There’s a moment in Matthew 22 that doesn’t get the attention it deserves. The king prepares a wedding for his son. He sends invitations, twice. The invited guests blow it off. Some go back to their farms. Some go back to their businesses. Some kill the messengers. The king is furious, the wedding is still ready, and he opens the invitation to anyone who can be found. Good and bad alike. The halls fill up. Then the king walks in to greet his guests — and spots someone without a wedding garment. Not a gatecrasher. Someone who was genuinely invited. Someone who came. But who didn’t come prepared.
The king’s response is not gentle. “Bind him hand and foot, take him away, and cast him into outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. For many are called, but few are chosen.” William Miller has been sitting with this parable. And his question for the congregation at Greater Phoenix Church of God is the same question the parable is designed to produce: Am I ready?
Who the Parable Was Originally About
The first audience for this story knew exactly who they were in it. Jesus was speaking to the religious establishment of His day, the Pharisees, the teachers of the law, the very people who should have been the first to recognize the invitation. The originally invited guests. They were given every advantage. They had the scriptures, the prophets, the covenant history. And when the invitation came in the person of Jesus, they went back to their farms. Their businesses. Their institutional power. And some of them killed the messengers.
The Gentiles — the ones gathered from the highways, good and bad alike — were not the expected guests. But they came. And the hall was full. William’s observation: that original audience has a counterpart in every generation. Anyone who has had access to the truth and become comfortable with it. Anyone who knows the right answers and has stopped living them. Anyone in a congregation who shows up but hasn’t actually dressed for the occasion.
What the Wedding Garment Is
Revelation 19:8 gives the definition: “The fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints.” The wedding garment isn’t purchased at the door. It isn’t borrowed from someone else. It is woven through a life lived in genuine response to what God has given. You can be in the hall. You can have been invited. You can even have responded to the invitation. And still arrive without the garment — because the garment represents not attendance, but transformation. Not belief held at arm’s length, but belief that produces something.
Jesus told Nicodemus in John 3:3: “Unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Unless the Spirit enters and begins doing something, unless the water inside you, as He told the woman at the well, becomes a living fountain, you may be in the right building and still not be dressed for what is coming.
The Virgins Revisited: Oil You Can’t Borrow
Matthew 25 runs parallel to Matthew 22. Ten virgins wait for the bridegroom. Five are wise, five are foolish. All ten fall asleep. But when the cry comes at midnight, the bridegroom is coming , five have oil and five don’t. What’s striking is that the wise virgins can’t give their oil away. Not because they’re selfish. Because it doesn’t work that way. “Go rather to those who sell, and buy for yourselves.” (Matthew 25:9). You cannot receive someone else’s relationship with God in the last hour. You cannot borrow the Spirit that another person has cultivated over a lifetime of believing and responding. The oil has to be your own. It has to have been building inside you, a well that was given when you believed and has been kept flowing by everything you’ve said yes to since. The foolish virgins had been in the same waiting room as the wise ones. They had lamps. They may have had a little oil. But they hadn’t prepared. And when the moment came, what they had wasn’t enough to get through the night.
The Talent You Bury Stops Growing
The parable of the talents follows immediately after the virgins in Matthew 25, and William brought them together on purpose. The servant who received one talent buried it. He didn’t lose it to bad investments. He protected it from risk, and in doing so, lost everything.
“From him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away.” (Matthew 25:29). There is a spiritual parallel here that lands hard. A small measure of faith, a small work of the Spirit, a small amount of oil, all of it can be buried. Protected from use. Kept safe by inaction. And what is buried does not grow. What is not poured out does not multiply. The application is not complicated. The man who drives a neighbor to work when his leg is hurting, who stops to check on the elderly woman around the corner, who prays a blessing over someone who didn’t ask for much, that man is not burying his talent. He is multiplying it. And God, who is in the multiplying business, notices.
The Question the Parable Leaves You With
Jesus said in Matthew 10:32: “Whoever confesses Me before men, him I will also confess before My Father who is in heaven.” And in Matthew 25:40: “Inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.” The bride who has made herself ready looks like this. Not a spiritual performance. A life of small, Spirit-led obedience accumulated over time. A lamp that has been kept full. A garment that has been woven, thread by thread, through every choice that said yes to God instead of going back to the farm.
Many are called. Few are chosen. The difference, as best as scripture will tell us, is the garment. The oil. The accumulated response to a living God who has been giving you material to work with every day. Are you ready? Not as an anxious question, but as an honest one. Worth sitting with. Worth answering.
Greater Phoenix Church of God meets every Saturday at 10:30 AM at 4300 N. 82nd Street, Scottsdale, AZ.