The comprehensiveness of Christ's service.
The connection with what preceded is to be sought in John's keen sense of having transgressed the spirit of the beautiful words just uttered. Christ Would acknowledge all who professed his name; John had to confess that he had forbidden such a one from working. This leads to Christ's indicating—
I. MARKS OF HIS TRUE SERVANTS. The general link between the several classes is his "Name," i.e. conscious oneness and sympathy with him as the Son of God and Savior of the world. Accepting that as the test, he lays down:
1. A general principle of comprehension. (Verse 40.) It is negative. If a man does not oppose him, he is to be considered as an ally and a friend. There is no neutrality in man's relations to Christ. This was especially the case in that age: the devil was too active in human nature to suffer any opposition to be undeveloped. The powers of darkness and of light were in deadly antagonism, and all who were aware of the conflict were certain to have their sympathies engaged for the one side or the other. This seems a dangerous principle, and apt to lead to entanglement or disaster. "Divinely dangerous." Yet is it the teaching of the Spirit of God, and beautifully harmonious with it.
2. That those are his servants who do mighty works in his Name. This mere statement suggests how profoundly the work of Christ was leavening the community. There were many besides his professed followers who were influenced by his spirit.
3. That sympathy and help towards a disciple, as such, is itself a proof of discipleship.
II. THE SPIRIT IN WHICH THESE ARE TO BE REGARDED. The child of grace is to be trustfully disposed, and ready to put a charitable construction upon the merely negative behavior of men. And, moreover, it is to be recollected that the principle is not one of judgment, but of policy. "Jesus would impress it upon his disciples that they must honor and protect the isolated beginnings or germs of faith to be found in the world" (Lange). Towards all who do not oppose Christ there is to be an attitude of hopeful and trustful encouragement (cf. Matthew 11:1-30 :42).
1. Christian acknowledgment. "Forbid them not." Involving
2. Remembering their retaliation to the same Master.
"The word for millstone indicates the larger stone-mill, in working which an ass was generally employed, as distinguished from the smaller hand-mill of Luke 17:35. The punishment was not recognized in the Jewish Law, but it was in occasional use among the Greeks (Diod. Sic., 16:35), and had been inflicted by Augustus in cases of special infamy. Jerome states (in a note on this passage) that it was practiced in Galilee, and it is not improbable that the Romans had inflicted it upon some of the ringleaders of the insurrection headed by Judas of Galilee. The infamy of offending one of the ' little ones' was as great as that of those whose crimes brought upon them this exceptional punishment. It was obviously a form of death less cruel in itself than many others, and its chief horror, both for Jews and heathen, was probably that it deprived the dead of all rites of burial" (Plumptre, in 'New Test. Com.'). This punishment, such as it was, was but a shadow of the more terrible penalties of the spiritual state.—M.