Why did Jesus say: "Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead" in Matthew 8:22? Commentary and exegesis.

in jesus •  4 years ago 

Jesus in Matthew 8:22 teaches the disciples that he personifies life (he is the "son of man") and he is above all else, when one of his disciples first asks him to allow bury his father to after follow him: "But Jesus told him: ´Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead´".
Bible study. Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead. Matthew 8,22.jpg
The concept of spiritual death is very frequent in the Bible, and it refers to man's estrangement from true spiritual life, the true life of man according to Jesus is eternal life ("This is eternal life that they may know you the only true God", John 17:3), that is the worship of wisdom or in other words the worship of God in spirit and truth as Jesus taught to the samaritan woman:
"Jesus answered, ´Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life´.
The woman said to him, ´Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water´.
He told her, ´Go, call your husband and come back´.
´I have no husband´, she replied.
Jesus said to her, ´You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true´.
´Sir´, the woman said, ´I can see you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is Jerusalem.´
´Woman´, Jesus replied, ´believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do now, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.´" John 4:13-24
Worshiping money means spiritual dead. Jesus puts us in the dilemma between true life and spiritual death, that is, between the worship of wisdom on the one hand and the worship of money (idolatry) on the other. We cannot serve both: god and money at the same time.
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