11 “But when the king came in to look over the dinner guests, he saw a man there who was not dressed in wedding clothes, 12 and he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you come in here without wedding clothes?’ And the man was speechless. 13 Then the king said to the servants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ ”
The second thrust of Jesus’ parable of the wedding feast for the king’s son has to do with those who finally do attend. These were not the A or even the B-listers who rejected the king’s request to join the celebration, but those found in the “highways” and anyone willing to come. One man who did accept the invitation, was noticed for not having come dressed properly. He had no legitimate excuse for this faux pas, a disregard for accepted custom and an affront to the king and his son. As a result he provoked the monarch’s anger.
A number of lessons may be learned at this point. First, Jesus expected that those invited to the Kingdom of Heaven must come on God’s terms, not in their own cavalier way. Just coming as you are is not enough. There must be proper attire. The OT repeatedly speaks of being “clothed with salvation” (see 2 Chron. 6:41, Isaiah 61:10). Paul expands on this, “… not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith” (Phil 3:9). By analogy, Jesus’ parable points to the need of faith when coming to Christ. God will accept no man who enters presumptuously.
Second, God will respond angrily when people presume upon Him. Some people today have trouble with the idea that God can get mad at people; but Jesus, Who is love incarnate, taught that His loving Father was also capable of severe anger. Arrogance in the face of His love rejects that love as unneeded. To act like that is to step out of the line of God’s love and into the line of fire!
Third, there is a literal hell. The parable, though not here using the word “hell,” does depicts a place of confinement (“binding”) and suffering (“weeping and gnashing of teeth”), bereft of truth (“outer darkness”). Some today teach that Jesus only spoke in exaggerated terms to make a point. How could a loving God send someone to a literal, eternal place like hell? We would rebut, by asking then why Jesus would picture Him in such an extreme way if it were not so? That would be unjustified scare tactics. The all-knowing Son of God justifiably warned His detractors that the consequences are serious.
Lord, help me never to take a minimalist view of the consequences of people rejecting Christ. The stakes are too great to be wrong on these things.
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