Charles Spurgeon Commentary Matthew 22:13

"Then the king said to the servants, Bind him hand and foot, and cast him out into the outer darkness; there shall be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth." — Matthew 22:13 (ASV)

You may manage to get into the church even though you are not converted; but if you are not trusting in Christ, you are not saved, and your false profession will only make your destruction all the more terrible. Woe to us unless we are found wearing the righteousness of Christ—unless our lives are made holy by the gracious influence of His blessed Spirit! These are the wedding garments which we are to wear. If we do not have them, our presence at the festival will not avail us in the great testing time that is coming.

He had, by his action, if not in words, said, “I am a free man and will do as I like.” So the king said to the servants, “Bind him.” Pinion him. Let him never be free again. He had taken too many liberties with holy things. He had actively insulted the King.

He had lifted up his hand in rebellion and dared to set his foot within the King’s palace, “Bind him hand and foot.” Prepare the criminal for execution. Let there be no possibility of the rebel’s escape. He is where he ought not to be, “Take him away.” The King’s palace is no place for traitors.

Sometimes this sentence of excommunication is executed by the Church, when deceivers are put out of the ranks of the Lord’s people by just discipline, but it is more fully carried out in the hour of death.

It is worthy of note that the word for “servants” in this verse is not the same as that used in verses 3, 4, 6, 8, and 10. There it is douloi, here it is diakonoi, “ministers,” meaning the angels, whose special task it is to gather out of Christ’s kingdom “all things that offend, and them which do iniquity” (Matthew 13:41), “and sever the wicked from among the just” (Matthew 13:49).

The man in the parable had refused the robe of light, so the King says to his servants, “Cast him into outer darkness.” Cast him away, as people throw weeds over the garden wall or shake off vipers into the fire. Cast him far away from the banquet hall where torches flame and lamps are bright, “into outer darkness.” It will be all the darker to him now that he has seen the light within. His daring insolence deserves the most signal punishment. He is appointed to a place where “there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

It will be no place of repentance, for the tears shed there will not be those of godly sorrow for sin, but hot, scalding streams from eyes that flash with the fire of rebellion and envy burning in unsubdued hearts. The “gnashing of teeth” shows the character of the “weeping.” The outcast from God would gnash his teeth in all the fury of disappointed hatred, which had been foiled in its attempt to bring dishonor upon the King in connection with his Son’s wedding. Those who are professedly Christian, and yet really unbelieving and disobedient, will have such a doom as is described here. May the Lord in mercy save all of us from such a fearful fate!