Stage 1: The Path to Glory

As is only to be expected, the early paragraphs of the first stage of the going make frequent references to the fact that Christ was now embarked on a journey. The first paragraph tells how he set himself resolutely to go to Jerusalem (see Luke 9:51), sent messengers ahead to make necessary preparations (see Luke 9:52) and when he was not received in one village because he was going to Jerusalem (see Luke 9:53), went to another (see Luke 9:56). The second paragraph begins by repeating the fact that 'they were journeying along the road' (Luke 9:57) and proceeds to record the lessons Christ taught three would-be disciples about what following him along that path would involve. The third paragraph likewise begins (see Luke 10:1) by referring to the fact that Christ was travelling through the country, and tells how he sent a further seventy men on in front to every city and village which he would visit on the way.

Then there follow a further three paragraphs which make no mention of Christ's journey at all. At Luke 10:17–20 the Seventy return to Christ full of joy at their achievements and are both encouraged and corrected by Christ. At Luke 10:21–24 Christ expresses his own joy and thanks to the Father for what is happening, and points out to the disciples their special blessedness. Finally, at Luke 10:25–37 in answer to a lawyer's question Christ tells the parable of the Good Samaritan. Only after this second group of three paragraphs does Luke resume the theme of Christ's journey with an explicit journey ^{[p 194]} notice 'Now as they went on their way he entered into a village' at Luke 10:38.

It would be a reasonable working hypothesis, then, to suppose that the resumption of the journey notices at Luke 10:38 was meant to mark the beginning of a new stage in the journey narrative, and that the six paragraphs which we have just glanced at were intended to stand together as Stage 1 of the going. The hypothesis can easily be tested. Do these six paragraphs share any dominant theme or themes? Or do they show any other signs of being a coherent group?

We notice at once that the first (see Luke 9:51–56) and last (see Luke 10:25–37) paragraphs both involve Samaritans. This could, of course, be a superficial and insignificant feature; but indications are that it is not. First, both these stories are peculiar to Luke, and therefore his choice and placing of them must have been very deliberate. Next, these two stories are clearly variations on a common theme. In the first of them some Samaritans, moved by racial and religious hostility towards Jews, refuse Christ hospitality in their village. At that two apostles suggest calling down fire from heaven on them, and are rebuked by Christ for their unchristian attitude. In the second a Jew is viciously mugged and left half-dead by the roadside. Two fellow-Jews pass by and do nothing to help him; but a Samaritan, overcoming all religious and racial resentments, renders him first aid, transports him to a hotel and pays for him to stay until he has fully recovered. It is obvious that both stories are saying something important about what our reactions and attitudes should be towards people who are hostile to us on religious or racial grounds. And it is perhaps significant that while in the first story the Samaritans come out of the affair with little credit, since it was their initial action which provoked the Jewish apostles, in the second the Samaritan gets the credit for behaving far more nobly than the Jewish priest and Levite.

These two paragraphs, however, are not the only ones to deal with this theme. The third paragraph (see Luke 10:1–16) tells of the sending out of the Seventy. It is the longest (counting simply by verses) of the six, and it too is peculiar to Luke in the sense that no other ^{[p 195]} evangelist records the sending out of these seventy, though the instructions given them are of course basically similar to the instructions given to the Twelve on their earlier mission (cf. Matt 10:9–13). What is significant for our present purpose is the fact that out of its sixteen verses this paragraph devotes three (see Luke 10:10–12) to telling the Seventy how to react to those who reject them and refuse them hospitality, three more (see Luke 10:13–15) to a denunciation by Christ of Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum for having rejected him and his message, and one final verse (see Luke 10:16) to the enunciation of the general principle: 'whosoever listens to you, listens to me; and whoever rejects you, rejects me; and whoever rejects me, rejects him who sent me.' The rejection so heavily emphasized in these seven verses is not—or not simply—rejection of Jews by Samaritans, but more frequently of Jews by Jews; but it is, of course, rejection on religious grounds. And so we now have three paragraphs, all of them peculiar to Luke, and all of them carrying a common theme, stationed one at the beginning, one in the middle and one at the end of this series of six paragraphs. At the very least they act like a brace holding all six paragraphs together.

