Sitting in the London School of Theology library yesterday I was flicking through David Turner’s Baker Exegetical Commentary on Matthew and came across his discussion of this passage:
For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done. Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom. (Matt. 16:27–28)
Turner thinks that verse 27 “clearly refers to the coming of Jesus to the earth and the final judgment”, listing a number of passages in support: the parable of the harvest at the “close of the age” (Matt. 13:40-41), Jesus’ statement about the coming of the Son of Man in the Olivet discourse (24:30-31), the judgment of the nations, when the Son of Man will sit on his glorious throne accompanied by his angels (25:31), and Jesus’ retort to the high priest that he will “see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven” (26:64).
Turner then notes the problem of verse 28, which is ‘perplexing because it stresses the certainty of this future coming by stating that some of Jesus’s contemporaries will live to see “the Son of Man coming in his kingdom”’.
A number of solutions have been suggested by scholars. Some have argued that Matthew was wrong about the timing of the second coming and final judgment (Allen, Beare, Boring, Hare, Plummer).
Others think that Matthew was right about the timing but that Jesus was referring to something other than the final judgment: the transfiguration (Blomberg, Keener, Schnackenburg, Toussaint, many of the Fathers, and possibly 2 Pet. 1:16-18); the resurrection (Davies and Allison, Meier); the sending of the Spirit at Pentecost (McNeile); the judgment of Jerusalem in AD 70 (Alford, Hagner); or a “generic prediction of Christ’s future glory up to his return to earth, encompassing the resurrection, ascension, Pentecost, and present heavenly session” (Barclay, Carson, France, Hendricksen, Morris, Ridderbos).
Turner opts for the transfiguration, which occurs only six days later (17:1) and can be seen as a “foreshadowing of the future glorious coming”. “Some of those who hear Jesus make the prediction in 16:28… will witness the transfiguration.”
The suggestion that when Jesus said that “some standing here… will not taste death”, he had in mind an event that would occur only six days later, even allowing for Jewish hyperbole, seems frankly ludicrous. [pullquote]Why do commentators find it so difficult to accept the plain sense of the words?[/pullquote]
The phrase “some of those standing here” does not differentiate between some who will see the transfiguration (Peter, James and John) and the rest who will not. Rather, the implication is that not all of them will die before the coming of the Son of Man in his kingdom. None of his disciples dies in the next six days. And what the disciples will see is not a static foreshadowing of the event but “the Son of Man coming in his kingdom”—they will see the dynamic fulfilment of the prophecy.
In Matthew the motif is consistently associated with the foreseeable historical future of Israel—these are the texts which Turner thinks support his second coming / final judgment assumption:
- The Son of Man sends his angels at the close of the age to separate out the righteous from the unrighteous in Israel (13:36-43). The nations are not in view, the parables are addressed to Israel, the “close of the age” is not the end of the world, and the allusion to Daniel 12:2-3 underlines the point.
- I have made the case elsewhere that the seeing of the Son of Man “coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory” (Matt. 24:30) comes as the tightly integrated climax to judgment on Jerusalem. The events all unfold within a generation.
- The angels are sent to rescue and gather the “elect” disciples who have suffered in the course of their mission to tell Israel and the nations about YHWH has raised his Son from the dead (24:31).
- The judgment described in Matthew 25:31-46 is a judgment of the nations according to how they treated Jesus’ disciples—it belongs to the narrative of the sending out of the disciples into the world at the end of the age of second temple Judaism.
- The retort to Caiaphas (26:64) is a prediction that YHWH will give the right to rule Israel to Jesus as the Son of Man, who suffers and is vindicated, and to that community of followers which will suffer and be vindicated with him.
So the disciples, having been told that they will also have to take up their crosses if they mean to follow Jesus (16:24-26), are given the assurance that they will be delivered from their enemies and vindicated for their faithfulness to him within a period of, let’s say, 40 years. Peter may well have understood the transfiguration to have been a foreshadowing of this event, but to my mind it is out of the question that Jesus was referring to the transfiguration in Matthew 16:28.
Out of curiosity I also checked Tom Wright’s Matthew For Everyone commentary. He argues that phrases such as “the son of man coming in his kingdom” are not about the so-called “second coming”; they are about “his vindication, following his suffering” and are fulfilled when he is raised from the dead and is granted “all authority in heaven and on earth” (Matt. 28:18). The emphasis on the suffering and vindication of Jesus is important, but I don’t think it’s what Jesus is referring to in this passage.
The meaning of the saying is not that at this “coming” of the Son of Man Jesus will be given authority. It is that the disciples will be repaid according to what each has done. The “coming” happens not at the beginning of their mission to Israel and to the nations but at the end. In other words, the “coming” of the Son of Man in Matthew 16:28 is, so to speak, a “second” coming—it refers to the return of the master after a period of time to judge his servants (cf. Matt. 24:45-51; 25:14-30).
