We have reached the final stage of the Going. It is the longest of all the stages, fittingly so for it forms the climax of the great journey which began at Luke 9:51 and has been proceeding ever since. Its leading theme is self-evident, so that all we need to do in our preliminary survey is to investigate the way in which Luke has arranged his selection of material. That arrangement will give the events of this last stage the frame and focus in which Luke intends us to see them.
When the journey began at Luke 9:51 we were carefully told that while the goal of the journey was to be nothing less than Christ's being received up into heaven, the last stage on the road would be Jerusalem. It had to be. As Son of the Most High to whom the Lord God had promised to give the throne of his father David (see Luke 1:32), our Lord was heir to all the promises made by God to David, and Jerusalem was his capital. When therefore he finally presented his claim formally and officially to the nation, it would have to be done at Jerusalem. In fact, throughout the whole of this climactic visit Luke will constantly describe Christ's movements in relation to the city. We shall see him approach the city and weep over it (see Luke 19:29–44). It will be pointed out that each night to obviate premature arrest he was obliged to leave the city and take to the dark shadows of the Mount of Olives (see Luke 19:47–48; 21:37–38). We shall hear him predict the city's destruction and its centuries-long subjugation (see Luke 21:20–24). Luke will tell us with some poignancy of the secret [p 320] arrangements which the king had to make in order to be able to eat the Passover in his own capital city (see Luke 22:7–15). We shall see him at last led out of the city to crucifixion; and on his way warning the 'daughters of Jerusalem' (see Luke 23:26–31). And after his resurrection we shall find him rallying his dispirited disciples to Jerusalem (see Luke 24:13, 33), instructing them to wait in the city for empowering by the Holy Spirit, and directing them to make Jerusalem the starting point for their mission to the nations of the world (see Luke 24:46–49).
There is much more involved in all this of course than mere topography; but in this stage the higher levels of meaning and significance are built on topographical foundations. The stage itself begins (see Luke 19:28–46) as Christ reaches Bethphage and Bethany, and from Bethany in the company of his disciples descends the Mount of Olives and enters Jerusalem city. It ends (see Luke 24:33, 50–51) as he leads his disciples out of Jerusalem city back up the Mount of Olives until they are over against Bethany, and there leaves them.
In the course of the stage Christ makes two very carefully prepared entries into the city, and Luke calls our attention to the fact by the similarity of his descriptions. At Luke 19:29–35 he tells us that Christ sent two of his disciples into the nearby village to borrow an ass, with careful instructions what to say to its owners (see Luke 19:31–34). And going, the two disciples 'found even as he had said to them' (Luke 19:32). They then took the ass to Christ who rode it into the city. In the days that followed he daily made many minor entries and exits, but, of course, only the initial entry was made in ceremonial style on the ass. The days were filled with teaching and discussion; and then Luke brings this part of the stage to an end with the general summary remark: 'And every day he was teaching in the temple . . . and all the people came . . . to him in the temple. . .' (Luke 21:37–38).
Then comes the second carefully prepared entry (see Luke 22:7–13). Christ once more sent two disciples into the city, this time to borrow a room, with careful instructions what to say to its owner. And going, the two disciples 'found as he had said to them' (Luke 22:13). Momentous events followed that entry; but when at last they are all over Luke brings this second part of the stage to an end [p 321] likewise with a general summary remark: 'And they . . . returned to Jerusalem . . . and were continually in the temple' (Luke 24:53).
These two major entries, then, are obviously similar in their basic pattern, but their differences are striking, and we must try to see their significance. By the time our Lord enters Jerusalem at the beginning of this stage we have been well prepared and know what to expect: he will be rejected and crucified (see Luke 9:22, 31; 17:25; 18:31–33). At the same time we have been left in no doubt that he is God's Messiah (see Luke 9:20, 35) and the royal Son of David (see Luke 18:38–39); and, therefore, it has also been explained, sometimes explicitly and sometimes in parabolic language, how the matter of his suffering will fit into the programme for bringing the Son of David into his kingdom. After his crucifixion he will rise from the dead (see Luke 9:22; 18:33), and ascend into heaven (see Luke 19:11) and eventually come again to reign (see Luke 9:26; 17:22–37; 19:15). The question arises, therefore, as to how exactly the sufferings relate to the reigning. Is it that the sufferings are simply a temporary obstacle between his claiming to be king and the actual establishment of his kingdom? Or, perhaps, a divinely foreseen interlude that will allow the king's servants to travel the world and spend the centuries preparing the nations for the king's coming reign? Or are his sufferings something more than an obstacle or more even than a useful interlude?