We look next, therefore, to see whether there is any recognizable flow or pattern of thought running through all six paragraphs, or whether the six are a mixture of likes and unlikes, of related and unrelated topics. Now we have already observed that while the first three paragraphs all explicitly mention Christ's journeying, the second three do not. There is nothing artificial about this arrangement. The first three paragraphs all deal with practical matters relating to the journey: (1) the sending out of a small advance party to make practical arrangements in some suitable village or town for the overnight stay of Christ, his apostles and all the other, perhaps quite numerous, disciples who followed him. Any village about to be descended upon by such a large crowd would need adequate warning so as to be prepared to put them up; (2) three would-be disciples are instructed on the demands which following Christ on his journey will make on them; and (3) seventy disciples are sent out in pairs in advance, to every town and village to be visited by Christ, ^{[p 196]} not in order to make practical preparations for his coming, but to prepare the people spiritually for the tremendous choices that they will be faced with when Christ arrives and presents himself and his message. The reason why the next two paragraphs do not continue to talk of Christ's journey, is that at this point (see Luke 10:17) the Seventy return from theirs and proceed to give a joyful report of their achievements; and after commenting on their report Christ expresses in the next paragraph (see Luke 10:21–24) his own joy at the events which the disciples are now witnessing. So what we have in these two paragraphs is not a record of the continuing journey, but reflections on the significance of the journey of Christ so far and of the journeys of the Seventy. With that, one paragraph is left containing Christ's answer to a question posed at this time by a lawyer. At first sight both the question and the answer might seem to be merely incidental to the main flow of the narrative. Actually, as we have already seen, the answer continues what is in fact one of the dominant themes of this part of the Gospel, and that by itself could fully account for Luke's decision to select this parable and place it here. But there is also a further somewhat curious feature to be noticed about it: the storyline of the parable contains a tremendous lot about travelling, much more in fact than is strictly necessary to point the moral. The man who fell among thieves was, of course, on a journey and so likewise were the priest and Levite. Then came the Samaritan 'as he journeyed' (Luke 10:33) to where the man was and saved his life; and, as far as the lesson goes which the parable was required to teach, the storyline could have ended there. But it goes on: the Samaritan put the man on his own beast, transported him to an inn, and took care of him. Even so the story is not finished. In the morning when the Samaritan left, he paid the innkeeper sufficient to cover several days' further board and lodging for the Jew. Surely by now we have had enough detail to complete the picture of an extraordinarily kind, generous and caring Samaritan, who really loved his neighbour as himself. Perhaps we have, but the story is not yet finished: the Samaritan has some more travelling to do. As ^{[p 197]} he leaves, he announces that he is coming back again, and promises on his return to reimburse the innkeeper for any additional expense he may have incurred.

Now the exegetes with their strict logic rightly insist that the parable of the Good Samaritan was not intended as an allegory and must not be treated as one. On the other hand if Luke could be thought to have had some literary sense in addition to his concern for history and for strict exegesis, one would be tempted to a further comment: placed as it is in the opening stage of the Going with its necessarily heavy emphasis on Christ's journey and the journeys of the Seventy, the parable of the Good Samaritan with its similarly prominent theme of travelling, acts like a sub-plot would in a work of literature: it indirectly reinforces the work's major theme. And there might be even more to it than that; but for the moment we must turn to another preliminary observation.

We find ourselves with two sets of paragraphs with three paragraphs in each set. The first set opens with the famous remark: 'And when the time for his being received up was getting near. . .' It refers to our Lord's ascension and it would be impossible to exaggerate the importance and the significance of the elevation of the man Christ Jesus to the right hand of God in heaven. But when we look at the opening verses of the second set, we find Christ announcing (Luke 10:18): 'I beheld Satan fall like lightning from heaven.' Jesus ascending into heaven, and Satan falling from heaven—these two events are so obviously complementary the one to the other that it would scarcely be possible to comprehend fully the significance of the one without the other.

