Luke 7:30 Meaning and Explanation

Here is the contrast: the Pharisees and lawyers — the most religiously credentialed men in Israel — refused John's baptism, and in refusing it "rejected the counsel of God against themselves." God's gracious purpose reached even them, and they turned it away.

The phrase "against themselves" tolls like a bell: rejecting God's counsel wounds no one but the one who rejects it. They would not stoop to a sinner's baptism, and the pride that kept them dry at the Jordan kept them blind at the Messiah's arrival. The verse stands as sober witness that it is possible to be expert in the things of God and still refuse what God is actually doing — and that the refusal is freely, tragically one's own.