In the chapters which now follow, one topic is prominent above all others: Christ's moral teaching. Chapter 6, for example, contains Luke's counterpart (Luke 6:20–49) to Matthew's Sermon on the Mount. We need not decide the question whether the matter which Luke records here was spoken on the same occasion as the matter which Matthew records in the sermon, or whether Christ, like many other preachers, gave many similar, but not identical, sermons on different occasions. Nor for the moment need we stay to consider the difference in proportions: the sermon in Matthew fills no less than three whole chapters (Matt 5–7), while Luke's counterpart occupies merely thirty verses (Luke 6:20–49). The general similarity between Luke's material here and the Sermon on the Mount is enough to alert us to the fact that a sizeable part of the next two chapters is going to be taken up with Christ's moral teaching.
Equally obvious is the repetition throughout these two chapters of the words sin, sinners and sinful. The first story in chapter 5 is peculiar to Luke, and we may presume that he chose it to stand in this prime position because he judged its message especially suitable for the beginning of this new section of his Gospel. Here is the climax of the story in Luke's own words: 'But Simon, when he saw it, fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, Lord"' (Luke 5:8). [p 94]
In the third story (see Luke 5:17–26) a man, brought to Christ to be healed of paralysis, is unexpectedly given something else first: 'Man, your sins are forgiven you' (Luke 5:20). And when the scribes object: 'Who can forgive sins but God alone?' (Luke 5:21), Christ replies: 'Which is easier, to say, "Your sins are forgiven you," or to say, "Arise and walk"? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins . . .' (Luke 5:22–24).
Again, in Luke 5:30–32 we find the following sequence: 'And the Pharisees . . . complained . . . saying, "Why do you eat and drink with the tax-gatherers and sinners?" And Jesus . . . said . . . "I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance."'
Again in Luke 6:32–34 we find Christ reminding his disciples that 'If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners . . .'
But if the words 'sin' and 'sinners' are prominent in these chapters, so are other words of similar meaning. In Luke 6:2 the Pharisees accuse Christ's disciples of doing 'what it is not lawful to do on the Sabbath'. Christ counters their accusation by pointing out that David and his men on one occasion ate 'what it is not lawful for anyone to eat except the priests' (Luke 6:4).
Similarly the whole crux of the story of the man with the withered hand (Luke 6:6–11) is 'Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil?' (Luke 6:9).
In addition there are other places in these chapters where, without actually using the words wrong, or unlawful, or sinful, the Pharisees by their questioning imply that Christ is doing wrong. In Luke 5:30 their question 'Why do you eat and drink with tax-gatherers?' implies that it is wrong to eat with them. In Luke 5:33 their statement, 'The disciples of John fast often . . . but yours eat and drink', implies that Christ is wrong in not making his disciples fast.
Clearly, then, these chapters are going to be concerned with Christ's teaching on right and wrong, on what is lawful and unlawful, on doing good and doing evil, on sin and sinners and on how [p 95] to treat them, on justice and forgiveness, uncleanness and cleansing, in other words, on morality.
Our first task is to discover, if we can, how far through the coming chapters this topic is meant to extend before Luke allows another topic to dominate his narrative. Our task is easy: at the end of the long sermon on morality Luke, in his typical way, has placed a concluding remark which formally brings Stage 3 to its end and separates it from Stage Luke 4: 'When he had completed all his words in the hearing of the people, he entered Capernaum' (Luke 7:1).
Next we ought to look at the selection and ordering of his material. Much of the material which Luke has put into this stage is common to him and Matthew and/or Mark; but certain notable features are peculiar to Luke. As we have already noticed, the very first story in this stage is altogether peculiar to Luke (see Luke 5:1–11). Again, Mark has no equivalent of Matthew's Sermon on the Mount; Luke has, but he puts it in a very different position from Matthew: Matthew puts the Sermon before the cleansing of the leper (Matt 8:1–4), the healing of the paralytic (Matt 9:2–8), the call of Levi and the criticisms made by the disciples of John (Matt 9:14–17), the choosing of the apostles (Matt 10:1–4), the incident in the cornfield (Matt 12:1–8) and the man with a withered hand (Matt 12:9–14); Luke puts his equivalent after all these things, and some even of these things he puts in a different order from Matthew. Luke's basic selection and order are nearer to Mark's; but his inclusion of the miraculous catch of fish (Luke 5:1–11) and an equivalent of the Sermon on the Mount, inevitably means that his flow of thought is different from Mark's. We must look, therefore, to see whether Luke's arrangement of his material will give us any help in perceiving the particular way he is looking at things.
He starts off in chapter 5 with three stories each introduced by a formal 'And it came to pass',25 and each recording a miracle. In the first (see Luke 5:1–11) Peter is brought to realize and confess his sin, [p 96] and is made 'a fisher of men'. In the second (see Luke 5:12–16) a man is cleansed of leprosy and sent as a testimony to the priests. In the third (see Luke 5:17–26) a man is forgiven his sin, cured of paralysis and made an object lesson to the teachers of the law. Since, even superficially read, they seem to have certain features in common, let us label these three incidents Movement 1.
'After these things he went out', says Luke (Luke 5:27), and there follows a discussion, provoked by the conversion of Levi, on the spiritual discipline which Christ imposed on his 'converted sinners' and on himself in his contacts with them (see Luke 5:27–35). Christ concludes the discussion with a parable which turns out to be threefold: old and new garments, old and new wineskins, old and new wine (see Luke 5:36–39). Let us call this discussion Movement 2.
Chapter 6 starts off with three stories, each introduced by a formal 'And it came to pass'. In the first (see Luke 6:1–5) the Pharisees criticize him and his disciples for plucking and rubbing ears of corn and eating them on the Sabbath. Christ refutes the criticism. In the second (see Luke 6:6–11) Christ defies the scribes and Pharisees and heals a man with a withered hand in the synagogue on the Sabbath. The Pharisees are furious and begin to plot revenge. In the third (see Luke 6:12–19) Christ carefully chooses twelve special disciples, calls them apostles, publicly associates them with himself as he continues his work of healing before vast multitudes from all over the country. A discernible current of thought runs through all three stories. Let us call them Movement 3.