More of that later. The immediate question it raises is: if the ideas of the opening paragraph of the second set so obviously complement the ideas of the opening paragraph of the first set, what about the other paragraphs of the two sets? If they turn out to do the same, we shall clearly have to take account of this fact in our exposition. Here then is a table of contents for the two sets of paragraphs, listing their main ideas side by side (see Table 8). ^{[p 198]}

Table 8 Stage 1 of the Going Luke 9:51–10:37

The movements

1. Its costs and sorrows (Luke 9:51–10:16)
2. Its joys and triumphs (Luke 10:17–37)

1. Its costs and sorrows (Luke 9:51–10:16)

We must now consider the three paragraphs of the first movement one by one. As we do so we should be aware that these paragraphs form a natural progression, and to get a balanced view of the matters which they present, we must hear their whole story through to its end. In the first paragraph (see Luke 9:51–56), for instance, two apostles are rebuked for suggesting calling down fire from heaven upon a Samaritan village that had refused Christ hospitality. But in the third paragraph the Seventy are told (see Luke 10:11–12) that if any city refuses to receive them, 'it shall be more tolerable in that day for Sodom than for that city'. And we all know what happened to Sodom: 'fire . . . came down from heaven and destroyed them all' (see Luke 17:29). Quite clearly, there are two sides to the question of what should happen to those who reject Christ; but let us begin at the beginning.

i. Christ's path to his ascension into heaven (Luke 9:51–56)

We start now the story of the journey destined to take the man Jesus of Nazareth to the highest pinnacle of the universe, to be seated at the right hand of the power of God (see Luke 22:69). The goal of the journey was inexpressibly glorious; but the road to that goal lay through indescribable sorrow: it must go through Jerusalem. Our Lord was under no illusion about what he must suffer there; but when the time drew near for his ascension, he resolutely set out for Jerusalem. In its early stages the journey lay through Samaria and Luke's story tells how when Christ's messengers went ahead to make arrangements for Christ to stay the night in a certain Samaritan village, the villagers would not receive him. We recall that when he came to earth, there was, by accident, no room for him and his parents in the inn (see Luke 2:7); now as he began to go there was no room for him in the village. But this time it was no accident: the Samaritans could have put him up but refused. ^{[p 200]}

Their reason was both sad and ironic. They rejected him because he was making for Jerusalem (see Luke 9:53), and such was the religious animosity between Samaritans and Jews, that a Jew travelling to Jerusalem to take part in its religious festivals there was a persona non grata in Samaria. Little did they know that he was going to Jerusalem to be rejected by the religious authorities (see Luke 9:22) and crucified. And still less did they realize that he was going to Jerusalem to die for their redemption. The bitterness of the religious hostility between Jews and Samaritans was not at his instigation nor did it have his approval. But that made no difference: to them he was a stereotype, a Jew going up to the religious festivals at Jerusalem, and without further enquiry they shut him out.

James and John were so enraged at this insult to their Master, that they proposed the immediate calling down of fire from heaven upon the Samaritan village. Now at Luke 10:11–16 we shall be told what grave consequences must follow the knowing and deliberate rejection of Christ and his messengers. But there Christ is talking about rejection in the face of abundant and unmistakably clear evidence (see Luke 10:13). Here the Samaritans were acting out of ignorant religious prejudice: they knew not what they did. Christ rebuked his apostles for even suggesting calling down judgment on their heads. Nor did he try to argue with the Samaritans; he quietly went to another village for the night, travelled on to Jerusalem and there died for them. Not long afterwards the Samaritans heard why he had died, and many of them—let's hope our villagers were among them—were converted to Christ (see Acts 8:5–25).

ii. The demands and costs of following the Son of Man (Luke 9:57–62)

James and John's experience shows that the disciple of Christ must be prepared to accept the world's hostility without retaliation or desire for revenge; the lesson taught to the first of the three would-be disciples of this paragraph shows that the disciple of Christ must be prepared to resist the allurements of its comforts. The Son of Man, Christ pointed out, had not the comfort that even such lowly creatures as foxes and birds had: they had their own holes and nests, ^{[p 201]} while he had no home of his own, no resting place to which he could retire, settle and be at ease. He must be always on the move, sleeping in other people's houses, or inns, without any base to which he could return. Following Christ on the road to Jerusalem would obviously involve a disciple in a similarly 'homeless' existence. But the lesson surely has a deeper level of meaning. Those who start out to follow Christ on the road to glory, must be prepared to give up the idea of this world as their home; they become travellers, restlessly moving on, using life's lodging-houses on the way, but with no place to settle down this side of heaven.

