I haven’t heard Matthew 21:28-32 used to defend Purgatory before, but it seems to me that it does so pretty plainly. Jesus is speaking here to “the chief priests and elders of the people”:
28″But what do you think? A man had two sons, and he came to the first and said, ‘Son, go work today in the vineyard.’
29″And he answered, ‘I will not’; but afterward he regretted it and went.
30″The man came to the second and said the same thing; and he answered, ‘I will, sir’; but he did not go.
31″Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Truly I say to you that the tax collectors and prostitutes will get into the kingdom of God before you.
32″For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him; but the tax collectors and prostitutes did believe him; and you, seeing this, did not even feel remorse afterward so as to believe him.
There are plenty of directions in which to go from reading this. First, the Kingdom of God here refers to Heaven. The tax collectors and prostitutes already believe, but will get into the Kingdom of God, so it’s related to a future state. Second, Christ is explicitly tying salvation to obedient works: acts of faith, rather than simply belief. Third, this supports the notion of so-called “Anonymous Christians,” something usually denied by Protestants, and occassionally by Catholics as well. This is the notion that there are some who are not publicly Christians (and perhaps do not even consider themselves Christians), who still are Christians. Matthew 21:28-32 pretty clearly establishes that you can’t establish who’s damned simply by looking at the external markers.
But the most fundamental thing about the passage is that Jesus is saying that some people, due to their faith, will get to Heaven before others. If Purgatory weren’t real, I have no idea how one would read Matthew 21:31. Jesus obviously doesn’t mean that the tax collectors and prostitutes are going to die sooner. And so, if they’re not going to die sooner, but they are going to arrive in Heaven sooner, doesn’t that suggest that the chief priests and elders are going to be delayed a bit after death? Note also that here, Jesus isn’t suggesting that they’re not going to Heaven, just that they’re going to get there after the tax collectors and prostitutes. In fact, if they’re not getting there at all, I don’t see how v. 31 makes sense.
The term used here, proagō, means to go ahead of someone, and implies that that someone follows you there. So in Matthew 26:32, proagō is the term used when Jesus says, ” I will go before you into Galilee” (same with Mark 16:7, when the prophesy is fulfilled). It implies, of course, that the Disciples are going to Galilee after Him. Even the Star of Bethlehem “went before” the Magi to Bethlehem (Matthew 2:9). So the people Jesus is speaking to are apparently going to Heaven ultimately, just not right away.
Of course, Matthew 21 doesn’t really spell out Purgatory at all. Jesus doesn’t say, “the reason that the tax collectors and prostitutes are going before you is that you need to be painstakingly purified of your sins before you can enter the glories of Heaven.” But nonetheless, the passage seems to make sense only if Purgatory is true.
I have a few concerns about the this interpretation of Matthew. The word ‘before’ does not necessarily imply ‘after’. Before can imply an order of preference, that the sinners will be preferred to the self righteous. Take the sentence, ‘I bowed down before you’; this could mean in time I bowed to the ground and after I had bowed to the ground, you bowed to the ground, or it could mean that I, in deference to your greater stature, bowed down to the ground in homage and that you never bowed at all. The concern I have about the use of this to teach purgatory is that the passage is addressed to the same people cast out of the vineyard, those dead branches pruned from the vine (John ch 15), and those branches broken off in Roman ch 11.
As with Matthew (Ch 1), that Joseph did not know Mary until she had brought forth her firstborn son, the word ‘until’ does not imply a condition to be fulfilled; though ‘before’, as used in Vs 31 might be conditional, Church teaching on faith implies that for those persons exposed to the Word of God, faithlessness is a grave sin, http://www.newadvent.org/summa/3010.htm The Pharisees and elders in Vs 22 are convicted of unbelief, and impenitence, and inasmuch as the rest of the chapter is addressed to the disobedient, faithless sons of Abraham, it seems to imply that the use of ‘before’ is an order of preference not necessarily implying a temporal ‘after’ wherein the Pharisees and elders of this chapter inherit the kingdom of God.
In chapter 21, Jesus says the kingdom of God shall be taken from you and shall be given to a nation yielding fruits thereof (the new Israel). Further in Chapter 22, in the parable of the wedding feast, the guests invited to the feast are the Jews, but in rejecting the invitation, i.e. their unbelief and impenitence in Ch 21 Vs 32, they are destroyed. The context indicates that those destroyed, would not be given a place in heaven.
In Christ
Ryan
hmm.
That’s the English “before.” Does the Greek word also carry these additional meanings?
You can be blind to a whole lot of things if you don’t understand the simple fact that “the kingdom of heaven is at hand” and “the kingdom of heaven is in your midst.” As scripture plainly says over and over. Jesus didn’t come so that we could go to heaven when we die; Jesus came so that heaven (aka the Holy Spirit) could come into us, so that the spiritual powers that be would no longer have dominion over us, but we would be granted authority here and now to bring forth the will of the Father here on earth. One receives the kingdom of heaven the moment they repent and believe the gospel and start bearing its fruit shortly after. In fact, one enters the kingdom of heaven the moment they ask for the Holy Spirit. (See Luke 11)
What did Jesus tell Pilate when He asked if Jesus was a king? He said if His kingdom was of this world, His Father would send legions of angels. We enter the kingdom in the spirit the moment we’re born again and these angels are all around us. Why do you suppose Jesus tells us to abide in Him? What do you suppose that means? It means our Lord is a mighty fortress that we live in and are provided shelter for as long as we remain in it, and also that kingdom is in us. Do we interact with the kingdom of heaven the same as when we die? Certainly not. Scripture plainly states flesh and blood cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. We haven’t received the entire inheritance yet. We are yet to take off these bodies of flesh and put on glorified bodies, but we who truly believe and understand the gospel have inherited the kingdom in the Spirit and that’s what makes such a radical difference in a true believer’s life, shaking even the lives of those around them when they are born again. It’s not by their own might. And this brings me to what really seals it if you accept nothing else I’ve said, John 3 plainly states that we enter the kingdom when we’re born again. And if you still doubt, move forward to chapter 4: how do true worshippers worship God? In spirit and in truth. We aren’t just beings made up of flesh; we’re spiritual beings and true believers have already inherited the kingdom in spirit.