It is as if to answer these questions that Luke draws our attention to the highly significant fact that when at last our Lord came officially to his capital city as Zion's king, he made not one but two carefully arranged entries into the city. At the first entry he arranged things so as to gain for himself maximum publicity; at the second with equal care he arranged things to secure maximum secrecy. On the first occasion he borrowed an ass from its owners, and on the second an upper room from the master of a house. On both occasions these immediate arrangements were made to facilitate the fulfilment of age-long plans. When on the first occasion Christ borrowed an ass he did so in order to fulfil the prophecy given centuries earlier through Zechariah (see Zech 9:9) that one day Jerusalem's king Messiah would come riding into the city on an ass. When [p 322] on the second occasion he borrowed an upper room in Jerusalem it was in order that there he might eat the very last Passover before the prophetic promise inherent in the symbols of that historic institution should be fulfilled by his own suffering at Calvary (see Luke 22:16). On the first occasion, he claimed the role of Zion's king; on the second the role of Israel's true Passover lamb. The second role was no improvisation thought up to take advantage of Israel's unexpected rejection of her king.
In Israel's history the institution of Passover preceded that of kingship by centuries; the promises inherent in its celebration had prior claim to fulfilment. But what perhaps is most significant of all is that on the first occasion when his claim to kingship was publicly rejected, he prophesied that he himself would be 'thrown out of the vineyard' and murdered, and that in his absence the city would be overrun by the Gentiles until the time of his second coming (see Luke 21:20–36). When, however, he entered the city secretly on the second occasion, he proceeded there and then to set up his kingdom by instituting the new covenant by whose laws his subjects would from now on be ruled. He did it first in the upper room by means of symbols (see Luke 22:20), and shortly afterwards at Calvary in actual suffering and blood.
Christ's sufferings then were no mere temporary obstacle, nor merely a fortunate interlude; they were the very basis on which his kingdom was set up. But Luke's careful emphasis on the fact that there were two entries one public and one private reinforces the lesson that we have already met with in the Gospel, namely that there are two senses in which we must think of the establishment of the kingdom. At his first entry Christ publicly presented himself as king and both he and his kingdom were publicly rejected. In that public open sense the kingdom will not be established until the second coming. At the second entry the kingdom was set up, as it were, secretly. Its covenant was concerned with the writing of God's laws in the human heart (see Luke 22:20; Jer 31:33–34). The world at large eventually saw his sufferings, blood and death, but they had no idea that by that very blood he was ratifying the covenant [p 323] and so establishing his kingdom. The significance of his death and the institution of the covenant were announced and explained in the secrecy of the upper room, as was appropriate for a kingdom which until he comes again must exist solely in spiritual form.
We shall find then that Luke has arranged the movements of this final stage in two groups, headed by the two entries of the king into his capital city. Once more a table of contents will help us to grasp the major themes of the movements and the thought-flow between them (see Table 12). [p 324] [p 325] [p 326] [p 327]
Table 12 Stage 5 of the Going Luke 19:29–24:53
| 1 The coming of the king 19:29–40 | 1 The king questioned 20:1–8 | 1 The king questioned 20:20–26 | 1 The coming of false messiahs 21:5–19 |
| a ‘Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord.’ b . . . the Pharisees . . . said, ‘Rebuke your disciples’ . . . ; he said . . . ‘ if these keep silent, the stones will cry out’. | a ‘By what authority do you do these things? Who gave you this authority?’ b ‘The baptism of John, was it from heaven or from men?’ | a They watched him . . . that they might . . . deliver him up . . . to the authority of the governor. b ‘It is lawful . . . to give tribute to Caesar or not?’ . . . ‘Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.’ | a ‘Many shall come in my name . . .’ b ‘I will give you a mouth . . . which all your adversaries shall not be able to withstand . . .’ |
