2025.06.14 Hopewell @Home ▫ Matthew 19:27–30

Read Matthew 19:27–30

Questions from the Scripture text: Who answers Jesus in v27? What does he say they have done? What does he ask? Whom does Jesus answer (v28)? About what time does He answer? Who will be doing what in that time? Who else will be on thrones? Doing what? What things will His followers have left for His Name’s sake (v29)? How much will they receive? What will they inherit? What will many find to be the relationship between their status in this world and their status in the next (v30)?

What do we learn from Jesus’s gentle correction of Peter’s question? Matthew 19:27–30 prepares us for the sermon in the morning public worship on the coming Lord’s Day. In these four verses of Holy Scripture, the Holy Spirit teaches us that faith itself is not a work.  

Peter doesn’t understand that they already have everything because they have Christ. His question in v17 implies that he views giving up all and following Christ as meritorious. He has misinterpreted Jesus’s words about the young man, because Peter thinks that the disciples’ “sacrifice” should earn something.

Jesus reminds them that all things will be remade (NKJ “regeneration,” v28). Reward in this world, whatever it is, is short-lived. And living for it is short-sighted. Even in the renewed world, having Jesus and belonging to Him will be their greatest glory. The glory of their thrones is only a derivative glory from His throne.

What Peter has failed to understand is that no one “loses” by giving up for Christ, but rather gains a hundredfold (v29). All of his relationships and possessions, he now has in union with Christ. As a gift from Christ and  service unto Christ. They become more than a hundredfold more blessed this way. Not only that, but by becoming part of Christ’s family, believers have more in and with their brothers and sisters in the Lord than they could have ever had in the world. Most of all, if they have Christ, literally everyone and everything in existence is now for them (cf. Rom 8:32)

No, Peter has not followed Jesus as some sort of meritorious work by which he has earned reward. Faith is not a work that we do by which we earn something from God. It is a resting in which we receive God Himself, and all the good that He does for us, in Christ. If Peter was speaking with better theological accuracy, he would have said, “We have gained everything by following You! How much we already have! And how much more we will have forever!”

This principle of faith is why the last are first; they put comparatively little upon what they have in themselves, and comparatively much upon what they have in Christ. They do not think that they have given much, but rather that they have gained everything. And they are correct.

But for others, for those who think they are first, the sad opposite is true: because they put much upon what they think they have in themselves, they put rather little upon what they might have in Christ. And in the end, they find that they are last.

Faith gives nothing and receives everything. It is not a work. It is a receiving and resting upon the Christ Who works. And since faith receives Him, faith receives everything. He is the heavenliness of heaven, and faith has Him, already, on earth.

What are you tempted to think you have “given up” for Christ? What are some tangible examples of how you have actually gained in Christ, rather than lost? What blessings do you most enjoy now? What will you most be enjoying forever?

Sample prayer:  Whom have we in heaven, but You, Lord Jesus? And there is nothing on earth that we desire beside You. Our flesh and heart fail, but You are the strength of our heart and our portion forever. Grant unto us the faith to know that in You, we have heaven itself, for we ask it in Your Name, AMEN!

Suggested songs: ARP73C “Yet Constantly, I Am With You” or TPH73C “In Sweet Communion, Lord, with Thee”