And the king, having gone in to see the guests, beheld there a man not clothed with a wedding garment.
The hall is full, the servants have brought in strangers from the roads, and nothing is left but the feast. Then the King comes in, and one guest has arrived on his own terms.
This is not a hunt for enemies. The King comes to see His friends, and the visit finds out those who are not.
The King comes in to see His guests. This cannot be in heaven, where the Church is gathered, for no false believers will be there. As we said, what presses on our heart here is a solemn truth, not an exact timetable of events... The King comes in, not to look for enemies, but to see His friends. Yet the enemies have to be found out. Their refusal to take the wedding garment He provides is what marks them.
No one had to arrive dressed for a royal feast. The clothing belonged to the occasion, and the host supplied it.
A wedding feast calls for a wedding garment, and nobody can do without it. The King provided it out of His own great generosity, and each guest had only to wear it. Who that honoured the King and the occasion would refuse? The servants did not look for such garments outside. Nobody wore them on the highways; they were worn inside at the wedding. The point was not for the guests to turn up in their best. Giving was the King's business. Whoever came, there was more than enough; "everything is ready."
The garment was a gift. So the rich man and the beggar would offend in the same way by keeping their own clothes.
If a guest invited by the king came in wearing costly clothes he had provided himself, or if a poor guest wore his own rags, either would have insulted the king. Each would have despised both the robe provided and the feast he was invited to. Only the one who invites people to the wedding can give them a garment fit for the occasion. Two things are set aside completely: the idea that anything in ourselves qualifies us to come in, and the fear that our condition will shut us out. Our blessing depends on one single thing — the sufficiency and the grace of the one who invites.
The King asked nothing about the man's record. Only the missing robe mattered.
This was the ground for immediate action. Nobody asked what the man had been or had done. The servants had orders to bring in the bad as well as the good... He may even have been the most correct, moral and religious person there, like the young ruler who left the Lord in sorrow. But whether he was a degraded sinner or a self-righteous soul, one thing is certain: he had no wedding garment on. That caught the King's eye at once. He was treating the King's grace as nothing, and openly dishonouring His Son.
The rest of Scripture shows what the robe means.
Only the language of the gospel, as we find it elsewhere, makes the spiritual meaning clear. The "robe of righteousness" (Isaiah 61:10) with which God covers His people can only carry the fullest gospel meaning. Christ alone is made our righteousness (1 Corinthians 1:30), and, as with the first covering God gave for the nakedness of sinful man, it is death that in His wonderful way has supplied it. He is God's free gift to all who will receive Him, and that fact will strike dumb everyone who at last stands before God without Him.
He sat among them and nobody noticed. That is the warning for anyone who measures himself by the people around him.
Nothing in the parable suggests that the other guests thought he was any different from themselves. The imitation was that thorough. And so it is now. Huge numbers today claim to be religious, and no one on earth could feel quite sure whether they are real Christians or only formal ones. Their lives are strictly moral. They regularly attend some place of worship, they give money for church, mission and charitable causes, and they sing psalms and hymns as sweetly as anyone. They read the Scriptures, they pray, and they may even preach in public. Yet look for the unmistakable signs of divine life in the soul, and the search is in vain.
The robe is not a burden. It is the dress of a celebration.
Every sinner adorns himself with it the moment his heart values Christ. And what a joy it is to know that when we put on Christ, we are not putting on sackcloth, and we are not entering a spirit of heaviness. A wedding garment has clothed us, and we dress our spirits in the garment of praise!
- Gift — The garment was the King's to give, not the guest's to find. No one who came in off the roads could dress himself for a royal feast.
- Refusal — The man's sin was not his past but his choice. By keeping his own clothes he despised the grace that had clothed everyone else.
- Equality — Fine clothes and rags offend in the same way. Both replace what the King gave, and our standing rests on the grace of the One who invites.
- Detection — The other guests saw nothing wrong with him. Only the King could tell the real from the imitation, so measuring yourself by other church-goers proves nothing.
- Joy — Christ Himself is the robe. Whoever puts Him on wears no sackcloth, but a wedding garment and the garment of praise.
And he says to him, [My] friend, how camest thou in here not having on a wedding garment? But he was speechless.
The king's servants had filled the feast from the roads, bringing in "both bad and good." Now the king walks in and finds one guest with no wedding garment. His question is not about the man's past or his morals.
The whole force of the king's question rests on a detail of the setting: the guest was never expected to supply his own robe.
The king therefore in his coming sees a man without a wedding garment. This was an actual insult to the king, for a wedding garment was furnished by the host when the invitation was given. One's neglecting to wear it was an affront to the best.
Since a crowd pulled in off the highways could not be expected to own royal clothing, the provision was made in advance — and refusing it was a deliberate act.
No one expected a crowd gathered at random from the highways to own clothing fit for a royal banqueting hall. So the King had provided wedding robes. The man the King's eye fell on dared to insult the King by turning up in clothes of his own. He either thought too much of his own clothes to put them aside, or too little of what suited the King's presence to wear the wedding garment.
The parable never says what the man wore. Rich or ragged, his own clothes were the problem.
