Matt 11:16–19 — The Unique Wisdom of Jesus’ Gospel

The focus of this sermon is the final statement in verse 19: “Yet wisdom is justified by her deeds.” This is a difficult statement whose meaning is not immediately clear. I believe it speaks of Christ’s gospel and its wisdom. Wisdom is personified in Christ himself and in the gospel he proclaims. Despite the opposition of unbelievers, his wisdom is proven right by wisdom’s deeds—that is, by the results of his gospel.

Before examining this statement, we should review the preceding context. In verses 2–6, John the Baptist is in prison because Herod did not like his message. While there, John hears about the works of Jesus—his miracles and healings, the deeds of the Messiah. John believes that Jesus is the Messiah, but he is perplexed about the timing. If Jesus truly is the Messiah, why is John still in prison? Should not the Messiah conquer his enemies and establish the eternal kingdom?

John therefore sends some of his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” Jesus replies, “Go and tell John what you hear and see.” He then recounts the deeds John has already heard about: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, and lepers are cleansed. These outward miracles, which signify the presence of the kingdom, are connected with Jesus’ fundamental message—the gospel itself. Jesus therefore concludes his list of messianic works with the most important one: “The poor have good news preached to them.”

These are not merely the economically poor but the poor in spirit: those who know they are spiritually needy. They are people like the leper and the paralyzed man, who know they are sinners, and the centurion, who comes to Jesus seeking grace. The spiritually poor and needy have the gospel preached to them.

Jesus proclaims the gospel of the kingdom and the forgiveness of sins that comes through his person and work. That forgiveness ultimately comes through the cross, which still lies ahead, but Jesus is already on his way there to provide atonement for the sins of his people. He concludes in verse 6, “Blessed is the one who is not offended by me.” Blessed is the one who is not offended that Jesus does not immediately bring the kingdom in glory, power, and judgment, but instead preaches forgiveness and heals the sick while God’s people continue to suffer as they await the day of consummation.

John himself is suffering in prison as he waits for the day when the kingdom will come in glory and the wicked will be judged. Blessed is the one who is not offended by the kind of Messiah Jesus is: a Messiah who comes in weakness to suffer and die for his people. Blessed is the one who willingly waits for the coming judgment, knowing that the gospel is already being proclaimed in the midst of this fallen world.

As John’s disciples depart to report Jesus’ words and strengthen John’s faith, Jesus turns to the crowd and comments on John’s ministry. He asks, “What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the wind?” The word swayed may communicate the picture more clearly. Reeds bend first in one direction and then another, depending on the wind. Was John that kind of person, blown about by every opinion and changing his message according to the political winds? Certainly not. He stood firm and proclaimed the truth of God.

Nor did the people go out to see “a man dressed in soft clothing.” John was like Elijah, living in the wilderness and wearing a garment of hair, not like a wealthy man dressed luxuriously in a palace. He was a prophet of God—and more than a prophet. Jesus declares, “This is he of whom it is written, ‘Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way before you.’”

Looking back on John’s ministry, Jesus explains its significance. John had completed his task: he proclaimed repentance for the forgiveness of sins, baptized Jesus, and presented him to Israel as the Messiah. Malachi 3:1 identifies John as the promised messenger, the forerunner who would prepare for the Messiah’s coming and introduce him to God’s people. John was the final arrow pointing to Christ and announcing, “Here he is.” All the promises and messianic expectations of the Old Testament converge in John, the last in the line of the old covenant prophets, who points to Christ as their fulfillment.

Jesus then says, “Among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist.” This is an extraordinary claim: John is the greatest man who had yet lived. Nevertheless, Jesus adds that “the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” These words disclose the great chasm between the old covenant and new covenant eras. To use the analogy of tectonic plates, John stands on the San Andreas Fault. Everything up to and including John belongs to the old order, the age of types, shadows, and prophecies. With the coming of Christ, the new age has begun. The kingdom of God foretold in the Old Testament has arrived in the person of Jesus Christ. Therefore, anyone who believes in Jesus and enters his kingdom is greater even than John the Baptist.

