IN MATT.7:6, the Lord Jesus Christ teaches: “Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before the swine, lest they trample them under their feet and turn again and rend you.” With this, the Lord brings to an end what He has been teaching concerning the difficult and involved subject of punishment. The Authorized Version (AV) and some other versions of Bible translations, place this verse in a special paragraph of its own, thus creating, perhaps a wrong impression, that the statement is a new thought of its own without any connection with what precedes it. – “Judge not, that ye be not judged…” (Matt. 7:1-5). This seems not to recognize that it is rather, the conclusion of the matter which started in Matt. 7:1. It is therefore the final statement in that connection.
It is an outstanding statement and one which generally comes with a great shock of surprise to people. In the preceding verses the Lord has been talking in the most solemn manner, that we should not judge; and that we should cast the beam out of our own eye before we begin to think about the mote that is in the eye of our brother. He has been warning that with what judgment we judge, we shall be judged. Then suddenly He says: “Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you”. It seems coming neck and crop; it seems to be entirely contradictory of all that He has been teaching. And yet if our exposition of the first five verses of Mathew 7 has been right, we will not find it surprising at all; for it indeed follows as an almost inevitable corollary. Our Lord says we must not judge in the sense of condemning; but He reminds us that the matter does not end at that with regard to the matter. In order to have a right balance and a complete statement on the subject, this additional or further observation becomes necessary.
To end the lesson with the first five verses would have undoubtedly led to a false position, people would be so
careful as to avoid the terrible danger of judging in the wrong sense that they would exercise no discrimination whatsoever. This would lead to no such thing as discipline in the church, and the whole of the Christian life would be chaotic. There would be no such thing as exposing heresy and pronouncing judgment with regard to it. This would be so, because everybody would be very afraid of judging the heretic, they would turn a blind eye to it; this error would be prevalent in the church, more than as it is now. So the Lord, went on to make this further statement (verse 6). The Christian, the preacher, the pastor – and all believers are spiritually ordained into universal priesthood cannot, once more, fail to be influenced by the wonderful amazing perfect balance of this scriptural teaching, emphasizing that a detailed, microscopic study of any one section of Scripture is generally much more profitable than a telescopic view of the whole Bible; because, if you make a thorough study of any one section, you will find all the great doctrines sooner or later. This will enable every student of the Bible to avoid isolating any statement or teaching in the holy writ, and in the balance, take them in their contexts, this is because many Christians of today, forget or ignore this additional statement of the Lord to His teaching on ‘judging’, that they exhibit the lack of discrimination, and are ready to accept and extol and recommend anything presented to them with vague claim to Christianity. They delude themselves in claiming that, not judging is a friendly and charitable spirit, and so people – some believers fall unchecked into grievous errors and their immortal souls thrown into jeopardy. But all this can be avoided by just taking the Scripture as it is and remembering always that it is by so doing that one can always achieve the all important balance.
This statement of “Give not that which is holy unto the dog… neither cast ye your pearls before the swine to rend you” might seem perplexing superficially when considered along with what the Lord taught in the preceding verses (Thou shall not judge …” and “cast out the beam out of thine own eye…”) and perhaps calls for reconciliation of the former and the later. The simple fact is that, while our Lord exhorts the Christian not to be hypocritical (human judgment is always tainted with hypocrisy of one covering one’s own wrong doings in judging another), He never tells the believer not to be discriminating. There is absolute difference between these two things. What the Christian is to avoid is the tendency to be censorious, to condemn people, to set himself up as the final judge, and to make pronouncements on persons. But this is very different from exercising a spirit of discrimination, to which the Scripture is always, and ever exhorting the believer. This is connoted in the exhortation to ‘prove’, ‘test every spirit’ and ‘beware of false prophets’ The Christian must recognize the error wherever it appears, but he is to do so, not in order to condemn, but in order to help. And this is the connecting link between this statement (verse 6) and what precedes it (verses 1-5) Our Lord, Jesus Christ has been dealing with the question of helping ‘our brother to get rid of the mote in his eye’, and if we wish to do so in the right way, them of course, we must have a spirit of discrimination. We must be able to recognize motes and beams and to discriminate between person and person.
