For the Son of man
shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward
every man according to his works. (Matt 16:27)
Ver. 27. This belongs to a third group of texts to be
taken into account in an attempt to fix the import of the title—those which
refer to apocalyptic glory in terms drawn from Daniel 7:13.—τότε ἀποδώσει: the
Son of Man comes to make final awards. The reference to judgment comes in to
brace up disciples to a heroic part. It is an aid to spirits not equal to this
part in virtue of its intrinsic nobleness; yet not much of an aid to those to
whom the heroic life is not in itself an attraction. The absolute worth of the
true life is Christ’s first and chief line of argument; this is merely
subsidiary (Alexander Balmain Bruce, "The Synoptic Gospels," in The
Expositor's Greek Testament, ed. W. Robertson Nicoll, 5 vols. (New York:
George H. Doran Company, n.d.], 1:227–28)
27.
Jesus further brings out the point by referring to eschatological values. In
due course this world with all its values will be done away, and in the world
to come the profits made in the here and now will be seen for the shoddy things
they are. This is the third consecutive verse with an opening For; Jesus is following a tightly
reasoned argument. The giving of an exchange for life in this world is
nonsense, for in due course this world will be replaced by something new. The Son of man is, of course, Jesus’
favorite way of referring to himself (see on 8:20). He does not say when or
where he will come, but clearly he has ceased to speak of the ordered life of
the present world and is speaking of the end of that ordered life. The end will
be ushered in by the coming back to this earth of the Son of man. He will then
be coming in the glory of his Father,
an expression that brings out the oneness of the Father and the Son and also
something of the brilliance that will attend the second coming. That will not
be in the lowliness that characterized his first coming to this earth, but in
glory and splendor. This is further brought out with the addition with his angels. We should probably
understand his to refer to the Son’s
angels rather than those of the Father, but there is probably no great
difference. In that new world it is hard to think of any division of glory into
that of the Father and that of the Son.
Then
leads us to what is next in sequence. Jesus speaks of the judgment wherein each
will receive the appropriate requital. His behavior is the sum of his
achievement; it includes all that he has done. Jesus makes it clear that there
will be a final reckoning and that those who have exchanged their essential
being, their “life,” for ephemeral profit or pleasure will receive the
recompense that is due. In the end there will be a righting of all wrongs.
(Leon Morris, The Gospel According to Matthew [The Pillar New
Testament Commentary; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1992], 433-34)
Matt 16:27 is similar to what Jesus said to Joseph Smith in the 1832 account of the First Vision:
behold and lo I come quickly as it [is?] written of me in
the cloud <clothed> in the glory of my Father
See my debate with Adam Stokes here where we discussed the 1832 First Vision account and how it refutes, not supports, the thesis that early Latter-day Saint theology was a form of Modalism.
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