'And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples' says Luke (Luke 6:20), and there follows a long statement of Christ's moral teaching (see Luke 6:20–38). Christ concludes the statement with a parable which turns out to be three-fold: it is based on eyesight (see Luke 6:39–42), fruit trees and fruit (see Luke 6:43–45), and building (see Luke 6:46–49).26 Let us call this statement of Christ's moral teaching Movement 4. [p 97]
Judged merely from the point of view of its superficial, formal arrangement, the material in this stage has certainly been organized in a very neat and orderly fashion. Our exposition will have to keep an eye on this arrangement, just in case Luke is using it to help us to see the significance of the facts he records. There follows a map to enable us to see the contents of this stage at a glance (see Table 5). [p 98]
Table 5 Stage 3 of the Coming Luke 5:1–7:1
| 1. Christ and the authorities Luke 5:1–26 | 3. Christ and the authorities Luke 6:1–19 |
| 1 In the fishing-boat 5:1–11: Christ the Lord of daily work. Peter, the expert fisherman, is convicted of sin, but is made into a fisher of men. | 1 In the cornfield 6:1–5: Christ the Lord of the Sabbath. The disciples are accused of sin, but Christ defends and justifies them. |
| 2 The untouchable leper 5:12–16: Christ ‘stretched out his hand and touched him’. The cleansed leper is sent as a testimony to the priests. | 2 The man with a withered hand 6:6–11: Christ says ‘Stretch out your hand’. The man’s healing is made a lesson to the scribes and Pharisees. |
| 3 The healing of the paralytic 5:17–26: Present were Christ and Pharisees and teachers of the law from all over Galilee, Judaea and Jerusalem. ‘And the power of the Lord was there for him to heal’ (5:17). The paralytic is made a testimony to the theologians. | 3 The healing of the multitudes 6:12–19: Present were Christ and his newly appointed apostles. A great crowd assembles from Judaea, Jerusalem, Tyre and Sidon. ‘Power came out from him and healed them all’ (6:19). |
| 2. Christ’s principles of spiritual discipline Luke 5:27–39 | 4. Christ’s principles of morality Luke 6:20–49 |
| 1 Attitude to the sinfully rich and socially ostracized tax-collectors 5:27–28: Christ converts the tax-collector, Levi, who abandons his unacceptable way of making money and follows Christ. | 1 Attitude to poverty, hunger, sorrow and social ostracism 6:20–23: ‘Blessed are you poor . . . blessed are you when men shall . . . ostracise you . . . for the Son of Man’s sake’. |
| 2 Attitude to mixing socially with sinners 5:29–32: Pharisees criticize Christ for attending a dinner party with rich tax-collectors and sinners. Christ gives his reasons: the sick need a doctor. | 2 Attitude to riches, society, laughter and social acceptance 6:24–26: ‘Woe to you who are rich now. . . who are full . . . when all men speak well of you . . .’ for ‘you have received all the comfort you are going to get’. |
| 3 Attitude to fasting and spiritual exercises 5:33–35: Behaviour of the ‘sons of the bride-chamber’ is regulated according to the presence or absence of the bridegroom. | 3 Attitude to enemies and would-be borrowers 6:27–38: Behaviour of ‘sons of the Most High’ should conform to that of their Father. |
| 4 A threefold parable 5:36–39: (a) old and new garments, (b) old and new wineskins, (c) old and new wine. | 4 A threefold parable 6:39–49: (a) good and bad eyesight, (b) good and bad fruit trees, (c) good and bad building. |
The movements
- Christ and the authorities (Luke 5:1–26)
- Christ's principles of spiritual discipline (Luke 5:27–39)
- Christ and the authorities (Luke 6:1–19)
- Christ's principles of morality (Luke 6:20–49)
The central feature of Christ's moral teaching, when we first become aware of it, is undeniably astonishing: according to Christ, he himself is the criterion and touchstone of what is right and wrong.
At the beginning of the stage (see Luke 5:5), it is Christ's word, and no other consideration, which Peter at his daily work of fishing must obey in order to achieve success. At the end of the stage (see Luke 6:46–49) it is the hypocrisy of calling Jesus Lord and then failing to do the things which he says, that leads to ultimate disaster. In Luke 5:21–25 it is because Jesus is the Son of Man that he has the authority, which God alone has (see Luke 5:21), to forgive sins in the ultimate sense. In Luke 6:5 it is because he is the Son of Man that makes it lawful for his disciples to work for him on the Sabbath. And in Luke 6:22 it is because he is the Son of Man that persecution for his sake is a supreme blessing.
This central feature of his moral teaching is all the more astonishing when we remember that he was not addressing himself to a morally and religiously backward people: he was living and teaching in a nation whose moral and religious sense was developed beyond that of any other nation in the world. Its Old Testament was unmatched in the ancient world not only for its lofty monotheism and morality, but also for its insistence that religion and morality were, and must be, the two inseparable sides of one and the same [p 99] coin. By the time our Lord came, Judaism's meticulous priests, careful exegetes and sophisticated theologians had given, and were still giving, endless thought to the question of deducing from the Old Testament what was right and what was wrong in any given situation. Judaism had no lack of experts. Most of them accepted the Old Testament as the Word of God and therefore as the basic authority on all moral and religious matters. Many of them held that the traditions of the elders were equally binding on the people as God's Word. Others disagreed and this naturally led to much disputing among the different schools of thought. But as they watched Christ act and heard him teach, most experts were agreed that he was blasphemous (see Luke 5:21), lax and careless (see Luke 5:30, 33), and positively lawless (see Luke 6:2); and they sought grounds for accusing him (see Luke 6:7), deliberated how to stop him (see Luke 6:11) and ostracized his disciples as evil men (see Luke 6:22). Christ, of course, defended himself and his disciples and on occasions went over to the attack and criticized the experts for what he maintained were perverse distortions both of religion and morality. Not surprisingly this stage is full of disputing (see Luke 5:21–24, 30–32, 33–35; 6:2–5, 7–11, 22–23); and Luke is not afraid to tell us about it. Better a vigorous moral awareness, even if it leads to much controversy, than peace that arises out of moral indifference.
Luke, then, will show us Christ in contrast with Judaism and its experts at two different levels. In chapter 5, speaking generally, Luke shows us Judaism as a system which in its day was good, indeed God-given; no criticism is levelled against it except that it is now old and beginning to be obsolete. Against this background Luke represents Christ as bringing something that was completely new, higher and better. In chapter 6, on the other hand, again speaking generally, Luke presents Judaism as a system which has been distorted by the perverse interpretations of the religious and theological authorities. These perversions Christ exposes for what they are, and in their place he presents himself, his example and his Word as the only true and final authority.
But it is time we began to look at the detail of Luke's narrative. [p 100]
1. Christ and the authorities (Luke 5:1–26)
From many points of view the first three stories of Stage 3 hang together as a group. In each we find Christ in relation to an expert authority in some field or other. In Story 1 (see Luke 5:1–11), the field is that of fishing, and the expert authority is Peter, a master fisherman. In Story 2 (see Luke 5:12–16) the field is that of ceremonial cleanness and uncleanness, and the expert authorities are the priests. And in Story 3 (see Luke 5:17–26) the field is that of biblical interpretation and the expert authorities are the doctors of the law (see Luke 5:17).
In each field Christ, to everyone's amazement (see Luke 5:9–10, 15, 26), does better than the experts can do, indeed better than they can imagine is possible. When, having protested that there are no fish about (see Luke 5:5), the master fisherman lets down his nets at Christ's word, he takes an enormous catch (see Luke 5:6). The priest was expert at diagnosing leprosy (see Lev 13–14) and had the authority to pronounce a leper clean, if he ever recovered; but the priest could not cure a leper. Christ could and did. The doctors of the law were expert theologians. They could have discoursed at length and with great profit on the Old Testament doctrine of divine forgiveness. But they could not, of course, exercise that divine forgiveness and release a sinner from the guilt of his sins. Nothing less than that was what Christ claimed to have the authority to do; and he backed up his claim by the performance of a miracle (see Luke 5:20–26).
