Before the Son of Man Comes

Among the most difficult texts of the New Testament to interpret are the words of Jesus that have to do with final judgment and the coming of the Son of Man in glory. Matthew 10:23, along with Matthew 24 and a few other texts in that gospel, have generated many different interpretations. These interpretations are worthy of consideration, but have been presented in this reflection rather than the sermon to keep things from getting bogged down in the details. The focus of this reflection is on the phrase, “before the Son of Man comes.”

To begin with, though, the immediate context ought to be considered, especially as it pertains to the wider project of gospel proclamation. In v22, Jesus warns his disciples that even their closest friends and relations will hate them on account of their union with Christ, but he also offers hope: “But the one who endures to the end will be saved.” This “end” is the end of that hatred and persecution that arises from the disciple’s close association with Jesus. Herman Ridderbos comments, “For many individual disciples, this [end] is connected with the end of their lives, and for the confessors of the Lord in general, [it is connected] with the end of the world: conflict will not stop before then.”[1]

That comment leads us to v23 and the difficult words that end that verse. While Jesus is clear enough that martyrdom or a grand final stand is not essential to the project of gospel proclamation, it is not clear what he means when he says to the Twelve that they will not finish the rounds of Israelite towns “before the Son of Man comes.” Ridderbos comments that this must be a reference to the second coming of Jesus in glory, since it would be difficult to call Jesus’ resurrection or the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, two other interpretive suggestions, the coming of the Son of Man. Because we have little evidence of the kind of persecution of the disciples described in the prior verses during the earthly ministry of Jesus, and yet these words are spoken in the context of preparing the Twelve for their participation in the project of gospel proclamation, the question, as expressed by Ridderbos, is this: “How must one understand the connection between the second coming of Christ and the flight of the disciples through Jewish lands?”[2] Of the many interpretations, a few are important:[3]

1.     Jesus’ words relate to an historical “coming,” as if Jesus would soon catch up with the disciples as they made their rounds preaching the gospel in Galilee. This view discounts the force of Jesus’ admonition to endure to the end in the prior verse, as discussed above.

2.     Jesus’ words refer to the resurrection or the outpouring the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, but, as noted above, the more natural understanding of this phrase is the second coming of Christ, which is strengthened by the warning in v22 to endure to the end.

3.     Jesus’ words refer to his second coming, but D.A. Carson rejects this, arguing that Jesus’ words are not a clear example of what is called prophetic perspective. See below, however, for further discussion.

4.     Jesus’ words refer to a further stage in the coming of the kingdom, namely the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. This is Carson’s preferred interpretation.

With due respect to D.A. Carson, his quick dismissal of option 3 appears to be related to his own convictions regarding the interpretation of Matthew 24. While either option 3 or 4 will fit the overall biblical data better, my own preference is for option 3 because it seems to fit the redemptive historical situation well according to the progress of revelation and the notion of prophetic perspective. Ridderbos describes prophetic perspective as “future events that are apparently fulfilled over the course of centuries are often placed immediate after or even right next to each other in the picture of the future from the prophet.”[4] Like a series of mountain ranges that appear as one from a distance, only when one arrives at the first range does the previously flattened perspective round out into a richer, fuller perspective. So it can be with prophecy, especially when the notion of a church filled with both Jews and Gentiles would take several significant acts of God and the Jerusalem Council to make sense, as the first half of the book of Acts indicates. It should not be objectionable, then, that prophetic perspective would be found in Jesus’ words to his disciples.

[1] Herman N. Ridderbos, Het Evangelie Naar Mattheus, 2nd ed., Korte Verklaring Der Heilige Schrift (J. H. Kok, 1952), 1:205.

[2] Ridderbos, Mattheus, 1:206.

[3] The following is a select summary based on D. A. Carson, Matthew, Rev., The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, ed. Tremper Longman III and David E. Garland (Zondervan, 2010).

[4] Ridderbos, Mattheus, 1:206.