subject to them.” 1744 It did not say, “He was subject to His mother,” or was “subject to her,”
but “He was subject to them.” To whom was He subject? was it not to His parents? It was
to both His parents that He was subject, by the same condescension by which He was the
Son of Man. A little way back women received their precepts. Now let children receive
theirs—to obey their parents, and to be subject to them. The world was subject unto Christ,
and Christ was subject to His parents.
20. You see then, brethren, that He did not say, “I must needs be about My Father’s
service,” in any such sense as that we should understand Him thereby to have said, “You
are not My parents.” They were His parents in time, God was His Father eternally. They
were the parents of the Son of Man—“He,” the Father of His Word, and Wisdom, and Power,
by whom He made all things. But if all things were made by that Wisdom, “which reacheth
from one end to another mightily, and sweetly ordereth all things,”1745 then were they also
made by the Son of God to whom He Himself as Son of Man was afterwards to be subject;
and the Apostle says that He is the Son of David, “who was made of the seed of David ac-
cording to the flesh.”1746 But yet the Lord Himself proposes a question to the Jews, which
the Apostle solves in these very words; for when he said, “who was made of the seed of
David,” he added, “according to the flesh,” that it might be understood that He is not the
Son of David according to His Divinity, but that the Son of God is David’s Lord; for thus
in another place, when He is setting forth the1747 privileges of the Jewish people, the Apostle
saith, “Whose are the fathers, of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, Who is over
all, God blessed for ever.”1748 As, “according to the flesh,” He is David’s Son; but as being
“God over all, blessed for ever,” He is David’s Lord. The Lord then saith to the Jews, “Whose
Son say ye that Christ is?” They answered, “The Son of David.”1749 For this they knew, as
they had learnt it easily from the preaching of the Prophets; and in truth, He was of the seed
of David, “but according to the flesh,” by the Virgin Mary, who was espoused to Joseph.
When they answered then that Christ was David’s Son, Jesus said to them, “How then doth
David in spirit call Him Lord, saying, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit Thou on My right
hand, till I put Thine enemies under Thy feet.1750 If David then in spirit call Him Lord, how
is He his Son?”1751 And the Jews could not answer Him. So we have it in the Gospel. He
1744 Luke ii. 49, 50, 51.
1745 Wisd. viii. 1.
1746 Rom. i. 3.
1747 Commendaret.
1748 Rom. ix. 5.
1749 Matt. xxii. 42.
1750 Ps. cx. 1.
1751 Matt. xxii. 43, 44, 45.
541
Of the agreement of the evangelists Matthew and Luke in the generations…