Verses 1-34
Chapter 20
20:1-16 "For
the situation in the Kingdom of Heaven is like what happened when a
householder went out first thing in the morning to hire workers for his
vineyard. When he had come to an agreement with them that they would
work for 4 pence a day, he sent them into his vineyard. He went out
again about nine o'clock in the morning, and saw others standing idle in
the market-place. He said to them, 'Go you also into the vineyard, and I
will pay you whatever is right.' And they went. He went out again about
twelve o'clock midday, and about three o'clock in the afternoon, and
did the same. About five o'clock in the evening he went out and found
others standing there, and said to them, 'Why are you standing here the
whole day idle?' They said to him, 'Because no one has hired us.' He
said to them, 'Go you also to the vineyard.' When evening came, the
master of the vineyard said to his steward, 'Call the workers, and give
them their pay, beginning from the last and going on until you come to
the first.' So, when those who had been engaged about five o'clock in
the afternoon, came, they received 4 pence each. Those who had come
first thought that they would receive more; but they too received 4
pence each. When they received it, they grumblingly complained against
the master. 'These last,' they said, 'have only worked for one hour, and
you have made them equal to us, who have home the burden and the hot
wind of the day.' He answered one of them, 'Friend, I am doing you no
wrong. Did you not come to an agreement with me to work for 4 pence ?
Take what is yours and go! It is my will to give to this last man the
same as to you. Can I not do what I like with my own money? Or, are you
grudging because I am generous?' Even so the last shall be first, and
the first shall be last."
This parable may sound to us as if it described a purely
imaginary situation, but that is far from being the case. Apart from the
method of payment, the parable describes the kind of thing that
frequently happened at certain times in Palestine. The grape harvest
ripened towards the end of September, and then close on its heels the
rains came. If the harvest was not ingathered before the rains broke,
then it was ruined; and so to get the harvest in was a frantic race
against time. Any worker was welcome, even if he could give only an hour
to the work.
The pay was perfectly normal; a denarius or a drachma was the
normal day's wage for a working man; and, even allowing for the
difference in modern standards and in purchasing power, 4 pence a day
was not a wage which left any margin.
The men who were standing in the market-place were not
street-corner idlers, lazing away their time. The market-place was the
equivalent of the labour exchange. A man came there first thing in the
morning, carrying his tools, and waited until someone hired him. The men
who stood in the market-place were waiting for work, and the fact that
some of them stood on until even five o'clock in the evening is the
proof of how desperately they wanted it.
These men were hired labourers; they were the lowest class of
workers, and life for them was always desperately precarious. Slaves and
servants were regarded as being at least to some extent attached to the
family; they were within the group; their fortunes would vary with the
fortunes of the family, but they would never be in any imminent danger
of starvation in normal times. It was very different with the hired
day-labourers. They were not attached to any group; they were entirely
at the mercy of chance employment; they were always living on the
semi-starvation line. As we have seen, the pay was 4 pence a day; and,
if they were unemployed for one day, the children would go hungry at
home, for no man ever saved much out of 4 pence a day. With them, to be
unemployed for a day was disaster.
The hours in the parable were the normal Jewish hours. The
Jewish day began at sunrise, 6 a.m., and the hours were counted from
then until 6 p.m., when officially the next day began. Counting from 6
a.m. therefore, the third hour is 9 a.m., the sixth hour is twelve
midday, and the eleventh hour is 5 p.m.
This parable gives a vivid picture of the kind of thing which
could happen in the market-place of any Jewish village or town any day,
when the grape harvest was being rushed in to beat the rains.
C. G. Montefiore calls this parable "one of the greatest and most
glorious of all." It may indeed have had a comparatively limited
application when it was spoken for the first time; but it contains truth
which goes to the very heart of the Christian religion. We begin with
the comparatively limited significance it originally had.
(i) It is in one sense a warning to the disciples. It is as if
Jesus said to them, "You have received the great privilege of coming
into the Christian Church and fellowship very early, right at the
beginning. In later days others will come in. You must not claim a
special honour and a special place because you were Christians before
they were. All men, no matter when they come, are equally precious to
God."
There are people who think that, because they have been members
of a Church for a long time, the Church practically belongs to them and
they can dictate its policy. Such people resent what seems to them the
intrusion of new blood or the rise of a new generation with different
plans and different ways. In the Christian Church seniority does not
necessarily mean honour.