Jesus makes this clear in verse 12: “From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force.” I prefer to translate the first clause, “the kingdom of heaven is forcefully advancing.” Beginning with Jesus’ baptism during John’s ministry, the kingdom has advanced, while those who believe in Jesus forcefully lay hold of its reality.

Although John is perplexed about the eschatological timetable—where are the judgment and unquenchable fire?—Jesus insists that the kingdom has arrived. It has come, if only people have eyes to see it, and it is forcefully advancing. We see this, for example, in Jesus’ exorcism of the two demon-possessed men in Matthew 8:28–34. These men, formerly in Satan’s grip and under his dominion, are delivered and transferred from the kingdom of darkness into Christ’s kingdom. The kingdom of God advances with power, plundering Satan’s dominion and claiming its spoils: individual sinners, God’s elect, brought into the kingdom of grace and glory.

Throughout Matthew 8 and 9, people come to Jesus and lay hold of him in faith. The blind men cry, “Have mercy on us, Son of David.” Conscious of their need, they seek his grace. Their faith proves that the kingdom is already present, not merely a future hope. At the end of the age, it will certainly be consummated: the wicked will be judged, and the new creation will come. Yet even before that day, the kingdom advances in Christ because the King is present and is bringing his people into his kingdom of grace and glory.

Jesus continues, “All the Prophets and the Law prophesied until John.” The entire Old Testament was preparatory. The kingdom had not yet come because Christ had not yet come. The Law and the Prophets looked ahead and established the expectation of the kingdom that has now arrived in him. Jesus is the fulfillment of the Old Testament.

“If you are willing to accept it,” Jesus adds, John “is Elijah who is to come”—the Elijah foretold in Malachi 4. John is not literally Elijah raised from the dead, but one who comes in the spirit and power of Elijah. Jesus himself identifies John as the fulfillment of Malachi 3 and 4, the Elijah-like messenger who prepares the way. “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

Not everyone could see this. Many scribes, Pharisees, and other Jewish people interpreted the Old Testament through a Christless lens. They expected a merely literal restoration of national Israel, the expulsion of the Romans, and the return of Israel’s earthly glory. Jesus tells them that they must understand the Old Testament spiritually and Christologically. Its gospel message is fulfilled in his person and work—in his healing of the sick, forgiveness of sinners, table fellowship with them, and gracious entrance of them into his kingdom.

This brings us to our text. Jesus shifts from interpreting John’s ministry in light of Scripture to describing Israel’s response to both John and himself: “To what shall I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to their playmates, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.’”

Jesus’ Gospel Questioned

The picture is of children in the marketplace trying to persuade their playmates to join their games. At first, they sing a dirge, a mournful song like one sung at a funeral. But their playmates refuse to mourn, so they try the opposite: they play the flute, music associated with a joyful celebration such as a wedding. Yet the other children still do not respond; they refuse to dance.

The dirge corresponds to John’s ministry, with its solemn warning of coming wrath and its call to repent in preparation for judgment. The flute corresponds to Jesus’ gospel of joy and forgiveness, enacted as he eats and drinks with sinners. “This generation”—the unbelieving majority of the Jewish people, represented especially by the scribes and Pharisees—responds to neither. They know that the kingdom is present in Christ but refuse to receive it. They turn a cold shoulder because they are unaware of their need. They are like children who will respond to neither mournful nor celebratory music.

The Pharisees did not like John’s preparatory message. He warned them, called them to repentance, and summoned them to confess and mourn their sins and cry to God for mercy. This offended them because they did not believe they needed repentance. They regarded themselves as righteous keepers of the law who already possessed a right standing with God.

John’s warning implied that this confidence was false. When he saw Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham” (Matt 3:7–9). They trusted their descent from Abraham and believed that they had no need to repent. John warned them that they were not on the right path. Thus, when the dirge sounded, they refused to mourn.