| 2 The coming destruction of Jerusalem 19:41–44 | 2 The murder and vindication of Messiah 20:9–18 | 2 The resurrection and enthronement of Messiah 20:27–44 | 2 The destruction and redemption of Jerusalem 21:20–33 |
| a ‘. . . your enemies shall . . . compass you round . . . and . . . dash you to the ground and your children within you.’ b ‘. . . but now they are hid from your eyes . . . because you did not know the time of your visitation . . .’ | ‘. . . I will send my beloved son . . . They . . . killed him . . . “The stone which the builders rejected, the same was made the head of the corner” . . . if it falls on anyone, it will scatter him as dust.’ | ‘. . . neither can they die any more, for they . . . are sons of God being sons of the resurrection . . . How say they that the Christ is David’s son? . . . “Sit at my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool”.’ | a ‘. . . Jerusalem compassed with armies . . . Woe unto those who are with child . . . they shall fall by the edge of the sword . . .’ b ‘. . . then shall they see the Son of Man coming . . . when you see these things . . . know that the kingdom of God is nigh . . .’ |
| 3 Christ enters the temple 19:45–48 | 3 Reaction in the temple 20:19 | 3 Assessment of temple offerings 20:45–21:4 | 3 Final admonition in the temple 21:34–38 |
| ‘. . . My house shall be a house of prayer: but you have made it a den of robbers.’ And he was teaching daily in the temple. But the chief priests . . . sought to destroy him, and they could not find what they might do, for the people all hung upon him listening. | . . . And the scribes and the chief priests sought to lay hands on him in that very hour, and they feared the people, for they perceived that he had spoken this parable against them. | ‘. . . Beware of the scribes . . . who devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayers . . .’ A widow gives her whole living to the temple treasury. | ‘. . . Take heed to yourselves lest your hearts be weighed down with dissipation . . .’ And every day he was teaching in the temple . . . and all the people came . . . to hear him. |
| 5. The king eats in Jerusalem: symbols of his suffering and death 22:1–38 | 6. The king arrested and tried by the religious authorities 22:39–71 | 7. The king tried, sentenced and crucified by the political authorities 23:1–56a | 8. The king eats in Jerusalem: evidence of his resurrection 23:56b–24:53 |
| 1 Necessary preparations 22:1–13 | 1 Arrest: priests and the authority of darkness 22:39–53 | 1 Civil trial: Pilate and the authority (v. 7) of Herod 23:1–25 | 1 Unnecessary preparations 23:56b–24:12 |
| ‘go and prepare us the Passover . . . Where are you wish us to prepare . . .’ And they . . . Find it as he had said to them, and they prepared the Passover. | ‘Father, if thou be willing remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will by thine be done . . .’ And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly . . . | And Pilate spoke, willing to release Jesus . . . but they were instant with loud voices . . . and their voices prevailed . . . Pilate gave sentence that what they asked for should be done . . . Jesus he delivered to their will. | They came . . . bringing the spices which they had prepared, and they found the stone rolled away . . . and they found not the body of the Lord Jesus . . .’Remember how he spoke to you . . .’ |
| 2 Eating with his disciples 22:14–34 | 2 Christ is led away to the high priest’s house 22:54–65 | 2 The leading away and the crucifixion 23:26–49 | 2 Eating with his disciples 24:13–43 |
| a ‘With desire I have desired to eat this Passover . . . before I suffer, for . . . I will not eat it until it be fulfilled (22:15–16) . . . The Son of Man goes as it has been determined (22:22) . . . And I appoint unto you a kingdom . . . that you may eat . . . at my table in my kingdom’ (22:24–30) . . . b And he took bread, and broke it and gave it to them saying, ‘This is my body . . . this do in remembrance of me . . .’ (22:19) | a And a maid . . . said, ‘This man also was with him’. But he denies, saying . . . ‘I do not know him . . .’ And Peter remembered the word of the Lord. b And the men . . . mocked Jesus and beat him . . . saying, ‘Prophesy, who is it that struck you?’ | a And he said, ‘Jesus, remember me’ . . . and he said . . . ‘Today shall you be with me in paradise.’ b And the rulers also scoffed . . . and the soldiers mocked . . . and one of the malefactors . . . railed on him. | a ‘O . . . slow of heart to believe after all that the prophets have spoken. Ought not the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into his glory . . .’ he interpreted in all the Writings the things concerning himself (24:25–27) . . . ‘Have you here anything to eat? . . .’ and he took it and ate before them (24:41–43). b And he took the bread . . . and broke it and gave to them, . . . and he was known to them in the breaking of the bread (24:30, 35). |