(ii) There is an equally definite warning to the Jews. They knew
that they were the chosen people, nor would they ever willingly forget
that choice. As a consequence they looked down on the Gentiles. Usually
they hated and despised them, and hoped for nothing but their
destruction. This attitude threatened to be carried forward into the
Christian Church. If the Gentiles were to be allowed into the fellowship
of the Church at all, they must come in as inferiors.
"In God's economy," as someone has said, "there is no such thing
as a most favoured nation clause." Christianity knows nothing of the
conception of a herrenvolk, a master race. It may well be that we who
have been Christian for so long have much to learn from those younger
Churches who are late-comers to the fellowship of the faith.
(iii) These are the original lessons of this parable, but it has very much more to say to us.
In it there is the comfort of God. It means that no matter when a
man enters the Kingdom, late or soon, in the first flush of youth, in
the strength of the midday, or when the shadows are lengthening, he is
equally dear to God. The Rabbis had a saying, "Some enter the Kingdom in
an hour; others hardly enter it in a lifetime." In the picture of the
holy city in the Revelation there are twelve gates. There are gates on
the East which is the direction of the dawn, and whereby a man may enter
in the glad morning of his days; there are gates on the West which is
the direction of the setting sun, and whereby a man may enter in his
age. No matter when a man comes to Christ, he is equally dear to him.
May we not go even further with this thought of comfort?
Sometimes a man dies full of years and full of honour, with his day's
work ended and his task completed. Sometimes a young person dies almost
before the door of life and achievement have opened at all. From God
they will both receive the same welcome, for both Jesus Christ is
waiting, and for neither, in the divine sense, has life ended too soon
or too late.
(iv) Here, also, is the infinite compassion of God. There is an element of human tenderness in this parable.
There is nothing more tragic in this world than a man who is
unemployed, a man whose talents are rusting in idleness because there is
nothing for him to do. Hugh Martin reminds us that a great teacher used
to say that the saddest words in all Shakespeare's plays are the words:
"Othello's occupation's gone." In that market-place men stood waiting
because no one had hired them; in his compassion the master gave them
work to do. He could not bear to see them idle.
Further, in strict justice the fewer hours a man worked, the
less pay he should have received. But the master well knew that 4p a day
was no great wage; he well knew that, if a workman went home with less,
there would be a worried wife and hungry children; and therefore he
went beyond justice and gave them more than was their due.
As it has been put, this parable states implicitly two great
truths which are the very charter of the working man--the right of every
man to work and the right of every man to a living wage for his work.
(v) Here also is the generosity of God. These men did not all do
the same work; but they did receive the same pay. There are two great
lessons here. The first is, as it has been said, "All service ranks the
same with God." It is not the amount of service given, but the love in
which it is given which matters. A man out of his plenty may give us a
gift of a hundred pounds, and in truth we are grateful; a child may give
us a birthday or Christmas gift which cost only a few pence but which
was laboriously and lovingly saved up for--and that gift, with little
value of its own, touches our heart far more. God does not look on the
amount of our service. So long as it is all we have to give, all service
ranks the same with God.
The second lesson is even greater--all God gives is of grace. We
cannot earn what God gives us; we cannot deserve it; what God gives us
is given out of the goodness of his heart; what God gives is not pay,
but a gift; not a reward, but a grace.
(vi) Surely that brings us to the supreme lesson of the
parable--the whole point of work is the spirit in which it is done. The
servants are clearly divided into two classes. The first came to an
agreement with the master; they had a contract; they said, "We work, if
you give us so much pay." As their conduct showed, all they were
concerned with was to get as much as possible out of their work. But in
the case of those who were engaged later, there is no word of contract;
all they wanted was the chance to work and they willingly left the
reward to the master.
A man is not a Christian if his first concern is pay. Peter
asked: "What do we get out of it?" The Christian works for the joy of
serving God and his fellow-men. That is why the first will be last and
the last will be first. Many a man in this world, who has earned great
rewards, will have a very low place in the Kingdom because rewards were
his sole thought. Many a man, who, as the world counts it, is a poor
man, will be great in the Kingdom, because he never thought in terms of
reward but worked for the thrill of working and for the joy of serving.