Yet they did not like Jesus’ message either, though one might expect his message of gospel grace to be more welcome. John fasted; Jesus feasted. Jesus was a friend of sinners who enacted the gospel through celebratory meals of fellowship with them. Nevertheless, the Jewish leadership criticized Jesus’ message of grace just as they criticized John’s message of judgment. Both messages required them to admit that they were sinners who needed to be reconciled to God.

Verse 19 records their accusation: “The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’” They accused Jesus of being too free with God’s grace. In their eyes, his association with sinners suggested that he was defiled by them and insufficiently strict in his piety. They slanderously twisted his table fellowship into sinful overindulgence in food and wine.

This accusation resembles the criticism leveled against Paul’s gospel, which is the same gospel Jesus proclaimed. Paul wrote, “The law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (Rom 5:20). To the unbelieving, moralistic mind, that message sounds dangerous. Paul’s critics therefore accused him of teaching that people should sin more so that grace might abound still more. Paul emphatically rejects the conclusion: “By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?” (Rom 6:2).

Like the critics of Jesus, the critics of Paul misrepresented the gospel as a license to sin because they did not recognize their own sinfulness and need. The good news is preached to the spiritually poor—to those who know they are in trouble and need grace. To the hard-hearted and self-righteous, who imagine that they need no forgiveness, the gospel means nothing.

Jesus’ fellowship with sinners looks like an endorsement of sin only to those who fail to see the beauty of his grace. He eats and drinks with sinners, welcomes them into fellowship, and transforms them. Consider his words to the paralyzed man in Matthew 9:2: “Take heart, my son; your sins are forgiven.” These words are remarkably bold and gracious. Looking at his paralyzed body, the man might have feared that he had committed some terrible sin. Jesus does not want him to be discouraged but to possess assurance: “Take heart, my son; your sins are forgiven.” That is joyful news only to those who know that they have sins in need of forgiveness.

Jesus’ Gospel Vindicated

Jesus’ gospel is questioned, maligned, misinterpreted, and falsely accused. Yet verse 19 concludes, “Wisdom is justified by her deeds.”

Some commentators understand this as an aphorism: wise teaching is shown to be wise by the good actions that flow from it. That is undoubtedly part of the meaning. Yet I believe Jesus is also identifying himself with Wisdom. The New Testament supports this connection; for example, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1:30 that Christ is our wisdom. The Old Testament had already anticipated the personification of wisdom, especially in the book of Proverbs.

Christ as Wisdom Incarnate

Proverbs 1:20 pictures Lady Wisdom crying aloud in the street and raising her voice in the marketplace. In Proverbs 8, she stands beside the way, at the crossroads, and at the gates of the town, calling to humanity. She invites people to receive her teaching. Fools reject Wisdom and go instead to the house of Lady Folly, which leads to death. Those whose eyes have been opened by grace hear Lady Wisdom, receive her instruction, find life, and obtain favor from the Lord.

Jesus identifies himself as the fulfillment of this portrait in Proverbs 8 and 9. “Wisdom is justified by her deeds”: Lady Wisdom is vindicated by the results of her teaching. The immediate context strengthens this connection. In Proverbs 9, Wisdom prepares a splendid banquet. She slaughters her beasts, mixes her wine, sets her table, and sends her young women into the town to invite the simple: “Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed” (Prov 9:5).

This fits Matthew’s context perfectly. “The Son of Man came eating and drinking,” reclining at table with tax collectors and sinners (Matt 9:10). Jesus fulfills Wisdom’s banquet. Just as Lady Wisdom invited people to her feast, Jesus, Wisdom personified and indeed Wisdom incarnate, invites sinners to his table. Jesus and his gospel of the kingdom set forth a banquet of grace, mercy, and forgiveness, summoning sinners to rejoice in fellowship with him.

The crucial point is that those who enjoy table fellowship with Jesus do not remain in their sins. They seek his wisdom so that their lives may be changed. They do not come to remain tax collectors and sinners but to become like Matthew himself, no longer practicing extortion but hungering and thirsting for righteousness. The kingdom is forcefully advancing, and they are spiritually laying hold of it by faith, bringing forth fruits of righteousness in their lives.