Each of these stories in fact relates a miracle, and, as we have already observed, the people whom Christ thus miraculously treats are made a testimony to others. Peter is given a ministry to all men in general: 'from henceforth you will catch men' (Luke 5:10). The leper is deliberately sent to the priest 'for a testimony to them' (Luke 5:14). The paralytic and his forgiveness and healing are made a testimony both to the theologians (see Luke 5:17) and to the lay public (see Luke 5:26). But the miracles carry no implied criticism of Judaism's experts, and it is important to notice it here, because in chapter 6 Christ will criticize some of those experts very severely. The miraculous catch of fish is not meant to imply that if Jewish fishermen were only more efficient they too would always secure bumper catches; [p 101] the miraculous cleansing of the leper is not meant to suggest that if Judaism's priests were only more holy they too would be able to heal lepers; and the miraculous healing of the paralytic is not meant to demonstrate that if Judaism's teachers of the law were only more knowledgeable or more exact in their exegesis, they too would be able to exercise the divine prerogative of forgiving people's sins. Of course not. The miracles are frankly miracles. They reveal the uniqueness of Jesus: he is the Son of Man; and they demonstrate that with the arrival of the Son of Man a new age has dawned and a new way of dealing with the age-old problem of sin and sinners. The demonstration will cover three fields: daily work and its motivation; religious discipline and its relation to personal purity; biblical interpretation and its relation to practical living.
Let us look at the stories individually.
i. In the fishing-boat (Luke 5:1–11)
It makes excellent sense in a series of stories and sermons dealing with the topic of sin that the first story should deal with Christ's ability to awaken a man to his sinfulness. How will a man correct sinful attitudes if he is not aware of them? It also makes sense that the first story should deal with sinfulness in the widest possible area, daily work.
One day, so we are told (see Luke 5:3), Christ used Peter's boat as a pulpit from which to preach a sermon. Peter sat by Christ's side right through the sermon, but as far as we are told, the sermon did not convict him of sin. After the sermon was over, Christ told Peter to put out into deep water and let down the nets for a catch. Now sermons may not have been much in Peter's line, but fishing certainly was. On that he was an authority, and from his expert knowledge and recent experience, he knew it was no good letting down the nets for a catch: there were no fish about. A long night's fruitless fishing had shown that, and he told Christ so (see Luke 5:4–5). But then he made a decision which was to revolutionize his whole attitude to daily work: 'Nevertheless,' he said, 'if you say so, I will' (Luke 5:5). Before this Peter's motive for letting down his nets had always been the obvious and [p 102] natural one, the hope of catching fish and making a profit. Why not? But this day, with no hope of fish or profit, he let down his nets for another reason and motive entirely: simply because Christ told him to, in obedience to Christ, in order to please Christ. The result was an enormous catch of fish, bigger than his tackle could cope with.
The effect upon Peter was understandable. The miracle was not teaching better techniques which, if followed, would improve Peter's profits: it was calling his attention to the person of Jesus. However dimly Peter perceived who Jesus was at this stage, he had in fact discovered the Holy One of God. Here was the Lord of fish and fishermen, the Lord of nature, the Lord of men and of their daily work. And here was that Lord not simply in a pulpit preaching sermons, but beside Peter in his boat at his daily job, seeking to be not only the director of his work but the one whose pleasure Peter is to seek in doing that work. And to think that a few minutes ago Peter, relying on his expert knowledge, had presumed to tell him that his command to let down the nets was misguided. It made Peter so aware of his sinfulness that he felt unfit to be in the same boat and engaged on the same work as Christ. 'Depart from me', he said, 'for I am a sinful man, Lord' (Luke 5:8).
Christ did not depart, of course, nor even criticize Peter. It was not Peter's fault that up until this point he had gone to work simply to make a living and for what enjoyment there was to be had in the process. He had not realized before who Jesus was, and Jesus had never before indicated that he wanted to be the director of Peter's work. When he had been asked, Peter had readily agreed to loan his business plant for the good of Christ's religious cause; but even so he had not realized that it was open to him to work for Christ in everything that he did. As soon as he realized it, he at least showed himself ready to respond to the challenge.
We, who have long known who Jesus is, however, and what he requires of us in the sphere of our daily work, might well have cause to feel more sinful than Peter. Our sinfulness as Christians is perhaps seen most not in the occasional, glaring misdemeanour of which we may be guilty, but in the chronic substandard quality [p 103] of the motivation of our daily work. How long is it since we went about a day's work, not primarily for its necessary material profit, or for the enjoyment to be got out of doing it, but primarily in order to please the Lord and obey him? And if it is a sin for the Christian to have any prime motive for doing his daily work other than to please the Lord (see Matt 6:31–32; Col 3:23), how many days have we spent totally in sin!
Peter's confession of sinfulness, however, was not answered by some such word as 'Do not be afraid, your many sins have all been forgiven'. Peter was not thinking of specific and particular sins which he had committed, but of his general sinfulness and unworthiness as a person: 'I am a sinful man'. Christ's reply was, in effect, 'Don't worry; in spite of that I can make something of you and use you: from now on you will catch men.' The phrase 'catch men' is instructive. At his daily work he caught fish and a skilful job it was. Now those skills were not to be abandoned, but applied at a higher level. Peter's daily work was to be elevated to the higher spiritual level for which the lower material level is but the necessary, practical foundation. To live we must eat, and fish will do for that as well as anything. But there is more to life than eating: and therefore even catching fish, done for the right motives, has ultimate purposes far beyond merely keeping people alive. Therefore the Lord of daily work, having taught Peter to go about that work with the right motive ('Nevertheless at your word I will'), now calls Peter to serve at the level of the ultimate purpose of life's work. 'From now on', he says, 'you will catch men', catch them, of course, for God and for his kingdom. With that Peter left his secular employment to devote himself to spiritual work (see Luke 5:11). But it is to be remembered that the experience which launched him on his great spiritual labours was an experience which he had of Christ in his secular work. For the believer secular and spiritual work are simply different ends of an undivided spectrum, and the secular work can and must have the same ultimate objectives in view as the spiritual. Since Messiah has come, we, in our daily work, may no longer be content to aim at less than serving him and his cause. [p 104]
ii. The untouchable leper (Luke 5:12–16)
After Peter's sinfulness had been exposed there came to Christ a man 'full of leprosy' (Luke 5:12). His uncleanness needed no exposure: he had long since been diagnosed by a priest and was obliged to cry, 'Unclean! Unclean!' (Lev 13:45–46). His leprosy was obvious to everybody anyway: he was full of it.
We do not know exactly what disease, or cluster of diseases, was referred to in biblical times by the term 'leprosy'. Whatever it was, the disease, like any other disease, was sometimes regarded as having been imposed on some people as a divine chastisement for their sins (cf. the case of King Uzziah, 2 Chr 26:16–21); but it was not always thought to be so.27 Nonetheless in Old Testament days leprosy, in common with many other physical functions and malfunctions (see Lev 15), was thought of as rendering a person not only physically unclean, but ceremonially unclean as well; and the ceremonial as well as the physical uncleanness was regarded as contagious. The disease, therefore, had to be diagnosed by a priest, and upon such diagnosis the sufferer had to be officially pronounced unclean, and segregated from the presence of God in the temple and from social contact. When, if ever, the leper was cleansed in the sense of being physically healed, he then had to visit the priest again to have his physical healing certified, and in addition he had to offer certain sacrifices and perform certain ablutions before he could be finally and officially pronounced ceremonially clean (see Lev 14). The regulations were severe on the sufferer: they were necessary for the protection and health of the nation.