It is the paradox of the Christian life that he who aims at reward loses
it, and he who forgets reward finds it.
20:17-19 As he
was going up to Jerusalem, Jesus took the twelve disciples apart, and
said to them, while they were on the road, "Look you, we are going up to
Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered to the chief priests
and the Scribes, and they will condemn him to death, and they will hand
him over to the Gentiles to mock, and to scourge, and to crucify; and on
the third day he will be raised."
This is the third time that Jesus warned his disciples that he was on the way to the Cross (Matthew 16:21; Matthew 17:22-23).
Both Mark and Luke add their own touches to the story, to show that on
this occasion there was in the atmosphere of the apostolic band a
certain tenseness and a certain foreboding of tragedy to come. Mark says
that Jesus was walking ahead by himself, and that the disciples were
amazed and afraid (Mark 10:32-34).
They did not understand what was happening, but they could see in every
line of Jesus' body the struggle of his soul. Luke, too, tells how
Jesus took the disciples to himself alone that he might try to compel
them to understand what lay ahead (Luke 18:31-34).
There is here the first decisive step to the last act of the
inescapable tragedy. Jesus deliberately and open-eyed sets out for
Jerusalem and the Cross.
There was a strange inclusiveness in the suffering to which
Jesus looked forward; it was a suffering in which no pain of heart or
mind or body was to be lacking.
He was to be betrayed into the hands of the chief priests and
Scribes; there we see the suffering of the heart broken by the
disloyalty of friends. He was to be condemned to death; there we see the
suffering of injustice, which is very hard to bear. He was to be mocked
by the Romans; there we see the suffering of humiliation and of
deliberate insult. He was to be scourged; few tortures in the world
compared with the Roman scourge, and there we see the suffering of
physical pain. Finally, he was to be crucified; there we see the
ultimate suffering of death. It is as if Jesus was going to gather in
upon himself every possible kind of physical and emotional and mental
suffering that the world could inflict.
Even at such a time that was not the end of his words, for he
finished with the confident assertion of the Resurrection. Beyond the
curtain of suffering lay the revelation of glory; beyond the Cross was
the Crown; beyond the defeat was triumph; and beyond death was life.
20:20-28 At
that time the mother of Zebedee's sons came to him with her sons,
kneeling before him, and asking something from him. He said to her,
"What do you wish?" She said to him, "Speak the word that these two sons
of mine may sit, one on your right hand, and one on your left, in your
Kingdom." Jesus answered, "You do not know what you are asking. Can you
drink the cup which I have to drink?" They said to him, "We can." He
said to them, "My cup you are to drink; but to sit on my right hand and
my left is not mine to give, but that belongs to those for whom it has
been prepared by my Father." When the ten heard about this, they were
angry with the two brothers. Jesus called them to him and said, "You
know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great
ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you, but
whoever wishes to prove himself great among you must be your servant;
and whoever wishes to occupy the foremost place will be your slave, just
as the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give
his life a ransom for many."
Here we see the worldly ambition of the disciples in action.
There is one very revealing little difference between Matthew's and
Mark's account of this incident. In Mark 10:35-45
it is James and John who come to Jesus with this request. In Matthew it
is their mother. The reason for the change is this--Matthew was writing
twenty-five years later than Mark; by that time a kind of halo of
sanctity had become attached to the disciples. Matthew did not wish to
show James and John guilty of worldly ambition, and so he puts the
request into the mouth of their mother rather than of themselves.
There may have been a very natural reason for this request. It
is probable that James and John were closely related to Jesus. Matthew,
Mark and John all give lists of the women who were at the Cross when
Jesus was crucified. Let us set them down.
Matthew's list is:
Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the
mother of the sons of Zebedee (Matthew 27:56).
Mark's list is:
Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the Younger and of
Joses, and Salome (Mark 15:40).
John's list is:
Jesus' mother, his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and
Mary Magdalene.
Mary Magdalene is named in all the lists; Mary the mother of
James and Joses must be the same person as Mary the wife of Clopas;
therefore the third woman is described in three different ways. Matthew
calls her the mother of the sons of Zebedee; Mark calls her Salome; and
John calls her Jesus' mother's sister. So, then, we learn that the
mother of James and John was named Salome, and that she was the sister
of Mary the mother of Jesus. That means that James and John were full
cousins of Jesus; and it may well have been that they felt that this
close relationship entitled them to a special place in his Kingdom.
