"Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing." (Matthew 23:37)
1. If these people Jesus is speaking about are the elect, why were they unwilling to be gathered under his wing?
2. If these people were not the elect, why would Jesus want them gathered under his wing?
"Again, when the sophists seize on this passage, to prove free will, and to set aside the secret predestination of God, the answer is easy. God
wills to gather all men, say they; and therefore all are at liberty to come, and their
will does not depend on the election of God.
I reply: The
will of God, which is here mentioned, must be judged from the result. For since by his word he calls all men indiscriminately to salvation, and since the end of preaching is, that all should betake themselves to his guardianship and protection, it may justly be said that he
wills to gather all to himself. It is not, therefore, the secret purpose of God, but his
will, which is manifested by the nature of the word, that is here described; for, undoubtedly, whomsoever he efficaciously
wills to
gather, he inwardly draws by his Spirit, and does not merely invite by the outward voice of man.
If it be objected, that it is absurd to suppose the existence of two
wills in God, I reply, we fully believe that his
will is simple and one; but as our minds do not fathom the deep abyss of secret election, in accommodation to the capacity of our weakness, the
will of God is exhibited to us in two ways. And I am astonished at the obstinacy of some people, who, when in many passages of Scripture they meet with that figure of speech (
ἀνθρωποπάθεια) which attributes to God human feelings, take no offense, but in this case alone refuse to admit it. But as I have elsewhere treated this subject fully, that I may not be unnecessarily tedious, I only state briefly that, whenever the doctrine, which is the standard of union, is brought forward, God
wills to
gather all, that all who do not come may be inexcusable."
See the fuller treatment:
here
God is not willing something that did not come to pass. More from the source above:
"I freely acknowledge that Christ is speaking of the revealed will of God, when He says, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered thy children together, . . . and ye would not. For He is upbraiding the Jews with the same ingratitude and hardness of heart as He had before done in the song of Moses (Exodus 15:17, etc.). And we know full well that God did in reality bestow on the Jewish nation all the blessings which the words of that song expresses, seeing that, by giving them His law, by the ordinances of His worship, and by the many benefits which He conferred on that people, and by which He bound them to Himself, He protected them, as it were, by the overshadowing of His wings; and He would still have done so, had not their indomitable obstinacy and obduracy carried them away from Him. After, therefore, Christ had testified His will so often and in so many different ways, spoken in order to win a perverse nation to their obedience, but all in vain; it is with the utmost justice that He complains of their ingratitude.
For, as to your restricting all these things to the lifetime of Christ, this you do with your usual ignorance of these divine things. Just as if Christ were not the true God, who, from the beginning, had not ceased to spread the wings of grace over His own elect people! But here you, in a moment, conclude that, if there were another and secret will in Christ, while He thus addressed Jerusalem, the whole life of Christ must have been an inconsistency. Just as if, to allure by the voice and by kindnesses, and yet to leave the heart untouched by the inspiration of His secret Spirit, were in Christ diverse and contrary acts!
But, that the absurdity and futility of your calumny may the more plainly appear, answer me, I pray you, this question: Where does Christ complain that He was mistaken or deceived by the event, that the vine, from which He had expected grapes, brought forth wild grapes? What answer have you to give, noble teacher and skillful rhetorician? Will you impute ignorance to Christ, to avoid making Him speak falsely? What! did the Jews entirely prevent and defeat the purposes of God? Why, according to you, the blessed God was sitting in doubt all the time as to what the event would be, and that event quite deceived and surprised Him at last. No I nor will it at all alter the state of the case if you make the saying of Christ, which He speaks to the fact and to the state of Jerusalem, refer to the secret foreknowledge of God."
Our Lord here speaks in the divided sense. The will of Christ in this passage is not to be taken as his divine will, for no one resists the divine will, rather it is his human will, of his will as a man, subordinate to the divine will, a human will not always fulfilled. Turretin (
Institutes, vol. 2) is instructive:
Although Christ professes that he had wished to gather together the children of Jerusalem, and they would not (Matthew 23:37), it does not follow that grace is resistible.
(1) Jerusalem is here openly distinguished from her children and by it are denoted the elders, scribes, priests and other leaders of the city (who are gifted with the better name of city [as Matthew 2:1, 3] and who wished to be considered the fathers of the people). Nor does Christ say that those whom he wished to gather together were unwilling to be gathered together but only that Jerusalem was unwilling that her children should be gathered and thou wouldst not (kai ouk ethelesate to wit, ye leaders).
And thus Christ does not so much complain of those who being called had not come, as of those who resisted the calling of others as much as they could (the key of knowledge being taken away), not entering as to themselves and prohibiting others who entered (i.e. who desired to enter) as much as in them lay, as we read in Luke 11:52. But still Christ did not cease, notwithstanding the resistance of the leaders of the city; to gather whom he wished, as Augustine has it (Enchiridion 24 [97] [FC 2:449-5O; PL 40.277]).
(2) Although Jerusalem is not distinguished from her children, but is taken for the inhabitants themselves, it would not follow that they resisted efficacious grace, both because not the decretive but the preceptive will is denoted (which repeatedly put them in mind of their duty) and because gathering together differs from conversion. The former pertains to the external call by which men are collected into one by the word and brought into fellowship with the church. The latter pertains to the internal call wrought by the Spirit whom men cannot resist. Christ indeed wished them to do what he commanded (i.e. it would be pleasing to him) and he had also decreed to command it. But still he was unwilling as to the event (i.e., he had not decreed that the thing which he had commanded should actually be done). For, if he had seriously wished it, no reason can be given why they would not have been gathered together since no one can resist his will.
Confusion over this passage should fade when one considers the passage in John 11 about Lazarus. In the passage from John 11 we see that Jesus wept over Lazarus condition. Our Lord was not indifferent to the situation, though He, as the God of all life and sustainer of creation, was the one who appointed Lazarus death. The two senses are vibrant in John 11, and likewise should be in this passage from Matthew as well.