Thus, “Wisdom is justified by her deeds” is equivalent to Jesus’ statement in Matthew 12:33 that “the tree is known by its fruit.” Both sayings teach the same principle, although Matthew 11 draws particularly on the Old Testament figure of Lady Wisdom.

The Unique Wisdom of Jesus’ Gospel

Sanctification Is the Fruit of Justification

First, the unique wisdom of Jesus’ gospel means that progressive sanctification is the fruit of justification.

Jesus healed and forgave sinners first. Before the paralyzed man had done anything, Jesus told him, “Take heart, my son; your sins are forgiven.” Jesus preached the gospel to the poor and came not to call those who considered themselves righteous but sinners. Only after proclaiming forgiveness and enjoying fellowship with sinners did he call them to take up their cross and follow him. As he said to the woman caught in adultery, “Go, and from now on sin no more.”

The assurance that we are justified and forgiven is the necessary precondition for hearing Christ’s call, taking up our cross, and striving to sin no more. Our assurance of justification and forgiveness is not contingent upon our progressive sanctification. That would turn the fruit into the root. The root is the gospel: we are forgiven and justified in Christ. The fruit is our growth in holiness as we increasingly die to sin and live unto righteousness.

Our Good Works Are Christ’s Work in Us

Second, the unique wisdom of Jesus’ gospel means that our good works are Christ’s work in us. There is, of course, a sense in which they are genuinely our works. We must strive, seek the Lord’s grace, and exert effort to live for him. Ultimately, however, it is Christ working in us.

Paul makes this clear in 1 Corinthians 15:10. Reflecting on his apostolic ministry, he writes, “By the grace of God I am what I am.” Paul knew this because he had been a Pharisee who persecuted the church and killed Christians. Only God’s grace saved and forgave him. Yet this grace did not make Paul passive: “His grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them.” Paul acknowledges that he worked, but immediately qualifies the statement: “Though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.”

We must work, make every effort, put sinful deeds and desires to death, and obey the Lord. Yet the obedience to which God calls us is the product of his grace working within us.

From his ascended throne, Jesus Christ continues to work miracles by his Spirit. The outward miracles of Matthew 8 and 9—healing the sick and raising the dead—do not ordinarily continue in the same visible form. Christians still suffer physical affliction and die of cancer. Nevertheless, we see Christ’s miraculous work as he transforms our lives and conforms us to his image.

Christ produces in us the kingdom righteousness described in the Sermon on the Mount, a righteousness exceeding that of the scribes and Pharisees. He makes us merciful, teaches us to love our enemies, and gives us a desire for purity of heart. These are Christ’s own works within us. If Wisdom is Jesus, then “Wisdom is justified by her deeds” means that Christ’s wisdom is vindicated by his works of transforming us into his image.

This truth makes a profound difference. If we regard sanctification as entirely dependent on our effort and overlook the reality of Christ working within us, we may despair and give up. When we recognize his work, however, we know that sanctification is all of grace, just as justification is all of grace.

Sanctification Vindicates Christ’s Gospel

Third, Christ’s work of progressively sanctifying us vindicates his gospel.

The scandal of the gospel is that Jesus eats and drinks with sinners. His opponents accused him of antinomianism and cheap grace. Yet Jesus declares that he will vindicate the wisdom of his gospel in the changed lives of his people as sinners are restored to the image of God.

When Christ forgives a man or woman, he also changes that person. The tree is good, and therefore its fruit is good. Those who have been forgiven and received grace from Christ are not content with sin. They possess a holy hatred of it, wrestle against it, long to be free from it, and strive to live for Christ.

The Spirit’s work in us is Christ’s vindication of his grace and gospel. Paul prays in Philippians 1:11 that believers will be “filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.” Imputed righteousness bears fruit, and that fruit comes through Jesus Christ. It brings glory and honor to him and demonstrates the wisdom of his gospel.

Our sanctification does not depend ultimately upon us; it is Christ working within us. Moreover, Christ desires to perform this work in order to vindicate his gospel. What a wonderful encouragement it is to know that we have a part in this vindication as we behold him working in us.