‘Jesus says to them, “Truly I say to you, that the public servants and the prostitutes go into the Kingly Rule of God before you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the public servants and the prostitutes believed him, and you, when you saw it, did not even repent yourselves afterward, that you might believe him.”
Jesus then applies the parable in terms of the response of people to the ministry of John. John had come in ‘the way of righteousness'. He had walked righteously. He had taught righteousness (compare Luke 1:17; John 5:33; John 5:35). But above all He had brought God's active righteousness and deliverance to the people (see Isaiah 41:10; Isaiah 45:8; Isaiah 51:5; Isaiah 61:3 etc.; Luke 1:17). And many of the public servants and the prostitutes, the lowest of the low, those who would have been seen as those least likely to respond to God, had believed him. And they had repented and had been baptised, declaring their desire to take part in the future drenching of the Holy Spirit, declaring that they wanted to be God's ‘holy ones' (saints). Thus they had ‘gone into' the Kingly Rule of God. They had begun to live anew and had wanted all that God could give them. They had begun to obey Him and acknowledge His Kingly Rule. They were no longer what they were, but were now seeking to live their lives in a way which was pleasing to God. And the same was true of all who had responded to God's message through John.
But the religious leaders had not responded in this way. They did not believe him. They did not repent. They did not go into the Kingly Rule of God then. Nor had they done so since, even when they had seen the repentance of others whom they had castigated as sinners. They had remained unmoved. Thus they were still outside the Kingly Rule of God. Note the use of ‘Kingly Rule of GOD'. The former had responded to God Himself, the latter had turned from God. This expression always expresses the immediacy of His Kingly Rule in Matthew.
The contrast would have been startling to all who heard it. Being a public servant meant that a man was seen as having betrayed his country and his friends and as having consorted with the enemies of his people. He was engaged in the service of those who served Rome. He was thus seen, even by the ordinary people, as a traitor towards God and towards his people. He was universally despised in Israel. Being a prostitute was similar for a woman. She was seen as encouraging men into adultery (see Proverbs 7:10-23). She betrayed all that a decent woman stood for, and prostituted the relationship that lay at the basis of all decent society. Along with the public servant she was seen as openly defying God, and as being therefore, of all people, the most displeasing to God. Both would have been seen as the last ones who could ever have been expected to find acceptability with God. Thus the thought that such people might actually have entered the Kingly Rule of God would have seemed almost unbelievable. It would open the door of hope for all, again on the basis of repentance. For it must be recognised that they were only accepted because they had repented and believed.
The leaders of the people on the other hand saw themselves as not only respectable, but as thoroughly pleasing to God, as pleasing as a man can be. Were they not able to prove by their genealogies that they were sons of Abraham. Was His favour towards them not evidenced by their wealth and position, both seen as tokens of such favour? And the people on the whole would have agreed with them. They therefore saw no need to repent. Thus what Jesus was suggesting was almost shocking. It was turning the Jewish world upside down. But here again was Jesus' confirmation that the new age had begun, and that the Kingly Rule of God was already here, and had been since the time of John. For the whole point of what He was saying was that the sinful who have repented at John's preaching have entered the Kingly Rule of God, and are therefore now God's true people, while the outwardly righteous who have not responded to John's preaching, have not entered the Kingly Rule of God, and are even now unwilling to do so.
In this context ‘go before you' must signify present experience, for the assumption of ‘before' (which always in its use here indicates ‘before' in time) is that there is still opportunity for those who have not yet entered to do so, while once the time for entering the future Kingly Rule of God comes, all decisions will have been finalised, and those who have not believed will not be entering at all. There will be no question then of ‘before' for them, for their opportunity would have gone. Thus present experience is what is in mind. And this is confirmed not only by the use of ‘before' but by the whole argument. It loses most of its strength if it only refers to entry into the Kingly Rule of God in the distant future.
Note the huge implication of what Jesus is saying in all this. He is declaring that all men, even the chief priests and the aristocracy, are to be tested by how they have responded to John's preaching. And that is because John was not to be seen as just another preacher. He was to be seen as an eschatological figure. He was the forerunner of the Coming One. In him God was thus challenging the world. He had come representing the full truth of God. And thus all men of whatever level were judged by their response to him, in the same way as they will be judged by their response to the Coming One Who will follow him. For John was inescapable. In him God's truth was polarised. Through him God had broken in on the world. Thus not to believe him was not to believe God. And to believe him or otherwise was therefore the same as believing in the Coming One. It divided the righteous from the unrighteous. (And the corollary of this was that believing in the Coming One would also be vital, for there is salvation in no other than the One to Whom John pointed, and no other Name under Heaven given among men by which men and women can be saved (Acts 4:12)).
By this parable therefore Jesus rams home the failure of the chief priests and the aristocracy to respond to John and his message, reinforcing their failure to appreciate that his baptism and his message was from God.