There is no nominative liere to wliicli we can refer " tliey." It is an Hebraism equivalent to '■ You will be put out."
Hengstenberg observes, " The disciples were not to depart voluntarily out of the synagogue, but to await what would happen to them on a full proclamation of the Gospel. This gives a very intelligible hint to the faithful in times of the Church's decline : viz., that they should keep far from their thoughts the idea of arbitrary secession. The new formation is right only when the casting out has gone before."
Calvin remarks, " We have no reason to be alarmed at the Pope's excommunications, with which he thunders against us on account of the Gospel. They will do us no more injury than those ancient excommunications which were made against the apostles." The curse causeless shall not come.
[Yea...ti7ne comet7i..MUeth.. .service.] In* this clause our Lord warns the eleven that they must not be surprised if even death was the final result of discipleship. There would be no length of persecution to which their enemies would not go. " The hour comes when he who has killed you will think that in so doing he offers God an acceptable service."
How true this has proved, the history of all religious perse- cution has abundantly showed. Who can doubt that Saul be- fore his conversion was sincere ? "I verily thought that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Naz- areth." (Acts xxvi. 9.) The persecutions carried on in Spain, and Portugal, and France, and England, by Romanists against Protestants, are painful examples of the same thing. Men have actually thought that killing people was doing a holy and a good action.
The extent to which conscience may be blinded, until a man actually thinks that he is doing a godly deed, when in reality he is committing a huge sin, is one of the most painful phe- nomena in human nature. Many of those who burned our Re- formers in the days of Queen Mary were sincere and in earnest. " Earnestness" is not the slightest proof that a man is right in his religion. It is one of the most monstrous- idols of modern times. The folly of those who are content with " earnestness," and ^ay that all " earnest " men go to heaven, is abundantly shown by this text.
Ferus remarks that " good intentions and meanings are no better than impiety, if they do not spring from God's Word."
3. — [And these things will they do, etc.] Here, as in a former verse, our Lord points to blind ignorance as the true cause of the enmity of the Jews against Himself and His disciples. " They do not rightly know my Father, in spite of their profes- sions of religious knowledge ; nor Me, whom the Father hath sent. Hence they hate and persecute." (See Ch. xv. 21.)