The objective interpretation of “Give not that which is holy unto the dogs. Neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet and turn again to rend you” obviously is reference to the truth, which is holy and which can be likened to pearls. The holy thing – the pearl – to which Christ refers, is clearly the Christian message, the message of the Kingdom, the very thing about which He is speaking Himself in this incomparable teaching. As for the kind of persons He refers to as dogs and swine, this is indeed an extraordinary terminology to use, for, in Palestine (the home region of the Jews) the dog was regarded as a scavenger of the village, and its very name, a term of opprobrium; not the domestic pet to which we are wont, but a fierce and dangerous half-wild animal. While the swine in the Jewish mind stood for all that was unclean and outside the pale. These are the two terms the Lord used to teach how to discriminate between people and people. The Christian must always bear in mind that there is a class of persons who, with respect to the truth, can be described as “dogs” or as belonging to the ‘swine’. This certainly does not represent the attitude of the Christian to an unbeliever for the good reason that you could never convert an unconverted, if you are not to present the gospel truth to him. Our Lord Jesus Himself while here on earth went out preaching to such people. He sent out His disciples and apostles to preach to such persons, He sent the Holy Ghost upon the early church in order that the church might testify and preach the truth to the unbelievers. So it cannot mean that.
The positive approach to this question is to observe how the Lord Himself implemented this particular teaching. The Scripture answer is that the Lord very clearly differentiated between persons and types. The four gospels bear witness to the fact that He did not handle any two persons in exactly the same way. Fundamentally it is the same, but on the surface it is different. Take the way He handled Nathaniel, and Nicodamus, and the woman of Samaria. At once one sees certain differences. There is a marked difference in His manner and method in his confronting the Pharisees and when dealing with the Republicans and sinners. You must notice the difference in His attitude towards the self-righteous proud Pharisees and the woman caught in sin. Perhaps, one of best illustrations is the one recorded in Luke 23. When He was examined by Pilate, our Lord answered Pilate’s questions, but when He was questioned by Harod, who should have known better, and who just had a morbid, unhealthy curiosity and was looking for signs and wonders, the Lord kept mute and uttered not a word in answer to Harod’s questions, (see Luke 23:3,9). This is a good example of the Lord’s dealing with people in terms of the same truth, but different ways and accommodated His way of teaching the person. He did not vary the truth, but He varied the particular method of presentation. This, the believer would always find and learn from the Gospels.
The early apostles did the same precisely and carried out the injunctions of this teaching of their master. This is typical of the experience of Paul and Barnabes in Antioch in Pisidia where they met and had to contend with the jealousy, envy and opposition of the Jews. Paul was bold enough to tell the Jews that: “it was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you but seeing you put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles” (Acts 13:46). Paul of cause stopped presenting this “holy thing” to them. He did exactly the same thing in Corinth. In Acts 28:6 we read that: “And when they opposed themselves, and blasphemed, he shook his raiment, and said unto them, your blood be upon your own heads; I am clean: from henceforth I will go unto the Gentiles” These are the people to whom the Gospel Truth was presented, and they did the very thing the Lord prophesied. As dogs and swine, they turned again – they opposed, they blasphemed and they stamped the truth under their feet. The reaction of Paul and Barnabas was to turn away from them; they never again presented the gospel to them. He turned his back upon the Jews who rejected and showed their inability to appreciate the truth. And Paul and Barnabas on their part had to turn to the Gentiles and [Paul became the “Great Apostle of the Gentiles”.
This appears to be the right approach and attitude to the application of this teaching; which at first sight appear somewhat perplexing. But we must pursue the exposition a little more in detail. This will be for next week.
(To be continued next week)