This elaborate ceremonial treatment of leprosy and its cleansing have naturally led Christians all down the centuries to regard leprosy as a kind of picture of the uncleanness of sin, and Christ's cleansing of the leper as a parable of his ability to purify a man's life. It is true that in more recent times some sensitive people have objected to this idea on the grounds that it casts a terrible stigma on [p 105] people suffering from physical leprosy. The objection is understandable, but, if one may say so respectfully, illogical. Paralysis (see Heb 12:12), blindness (see John 9:1–3, 40–41) and gangrene (see 2 Tim 2:17) are all used in the New Testament as metaphors of spiritual malaise. Leprosy is but one among many physical illnesses that can helpfully be used as a metaphor or parable of moral and spiritual disease; and we are all morally and spiritually unclean in God's sight. The greater saint a man is, the more readily he will acknowledge it (see Isa 6:5). But sheer common experience will tell us that moral and spiritual uncleanness is not imaginary, nor is the danger of contagion. These things trouble our modern world still, and we therefore look with interest to see what Christ's attitude was both to the unclean man and to Judaism's laws on uncleanness.
Christ's cleansing of the leper demonstrated two things simultaneously: his divine compassion and his miraculous power. He might have cured the man simply by speaking the command, 'Be clean'; but in his compassion he stretched out his hand and touched him (see Luke 5:13). It requires little effort to imagine what the touch of that hand meant to a man who had been segregated from society as an untouchable. But we must not misinterpret Christ's compassion: it carried no criticism of the Jewish priests. He was not suggesting that if they had only been more compassionate they would not have segregated the man. Christ's touch had the miraculous ability to banish leprosy. The priests had no such power. For them to have touched the leper would have been to spread the uncleanness by contagion; and that would have been pseudo-compassion. Their God-given duty was to maintain standards of cleanliness, to diagnose leprosy, pronounce lepers unclean, and, painful and drastic though it was, to segregate them. In touching the leper Christ was doing nothing to undermine the priests' stand against uncleanness; on the contrary, he upheld their authority: for when he had cleansed the man he sent him to the priests for their inspection, and told him to offer the sacrifices required by the law of Moses (see Luke 5:14).
The analogy will hold for moral and spiritual uncleanness too. Many people nowadays seem to imagine that Christ's compassion [p 106] for unclean people justifies permissiveness. But that is mistaken and dangerous. The law of God condemns uncleanness, and warns that if persisted in it will lead to eternal segregation (see Rev 21:27). Christ certainly can do what the law cannot do: he can cleanse a man (see John 13:10; Eph 5:26). But that does not mean that he disagrees with the law. Cleansing a man is not the same thing as saying that on grounds of compassion dirt should no longer be so strictly regarded as dirty. Cleansing presumes that dirt is dirty, ugly, dangerous and unacceptable. Indeed Christ is on record (see Luke 16:14–18) as having explicitly denied that he had come to encourage a more permissive attitude towards the law's moral demands; and his apostles later on solemnly warn us that various forms of moral uncleanness are contagious (see 1 Cor 5:6; Heb 12:14–15).
On the other hand, in carefully sending the cleansed leper to the priests 'for a testimony to them', Christ was making a second, supremely important point. He was inviting them to observe that someone had arrived with a power infinitely greater than they or their rituals possessed. They could not heal a leper: he could.
Once again the analogy holds at the moral and spiritual level, and here is the glory of Christ's power. It is not simply that Judaism's concepts of ceremonial defilement and its rituals, sacrifices and ablutions were eventually to pass away as being elementary, external symbols inappropriate in a world come of age. It is that the law entrusted to Israel, divine in its origin though it was, could not, even at its deepest and most spiritual level, produce in a man's heart and life the cleanness that it rightly demanded. But what the law could not and cannot do, that Christ can. This is the constantly repeated theme of the New Testament (see e.g. Acts 15:8–9; Rom 7:7–8:11; Titus 3:3–7; Heb 9:9–14).
iii. The healing of the paralytic (Luke 5:17–26)
Both Matthew (see Matt 9:1–8) and Mark (see Mark 2:1–12) record the healing of the paralytic which Luke now presents (see Luke 5:17–26); but only Luke tells us in the opening verses that there were . . . 'doctors of the law sitting by, who had come out of every village of Galilee and [p 107] Judaea and Jerusalem' (Luke 5:17). Indeed, the term 'doctor of the law' (nomodidaskalos) occurs only twice elsewhere in the New Testament; which seems to show that Luke is wishing to emphasize here that on this occasion a number of Judaism's official teachers of the Old Testament were present. These men were different from the priests of whom we have just been thinking: the priests were experts in the practice of Judaism's rituals, the doctors of the law in Judaism's theology.
Now the lesson which Christ taught them was not that God being a forgiving God delights to forgive the repentant sinner. That the Jewish theologians (one suspects, even the Jewish schoolchildren) knew already from the Old Testament. What Christ taught them was something startlingly new: he personally released a man from the guilt of his sins (see Luke 5:20). The theologians immediately picked up the implications of this claim. The Old Testament gave no one, not priest, nor prophet, nor theologian any such authority. They could pronounce in God's name that God had forgiven, or would forgive, such and such a sin; but none had authority to pronounce forgiveness in his own name, as Christ had just done. They accused him of blasphemously arrogating to himself a divine prerogative (see Luke 5:21). And Christ's reply was not to explain that they had misunderstood him. Far from it. He proceeded to demonstrate by a miracle that he personally as Son of Man had authority here on earth, without waiting for some final judgment, to pronounce absolute and final forgiveness in his own name (see Luke 5:22–25).
Astonishing as this was to the theologians, an even fuller statement of the wonderfully new element which Christ has introduced into the concept and enjoyment of forgiveness, came with Christ's death, resurrection and ascension. Judaism, it goes without saying, had all the way along, known and enjoyed divine forgiveness. But it was forgiveness of a kind that left even the saintliest of them with a conscience 'not yet made perfect' (Heb 10:1–23), with no sense at all that sin had been finally and fully put away, and therefore with the need constantly to bring further sacrifices to put away further sin. With them, therefore, the question of forgiveness was always at [p 108] any given time incomplete. They had no freedom to enter the most holy place of God's presence, and the question of ultimate acceptance with God was left uncertain. By contrast the forgiveness which Christ gives makes the conscience 'perfect', in the sense that the one forgiven is assured that God will never again 'remember his sins against him', will never raise again in the court of divine judgment the question of his guilt and its legal penalty. It therefore frees the one forgiven from the need to offer any more sacrifices for his sins and gives him complete freedom of access into, and welcome in, the presence of God both here and now, and in the hereafter.
We should notice at once, however, that when the theologians objected that Jesus' claim was blasphemous they were not (at this stage, at least) being perverse. If he had not been the divine Son of Man, his claim would have been blasphemous; and as yet they had little evidence (many of them had come up from the south, see Luke 5:17) to prove that this particular claim was true. To set their minds at rest, therefore, Christ proceeded to do a miracle. Not just any miracle, of course, but a miracle designed to show that the forgiveness he had just pronounced was not bogus, or rank antinomianism, but real and genuinely divine. Having forgiven the paralytic he proceeded to release him from his paralysis and to give him the strength to walk to the glory of God. The man himself, says Luke, went off to his home glorifying God; and everybody who saw it was amazed, and they too glorified God at the sight of the one-time paralytic walking (see Luke 5:25–26).