The lesson taught to the second would-be disciple shows that a follower of Christ must be prepared not only to let go home comforts: he must refuse the claim that home duties have priority. Called to follow Christ, this man agreed to do so but asked permission first to go off and bury his father. It is perhaps unlikely that the man's father was already dead and that the man was asking for a two-hour delay in order to attend the funeral. It is more likely that the father was getting elderly and that the man with his Jewish sense of the religious duty of giving parents an honoured burial, was asking Christ for permission to delay following him until his father died (and, perhaps, also until he inherited his father's estate). Now it is a fact explicitly stated by Christ (see Matt 15:3–9) that the care of elderly parents is a God-given duty which may not be put aside under any religious pretext whatsoever. If, therefore, anyone accepts Christ as Lord, Christ will direct him to fulfil this duty to his parents. But our man was making two mistakes. He asked permission to fulfil what he felt was a prior duty before becoming a follower of Christ. There can, of course, be no prior duty. If Jesus is God's Son, our first duty is towards him. A man who considers that he has a prior duty to fulfil before he is free to become a follower of Christ, has no concept of who Christ is. And secondly, the man was not asking permission to look after his elderly father, but to bury him. In asking to delay following Christ until he had buried his father, the man showed he had no concept of the urgency and importance of the task to which Christ ^{[p 202]} was calling him. That task was to 'go and proclaim the kingdom of God' (see Luke 9:60). People at large—his father included—desperately needed to hear that message: their eternal salvation depended on hearing it and on responding to its urgent call. It would be a very curious way of fulfilling his duty as a son to his father, to delay becoming a preacher of the gospel until his father was dead and buried. Moreover, Christ pointed out to the man that spiritually dead unbelievers could perform the task of burying his father when he died; but spiritually dead unbelievers could not preach the gospel to him or anybody else. 'Let the [spiritually] dead, bury the [physically] dead' said Christ (Luke 9:60). It is not an unkindness nor a failure in duty for a believer to let the spiritually dead do what they can well do to help themselves, so as to have more time himself to do for them what they cannot do for themselves. A surgeon does not waste his time cleaning his patient's boots.

The man's sense of duty towards his father, therefore, was false—false even to his father's deepest need. It was a sense of duty imposed not by the requirements of God's law or by the gospel, but by the social and religious conventions of the world. The claims of discipleship to Christ demanded that it be disregarded.

The lesson taught to the third would-be disciple shows that a follower of Christ must be prepared to break decisively the pull of family affection. A soldier called to fight to protect his nation and family must be prepared to leave his family and go off to the front. Our third disciple wanted to delay following Christ until he had gone home and said goodbye to his family. But saying goodbye according to the social customs of the time would have meant a succession of farewell dinner parties day after day, always putting off the time of departure until tomorrow (see, for instance, Judg 19:3–8), and making it ever more difficult to leave. 'No one who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God', said Christ (Luke 9:62). It is a number one rule in ploughing that if you want to plough a straight furrow, you must keep your eyes riveted on the marker at the other end of the field. If you take your eyes off the marker and look behind you, the plough will go ^{[p 203]} wandering all over the place. There is no denying that to put our hand to the plough of service in the kingdom of God is to face some sacrifice of the joys of family life, which may well increase as the plough advances. If when the going gets tough, we look back and hanker after the easier life we have left behind, we shall get our eyes off the goal we were supposed to be aiming at, our drive will falter, our efficiency will be impaired, our sense of direction will become confused and our ploughing may cease altogether.

iii. The journeyings of the Seventy (Luke 10:1–16)

If the first paragraph preached that a follower of Christ must be prepared to endure the world's hostility without retaliation, and the second made clear the costs of becoming a disciple and herald of the kingdom, the third describes what is involved in the actual work of being a herald. We cannot, of course, draw straight lines from the case of the Seventy who served Christ before his crucifixion to our own who serve him after Pentecost. As we pointed out earlier ^{[p . 163]} the instructions given on this occasion were later modified, and in some respects reversed (see Luke 22:35–38). But we can try to see the significance of these instructions for the particular mission on which the Seventy were sent, and then deduce certain general principles from them.