Suppose a guest invited by the king were a rich man, and tried to come in wearing expensive clothes of his own providing. Or suppose a poor man tried to wear his ragged clothes. Either way it would have been an insult to the king. It would despise both the robe provided and the occasion he was invited to. The one who invites to the wedding is the only one who can give the guests clothing that suits the occasion. Two things are set aside completely: the thought that anything in ourselves gives us the capacity to come in, and the fear that our state will shut us out. Our blessing depends on one single thing — the sufficiency and the grace of the one who invites.
Commentators read the garment as Christ Himself.
The wedding garment is Christ. So this guest came before the King without Christ. He had not put on Christ! Whatever the pretence, it was all and only himself, not Christ… But the very worst of sinners who takes Christ as his only confidence to stand before God proves God right and exalts His grace. He is like a man broken down in his thoughts about himself. He looks up and says: I cannot trust what I have been, nor even what I want to be. But I can trust what You are to me in the gift of Your Son.
The servants brought in bad and good alike, so the man's record was not what shut him out. One thing did.
The King raised no question about what the man had been or done. The servants had orders to bring in the bad as well as the good… This man may even have been the most correct, moral and religious person there, like the young ruler who went away from the Lord in sorrow. But whether he was a degraded sinner or a self-righteous soul, one thing is certain — he had no wedding garment on. That caught the King's eye at once. He was treating the King's grace as nothing, and it was an open dishonour to His Son.
The king's question invites an answer. The man says nothing, and his own judgment is the reason.
He got into the marriage feast with a careless heart, thinking of himself and relying on some quality of his own nature. But then his sense of what was fitting and necessary woke up, and nothing stopped it working in his conscience. One simple, plain question is put to him: should anyone in such a dress be in such a place? He is "speechless." He is convicted. He has nothing to say. His own judgment tells him that a man like him has no business in a place like that.
That silence is not unique to him.
The man is questioned and has no answer. When the Lord judges, no one will dare to open his mouth in self-defense.
This warning is not for people who turn the invitation down. It is for people whose religious life looks flawless.
On the outside you may not make light of God's invitation. To all appearances you may be a Christian, diligent in all religious matters. Dressed in the clothes of your own righteousness, you may stand up to the most experienced eye. But you do not have Christ — the wedding garment. A moment is coming when God will read you through and through, stop your mouth, and pronounce your judgment.
- Provided — Only the king who invites can supply clothing fit for his feast, and he had already supplied it.
- Refused — Rich clothes or rags made no difference. Wearing your own meant refusing the king's, and that was the insult.
- Christ — The garment stands for Christ. To come without it was to dishonour the King's Son.
- Unmasked — Reputation counted for nothing. A moral, religious man could still be the one the king's eye stopped at.
- Speechless — The king calls him "friend," and he says nothing. His own conscience agrees that he does not belong.
Then said the king to the servants, Bind him feet and hands, and take him away, and cast him out into the outer darkness there shall be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth.
One man at the wedding feast receives this sentence. The king questions him first, and he has no answer. Why is the penalty so heavy when the fault looks like a matter of clothing, and who are the servants sent to carry it out?
The king does not condemn without first asking. He gives the man a chance to explain, and the man has nothing to say. One writer explains that silence.
"And he was speechless." His memory is sharpened, his conscience fully awake, his sin seen in its true colours, and the majesty of God understood. Who would dare say a word!
Another writer follows the scene in three steps, and marks how late the man was.
To the demand, "Friend, how did you come in here without a wedding garment?" he was speechless, without excuse. Could he then plead for mercy and beg for a covering not his own? No, it was too late for that; it was too late. The sentence of the insulted king went out. "Bind him hand and foot and cast him into the outer darkness." The king carried out that sentence at once. He cast the man out of the feast, and his rags became the chains that bound his soul in everlasting misery. He was searched, silenced and sentenced.
The charge is narrow. The king says nothing about the man's past life, and that is deliberate.
Here, notice, nothing is said to the man about what we may call his sins in general. The charge is simply that he had come in without the wedding garment. He had refused the grace of God, which alone could meet his need. So all his other sins, of heart and life, remained, and sank with him into the place of outer darkness.
The offence cuts both ways. Rags and fine clothes insult the host in the same way.
Suppose a guest invited by the king were a rich man, and tried to come in wearing fine clothing of his own providing. Or suppose a poor man tried to wear his ragged garments. Either way it would have been an insult to the king. It would despise both the "robe" provided and the occasion he was invited to. The one who invites to the wedding is the only one who can provide the guests with a garment suited to the occasion.
One writer names the garment, and says what it means to arrive without it.
The wedding garment is Christ. This guest therefore came before the King without Christ. He had not put on Christ! Whatever the pretence, it was all and only himself, not Christ, and that is everlasting ruin and condemnation to a sinner.
Another writer warns against putting this scene in heaven.
All the confusion about the wedding garment comes from a wrong idea of the parable. People give it a church application and put the scene in Heaven. However, the church is not in view here at all. It is, as in Matthew 13, the Kingdom of the heavens, the professing sphere of Christendom… It is made up of professors and possessors. The call goes out, many hear and follow it, but not all believe in their hearts and are saved. The man without the wedding garment represents this class, and it is a large one.