| 3 Provision for mission 22:35–38 | 3 The decision of the council 22:66–71 | 3 The decision of a councillor 23:50–56a | 3 Briefing for mission 24:44–53 |
| ‘When I sent you forth without purse . . . did you lack anything . . . But now he who has a purse let him take it . . . let him sell his cloak and buy a sword, for . . . this which is written must be fulfilled in me . . .’ | The assembly of the elders . . . led him away in to their council . . . He said . . . ‘the Son of Man shall be seated at the right hand of the power of God . . .’ And they said, ‘What further need have we of witness.’ | And . . . a man named Joseph, who was a councillor . . . he had not consented to their counsel and deed . . . who was looking for the kingdom of God . . . went to Pilate . . . asked for the body . . . and laid him in a tomb . . . | ‘All things which are written . . . concerning me must be fulfilled . . . And behold I send for the the promise of my Father upon you: but wait . . . until you are clothed with power from on high.’ |
The movements
First suite
- Jerusalem and the first coming of the king (Luke 19:29–48)
- The king and the question of religious authority (Luke 20:1–19)
- The king and the question of political authority (Luke 20:20–21:4)
- Jerusalem and the second coming of the king (Luke 21:5–38)
Second suite
- The king eats in Jerusalem: symbols of his suffering and death (Luke 22:1–22:38)
- The king arrested and tried by the religious authorities (Luke 22:39–71)
- The king tried, sentenced and crucified by the political authorities (Luke 23:1–56a)
- The king eats in Jerusalem: evidence of his resurrection (Luke 23:56–24:53)
The movements: first suite
1. Jerusalem and the first coming of the king (Luke 19:29–48)
i. The coming of the king (Luke 19:29–40)
When at the end of the long journey Christ eventually came to Jerusalem, he put beyond all doubt the capacity in which he came. Zechariah had prophesied (see Luke 9:9) that Zion's king should come to her 'just and having salvation, lowly and riding upon an ass, even [p 328] upon a colt the foal of an ass'. When, therefore, Christ reached Bethphage and Bethany, he sent for an ass and in full view of Jerusalem rode it solemnly in royal procession thronged by his disciples down the slope of the Mount of Olives over the last few furlongs of his approach to the city.
Even before the procession started he had asserted the rights of his lordship. Two of Christ's disciples were sent into the nearby village, where, so Christ told them, they would find a colt tethered. They were to untether it and bring it to him. And then Christ added: 'If anyone asks you, "Why are you untethering it?" You shall say as follows: "The Lord has need of it"' (Luke 19:31). The two disciples went off and, says Luke, they 'found even as he had said unto them' (Luke 19:32). Clearly this was no chance operation: Christ had the whole thing under his control perhaps by prior arrangement. At this point, then, all Luke need have said to complete the story was that the disciples did and said exactly as they had been told. Instead he chooses to repeat the detail: 'And as they were untethering the colt, its owners said to them, "Why are you untethering the colt?" And they said, "The Lord has need of it"' (Luke 19:32–34). Twice over, therefore, we hear the question raised: What right has Christ to take somebody's ass? And twice over the reply is given: 'The Lord has need of it'. His needs are paramount.
If, however, his riding into the city on an ass still left it uncertain that he was claiming to be Zion's king, his disciples put the matter beyond doubt. In an expression of personal homage 'they threw their garments on the colt and set Jesus on them.' As he moved forward, 'they spread their garments in the way' for him to ride over. Then as the procession came over the brow of the Mount of Olives and began the descent towards the city, they burst into spontaneous, joyful thanksgiving to God for all the miracles which they had seen Christ perform, and openly acclaimed Jesus as Messiah: 'Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord: peace in heaven and glory in the highest' (Luke 19:35–38).
