The Lord Jesus, therefore, gives direction concerning these tares, that unto the end of the world, successively in all the sorts and generations of them, they must be (not approved or countenanced, but) let alone, or permitted in the world.
The Lord Jesus in this parable of the tares, gives direction and consolation to his servants.
Secondly, he gives to his own good seed this consolation: that those heavenly reapers, the angels, in the harvest, or end of the world, will take an order and course with them, to wit, they shall bind them into bundles, and cast them into the everlasting burnings; and to make the cup of their consolation run over, he adds, ver. 43, Then, then at that time, shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.
The tares proved properly to signify anti-christians.
These tares, then, neither being erroneous doctrines, nor corrupt practices, nor hypocrites, in the true church, intended by the Lord Jesus in this parable, I shall, in the third place, by the help of the same Lord Jesus, evidently prove that these tares can be no other sort of sinners but false worshippers, idolaters, and in particular [and] properly, anti-christians.
CHAP. XXIII.
Matt. viii. 12. Matt. xxi. 43. God’s kingdom on earth the visible church.
First, then, these tares are such sinners as are opposite and contrary to the children of the kingdom, visibly so declared and manifest, ver. 38.[112] Now the kingdom of God below is the visible church of Christ Jesus, according to Matt. viii. 12. The children of the kingdom, which are threatened to be cast out, seem to be the Jews, which were then the only visible church in covenant with the Lord, when all other nations followed other gods and worships. And more plain is that fearful threatening, Matt. xxi. 43, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation that will bring forth the fruits thereof.
The distinction between the wheat and the tares, as also between these tares and all other.