This is one of the most revealing passages in the New Testament. It sheds light in three directions.
First, it sheds a light on the disciples. It tells us three
things about them. It tells us of their ambition. They were still
thinking in terms of personal reward and personal distinction; and they
were thinking of personal success without personal sacrifice. They
wanted Jesus with a royal command to ensure for them a princely life.
Every man has to learn that true greatness lies, not in dominance, but
in service; and that in every sphere the price of greatness must be
paid.
That is on the debit side of the account of the disciples; but
there is much on the credit side. There is no incident which so
demonstrates their invincible faith in Jesus. Think of when this request
was made. It was made after a series of announcements by Jesus that
ahead of him lay an inescapable Cross; it was made at a moment when the
air was heavy with the atmosphere of tragedy and the sense of
foreboding. And yet in spite of that the disciples are thinking of a
Kingdom. It is of immense significance to see that, even in a world in
which the dark was coming down, the disciples would not abandon the
conviction that the victory belonged to Jesus. In Christianity there
must always be this invincible optimism in the moment when things are
conspiring to drive a man to despair.
Still further, here is demonstrated the unshakable loyalty of
the disciples. Even when they were bluntly told that there lay ahead a
bitter cup, it never struck them to turn back; they were determined to
drink it. If to conquer with Christ meant to suffer with Christ, they
were perfectly willing to face that suffering.
It is easy to condemn the disciples, but the faith and the loyalty which lay behind the ambition must never be forgotten.
Second, this passage sheds a light upon the Christian life. Jesus
said that those who would share his triumph must drink his cup. What was
that cup? It was to James and John that Jesus spoke. Now life treated
James and John very differently. James was the first of the apostolic
band to die a martyr (Acts 12:2).
For him the cup was martyrdom. On the other hand, by far the greater
weight of tradition goes to show that John lived to a great old age in
Ephesus and died a natural death when he must have been close on a
hundred years old. For him the cup was the constant discipline and
struggle of the Christian life throughout the years.
It is quite wrong to think that for the Christian the cup must
always mean the short, sharp, bitter, agonizing struggle of martyrdom;
the cup may well be the long routine of the Christian life, with all its
daily sacrifice, its daily struggle, and its heart-breaks and its
disappointments and its tears. A Roman coin was once found with the
picture of an ox on it; the ox was facing two things--an altar and a
plough; and the inscription read: "Ready for either." The ox had to be
ready either for the supreme moment of sacrifice on the altar or the
long labour of the plough on the farm. There is no one cup for the
Christian to drink. His cup may be drunk in one great moment; his cup
may be drunk throughout a lifetime of Christian living. To drink the cup
simply means to follow Christ wherever he may lead, and to be like him
in any situation life may bring.
Third, this passage sheds a light on Jesus. It shows us his
kindness. The amazing thing about Jesus is that he never lost patience
and became irritated. In spite of all he had said, here were these men
and their mother still chattering about posts in an earthly government
and kingdom. But Christ does not explode at their obtuseness, or blaze
at their blindness, or despair at their unteachableness. In gentleness,
in sympathy, and in love, with never an impatient word, he seeks to lead
them to the truth.
It shows us his honesty. He was quite clear that there was a
bitter cup to be drunk and did not hesitate to say so. No man can ever
claim that he began to follow Jesus under false pretences. He never
failed to tell men that, even if life ends in crown-wearing, it
continues in cross-bearing.
It shows us his trust in men. He never doubted that James and
John would maintain their loyalty. They had their mistaken ambitions;
they had their blindness; they had their wrong ideas; but he never
dreamed of writing them off as bad debts. He believed that they could
and would drink the cup, and that in the end they would still be found
at his side. One of the great fundamental facts to which we must hold
on, even when we hate and loathe and despise ourselves, is that Jesus
believes in us. The Christian is a man put upon his honour by Jesus.