The situation was that Christ himself was about to visit a number of towns and villages on his way to Jerusalem and glory. Since he was the king, God's Messiah, Son of the Father, it meant that the kingdom of God was about to come near, very near indeed, to the people of these towns and villages. Theirs would then be the opportunity and responsibility of either receiving him and with him the kingdom of God, or rejecting both him and it. The consequences of Israel's rejection of him would be grave and far reaching even in this world, as subsequent history showed; the consequences in the world to come would be immeasurable. Yet the time for consideration, choice and decision when he came and passed through their towns, would be brief enough. It was important, therefore, that they should be prepared for his visitation (see Luke 19:44) and be presented ^{[p 204]} with ample evidence on the basis of which to make up their minds. Hence the preparatory mission of the Seventy: no man should be rushed into a decision without time to consider and understand the evidence.

Christ's first remark (see Luke 10:2) revealed his sense of the great potential of the mission field, but of the dire shortage of workers. Nineteen centuries seem not to have changed the situation much.

Next he explained his tactics (see Luke 10:3–12). He was under no illusion about the world's basic hostility to God, to his kingdom and to his Son. This world is a fallen world, his contemporaries were a perverse and crooked generation (see Luke 9:41; 11:29), like a pack of wolves. Christ's tactics, however, were to send his disciples among them utterly defenceless, and dependent on their mercy. They were to carry no cash, spare clothes or provisions. The effect would be to force the townspeople to a decision as to what they should do with them. If the missionaries had enough money to support themselves, then letting them hire a room in a hotel would be a simple commercial transaction carrying no spiritual implication. But if the people were faced with penniless, destitute men claiming to be Messiah's own ambassadors, they would be forced to decide whether they would receive and entertain them as such, or reject them.

The missionaries were to make it clear that they were not on some merely social or casual visit: they were to greet no man on the way in oriental fashion; they were to make it evident that they had urgent business to do and must concentrate on it.

When they entered a house, they were to pronounce peace upon the house (see Luke 10:5–6). That did not mean that if the occupants of the house were evil, they were to condone the evil by telling them that God is at peace with all men, however evil, and none will ever be lost. Far from it. Their pronouncement of peace was a declaration of their purpose: they had come to bring a message of peace and pardon. If there were people in the house open and prepared for salvation, they would enter into the good of the peace which the missionaries proclaimed. If the people of the house, having heard the message, were cynical and disbelieving, the offered peace would do ^{[p 205]} them no good: it would return to the missionaries. Neither God nor his servants can pronounce peace on those who reject Christ.

And then the missionaries were to make clear that their evangelism was not a cover for any easy and enjoyable life. Whatever house received them, they were to stay there; even if the food and surroundings were poor, they were not to go around looking for some other house where they could get better food and more comfortable lodgings. They were not tourists on holiday, nor pseudo-evangelists sponging on the people (see Luke 10:7).

Moreover, the differing cities they entered might well have different food laws and customs. Never mind. Whatever city they went to, they were to eat whatever was put before them (see Luke 10:8). They were not to raise difficulties and arguments about petty food laws, so obscuring the major issue of the gospel which they had come to present.

And then they were to make abundantly clear the issue at stake: healing the sick to authenticate their message they were to say that the kingdom of God had drawn near. They were to point out that Jesus was about to come: this would be the time of their visitation, their opportunity for salvation, their moment of decision (see Luke 10:9).

If, on the other hand, the people of any town refused to receive them, they were not simply to leave. By the symbolic gesture of publicly wiping off the dust of the city that stuck to their shoes, they were to indicate the awful significance and implications of this rejection. They were to call on the people to see that they had had an opportunity of salvation: the kingdom of God had come near them. When judgment fell on them worse than that which fell on Sodom, they would never be able to say that they had never had an opportunity to be saved, that they never knew what they were doing in rejecting the Saviour (see Luke 10:10–12).

At that point Christ seems to have been overwhelmed at the thought of cities like Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum, which had witnessed his mighty works, and were still unrepentant and unsaved. Turning aside from addressing his disciples, he pronounced his woe of sadness upon them: 'And you Capernaum, shall you be ^{[p 206]} exalted to heaven? You shall be brought down to hell' (Luke 10:13–15). There are after all two destinations. To think of the stupendous opportunity and possibility that a man can accept the gospel and can follow Christ to the glory of heaven, is to be filled as Christ was at the beginning of his instructions (see Luke 10:2) with a tremendous sense of the potential harvest to be reaped by the evangelists. But if heaven is a real possibility for man, so is hell. There are not two heavens, one for those who receive Christ, and one for those who reject him.

