What Does Matthew 11:26 Mean?

(26) **For so it seemed good.**—Literally, *Yea, Father,* [I *thank Thee*]* that thus it was Thy good pleasure.* The words recall those that had been spoken at our Lord’s baptism (“in whom I am well pleased,” Matthew 3:17), and the song of the heavenly host on the night of the Nativity (“good will among men,” Luke 2:14). The two verses are remarkable as the only record outside St. John’s Gospel of a prayer like that which we find in John 17. For the most part, we may believe, those prayers were offered apart on the lonely hill-side, in the darkness of night; or, it may be, the disciples shrank in their reverence, or perhaps in the consciousness of their want of capacity, from attempting to record what was so unspeakably sacred. But it is noteworthy that in this exceptional instance we find, both in the prayer and the teaching that follows it in St. Matthew and St. Luke, turns of thought and phrase almost absolutely identical with what is most characteristic of St. John. It is as though the isolated fragment of a higher teaching had been preserved by them as a witness that there was a region upon which they scarcely dared to enter, but into which men were to be led afterwards by the beloved disciple, to whom the Spirit gave power to recall what had been above the reach of the other reporters of his Master’s teaching.