two sons

173:3.1As the cav­il­ing Phar­isees stood there in si­lence be­fore Je­sus, he looked down on them and said: “Since you are in doubt about John’s mis­sion and ar­rayed in en­mity against the teach­ing and the works of the Son of Man, give ear while I tell you a para­ble: A cer­tain great and re­spected land­holder had two sons, and de­sir­ing the help of his sons in the man­age­ment of his large es­tates, he came to one of them, say­ing, ‘Son, go work to­day in my vine­yard.’ And this un­think­ing son an­swered his fa­ther, say­ing, ‘I will not go’; but af­ter­ward he re­pented and went. When he had found his older son, like­wise he said to him, ‘Son, go work in my vine­yard.’ And this hyp­o­crit­i­cal and un­faith­ful son an­swered, ‘Yes, my fa­ther, I will go.’ But when his fa­ther had de­parted, he went not. Let me ask you, which of these sons re­ally did his fa­ther’s will?”

173:3.2And the peo­ple spoke with one ac­cord, say­ing, “The first son.” And then said Je­sus: “Even so; and now do I de­clare that the pub­li­cans and har­lots, even though they ap­pear to refuse the call to re­pen­tance, shall see the er­ror of their way and go on into the king­dom of God be­fore you, who make great pre­ten­sions of serv­ing the Fa­ther in heaven while you refuse to do the works of the Fa­ther. It was not you, the Phar­isees and scribes, who be­lieved John, but rather the pub­li­cans and sin­ners; nei­ther do you be­lieve my teach­ing, but the com­mon peo­ple hear my words gladly.”

173:3.3Je­sus did not de­spise the Phar­isees and Sad­ducees per­son­ally. It was their sys­tems of teach­ing and prac­tice which he sought to dis­credit. He was hos­tile to no man, but here was oc­cur­ring the in­ev­i­ta­ble clash be­tween a new and liv­ing re­li­gion of the spirit and the older re­li­gion of cer­e­mony, tra­di­tion, and au­thor­ity.

173:3.4All this time the twelve apos­tles stood near the Mas­ter, but they did not in any man­ner par­tic­i­pate in these trans­ac­tions. Each one of the twelve was re­act­ing in his own pe­cu­liar way to the events of these clos­ing days of Je­sus’ min­istry in the flesh, and each one like­wise re­mained obe­di­ent to the Mas­ter’s in­junc­tion to re­frain from all pub­lic teach­ing and preach­ing dur­ing this Pass­over week.