Among the bystanders were some Pharisees. They suggested to Christ that he could not really approve of the exaggerated claims [p 329] which his disciples were making and they invited him to restrain their excessive zeal. Far from doing so, Christ affirmed in the strongest possible language that the claim the disciples were making was true and could not be silenced. If the disciples did not make it, the very stones of the city would cry out in recognition of her king and shame the silence of her inhabitants. In the preceding months Jesus had forbidden his disciples to publicize the fact that he was Messiah (see Luke 9:21); but now the time had arrived for him to present himself formally to the nation: with unambiguous clarity and maximum publicity he announced himself as Zion's long promised Messiah and king.
ii. The coming destruction of Jerusalem (Luke 19:41–44)
But for all that there was no ambiguity or uncertainty about the king's approach to his capital, the king was under no illusion that the city would either recognize or receive him. There follow now therefore two paragraphs, in the first of which he laments the consequences that must follow on Jerusalem's failure to receive him, while in the second he diagnoses its cause. For the consequences he had tears; for the cause nothing but divine indignation.
There was no self-pity or injured pride in his weeping over Jerusalem, nor any threat of revenge. To him the city was a mother whose instinctive concern was for the protection of her children; and he had come not merely as her king, but as one 'having salvation' (Zech 9:9). Certainly she had need of him. Long experience had shown that her walls and bulwarks by themselves without the protection of God's presence were insufficient to keep her enemies at bay (see Ps 48; Isa 26). If now she rejected her God-sent king and Saviour, her walls would become the prison in which her ruthless enemies would confine and then slaughter her and her children. Ruination was inevitable.
Our Lord did not even blame Jerusalem As a mother she would do what she felt was best for her children. But she was blind: 'the things which belong to peace were hidden from her eyes' (Luke 19:42), and 'she did not recognize the time of her visitation' (Luke 19:44). [p 330] Blindness may not be blameworthy, but it would not mitigate the tragic consequences of her rejection of her Saviour-king. The anticipation of those consequences moved him to tears; subsequent history has shown that his tears were not groundless.
iii. Christ enters the temple (Luke 19:45–48)
On entering the city Christ went directly to the temple, as Malachi (see Mal 3:1) had said he would. It was not merely that as the Father's Son he would wish before all else to pay his respects to his Father's house. It was that as Zion's king who was about to be rejected by Zion he would go immediately to the source of the trouble and expose the cause that blinded Zion to the rightful claims of her owner-king: robbers had infested the very temple of God. The outward evidence of that robbery was the blatant commercialization of the temple services; bad in itself it was but the symptom of a deeper malaise.
Somebody, of course, had to sell the required sheep and birds to would-be worshippers; but these sales should have been left to secular trade, unassociated with the sacred precincts and activities of the temple. For the temple authorities not only to allow this trading to go on in the temple courts, but to profit unduly from the sales themselves was not only inappropriate, it was scandalous. Instead of being priestly intermediaries to help men find worship and be blessed by God, they had become middlemen, turning their priesthood into a commercial monopoly in order to make financial profit out of men's quest for God.
Thus they robbed men, for it is difficult to experience the grace of God and the free gift of his salvation through the services of men bent on making money out of one's spiritual need. They also robbed God, treating his Word and sacraments as though they were the stock-in-trade of their business, and treating God's people not as God's possession, to be developed for God's enjoyment, but as a market to which they as the professionals had exclusive rights.
In high indignation Christ drove out those who sold, and began to teach the people daily in the temple-courts. It was the [p 331] beginning of a fight to the death. On the one side were the temple authorities determined to maintain their status, power and income. On the other side was the Messiah, 'come in the name of the Lord' to secure the divine rights. At stake were the faith, love, obedience and devotion of the people; and from now on this struggle for the hearts of the people will be one of Luke's main concerns (see Luke 20:1, 6, 19, 26, 45; 21:38; 22:2, 6; 23:2–5, 14, 35; 24:19–20). The temple authorities would have liked to destroy their 'rival' forthwith; but his immense popularity with the people made any immediate attempt at arrest and execution impossible and tactically unwise. To upset the people would have put at risk the very thing for which the battle was to be fought (see Luke 19:47–48). Subtler and more sophisticated tactics would have to be used.
2. The king and the question of religious authority (Luke 20:1–19)
i. The king questioned (Luke 20:1–8)
The expected attack soon came. One day as Christ was 'teaching the people in the temple and preaching the gospel', the religious authorities descended on him and in front of the people demanded to know what authority he had to do these things, and who gave him the authority (see Luke 20:1–2).
Uppermost in their mind was not his teaching so much as his, to them, highly irregular and shocking conduct in driving out the merchants from the temple ('by what authority is it that you do these things?'); and the form of their question—'who gave you this authority?'—shows that what they were thinking of was official authority. According to their way of thinking Jesus had no official authority, and they doubtless thought that if they could force him to admit it in front of the people, it would, if not discredit him, at least justify them before the people in arresting him.