From addressing the cities, Christ reverted to instructing the Seventy and pointed out the serious implications which rejection of them and their message carried: rejection of them was tantamount to rejection of him; and rejection of him was rejection of God (see Luke 10:16). No man is fit to preach the gospel, no man has grasped what the gospel is, who does not see that for anyone to reject the Saviour is unqualified disaster. But in all these instructions perhaps the thing that best prepared the Seventy to be effective evangelists, was to stand and witness the profound distress of the Saviour's heart as he thought of the doom that awaited Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum for their folly in refusing to repent.

2. Its joys and triumphs (Luke 10:17–37)

Movement 1 has been grave and sombre, presenting with realism and due seriousness the costs and suffering involved in following Christ, the demands of discipleship and service, and the solemnity that inseparably accompanies the preaching of the gospel, when the possibility is present that those who hear may choose to reject it and so incur unspeakable loss. But there is another side to the story, which is bright with the exultant joy and wonder of being associated with the Son of the Father, of travelling after him the road to glory, and of witnessing the triumph of his work of redemption. Movement 2 puts this other side of the story, which we shall see if as we study its three paragraphs, we compare and contrast them with the three paragraphs of Movement 1. ^{[p 207]}

i. Satan's fall like lightning from heaven (Luke 10:17–20)

The Seventy returned from their mission exultantly joyful in a discovery they had made: 'Even the demons, Lord,' they said, 'are subject to us in your name' (Luke 10:17). Without their knowing it, theirs was the first expression of a theme which after Pentecost and the ascension was to rise to a mighty crescendo of joy and praise as the early Christians realized the significance of Christ's being 'received up' into heaven. 'He has gone into heaven' says Peter (1 Pet 3:22), 'angels and authorities and powers being made subject to him.' 'God has . . . made him to sit at his right hand in heavenly places', says Paul (Eph 1:20–22) 'far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and every name that is named not only in this age, but also in that which is to come; and God has put all things in subjection under his feet . . .'. Indeed Christ saw what was happening in this mission to Israel as the early successes in a war which would end in Satan's being cast out of heaven completely. 'I beheld Satan fall as lightning from heaven' he said (Luke 10:18). His vision was prophetic. The Christians after Pentecost were aware that they still had to fight against 'spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly realms' (Eph 6:12). But they had no doubt about the outcome (see Rom 16:20); and what excited them as it did the Seventy was that here on earth they might exercise the triumphant authority of Christ's name. 'I have given you' said Christ (Luke 10:19) 'authority. . . over all the power of the enemy, and nothing will by any means hurt you'. Again, the Seventy were yet to learn that possessing this authority would not exempt them from suffering or even martyrdom. It would mean, however, that nothing could hurt them by separating them from God's love; in all things they would be 'more than conquerors', and they certainly would never be hurt by the second death (see Rom 8:37; Rev 2:11).

It is understandable then that they were overjoyed. Yet without dampening their joy Christ gently corrected its focus: 'Nevertheless', he said, 'do not rejoice in the fact that the demons submit to you, so much as in this that your names are written in heaven' (Luke 10:20). It is a wonderful thing to be allowed to perform effective service in ^{[p 208]} the name of Christ here on earth; it is even more wonderful to be able while still here on earth to be sure of heaven. The Greek word for 'written' carries the connotation of 'being enrolled in the citizen-lists of a city'. It reminds a believer that if in the deepest sense he is 'homeless' on earth, he is already a citizen of heaven (see Phil 3:20). And it is surely significant that Christ did not wait till the end of the road before he allowed his disciples to know this glorious fact: according to Luke it was not long after they had started on the road home to glory (see Luke 9:51) that he gave them this assurance. 'Rejoice above all in this', he said. Indeed, if a believer could not be certain of this, how could he rejoice at all? To believe in the reality of heaven, but to journey through life uncertain of ever arriving there, would be not joy but torture. It was the assurance of knowing that their names were already written in heaven that strengthened Paul in prison and nerved his fellow-workers in their labours for Christ in face of bitter persecution (see Phil 1:29; 4:3).

