"To You It Has Been Given to See"

The mornings this week have been delightfully occupied with a low-stress, confidence-boosting Greek translation class.  Armed with our Greek readers’ edition New Testaments and a couple of translation aids, the professor, the other student, and I read selected passages from the New Testament .  By Friday, we will have translated [fut pft act ind] selections from every New Testament author except Jude.  Part of the beauty of the class has been seeing connections between passages I wouldn’t have imaged were connected, such as Matthew 13 and I Peter 1.

Matthew 13:10-17

And the disciples, approaching him, said to Him, "Why do You speak to them in parables?"  He answered and said to them, "Because it has been given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given….For this reason I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor understand.  And the prophecy of Isaiah has come true in them, saying: ‘Hearing you will hear and never ever understand, and seeing you will see and never ever perceive.  For the hearts of this people are insensitive, their ears are hard of hearing, and their eyes are closed: Lest they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn, and I would heal them.’  But blessed are your eyes for they see, and your ears for they hear.  For truly, I say to you that many prophets and righteous ones longed to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.” [author’s translation]

The parable of the soils and the interpretation of the parable of the soils bracket this paragraph.  The different types of soils represent different kinds of people, some to whom it was given to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven and some to whom it was not given to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven.  We can see examples of these two types of people in Matthew.  The disciples do not initially understand Christ’s teaching that He will die and rise again, but as He continues to explain His words to them, they understand that He will die for sin and rise again.  They were able to understand Christ’s teaching because God had given them sight and hearing.  In contrast, the Pharisees listened a great deal to Christ’s words, but never saw or heard what He was saying because God had not given them sight or hearing.

Christ uses a play on words with see and hear.  Through most of the paragraph, those who don’t see and hear are not God’s people.  The disciples are different because they are God’s people who see and hear.  However, in the final sentence of the paragraph, Jesus speaks of sight and hearing in a technical sense meaning to see the fulfillment of what was promised in the past.  The prophets did not see the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven, not because they did not believe them, but because they did not see it happen during their lifetime.  They believed that God would provide a sacrifice for sin, but they did not see it happen.  The disciples see and hear not only in the sense that they understand mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven, but also in the sense that they see the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven fulfilled. This kind of sight and hearing was desired but never experienced by God’s people in the Old Testament. 

Roughly 30 years later, one of the seeing and hearing disciples, Peter, wrote these words:

“Concerning which salvation, the  prophets, having prophesied, sought out and inquired concerning the grace which is for you, trying to find out at what time and in what circumstances the spirit of Christ in them was predicting the suffering for Christ and the subsequent glories.  To the prophets it was revealed that they were not serving themselves but you….” [I Peter 1:10-12, author’s translation]

Peter comforts the suffering believers by reminding them of their salvation.  This salvation, he explains, was something that the prophets tried very hard to understand.  They desired to know when and how Christ would suffer and be glorified.  But, in God’s plan, the prophets were ministering to God’s people in the future who would understand.  The prophets longed to see and hear what the disciples saw and heard, the fulfillment of the prophecies of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Here we are: New Covenant believers who are blessed with an understanding of God’s plan that the prophets only dreamed of.  Look what God has opened our eyes to!  See how much of His plan He has shown to us!  Are we not greatly blessed?  And ought we not to praise the Father for opening our eyes?