They made the mistake that all religious 'establishments' are prone to make. The first question that ought to be asked of any teacher or preacher is whether his message is true, not whether [p 332] he has a licence to preach. Similarly the first and major question to be asked about Christ's cleansing of the temple was whether it was morally and spiritually valid and whether the Scripture he appealed to (see Luke 19:46; Isa 56:7) justified his action; whether he had an official permit from the dean and chapter to act in this fashion was altogether a secondary matter. Actually, as Messiah he had all the official authority he required without applying to the chief priests and temple captain for their permission. But the ultimate question was, as it must always be, one of moral and spiritual, and not of official, authority. Perhaps, of course, they sensed that to raise the question of the moral and spiritual authority of Christ's cleansing of the temple in front of the people would be embarrassing and dangerous: the people might find it difficult to see that it was morally and spiritually right for the temple authorities to make so much money out of their sacrifices. At any rate what they challenged was his official authority.
Christ did not answer them directly; instead he asked them a carefully phrased question about John the Baptist (see Luke 20:3–4). Now John had not conferred any authority on Jesus; but he had claimed to be the forerunner foretold by Isaiah (Isa 40:3–4), and he had declared Jesus to be the Messiah. Christ, then, could have asked the priests quite simply 'Do you not remember that John said I was the Messiah?' But that would merely have raised the further question 'But how do we know that John was a true prophet and had the authority to say these things?' What Christ asked therefore was: 'The baptism of John, was it from heaven, or from men?'; and the question, put thus, immediately focused attention on the moral and spiritual authority of John's ministry. John had proclaimed on the authority of Isaiah that for the nation to be prepared to recognize and receive Messiah would require radical and thoroughgoing repentance on the part of every member of the nation; and John had demanded that repentance be signified by baptism. It was in fact the tremendous moral and spiritual power of John's preaching of this baptism of repentance that had convinced the people that John was a God-sent prophet. [p 333]
Now many of the Pharisees, Sadducees, priests and theologians had refused to be baptized by John (see Luke 7:30; Matt 3:7); presumably they had privately decided that they did not need this baptism of repentance. But to be asked publicly in front of the people whether or not John's baptism was of God was highly embarrassing. To deny the moral and spiritual authority of John's preaching would have destroyed the people's respect for them completely. To say that while the people in general needed his call to repentance, they themselves did not, would not work either: religious leaders cannot altogether hide their moral failings from the people. But to admit that John's baptism was of God and obligatory on everyone would have been to own in front of the people that they were in rebellion against God by refusing to be baptized and to accept the Messiah to whom John had testified. So they tried to take refuge in uncertainty: 'we do not know', they said 'what authority John's baptism had.'
Now if it had been true that they did not have enough moral and spiritual discernment to decide about such an important matter, they would not have been fit to be the religious guides of the people. Their ignorance, however, was a pretence, and by it they negated the sacred responsibility of their priestly office. If they really believed that John was not of God, they had a duty to tell the people so; and if the people stoned them they had a duty to suffer it in the cause of truth and faithfulness. Deliberately to blur the truth and fudge the issues in order to keep their hold on the people was to descend to the level of mere religious politicians, more concerned with position and power than with truth.
ii. The murder and vindication of Messiah (Luke 20:9–18)
The religious authorities, then, had tried to discredit Christ in front of the people by questioning his authority for what he was doing. Christ exposed their dishonesty and refused to answer their enquiry. Instead, he turned to the people (see Luke 20:9) and in front of their leaders told them a story designed to state exactly what his authority was and how it would be vindicated, and at the same [p 334] time to warn the people that their leaders were about to perpetrate the gravest possible abuse of their religious office.
The story took a well-known Old Testament metaphor (see e.g. Isa 5) and turned it into a parable in which the people were represented as a vineyard, God as the owner of the vineyard and the religious leaders as contract workers responsible to cultivate the vineyard for the owner's satisfaction. On this basis Christ levelled a double charge at Israel's religious establishment. First, in the past they had frequently thwarted the wishes and satisfaction of the owner; and secondly in the present they were about to commit that crowning abuse of office to which religious establishments are prone, to take over the vineyard as if they were its owners in open rebellion against the owner.