The request of James and John not unnaturally annoyed the other
disciples. They did not see why the two brothers should steal a march on
them, even if they were the cousins of Jesus. They did not see why they
should be allowed to stake their claims to preeminence. Jesus knew what
was going on in their minds; and he spoke to them words which are the
very basis of the Christian life. Out in the world, said Jesus, it is
quite true that the great man is the man who controls others; the man to
whose word of command others must leap; the man who with a wave of his
hand can have his slightest need supplied. Out in the world there was
the Roman governor with his retinue and the eastern potentate with his
slaves. The world counts them great. But among my followers service
alone is the badge of greatness. Greatness does not consist in
commanding others to do things for you; it consists in doing things for
others; and the greater the service, the greater the honour. Jesus uses a
kind of gradation. "If you wish to be great," he says, "be a servant;
if you wish to be first of all be a slave." Here is the Christian
revolution; here is the complete reversal of all the world's standards. A
complete new set of values has been brought into life.
The strange thing is that instinctively the world itself has
accepted these standards. The world knows quite well that a good man is a
man who serves his fellow-men. The world will respect, and admire, and
sometimes fear, the man of power; but it will love the man of love. The
doctor who will come out at any time of the day or night to serve and
save his patients; the parson who is always on the road amongst his
people; the employer who takes an active interest in the lives and
troubles of his employees; the person to whom we can go and never be
made to feel a nuisance--these are the people whom all men love, and in
whom instinctively they see Jesus Christ.
When that great saint Toyohiko Kagawa first came into contact
with Christianity, he felt its fascination, until one day the cry burst
from him: "O God, make me like Christ." To be like Christ he went to
live in the slums, even though he himself was suffering from
tuberculosis. It seemed the last place on earth to which a man in his
condition should have gone.
Cecil Northcott in Famous Life Decisions tens of what Kagawa
did. He went to live in a six foot by six-foot hut in a Tokyo slum. "On
his first night he was asked to share his bed with a man suffering from
contagious itch. That was a test of his faith. Would he go back on his
point of no return? No. He welcomed his bed-fellow. Then a beggar asked
for his shirt and got it. Next day he was back for Kagawa's coat and
trousers, and got them too. Kagawa was left standing in a ragged old
kimono. The slum dwellers of Tokyo laughed at him, but they came to
respect him. He stood in the driving rain to preach, coughing all the
time. 'God is love,' he shouted. 'God is love. Where love is, there is
God.' He often fell down exhausted, and the rough men of the slums
carried him gently back to his hut."
Kagawa himself wrote: "God dwells among the lowliest of men. He
sits on the dust heap among the prison convicts. He stands with the
juvenile delinquents. He is there with the beggars. He is among the
sick, he stands with the unemployed. Therefore let him who would meet
God visit the prison cell before going to the temple. Before he goes to
Church let him visit the hospital. Before he reads his Bible let him
help the beggar."
Therein is greatness. The world may assess a man's greatness by
the number of people whom he controls and who are at his beck and call;
or by his intellectual standing and his academic eminence; or by the
number of committees of which he is a member; or by the size of his bank
balance and the material possessions which he has amassed; but in the
assessment of Jesus Christ these things are irrelevant. His assessment
is quite simply--how many people has he helped?
What Jesus calls upon his followers to do he himself did. He came not
to be served, but to serve. He came to occupy not a throne, but a
cross. It was just because of this that the orthodox religious people of
his time could not understand him. All through their history the Jews
had dreamed of the Messiah; but the Messiah of whom they had dreamed was
always a conquering king, a mighty leader, one who would smash the
enemies of Israel and reign in power over the kingdoms of the earth.
They looked for a conqueror; they received one broken on a cross. They
looked for the raging Lion of Judah; they received the gentle Lamb of
God. Rudolf Bultmann writes: "In the Cross of Christ Jewish standards of
judgment and human notions of the splendour of the Messiah are
shattered." Here is demonstrated the new glory and the new greatness of
suffering love and sacrificial service. Here is royalty and kingship
restated and remade.