We look back to the first paragraph of Movement 1 (Luke 9:51–56). To be refused entry and hospitality in a Samaritan village rankled with the apostles at the time as an intolerable insult and privation. Perhaps now the discovery that they had full citizen rights in heaven helped them to see the matter in its true proportions.

ii. The joy and blessedness of association with the Son of the Father (Luke 10:21–24)

At Luke 9:58 our Lord pointed out to a would-be disciple that the Son of Man had nowhere on earth to lay his head. That certainly shows us the staggering grace of his self-sacrifice. But there is another side to the matter: even as he was calling the man's attention to his homelessness on earth, he was enjoying the glorious fact to which he now (see Luke 10:21) gives expression, that his Father was Lord of heaven and earth, owner of every square inch of earth and of heaven into the bargain. Christ felt no self-pity at his homelessness. Nor was there with him the slightest sense of disappointment or shame that after all his immeasurable sacrifice, so far his converts were not even the wise and intelligent of this world but only those ^{[p 209]} who at best could be called intellectual infants. Quite the reverse. It filled him with joy that God in his sovereignty had hidden 'these things' from the intellectual and wise. Needless to say Christ was not giving vent either to exclusivism or to some kind of inverted elitism. He was observing that the knowledge of God and of his salvation is not one of those things that must yield up its secrets to a man if only he has sufficient intellectual power to analyse them. Atoms and molecules for instance and all things physical do belong to that lowly level. Granted they are very complicated, and granted that it takes intellectual powers bordering on genius to penetrate their secrets; but that is all it takes, precisely because physical things belong to such a lowly level. Move a little up the scale of things to the level of personhood, and then not all the giant intellects in the world could fully get to know a person simply by using their brains, if that person were unwilling to open up and let himself be known by communicating his thoughts and feelings. How much more so is it with God. The high mysteries of his person, his mind, his heart, his salvation are infinitely too exalted and wonderful to be penetrated and understood simply by submitting them to a sufficiently powerful intellectual analysis. By God's own choice and decree they remain hidden to the wise. And yet impenetrably mysterious though they are, the next thing that moved Christ to holy joy was his Father's ability and willingness to reveal them to intellectual infants. Again this was not exclusivism: anyone, if he has the sense to do it, can take the position of an infant before God's great mysteries. Nonetheless God's ability and willingness to reveal himself to the humblest of men is an exhilaratingly joyous thing to behold in action. Men of giant intellect often find it virtually impossible to communicate their profound philosophical insights to people of humble intellects. Not God. Take, for instance, the twelve apostles, humble men all of them, and the Seventy. On Christ's own admission they were intellectual infants. Yet not only had they grasped profound things about God, and his Son and his salvation, but they had recently been out communicating these things successfully to many of their fellow-men. ^{[p 210]}

Next Christ gave expression to the sense of infinite wealth that filled his heart (see Luke 10:22). As Son of the Father he enjoyed unique knowledge of the intimate relationship that lies at the heart of the Godhead, and with that unique knowledge the unique privilege of communicating it to whomever he pleased. Here were unsearchable riches and incalculable wealth. Paul (see Eph 3:8) became almost ecstatic at the thought of being allowed to share with Christ the privilege of opening up this wealth to the Gentiles. Who wouldn't? And yet there was one man, we remember, who with one eye on his duty to his father and one eye on the inheritance he was going to come into when his father died, asked to be excused preaching for Christ until his father was dead and buried (see Luke 9:60). His sense of values looks a little odd in this context.

Finally (see Luke 10:23) Christ congratulated his disciples on their extreme blessedness. With the Father's Son now on earth and already on the path that should lead him to the highest pinnacle of glory, they were seeing and hearing things that kings and prophets of centuries gone by longed in vain to see and hear. But now the long preparatory centuries were coming to an end. Now already the demons were subject to the disciples in Christ's name. Soon the power of the devil would be annulled. Soon the man Christ Jesus was to be received up in glory, far above all heavens; and one day they his redeemed would follow him to that glorious exaltation—their names were already written in heaven. And it was all beginning to happen in front of their very eyes. What a sight and what a prospect! To fix their eyes on these glorious things would help them as they 'followed the plough' (Luke 9:62) not to yield to the temptation to look longingly back to the attractions left behind.

iii. Travellers on the Jericho road (Luke 10:25–37)

The parable of the Good Samaritan, the exegetes tell us, must not be interpreted as an allegory. And they are right, of course—although the temptation to read it as an allegory has proved practically irresistible to generations of Christians. The parable was constructed to give a very practical answer to a Jewish lawyer's very ^{[p 211]} practical moral question, and to press upon him his duty of loving his neighbour as himself by giving him a practical example of what loving your neighbour as yourself means.

