nation. We can do this in the case of many seemingly stringent requirements of the gospel; but they accepted the announcement in its full and simple meaning, and asked in sorrowful wonder, Who then can be saved? If the way to heaven is barred to the rich man, how shall the poor pass therein? The difficulty seemed to apply to everybody. All who are not rich are hoping and struggling to become rich, and therefore fall under the same category. If the apostles thought not of themselves in this question, they were grieved at the reflection that, under the circumstances, the majority of mankind were recklessly endangering their eternal salvation. With their views of a temporal kingdom, the apostles probably were thinking of their own prospects.

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(25) Who then can be saved?--There is an almost child-like na?vete in the question thus asked by the disciples. They, whether among their own people or among strangers, had found the desire of wealth to be the universal passion. Even they themselves, when they had forsaken their earthly goods, had done so (as Peter's question showed but too plainly, Matthew 19:27) as with a far-sighted calculation. They were counting on outward riches in that kingdom as well as outward glory. And now they heard what seemed to them a sweeping condemnation, excluding all who possessed, and, by implication, all who sought after, riches from the kingdom. The feeling which thus showed itself in the disciples has, curiously enough, affected the text of the narrative in St. Mark. What seems an explanatory and softened statement, "How hardly shall they that trust in riches enter into the kingdom of God!" (Mark 10:24), is not found in the best MSS. The omission may have been an accidental error of the copyists, but it is scarcely probable; and its absence from St. Matthew and St. Luke, not less than that it is not our Lord's usual method to soften or explain His teaching, leads to the conclusion that a marginal note, added by some one who felt as the disciples felt, has here found its way into the text.