Now it so happens that in Hebrew 'walking' is a standard metaphor for a man's way of life and behaviour (e.g. Eph 4:17). Christ's demonstration, therefore, easily becomes for us a parable of what his apostles mean when they talk of the provision Christ makes for those whom he forgives to enable them 'to walk in newness of life' (Rom 6:4).
2. Christ's principles of spiritual discipline (Luke 5:27–39)
Having recorded three examples, drawn from different but representative areas, of Christ's new and better way with sin and sinners, [p 109] Luke now turns to deal with the spiritual discipline which Christ expected from his converts and which he imposed on himself and his disciples in his dealings with them. To illustrate the question clearly Luke cites some extreme cases.
i. Christ's attitude to the sinfully rich and socially ostracized tax-collectors (Luke 5:27–28)
All men are sinners, but in the estimate of Jews tax-collectors were triply bad. Firstly, they worked for the hated imperialists, and that in the eyes of many made them traitors. Secondly, as a class they were extortionate and fraudulent: the rabbis classed them as robbers. Thirdly, since their occupation necessarily involved them in constant contact with Gentiles, they were regarded by Jews of the stricter kind as permanently ritually unclean. Added together this meant that tax-collectors were regarded as the lowest of the depraved to be classed along with 'sinners', that is, prostitutes, and socially ostracized.
Levi was a tax-collector: what would Christ require conversion to involve for him?
We may recall that John the Baptist had taught that there was nothing morally wrong in tax-collecting for the imperial power; the wrong was in the fraud and extortion that tax-collectors generally practised. True repentance, therefore, according to John did not necessarily mean giving up tax-collecting, but it did mean giving up all fraud and extortion (see Luke 3:12–13). Christ seems to have taken the same basic view. His convert Zacchaeus, for instance, renounced fraud and extortion, promised reparations, but did not promise to give up his tax-collecting; nor apparently did Christ require him to (see Luke 19:1–10).
But with Levi there was no question of simply satisfying the minimum necessary requirements of morality. Christ called him to follow 'and he left everything and rose up and followed him'. Christ did nothing less than break his love of money and turn him into an altruistic follower of Christ. It was something that years of the synagogue's discipline and of social ostracism had been unable to achieve. [p 110]
ii. Christ's attitude to mixing socially with sinners (Luke 5:29–32)
Conversion to Christ immediately gave Levi a love and concern for his former fellow sinners such as he had never had before for them or for anybody else: it was, of course, a desire to see them also converted. Has a man been genuinely converted by the grace of Christ, if he does not in consequence have a desire that others be converted too? Levi's desire led to action: he threw a large dinner party at which his former colleagues could meet Christ and hear him preach.
The Pharisees and their biblical experts, however, criticized Christ and his disciples for attending the dinner. To their way of thinking mixing socially with such grievously antisocial sinners merely condoned their sin, and that in turn discredited Christ's evangelism. Perhaps those Pharisees' attendance at such dinner parties might have condoned sin. They had no gospel, they had not Christ's power to convert sinners, they were not, as he was, the Great Physician. They might even have been in danger of succumbing to moral contagion themselves. Christ did not tell them they ought to attend such parties. After all, one does not send just anybody to attend to a patient suffering from smallpox. On the other hand, if no doctor or nurse visits and tends such a patient, the patient will die without any chance of recovery. Someone, therefore, must go where the sick patient is. 'The healthy do not need a doctor,' said Christ, 'but the sick do. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance' (Luke 5:31–32).
It would certainly be a strange doctor who considered that he was doing all he could and should against disease by lecturing the healthy on the dangers of disease, and never going anywhere near the sick. And then, again, 'righteous' and 'sinners'—were they not in this context relative terms? Were the Pharisees altogether so righteous that they did not need the doctor at all?
iii. Christ's attitude to fasting and spiritual exercises (Luke 5:33–35)
But Christ's critics had another criticism, and this time it concerned not what he was prepared to do in order to make converts, but what he did with them when he had made them. Said his critics: 'John's [p 111] disciples frequently fast and engage in solemn prayers, and so do the Pharisees' disciples; but yours eat and drink' (Luke 5:33). They found such laxity disturbing: it seemed to take the seriousness out of true religion.
Christ replied with an analogy: 'Can you make the sons of the bridechamber [that is, a bridegroom's guests] fast while the bridegroom is with them?' (Luke 5:34). No, of course not. To try to enforce fasting on such an occasion would be absurdly inappropriate.
'On the other hand', said Christ, 'the days will come when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and they will fast then' (Luke 5:35). But by now the analogy had begun to merge into a metaphor. Christ was the bridegroom. For his disciples his presence, his forgiveness, their release from spiritual bondage, and the new vistas he opened up before them, made their joy like that of a wedding banquet. To have imposed fasting on them at that stage in their spiritual experience would have been highly incongruous and artificial. There is no point in fasting just for the sake of fasting. To be of any use it must be related to the spiritual realities of any given situation.
That did not mean that they would never fast. They would when the bridegroom was taken away. Historically that happened at the crucifixion, though their sorrow was soon overtaken by the joy of the resurrection, the ascension, and the coming of the Holy Spirit (see John 16:19–22). Spiritually, it can happen that a believer may lose, not the Lord's presence with him, but a sense of the unclouded joy of that presence. Or he may find himself in the thick of some spiritual battle. Fasting may well be appropriate then.
Two things must strike us about Christ's answer to this criticism. The first is its plain common sense: there was obviously no trace of religiosity about him. The second is a matter of much greater importance. Once again, as so often in this stage, Christ puts himself forward as the key, the controlling factor, the regulator of true spirituality. His disciples' lives are ordered not so much by rule and regulation as by the practical realities of a living relationship with a living Lord. For them forgiveness, salvation, morality, ethics, religious discipline, all hinge upon a personal relationship with Christ. [p 112]
This was a new thing in Judaism. And Christ will now tell us about the relation of the new to the old.
iv. A threefold parable (Luke 5:36–39)
It has become more and more evident as we have progressed through this first part of Stage 3, that in his way with sin and sinners Christ has not been calling the people back to a more rigorous and devoted obedience to the Judaism they already knew. Rather his coming has introduced something altogether new and better. In him, as another was yet to put it, 'God has provided some better thing' (Heb 11:40).
To explain the relationship between this new thing and the old Christ now tells a parable (see Luke 5:36–39). It is one single parable, but it has three parts; and all three parts have in common that the 'old thing' represents Judaism and the 'new thing' Christ and Christianity.
The old and new garments. Judaism's rituals and disciplines, the 'righteousness which is of the law' (Rom 10:5), however good originally, are now a worn out garment. It is impossible to maintain their usefulness by attempting to patch them up with a few new elements taken from the gospel of Christ. The old garment must be discarded and the new assumed in its place.
This proved a difficult lesson for some Jewish Christians to learn. People like Paul and Barnabas accepted it at once (see Acts 15; Gal 5:3–4; Phil 3:2–14). Others like Peter accepted it (see Acts 15:7–11), but sometimes were tempted to compromise (see Gal 2:11–21). Christendom has not always resisted the temptation of imagining that the Christian gospel can be expressed in rituals, ceremonies, sacrifices and priestly orders taken over from Judaism. But Christ's warning stands: try to patch an old garment with a piece of cloth taken from a new, and both garments will be spoiled and the attempted repair will not work.