In the past when God had sent his servants the prophets to call for repentance, reform and true worship from the people, the religious leaders had often resisted their reforms, suppressed, persecuted and sometimes destroyed the prophets, and so had cut off from God the response he sought from his people, the very satisfaction which it was their office as the religious establishment to promote.
In the present they were about to do even worse. In the language of the parable Christ claimed that the owner had now sent his 'beloved son' (Luke 20:13), and it is beyond all doubt that he was referring to himself and indicating with the utmost clarity 'what authority he had to do these things and who gave him this authority' (Luke 20:2). The Son had come for the same purpose as the prophets, but as the owner's Son he stood in a completely different relationship to the vineyard from either the prophets or the religious leaders. They were simply servants; he was the heir, joint-owner with the Father, with rights not only to the fruits, but to the vineyard itself. In other words, the people were his property; he personally had a claim to their faith, love, obedience and service, and it was the duty of their religious leaders to guide the people to place their faith in the Son and yield him their obedience. Instead of that Christ announced that they were going to put him, the owner's Son, to death, not because they thought his claims were false, but because [p 335] in their heart of hearts they knew that he really was the owner's Son, and they were determined not to surrender the control of the people to him but to keep it in their own hands. It had taken the coming of the owner's Son to expose the fact that they had turned their office from being a humble service to God and to his people into a usurpation of God's rights over his people, in the same way, we may add, as all kinds of extra-scriptural organizations subsequently usurped the rights of Christ over his churches, suppressed his Word and persecuted his evangelists.
Next the parable predicted the consequences of their usurpation of the owner's rights. The owner, Christ said, would respond to his Son's murder by destroying the contract workers and giving the vineyard to others. God's spiritual interests in the earth and the care of people who believed in and served the true God of Israel would pass out of the hands of Judaism's priesthood and eventually to a large extent out of Israel's hands altogether.
When the crowd heard this they were shocked (see Luke 20:16). A cynic might have said that the severity of Jesus' charge against the religious authorities was really caused by the fact that he wanted to do the very thing he accused the priests of, to control the people of God. The answer to such a charge lies in the way Jesus said his claims and his diagnosis would be vindicated. In the first place his parable informed the people that the religious authorities would succeed in putting him to death; and he made no attempt to rally the people to his defence. He was content to let the owner of the vineyard vindicate him after his death.
Secondly, he pointed to the fact that both his diagnosis of the situation and the vindication of his claim were predicted by Scripture. Psalm 118 was by common consent regarded as messianic, which is why the Pharisees objected so strongly when Christ's disciples applied its phraseology to him as he rode into Jerusalem claiming to be Zion's king (see Luke 19:38 = Ps 118:26). But that psalm in a context about the house of the Lord and the sacrifices of the altar referred in its figurative way to 'the builders'. Who could they be but Israel's priests and religious leaders? It also indicated that these leaders [p 336] would reject the stone which God would subsequently install as the keystone of his people's worship. Who could that keystone be but the Messiah? Precisely because he knew himself to be that Messiah, Jesus would make no attempt to resist the priests, to rally the people and take over the vineyard by their support. He could afford to let God vindicate his claim and set him as the keystone in the key position among his people.
Finally, however, he warned both the people and the religious leaders of what the consequences must be if they persisted in rejecting him. He was after all the owner's Son and heir to the vineyard (to the universe in fact, see Heb 1:2). He would one day be made the keystone in the eternal spiritual temple of God's universal praise. To repudiate that stone and try to build one's life on some other foundation would be to court brokenness and ruin, while active opposition would eventually be crushed and removed (see Luke 20:18).
As we read these solemn words we must not forget that at Luke 19:41–44 he wept when he thought how Jerusalem's blind rejection of his salvation would expose her to destruction at the hands of her enemies. But his compassion for the blind and ignorant must not lead us to forget what he must do to those who knowingly and deliberately usurp the rights of God, and especially to those who cloak their usurpation under the cover of religious office. There is no vineyard anywhere in the universe where creatures may usurp the authority of the owner and of his son and then continue for ever to enjoy the grapes.
