Matthew 22:41

Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, saying, What think ye of Christ? whose son is he? They say unto him, The son of David. He saith unto them, How then doth David in the Spirit call him Lord, saying, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, Till I put thine enemies under thy feet? If David then calleth him Lord, how is he his son?

Christ in that question pinpointed the precise truth the Pharisees had missed concerning him, that he was (and is) God in man. "What think ye of Christ?" is the most important question ever asked. All depends on the answer. No man can be saved who fails this test. To recognize and hail Christ as God come in the flesh, this is the beginning of eternal life. Without that perception, man must forever remain guilt-ridden, soul-blinded, and condemned forever. By propounding that question, it would seem that Christ, even at that late hour, was trying to relieve the sad condition of those evil men. He would even then have removed the scales from their eyes and directed their attention to the precise problem where their error lay, and which gave rise to the most important reason for their failure to recognize him.

The reason the Pharisees did not recognize Christ (though some did) was that not all the Messianic prophecies were received by them. In the very nature of God's revelation to humanity of the coming of that Holy One who is both God and man at once, there were necessarily SEEMING contradictions. Thus, Isaiah hailed the Coming One as "Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace," etc., while at the same time portraying him as a man or sorrows, acquainted with grief, with no form nor comeliness, a root out of dry ground, bruised, chastised, and suffering death. That was too much for the unspiritual Pharisee to understand. They did the natural, human thing: they believed the more agreeable prophecies and rejected the others. One outstanding example of such duality in the prophecies was singled out by Christ and made the subject of the question here.

The Old Testament passage Christ stressed in this confrontation of the Pharisees is Psalms 110:1. Of course, they had access to that information and could have known that Christ was both David's son and David's Lord; but they could not explain it, thus being liable, as were the Sadducees, to a charge of ignorance. Their ignorance, however, was not so much their sin as was their pride and egotism that prevented their learning from him who alone is "the Truth"!