Who carries out the sentence? Not the messengers who carried the invitation.
Notice that the word translated "servants" in verses 3, 4, 6, 8, is not the same as the one used in verse 13. The first (bondservants) refers to those who go out with the Gospel. The second (ministers) refers to the angels who carry out His judgments. These two things are never confused.
The picture takes its force from the bright room he has just left.
Inside the banquet hall there is joy and light. Outside it is night, and those who are there have no share in the joy inside… It is a place of weeping, of eternal grief. There is also gnashing of teeth. This may point not only to remorse, but also to anger; an eternal rebellion against God.
Some read this exclusion as being only from the kingdom, and only for a time. One writer answers that the parable will not carry that reading.
If Matthew 22:13 spoke only of a temporary judgment, then no hypocrite would ever face any other judgment. And if this judgment is not temporary, the whole system falls.
- Invited — the king gives the feast, so the king gives the clothing too. Fine clothes of your own insult him as much as rags do.
- Clothed — the garment is Christ. Everything turns on whether a guest has put Him on, or has only joined the feast in name.
- Searched — the scene is the professing sphere, not heaven, and it holds real and unreal guests together. The king's entrance tells them apart.
- Silenced — with his conscience awake and God's majesty in view, the man has no answer. The time to ask for mercy was before the king came in.
- Sentenced — angels bind him and cast him out. Outside the lighted hall lies darkness, weeping, and gnashing of teeth, and nothing here makes it temporary.
For many are called ones, but few chosen ones.
The parable ends with a line that explains why the King threw out the guest with no wedding garment. The word "for" ties the whole story to this verdict, and raises the question every reader must face: what separates the "called" from the "chosen"?
The "call" here is not a private summons to a few. It is the open gospel invitation, and it reaches beyond Israel to the nations. One writer explains who the feast is for, and how far it reaches:
The wedding feast that the King makes for His Son, and to which He invites guests, pictures God's gracious offer to give joy, comfort and blessing to those He wants to share in it. It is for the Son, in honor of the Son, that the feast is made. This parable points to far more than the two parables before it. It goes beyond the cross, for the offer goes out not only to Israel but also to the Gentiles.
Elsewhere in Scripture calling and choosing go together and describe the same people. This verse sets them against each other, and one writer marks the difference:
"Election" means choosing. And the calling is of those whom He has chosen; it is the making good of their election. In "many are called but few are chosen," the two are set against each other, not as here where they go together.
The same writer applies that contrast to the parable itself:
Matthew 22:14 seems clearly profession, or outward calling; the chosen, those owned in the wedding.
The parable shows two things: a result you can count, and a reality only God makes:
The gospel call goes out to "as many as you find," and the external result is that "the wedding hall was filled with guests." But verses 11-13 show what makes it real. Being there, and blessed, is not of man's will but of God's calling in grace.
The verse comes right after the King throws the man out. So the garment marks off the chosen from the merely called:
That is, the man who had not the wedding garment, though called to the feast, was not chosen as a guest. He was cast into outer darkness. Outwardly he had heard and accepted the invitation. But he had not used the garment the bridegroom provided for the guests, so he was rejected.
Another writer names the garment, and traces the man's ruin to the one Person he lacked:
The wedding garment is Christ. This guest therefore came before the King without Christ. He had not put on Christ! Whatever the show he made, it was all and only himself, not Christ. For a sinner, that means everlasting ruin and condemnation. But take the very chief of sinners. If he accepts Christ as his one confidence to stand before God, he thereby justifies and exalts Him and His grace.
The word "few" could sound as if God's provision ran out. The same writer closes the parable by blocking that idea:
"For many are called (that is, by the gospel), but few are chosen." In the end it is only a "little flock." That is not because grace was not ample for them all. It is because people abuse grace, and Christ is in so few — though He is all in those who have Him.
The verse is not a puzzle for theologians but a test for anyone who counts himself religious. One writer shows where the fault lay, then presses the question on the reader:
The fault and the blame were his own. The garment was free, and to refuse it was to insult the host. Mere outward assent is not enough; there must also be the acceptance of the offered garment, and this is what makes the choice valid. How significant this fact in this day of widespread profession! People give general assent to the call. Bad and good have heard it outwardly and have taken up the Christian profession. But even of these, few have accepted the wedding garment — the title to the feast. Few are morally fit, pardoned, justified, having Christ for their righteousness. For such there can be only outer darkness, weeping, and gnashing of teeth. Reader, have you the wedding garment?
- Called — the invitation goes out to all the roads, past Israel to the nations, and the hall fills with bad and good alike.
- Contrasted — this verse sets calling and choosing against each other. The "called" only profess; the "chosen" are owned at the wedding.
- Clothed — the one difference is the garment, and that garment is Christ. The man cast out came before the King in himself.
- Cheapened — "few" is not a shortage of grace but grace abused. The provision was ample for every guest.
- Checked — one question decides it, and you must answer it for yourself: have you the wedding garment?