Passage

Matthew 23

Verses 13–15 WEB Voices

After exposing honor-seeking religion, Jesus opens the seven woes. The first strike hypocrisy that blocks the kingdom and mission that multiplies ruin. (Verse 14, the widows’-houses woe found in many later manuscripts, is not treated in these notes.)

Matthew 23:13

13“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you devour widows’ houses, and as a pretense you make long prayers. Therefore you will receive greater condemnation.

Arminian

Woe names grief and judgment. They shut the kingdom in people’s faces—neither entering nor letting others enter who would.

Arminians find a tragic abuse of influence: grace’s door is blocked by false teaching and example. Those who would enter show inclination met with obstruction; leaders bear heavy guilt for hindering sincere seekers.

Reformed

Woe from the King exposes hypocrites who shut heaven’s kingdom. They refuse entry and obstruct others.

Christ alone opens and shuts with ultimate authority. False shepherds oppose His kingdom; their barrier is sin under His judicial word, and the woe is not empty rhetoric.

Key contrast Both treat the shutting of the kingdom as culpable hypocrisy. Arminians stress blocked seekers who truly would enter; Reformed Christians typically stress Christ’s judicial woe against leaders who oppose His kingdom under God’s righteous verdict.

Matthew 23:15

15Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel around by sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of Gehenna as yourselves.

Arminian

Zealous mission without truth: sea and land for one convert, then a disciple twice a child of hell. Evangelistic energy can deepen ruin when the gospel is twisted.

Grace cares about converts’ destiny. Mission must lead people to Christ, not into a harder hypocrisy. The woe summons repentance for teachers and converts alike.

Reformed

Proselytizing zeal ends in doubled Gehenna-children. Activity is not faithfulness.

God weighs mission by its fruit under truth. False religion reproduces itself; Christ’s woe judges both the makers and the system that multiplies heirs of wrath.

Historic quotes

Voices from both camps

Classic Arminian and Reformed comment on Matthew 23:13–15, in the writers’ own words.

Arminian Notable voices

“Wo unto you, scribes - I think the fourteenth and thirteenth verses should be transposed. This transposition is authorized by some of the best MSS., versions, and fathers. The fourteenth is wanting in the BDL., and in many others of inferior note, as well as in several of the versions.”

Adam Clarke · Commentary on the New Testament (on Matt 23:13–15)

Reformed Notable voices

“Christ pronounces a curse on them, because they pervert their office to the general destruction of the whole people; for since the government of the Church was in their hands, they ought to have been, as it were, porters for the kingdom of heaven. What purpose is served by religion and holy doctrine but to open heaven to us?”

John Calvin · Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists (on Matt 23:13–15)

Quotations lightly abridged for length; wording follows standard English translations of the sources named.

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