[pullquote]This is not simply a matter of having right (or wrong) beliefs about the second coming.[/pullquote] It is a matter of how the early church narrated its historical experience. Apocalyptic is simply the mode of story-telling used in the New Testament when it is necessary to show how God will resolve a future crisis.
Jesus expected his disciples to proclaim the good news of the kingdom to Israel and to the nations during a period of political and social turmoil, and he knew that they would face severe opposition. He speaks of the Son of Man coming with his angels in order to make it clear to them that there will be an end to the task and to the suffering. Within a generation they will be delivered from their enemies, and if they have remained faithful to their calling, they will be vindicated and rewarded. Some of them will live to see that.
This is a coherent and historically meaningful narrative. It is not the whole story of the church, but it is critical part of the story. We don’t need to make a doctrine out of it. We just need to tell it.
The Son of Man sends his angels at the close of the age to separate out the righteous from the unrighteous in Israel (13:36-43). The nations are not in view, the parables are addressed to Israel
In a passage using very similar language, the nations are very much in view:
‘When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. (Matthew 25:31-32)
Isn’t this the same event?
Also, I don’t have the same problems as the commentators you cite over Matthew 24:34. It’s clear to me at any rate that while Jesus is addressing events which led up to AD 70, another event comes into view behind those immediate events. Matthew 24:31 points to this event, again using similar language to Matthew 13:36-43 and 25:31-32:
And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other
Of course here, Matthew limits the gathering to the elect, which fits the focus of the context, but it doesn’t exclude a wider gathering of the nations at the same time, and may include a gathering which was cumulative: the church (elect) over time, leading to a conclusion. This would be at Jesus’s return. It couldn’t refer to AD 70, except in a highly spiritualised metaphorical way.
We can’t have too many completely different gatherings of angels though; that would be totally confusing.
And I’m still enjoying the posts!
@peter wilkinson:
Isn’t this the same event?
Yes, it is. But as I said in the post, it’s a judgment of the nations specifically with regard to how they have treated the disciples. Jesus is saying that the nations will be held accountable for how they responded to the presence of the disciples in their midst—not here for their idolatry, immorality, wickedness, injustice as in Romans 1. The focus is still on the final preservation and vindication of the disciples. It’s a disciple-centred judgment. It’s not a final judgment. That’s why the crucified and vindicated Jesus identifies himself with his suffering disciples.
Can you help me with the chronology? Jesus is preaching circa 33 AD. I assume you hold to an early view on when Matthew was written, so around 70 AD (before the siege and destruction of Jerusalem or after or during?). Then you have the period of pagan persecution and the martyr church. Constantine converts in 312 AD.
I can understand the end of persecution for the church and the victory over the pagan nations (Paul’s vision) but when does the vindication of the disciples happen (Jesus’s vision)?
Chronology with the Gospels is obviously complicated. I don’t really see why, even if Matthew was writing after AD 70, he could not have been faithful to Jesus’ perspective in his literary reconstruction. But the main point that I would make is that Jesus and Paul have different eschatological horizons. Jesus associated the vindication and deliverance of the disciples with the destruction of the temple and the end of that age of temple-centred Judaism. Paul connects vindication with the eventual ending of persecution in the Greek-Roman oikoumenē. He has transposed Jesus’ prophecy on to a wider historical landscape.
@Andrew Perriman:
Ah, so the disciples are proven right when the devastation and destruction Jesus warned of comes to pass and they have taken the narrow path of faithfulness into the new age? The world the Pharisees and other Jewish leaders clung to is brought down and only those who follow the disciples, who are following the path laid out by Jesus, will survive. Paul then picks that up and projects it into the next horizon with the young churches (which now include Gentiles) still following that path in faith that God will judge the pagan nations and rescue his church.
Have I got that right?
In my view, yes, that’s about right. The interesting question then is how does the first narrative get transposed into the second narrative. Paula Fredriksen had some interesting things to say about this, though not exactly in these terms, at the Jesus and Brian conference. Unfortunately, I took only minimal notes.
Could this passage be speaking of events like Stephen’s experience in Acts 7:55,56? Stephen could have been present when Jesus spoke these words that Matthew records. His vision occured before he was stoned, so he did see Jesus in his glory with the Father (and I assume Jesus’ angels) prior to his death. The problem would be the word “coming” and “to come”.
@John Janzen:
Hi John. So nice to hear from you.
I think you’ve probably answered your own question. Stephen’s vision of Jesus is certainly part of the narrative. As a Hellenist believer he would have heard about Jesus’ predictions from the apostles rather than directly from Jesus, but we can assume that it would have been a core element in their teaching. The vision affirms that Jesus is at the right hand of God as “Lord and Christ” (cf. Acts 2:34-36)—”standing”, interestingly, rather than sitting. But as you say, the coming remains in the future, which agrees with Peter’s earlier statement about the restoration of “all things”, though this raises another set of issues:
Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago. (Acts 3:19–21)
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