The old and new wineskins. Christ produces a new ferment of joy in the hearts of his disciples. The old traditional Jewish forms for the expression of religious life have now grown hard and unpliable. The new wine of new life in Christ could not possibly submit to their [p 113] unyielding restrictions. Not that Christian joy and fervour intend to dispense with discipline and restraint altogether; but new forms will have to be devised, more pliant and yet, in consequence, stronger.
The old and new wine. The wine of Judaism has become mellow and settled by centuries of experience and increasing tradition. The gospel of Christ and the salvation it provides are new wine. A man who has cultivated a taste for the traditional, settled dignity of Judaism, will not at once relish Christianity; he might even resent its novelty. Many did. Some still do.
It will be noticed, however, that while comparison is made throughout between Judaism and the gospel of Christ altogether to the advantage of the gospel, nothing disrespectful is said of Judaism. The garment of Judaism is now old; but there is no denying that it was a good, God-given garment in its day. The wineskins of Judaism have grown old and too tight for the new wine; but they served a good purpose for the old wine. Indeed, it is finally admitted that in some respects to some people Judaism will at first taste better than Christianity. In a word, the Christian gospel is being compared with good, healthy Judaism, which God had himself instituted to serve a very real need until Christ should come.
3. Christ and the authorities (Luke 6:1–19)
We have reached the halfway point in this stage and things now begin to take on a more serious tone. Christ's gospel is no longer being compared with features of Judaism which were good in their time but which are now becoming old and obsolete. Rather it is being compelled to stand against inadequate interpretations, and then positive perversions, of Judaism. In the first story of this movement the Pharisees accuse Christ and his disciples of breaking God's law, and Christ has to point out that their accusation is based on an inadequate interpretation of holy Scripture. In the second story Christ has to defy the Pharisees' interpretation of the law of Sabbath as being not only inadequate but positively immoral. In the third story, Jesus as Israel's Messiah bypasses all the traditional religious authorities in Judaism and appoints twelve apostles to be [p 114] his own authoritative representatives to the nation. He thus takes an early step on the path that should eventually lead to the complete divergence of Christianity from Judaism. Let us look at these stories in detail.
i. In the cornfield (Luke 6:1–5)
The Old Testament law of Sabbath (see Exod 20:8–11) forbade work on the Sabbath day. About that there was no doubt. When, therefore, our Lord's disciples plucked ears of corn on a Sabbath, rubbing them in their hands and eating the kernels, some of the Pharisees accused them of breaking the Sabbath (see Luke 6:1–2). If the accusation had been valid, it would have convicted the disciples of sin, and by implication Christ as well.
This incident is recorded also by Matthew (see Matt 12:1–8) and Mark (see Mark 2:23–28). Both of them inform us that our Lord in reply gave a number of different reasons in justification of his disciples' behaviour. Luke chooses to dwell on only one of them, and we therefore are here concerned only with that one reason. Our Lord did not choose, as he might have done, to point out that their definition of what constituted work on the Sabbath was quite arbitrary and had no authority within Scripture. What he did point out was that their application of the general law of Sabbath was wrong in this particular case: it overlooked the fact that Scripture itself allowed exceptions to religious regulations under certain circumstances, witness the precedent established by David's eating of the shewbread (see Luke 6:3–4; 1 Sam 21).
The law governing shewbread was not a moral law but only a religious regulation. The strict consecration of the shewbread to God and to his priests was designed to teach Israel the holiness of the Lord, the sacredness of his service and the sanctity of those whom he chose to minister to him in the special ministry of the priesthood. Normally, therefore, the symbols of that service were forbidden to non-priests. But the occasion recorded in 1 Samuel 21 was no normal occasion. In the first place David himself was no ordinary citizen. He was the Lord's anointed (1 Sam 16). He was [p 115] God's viceroy in Israel. Moreover at this time he was fleeing for his life from evil Saul, and desperately hungry. It was of paramount importance to the Lord that the Lord's anointed should be fed; and it was perfectly proper, therefore, that a symbol whose strict consecration was designed to teach Israel to revere the service of the Lord, should be used to serve the needs of the Lord's anointed. And if serving his needs meant serving the needs of his servants, there was nothing improper about it.
Now comes the analogy between the law of the shewbread and the law of Sabbath, between David as the Lord's anointed and Jesus as the Son of Man. The Sabbath was instituted for this primary reason among others, to teach men to cease one day a week from serving themselves and to devote the day to the service of God. But Jesus was no ordinary man. He was the Christ, the Son of David (see Luke 1:32), the Lord's Anointed (see Luke 4:18), the Son of Man in the fullest possible sense and as the Son of Man he declared himself to be Lord of the Sabbath. He had a right to his disciples' incessant service. If plucking the corn was done in his service, then it was perfectly proper to do it even on the Sabbath.
If a tourist is looking round a stately home and comes across a door marked private, he must respect the owner's prohibition. But if the owner's son comes out and invites him to dinner, the tourist is not disregarding the owner's prohibition by following the owner's son through the door marked private. Let us admit that the Pharisees did not realize that Jesus was the unique and more than human Son of Man (see Dan 7:13–14); it was nonetheless a misapplication of the law of Sabbath, though made in ignorance, to accuse the disciples of sin for working for God's Son on God's Sabbath.
Before we leave this incident, we should perhaps reflect how it raises, not lowers, the standards which God expected of Israel. They were taught to do their own work six days a week, and then to reserve one day in seven holy to the Lord. It is perilously easy in our secular world for the Christian to fall into the mistake of imagining that Christian liberty allows him to lower that standard, until no day is holy to the Lord; whereas in fact our Lord's teaching is that [p 116] for the Christian every day should be consecrated to his service. We may recall that at Luke 5:1–11 Christ taught Peter that he was Lord of the believer's daily work; here he teaches his disciples that he is Lord of their Sabbaths as well.
ii. The man with a withered hand (Luke 6:6–11)
There follows now another confrontation between Christ and the Pharisaic interpreters of Scripture. It happened in a synagogue on another Sabbath day. Present in the synagogue was a man with a withered hand and the Pharisees were watching to see if Christ would heal him; they were ready to accuse him of sin if he did, since according to them the healing of a man's hand was work and was therefore forbidden on the Sabbath.
And Christ who at Luke 5:14 had been so careful to uphold the authority of the priests, now defied these would-be authorities. Reading their unspoken thoughts he told the man to step forward where everybody could see him. That certainly concentrated everybody's attention on the man's poor, shrivelled, useless hand. How could anyone think that Sabbath-keeping was meant to prolong that state of affairs? God in his great compassion had instituted the Sabbath so that men's hands might rest and regain strength for further work, not so that it might prolong their disability to do any work at all. Christ who in his compassion had stretched out his own hand and touched the leper (see Luke 5:13), now bade this man stretch out his hand, and healed him.
