Every one that hath forsaken. — While the loyalty and faith of the Apostles were rewarded with a promise which satisfied their hopes then, and would bring with it, as they entered more deeply into its meaning, an ever-increasing satisfaction, their claim to a special privilege and reward was at least indirectly rebuked. Not for them only, but for all who had done or should hereafter do as they did, should there be a manifold reward, even within the limits of their earthly life, culminating hereafter in the full fruition of the “eternal life” of which they had heard so recently in the question of the young ruler.
For my name’s sake. — The variations in the other Gospels, “for my sake and the gospel’s” (Mark 10:29), “for the kingdom of God’s sake” (Luke 18:29), are significant, (1) as explanatory, (2) as showing that the substantial meaning of all three is the same. The act of forsaking home and wealth must not originate in a far-sighted calculation of reward; it must proceed from devotion to a Person and a cause, must tend to the furtherance of the gospel and the establishment of the divine Kingdom.
Shall receive an hundredfold. — The better MSS. have “manifold more,” as in St. Luke. The received reading agrees with St. Mark. Here it is manifestly impossible to take the words literally, and this may well make us hesitate in expecting a literal fulfilment of the promise that precedes. We cannot look for the hundredfold of houses, or wives, or children. What is meant is, that the spirit of insight and self-sacrifice for the sake of God’s kingdom multiplies and intensifies even the common joys of life. Relationships multiply on the ground of spiritual sympathies. New homes are opened to us. We find new friends. The common things of life — sky, and sea, and earth — are clothed with a new beauty to the cleansed eyes of those who have conquered self. St. Mark (Mark 10:30) adds words which, if one may so speak, are so strange that they must have been actually spoken, — “with persecutions.” We seem to hear the words spoken as a parenthesis, and in a tone of tender sadness, not, perhaps, altogether unmingled with a touch of the method which teaches new truths, by first meeting men’s expectations, and then suddenly presenting that which is at variance with them. The thoughts of the disciples were travelling on to that “hundredfold,” as though it meant that all things should be smooth and prosperous with them. They are reminded that persecution in some shape, the trials that test and strengthen, is inseparable from the higher life of the kingdom. (Comp. Acts 14:22.) Men need that discipline in order that they may feel that the new things are better than the old.