The lawyer had begun by asking what he had to do to inherit eternal life, and our Lord had referred him to the law which he knew so well and was able to quote so readily: 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbour as yourself'. But the lawyer wanted to justify himself. He did not want to appear to have asked a simple question to which he already knew the answer, as did everybody else. He had a problem with regard to the second of the two commandments: 'And who is my neighbour?' he asked. Now whether or not it was a genuine problem to him—Luke says his first question was designed to test the Lord (see Luke 10:25)—the problem he posed is a real problem. Are we expected to treat every man Jack in the whole of the world as our neighbour and love him as ourselves? And if that is impossible, where are we to draw the line? And are we to treat outrageous sinners and vicious tyrants and blaspheming heretics as our neighbours and love them, along with all others, as ourselves? Or may we with good common sense take the commandment as meaning by 'neighbour' the people in our family, or street, or synagogue, or at a stretch our fellow-nationals, but no more? Can we take it also that our political or national enemies, by being enemies, have ceased to be our neighbours?

The theoretical problem posed by the lawyer's question was not a frivolous, irresponsible question; but our Lord did not answer it at the theoretical level: he answered it by giving a practical example. And, as many commentators have observed, he did not directly answer the exact question which the lawyer asked, as is shown by his own final question to the lawyer (see Luke 10:36). He did not ask 'Who was the neighbour whom these three were expected to love?', but 'Which of these three became neighbour, or, acted as neighbour, to the man who fell among the robbers?' From the practical point of view that was all the guidance that the lawyer, or anyone else, needed: whenever we come across somebody in our pathway in great need, we are ^{[p 212]} to have compassion on them and help them as we would like them to help us if we were in need.

Our Lord, however, had chosen the characters in his parable with deliberate care. The man who fell among robbers was a Jew, the man who acted the neighbour to him was a Samaritan. When even the Jewish priest and Levite did not trouble to help their fellow Jew, it would be an astonishing thing for a Samaritan to help him. Such was the religious and racial animosity between Jews and Samaritans, that had the Jew been alive and well instead of half dead, and the Samaritan had offered him so much as a glass of water, the Jew would have rejected it with venomous indignation. And yet the Samaritan was moved with a compassion that overcame all religious animosity, and treated the Jew with extraordinary generosity.

The moral is self-evident; yet it will be useful to compare the lesson taught here with the lesson taught at Luke 10:10–12. The Seventy were taught that if people rejected them and their message they were to wipe off the dust of their feet against them, and warn them in the most solemn terms that they were rendering themselves liable to the judgment of God. They were not to take the view that differences in religious belief at this level do not matter as long as we all love one another. They were to teach that rejection of Christ and of the gospel and of those who preached it will lead to eternal disaster. But now the parable of the Good Samaritan puts the other side of the story. Suppose a Christian comes across his bitterest religious enemy, someone who has rejected him and his Christian gospel, and has even persecuted him—suppose he comes across this man in need, he must overcome all natural resentments, he must act the neighbour to his enemy, he must love the man as himself.

In the light of this it is difficult to understand how in past centuries professed Christians imagined they were advancing the cause of Christ by getting out their armies and fighting the Turks; and equally difficult to see how in our own day people can persuade themselves that it is right to defend the faith or promote the gospel by bullet and bomb. ^{[p 213]}

This then was the practical moral lesson that the parable was meant to teach; and perhaps we ought now to leave the parable in case lingering over it we fall into the ways of allegory which we earlier rejected. Even so we may surely be allowed one simple practical question to finish with. It goes like this: if this is how Christ taught us to love our neighbour as ourselves, how well did he practise what he preached? We and all mankind were certainly fallen under the power of what Christ called 'serpents' and 'scorpions', and what is worse, under the power of the enemy himself (see Luke 10:19). In that sorry plight we had no claim on the Father's pre-incarnate Son: we were not his neighbours nor he ours. But he chose by incarnation to come where we were; and in spite of the fact that human beings hounded him to a cross, he rescued us at his own expense, and has paid in advance the cost of completing our redemption and of perfecting us for unimaginable glory. What is more, when he comes again he will reimburse magnificently all who, like the Seventy, the apostles and the disciples, have in any way helped him in his task. ^{[p 215]}