But it was not merely compassion that moved Christ; nor did he appeal this time to his special status and rights as the Son of Man and Lord of the Sabbath, nor even to the authority of some particular Scripture. He appealed instead to the authority of morality, and argued that an interpretation of the Sabbath law that conflicted with basic morality must be wrong, for it would involve slander on the very character of God who ordained the Sabbath. To forbid the healing of a man's hand would be to do him an injury. 'I ask you', said Christ, 'is it lawful on the Sabbath day to do someone good, or to do him an injury, to save life, or to destroy it?' (see Luke 6:9). [p 117]
Yet when Christ defied the scribes and the Pharisees and healed the man, 'they were filled with madness, and discussed among themselves what they might do to Jesus' (Luke 6:11). The religious mind is a curious thing. It is not necessarily interested in common morality; still less in relieving human misery and affliction. It is interested in keeping rules; particularly the rules which spring from its own cherished interpretations of Scripture or tradition; and to these interpretations it will attribute the inflexible authority of God himself. Let God incarnate, contrary to its interpretations, interpose with a miracle of divine goodness to relieve human misery, then instead of revising its interpretations it will plan to stop such miracles happening again. Luke rightly describes this attitude as mindless folly (see Luke 6:11). It goes without saying that this was never true Judaism, but a perversion of it. It also goes without saying that Christianity has not always escaped similar misinterpretations.
iii. The healing of the multitudes (Luke 6:12–19)
The anger of the scribes and Pharisees at Christ's public defiance of their authority and his exposure in front of the people of the folly of their cherished interpretations of Scripture was more serious than might at first appear. It would lead eventually to his death. 'In these days', therefore says Luke (Luke 6:12) our Lord spent a night in prayer on a mountainside, and after that did two things.
First, he carefully chose twelve men from among his disciples and appointed them as his apostles. What these men were to be and do we learn later from Luke and from the rest of the New Testament. They were presently to be sent out as Messiah's official emissaries to the nation, their very number, twelve, being matched to the number of the tribes of Israel. To them he would delegate his power and authority (see Luke 9:1). After Pentecost they would be his official witnesses (see Acts 1:8, 22) and leaders of the new community, the Christian church. From their number some would be chosen to become the inspired writers of the New Testament, the official channels of the revelation given to the church from the risen Lord by the Holy Spirit (see John 14:26; 15:27; 16:13–15). [p 118]
Secondly, after choosing them he came down with them from the mountain, where he had been at prayer, and stood on the plain, before a tremendous gathering of disciples and of the general public from all over the country, north and south (see Luke 6:17). This was the first time that these men had stood with him publicly in their official capacity before such a representative crowd from all over the nation. They would never forget that occasion nor the demonstration he gave them that day of what he and his teaching stood for. The people came, Luke tells us, 'to hear him and to be healed of their diseases and . . . power came out from him and healed them all' (Luke 6:17–19). We recall that other gathering of which Luke has recently told us (see Luke 5:17) when there was assembled a representative collection of teachers of the law from every village of Galilee and Judaea and Jerusalem. On that occasion he had given those teachers a demonstration of the distinctive quality of his teaching. The power of the Lord was with him to heal, and the healing character of his teaching was manifested as he first forgave a paralytic's sins and then released him from his paralysis and gave him the power to walk to the glory of God. And so now, as his newly appointed apostles stood with him on the plain, power came out from him and he healed the crowds; and in that context of healing he 'lifted up his eyes on his disciples' (Luke 6:20) and taught them what the pastoral epistles would later describe as 'healthy, wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ' (1 Tim 6:3).
4. Christ's principles of morality (Luke 6:20–49)
We come now to Luke's equivalent of the Sermon on the Mount. We have no need to decide the question of whether or not the material recorded by Luke was spoken by Christ on the same occasion as the material recorded in the sermon by Matthew. Many preachers preach similar, but slightly varied, material on different occasions; and Christ may well have done so too. For our purposes the differences between the material presented by Luke and Matthew will be especially helpful. We cannot hope to do justice to the whole of our Lord's moral teaching summarized here by Luke; that would need [p 119] a close exegesis of every detail and wide-ranging discussion of its practical applications. Such a study would lead us far beyond the proportions of this present work. We must be content to observe the general flow of Luke's thought, and for that purpose those features which distinguish Luke's presentation from Matthew's sermon will prove a useful guide.
i. The right attitude to poverty, hunger, sorrow and social ostracism (Luke 6:20–23)
First we notice that whereas Matthew's sermon has nine beatitudes, Luke's has only four (see Luke 6:20–23). Here no blessing is pronounced on the positive states of being meek, merciful, pure in heart or peacemaker; only the negative states of poverty, hunger and weeping are mentioned, and those who suffer them are pronounced happy because of the compensations which they do, and shall, enjoy. Then one final blessing is given more prominence than the other three combined. It pronounces blessed those who are hated, separated from men's company, reproached, and whose name is cast out as evil for the Son of Man's sake: in a word, those who are socially ostracized not just for any cause whatever, good or bad, but for Christ's sake.
ii. The right attitude to riches, society, laughter and social acceptance (Luke 6:24–26)
The 'woes' which Christ pronounces in these verses have no counterpart in Matthew's sermon: they are peculiar to Luke. They express a mixture of indignation and sorrow, and more of sorrow than of indignation. They largely repeat in reverse terms, and thus underline, what the 'blessings' say. Now the biggest emphasis among the 'blessings', as we have just noticed, falls on those who are hated, ostracized and denigrated for the Son of Man's sake: they suffer, Christ explains, the same as the prophets did (see Luke 6:23). So here the corresponding 'woe' observes (Luke 6:26) that those who are spoken well of by all men, are being treated as the false prophets were. Luke leaves us in no doubt, therefore, as to what Christ had in mind. He was thinking of the bitter criticisms of his teaching, examples of which [p 120] we have had throughout this stage, and even more of the hostility which his exposure of the Pharisees' false teaching was beginning to stir up. We have already had one unpleasant instance of it at Luke 6:11; eventually, as we know, it would lead to his murder, and as Luke records in Acts to outbursts of persecution against the church.
Then one further, small but significant Lucan peculiarity is worth noticing. In Matthew, Christ phrases himself thus: 'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven' (Matt 5:3), in Luke he 'lifted up his eyes on his disciples and said, "Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God"' (Luke 6:20). And this use of the second person plural instead of the third continues throughout the 'blesseds' and the 'woes'.
The effect is that Christ divides the great company of people listening to him into two groups: you who are poor, are hungry and weep, and you who are rich, are full and laugh; you who are to be congratulated, and you who are to be sorrowed over. The final contrast is particularly significant. It is not between those who are reproached and those who are spoken well of by all. It is between those who are reproached for the Son of Man's sake, and those who are spoken well of by all. And the same applies to the other contrasts. In other words, the two groups are not those who are for any reason poor, hungry and sorrowful, and those who likewise for any reason are rich, full and laugh. The basic criterion that divides the great throng into two groups is whether they are Christ's genuine disciples or not.
