Forcing One’s Way into the Kingdom

Loving money more than God, many of the first-century Pharisees did not think that Jesus was talking sense when He said that we must love the Lord more than we love worldly goods (Luke 16:14–15). Their fault was particularly egregious considering the time that they were living in—namely, the advent of the blessed kingdom of God. That thought seems to lie behind Jesus’ teaching in today’s passage, where the response of the Pharisees is implicitly contrasted with the responses of others to the preaching of Christ.

Jesus says that “the Law and the Prophets were until John”—that is, John the Baptist. Here, “the Law and the Prophets” serves as a shorthand for the old covenant era, the period of history governed by the law of Moses and the Old Testament prophets that was characterized by sin and the failure of the covenant community as a whole to obey God in righteousness. God never intended this era to last forever; it was in place only until the coming of Jesus to fulfill the divine promise of salvation (Gal. 3:15–29). As the herald of Jesus, John the Baptist served as the last prophet of the old covenant era and was really a transitional figure between the old and new covenants. With John’s coming, the old covenant era was decisively drawing to a close.

Immediately after John’s ministry, Jesus came to preach the kingdom of God. Men and women were responsible to repent and trust in Yahweh, the covenant Lord of Israel, seeking to follow His law before Jesus came, but our Savior’s coming made even more culpable those who profess to serve God but in reality do not (Luke 10:1–15). The love of money that the Pharisees evidenced was unacceptable under the old covenant (Prov. 28:25) and even less acceptable under the new.

The jeering response of the Pharisees to the preaching of Jesus contrasts with the response of everyone else who “forces his way into” the kingdom (Luke 16:16). This is not a negative image but a positive one that considers how believers will let nothing stop them from coming into the kingdom of Jesus Christ. The image is similar to the parables of Jesus that show that the kingdom is so valuable that people will sell all that they own to possess it (Matt. 13:44–46). They will not be dissuaded from becoming a citizen of the kingdom by faith. Cyril of Alexandria comments on our Lord’s saying, “Whoever hears and loves the sacred message takes it by force. This means that he uses all his eagerness and strength in his desire to enter within the hope.”