Hereupon three remarkable subjects call for attention: the immense personal claim advanced; the view which Christ takes of fasting; and, arising out of this, the principle which He applies to all external rites and ceremonies.
I. Jesus does not inquire whether the fasts of other men were unreasonable or not. In any case, He declares that His mere presence put everything on a new footing for His followers who could not fast simply because He was by. Thus He assumes a function high above that of any prophet or teacher: He not only reveals duty, as a lamp casts light upon the compass by which men steer; but He modifies duty itself, as iron deflects the needle.
This is because He is the Bridegroom.
The disciples of John would hereupon recall his words of self-effacement; that He was only the friend of the Bridegroom, whose fullest joy was to hear the Bridegroom’s exultant voice.
But no Jew could forget the Old Testament use of the phrase. It is clear from St. Matthew that this controversy followed immediately upon the last, when Jesus assumed a function ascribed to God Himself by the very passage from Hosea which He then quoted. Then He was the Physician for the soul’s diseases; now He is the Bridegroom, in Whom centre its hopes, its joys, its affections, its new life. That position in the spiritual existence cannot be given away from God without idolatry. The same Hosea who makes God the Healer, gives to Him also, in the most explicit words, what Jesus now claims for Himself. “I will betroth thee unto Me for ever.... I will even betroth thee unto Me in faithfulness, and thou shalt know the Lord” (ii. 19, 20). Isaiah too declares “thy Maker is thy husband,” and “as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee” (liv. 5; lxii. 5). And in Jeremiah, God remembers the love of Israel’s espousals, who went after Him in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown (ii. 2). Now all this is transferred throughout the New Testament to Jesus. The Baptist is not alone in this respect. St. John regards the Bride as the wife of the Lamb (Rev. xxi. 9). St. Paul would fain present his Corinthian Church as a pure virgin to Christ, as to one husband (2 Cor. xi. 2). For him, the absolute oneness of marriage is a mystery of the union betwixt Christ and His Church (Eph. v. 32). If Jesus be not God, then a relation hitherto exclusively belonging to Jehovah, to rob Him of which is the adultery of the soul, has been systematically transferred by the New Testament to a creature. His glory has been given to another.
This remarkable change is clearly the work of Jesus Himself. The marriage supper of which He spoke is for the King’s son. At His return the cry will be heard, Behold the Bridegroom cometh. In this earliest passage His presence causes the joy of the Bride, who said to the Lord in the Old Testament, Thou art my Husband (Hosea ii. 16).
There is not to be found in the Gospel of St. John a passage more certainly calculated to inspire, when Christ’s dignity was assured by His resurrection and ascension, the adoration which His Church has always paid to the Lamb in the midst of the throne.
II. The presence of the Bridegroom dispenses with the obligation to fast. Yet it is beyond denial that fasting as a religious exercise comes within the circle of New Testament sanctions. Jesus Himself, when taking our burdens upon Him, as He had stooped to the baptism of repentance, condescended also to fast. He taught His disciples when they fasted to anoint their head and wash their face. The mention of fasting is indeed a later addition to the words “this kind (of demon) goeth not out but by prayer” (Mark ix. 29), but we know that the prophets and teachers of Antioch were fasting when bidden to consecrate Barnabas and Saul, and they fasted again and prayed before they laid their hands upon them (Acts xiii. 2, 3).