The case of Levi, the tax-collector (see Luke 5:27–32) will illustrate the point. Before his conversion, he was like all his fellow tax-collectors, hated by the people, socially ostracized, and spoken very badly of. That did not mean, of course, that he enjoyed the blessedness of which Christ speaks. He did not incur this treatment for Christ's sake. He was in fact among the rich, the full, those who laugh—an apt description of the guests at his pre-conversion banquets. But then Christ changed him: he stopped all his extortion, abandoned his lucrative occupation and shared a meagre common purse with Christ and his travelling band of evangelists in order [p 121] to take the gospel to the nation. Curiously enough, his conversion did not alter things much in one respect: he was still spoken ill of. The Pharisees, much as they disapproved of tax-collecting, were not pleased with his conversion to Christ nor with his attempts to get other tax-collectors converted (see Luke 5:29–30). And as for the poor, while they were doubtless glad to have a few less tax-collectors around, when they discovered that Jesus was not prepared to lead a revolution against the imperialists, they eventually joined with the Pharisees and Sadducees, rejected Christ and his apostles, Levi included, and chose by preference a revolutionary activist (see Luke 23:18–25). But now Levi did qualify for the blessedness of which Christ spoke: the poverty, suffering, criticism and ostracism which he now endured were being endured for the sake of loyalty to Christ and to his gospel.
One further element in this section of Christ's teaching may detain us for a moment: his remarkable compassion for the unscrupulously rich. At Luke 5:27–31, in spite of heavy criticism by the Pharisees he had gone among them with the compassion which a true physician has for the desperately sick. Now here at Luke 6:25–26 he tells us what moves him to pronounce his 'woe' of sorrow upon them: it is the thought that the comfort which they enjoy in this life is all the comfort which they are ever going to get. When we come to the story of the rich man and Lazarus (see Luke 16:19–31) we shall see more fully what he means by saying that such people have received all the comfort they are ever going to get (see Luke 16:25); and we shall the more readily understand his compassion. It will be interesting to see also that by that stage (see Luke 15:13–15) the Pharisees have somewhat changed their tune regarding the seriousness of serving mammon.
iii. The right attitude to enemies and would-be borrowers (Luke 6:27–38)
There follows now a number of detailed moral exhortations. Important in their own right, they also balance what has just been said. A man who rejoiced when he was cast out of men's company, reproached and rejected as evil, and who considered it a woe to be [p 122] spoken well of by all, might be in danger of becoming a very unpleasant character, a veritable Ishmael, his hand against every man, and every man's hand against him. Christ obviates this danger by telling his disciples what their attitude must be to the very enemies who have cast them out and spoken evil of them. 'Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who ill-treat you . . . lend . . . be merciful . . . do not judge, do not condemn . . . release . . . give.'
Running through these exhortations are two basic principles. The first is that followers of Christ are called upon to behave in ways far superior to those of sinners (see Luke 6:32–34). It is the fact that many of the kind and generous attitudes and acts on which we all congratulate ourselves, are the attitudes and acts which all members of all groups show towards members of their own groups. We all love our fellow-socialists, or fellow-capitalists, or fellow-nationals, or fellow-religionists. But there is nothing very special about that. Even sinners do the same. Christ calls his followers to love their enemies, their oppressors, their robbers and those that show them violence, and to do them good (see Luke 6:27–29).
The second is that followers of Christ must show the same character as their Father (see Luke 6:35–36). He is just, but he is more than just: he is merciful. So must his sons be. It is not so much a question of following rules, or even of clamouring for justice. It is a question of inheriting by the new birth the Father's nature and exhibiting that nature by behaving as his mature sons. Sonship, one might almost say, is the key to Christ's moral teaching. We recall how at Luke 5:34–35 he explained that the behaviour of 'sons of the bride-chamber' (which is what the Greek calls the bridegroom's guests) will be regulated by the presence or absence of the bridegroom. And the analogy turned into a metaphor: he is the bridegroom and his disciples are his 'sons of the bride-chamber'. Now here his disciples are sons of the Father. And once more we conclude that for them true moral behaviour is not so much a matter of keeping rules but a matter of developing a God-like character as a result of enjoying the life of God in fellowship with Christ. [p 123]
iv. A threefold parable (Luke 6:39–49)
The second half of Stage 3 ends, as does the first half, with a parable in three parts. But there is an important difference in the message of the two parables. The first tripartite parable (see Luke 5:36–37) was concerned to contrast the new and the better with what was good in its day, but is now old and inadequate. The second tripartite parable is concerned to contrast the true, good and correct with what is downright false and unrelievedly bad.
The first part of the second parable (see Luke 6:39–42) is based on an analogy with eyesight, and applies to those who would teach others. It castigates two faults. First there is the fault of the man who has no sight at all, and yet professes to lead others (see Luke 6:39–40), with the inevitable result that he himself falls into the ditch and his disciples, who by definition can get no further than the teacher they are depending on, fall into the ditch as well. It is a pathetic thing to listen to a man who has no personal experience of Christ's salvation trying to instruct others like himself in the gospel of Christ.
Secondly there is the fault of the man who has sight, but whose visual judgment is grievously impaired: he has a baulk of timber, says our Lord, with delightful hyperbole, in his eye and he can't really see straight. In prosaic language, he has some glaringly wrong habit or attitude in his life which everybody else can see; but strangely enough, not only can he apparently not see it himself, but he is the very one who is constantly pointing out other people's minor faults and failings, and offering to correct their vision by casting out these motes from their eyes. Actually, he could see the beam in his own eye if he wanted to: his finding fault with others is but compensation for allowing his own major fault to continue unjudged. Our Lord calls him a hypocrite (see Luke 6:41–42).
The second part of the parable (Luke 6:43–45) is based on an analogy with fruit trees and their fruit. The fruit of a tree is an unfailing indication of the nature of the tree. So a man's actions, words and attitudes are an unfailing indication of the state of his heart. But there is an ever present temptation to avoid drawing the painful conclusions that result from applying this principle to myself, by [p 124] regarding my few good actions and words, as 'typically me', and my many bad actions and words as 'not being me at all, really'. But we deceive ourselves thus. True, a Christian, if he knows what he is talking about, can say with Paul, 'But if what I would not do, that I do, it is no more I that do it, but sin which dwells in me' (Rom 7:20). But Paul is explaining why believers sin, not giving them an excuse for continuing to sin and not troubling themselves too much about it. A man whose conversation (Luke 6:45) is constantly full of evil things, great or small, has an evil heart; for a man's talk is the overflow of his heart. The saintliest man may be appalled by the occasional overspill whose sudden eruption escapes the filter of his moral judgment and reveals what pollutants still remain in the depths. But if the general tenor of a man's conversation is evil, the source must be evil too. No excuse can break the connection between a tree's fruit and the nature of the tree.
And finally, the third part of the parable is based on an analogy with building (see Luke 6:46–49). There is only one way to build a house secure against a storm and that is to dig down deep and lay its foundations on the rock. But digging deep can be troublesome. It is all too easy to be content with a superficial knowledge of Christianity and a superficial, nominal profession of faith without real obedience to Christ (Luke 6:46). But just as there is only one foundation, so only those who are by personal contact with him built directly and squarely on the foundation of his Word, believed, applied and performed, will survive the storms here and hereafter.
Notes
25This phrase is omitted for the sake of idiomatic English in many modern versions. It is common enough in Luke's Gospel, but it is not invariably used to introduce every incident.
26The mention of treasure in Luke 6:45 does not introduce another parable based on treasure hoarding; it is simply a metaphorical phrase used en passant to help the application of the fruit tree parable: a good tree brings forth good fruit; a good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good fruit.
27The New Testament also teaches that while sickness can be a divine discipline upon a believer for his sin (1 Cor 11:29–32), sickness is not by any means always the result of personal sin (John 9:1–3). [p 125]
English (US) · 