Jesus summed up his whole life in one poignant sentence: "The
Son of Man came to give his life a ransom for many." It is worth
stopping to see what the crude hands of theology have done with that
lovely saying. Very early men began to say, "Jesus gave his life a
ransom for many. Well, then, to whom was the ransom paid?" Origen has no
doubt that the ransom was paid to the devil. "The ransom could not have
been paid to God; it was therefore paid to the Evil One, who was
holding us fast until the ransom should be given to him, even the life
of Jesus." Gregory of Nyssa saw the glaring fault in that theory. It
puts the Devil on a level with God; it means that the Devil could
dictate his terms to God, before he would let men go. So Gregory of
Nyssa has a strange idea. The devil was tricked by God. He was tricked
by the seeming helplessness of Jesus; he took Jesus to be a mere man; he
tried to retain hold of Jesus, and in trying to do so, he lost his
power and was broken for ever. Gregory the Great took the picture to
even more grotesque, almost revolting, lengths. The Incarnation, he
said, was a divine stratagem to catch the great leviathan. The deity of
Christ was the hook; his flesh was the bait; the bait was dangled before
leviathan; he swallowed it and was taken. The limit was reached by
Peter the Lombard. "The cross," he said, "was a mousetrap (muscipula) to
catch the devil, baited with the blood of Christ."
All this is what happens when men take the poetry of love and
try to turn it into man-made theories. Jesus came to give his life a
ransom for many. What does it mean? It means quite simply this. Men were
in the grip of a power of evil which they could not break; their sins
dragged them down; their sins separated them from God; their sins
wrecked life for themselves and for the world and for God himself. A
ransom is something paid or given to liberate a man from a situation
from which it is impossible for him to free himself. Therefore what this
saying means is quite simply--it cost the life and the death of Jesus
Christ to bring men back to God.
There is no question of to whom the ransom was paid. There is
simply the great, tremendous truth that without Jesus Christ and his
life of service and his death of love, we could never have found our way
back to the love of God. Jesus gave everything to bring men back to
God; and we must walk in the steps of him who loved to the uttermost.
20:29-34 When
they were leaving Jericho, a great crowd followed him. And, look you,
two blind men were sitting by the roadside, and, when they heard that
Jesus was passing by, they shouted out, "Lord, have pity on us, you Son
of David!" The crowd rebuked them, so that they might be silent. Jesus
stood and called them. "What do you want me to do for you?" he said.
"Lord," they said, "what we want is that our eyes should be opened."
Jesus was moved with compassion to the depths of his being, and touched
their eyes; and immediately they recovered their sight and followed him.
Here is the story of two men who found their way to a miracle.
It is a very significant story, for it paints a picture of the spirit
and of the attitude of mind and heart to which the most precious gifts
of God are open.
(i) These two blind men were waiting, and when their chance came
they seized it with both hands. No doubt they had heard of the wondrous
power of Jesus; and no doubt they wondered if that power might ever be
exercised for them. Jesus was passing by. If they had let him pass,
their chance would have gone by for ever; but when the chance came they
seized it.
There are a great many things which have to be done at the
moment or they will never be done. There are a great many decisions
which have to be taken. on the spot or they will never be taken. The
moment to act goes past; the impulse to decide fades. After Paul had
preached on Mars Hill, there were those who said, "We will hear you
again about this" (Acts 17:32). They put it off until a more convenient time, but so often the more convenient time never comes.
(ii) These two blind men were undiscourageable. The crowd
commanded them to stop their shouting; they were making a nuisance of
themselves. It was the custom in Palestine for a Rabbi to teach as he
walked along the road; and no doubt those around Jesus could not hear
what Jesus was saying for this clamorous uproar. But nothing would stop
the two blind men; for them it was a matter of sight or blindness, and
nothing was going to keep them back.
It often happens that we are easily discouraged from seeking the
presence of God. It is the man who will not be kept from Christ who in
the end finds him.
(iii) These two blind men had an imperfect faith but they were
determined to act on the faith they had. It was as Son of David that
they addressed Jesus. That meant that they did believe him to be the
Messiah, but it also meant that they were thinking of Messiahship in
terms of kingly and of earthly power. It was an imperfect faith but they
acted on it; and Jesus accepted it.
However imperfect it may be, if faith is there, Jesus accepts it.
(iv) These two blind men were not afraid to bring a great
request. They were beggars; but it was not money they asked for, it was
nothing less than sight.
No request is too great to bring to Jesus.
(v) These two blind men were grateful. When they had received
the boon for which they craved, they did not go away and forget; they
followed Jesus.
So many people, both in things material and in things spiritual,
get what they want, and then forget even to say thanks. Ingratitude is
the ugliest of all sins. These blind men received their sight from
Jesus, and then they gave to him their grateful loyalty. We can never
repay God for what he has done for us but we can always be grateful to
him.
-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)