iii. Reaction in the temple (Luke 20:19)
At Luke 19:47–48 Luke reported that the religious authorities would have liked to destroy Christ but were unable to do so because of the people. Now at Luke 20:19 things have got worse, and Luke tells us that the authorities wanted to arrest him at once 'and they feared the people'. That is, fear of the people was no longer a reason why they could not arrest Christ, but a reason why they felt they must arrest and destroy him as soon as possible. That was because, as Luke explains, 'they [p resumably the people as well as the authorities] realized that he [p 337] had spoken this parable against them (that is, against the religious authorities)'. The people were beginning to get their eyes opened to the way the religious leaders had been, and still were, abusing their authority. In Christ, moreover, they had now discovered someone who was not afraid to stand up against the religious establishment and denounce them to their face. There was no telling what the people might do if things went on like this. In their fear of the people the authorities decided they must proceed against Christ at once.
3. The king and the question of political authority (Luke 20:20–21:4)
i. The king questioned (Luke 20:20–26)
In Movement 2 Luke showed us what Christ's claim to be king meant in relation to the established religious authorities in Judaism, and why those authorities repudiated his claim. Now he will devote the most of Movement 3 to showing us what Christ's claim to be king meant in relation to the political powers of the day. Luke does that by relating what the Jewish authorities did when they found they could not break Christ's popularity with the people by undermining his religious and spiritual authority: they decided to trap and destroy him at the political level.
The compulsory payment of taxes to the Romans understandably rankled with many Jews. For some the resentment sprang from simple economic considerations, with others from nationalistic feelings. The religious right wing in Judaism went further: they held that to pay tribute to the Romans was an offence against God, a misdirection of revenues that rightly should be given to their divine ruler, the Almighty. Moreover the major prophets had plainly declared that when the Messiah came God would grant Israel complete deliverance from Gentile domination. In consequence any messianic figure who was prepared to teach the people that it was a religious duty to refuse to pay tribute to the Romans would get an immediate and large following among the masses. Among the nation's religious leaders there was naturally more caution. The [p 338] high-ranking priests in particular, who held office virtually by grace and favour of the Romans, looked with alarm and disfavour on any messianic movement (see John 11:47–50) which might upset the Romans and thus eventually threaten, or even destroy (as eventually happened), their temple, priestly power and income. So they waited for a suitable occasion when there should be large crowds listening, and then using a judicious amount of flattery and appealing to his sense of justice and righteousness (see Luke 20:20–21) they asked him about paying tribute to the Romans. Was it right to pay it, or to refuse to pay it? The question was designed to catch him on the horns of a dilemma. If he said it was right to pay the tribute, he would immediately alienate the masses and as a religious leader that would be the end of him. If on the other hand he said that it was right to refuse to pay tribute, they could report him to the Roman governor who would have him executed for political subversion. That too would be the end of him. Christ's answer is proverbial. Calling for a denarius he got his questioners to recognize that the image and superscription on the coin were Caesar's, and he then laid down the principle 'Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's' (Luke 20:25).
We notice at once that the principle enunciated by Christ turns on the question of 'ownership', and this inevitably recalls the diagnosis of the religious situation which Christ has just given in the parable of the Vineyard. The whole point of that parable was that Israel's religious leaders, priests and theologians were usurping the rights of God the owner and of his Son and heir over the love, loyalty and obedience of the people. In eloquent contrast here Christ does not say that in demanding tribute from Israel Caesar is usurping the ownership rights of God. Nor does he say that now that the Messiah and heir to the throne has come, Caesar must give up his right to tribute, or his power over Israel. Quite the reverse. He asserts that Caesar is acting within his legitimate rights of ownership: render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's. It was a confusion of categories to suppose that faith in the truth and justice of God (see Luke 20:21) meant taking political steps to overthrow the government of [p 339] Tiberius Caesar, cruel and corrupt though that government was. And, as we shall later be told in detail, it was a misreading of the prophetic timetable and misunderstanding of Messiah's methods and strategies to suppose that faith in Jesus as Messiah must lead his followers to attempt to restore Israel's ancient ideal of a theocratic state by mounting political programmes of civil disobedience or outright warfare against the Gentile imperialists.
What then was Christ's timetable for the setting up of his kingdom? And what were to be his methods? And what was the nature of his kingdom? To these questions the subsequent paragraphs and movements turn.
ii. Resurrection and the enthronement of Messiah (Luke 20:27–44)
It so happened that around this time some of the Sadducees—and most of the leading priests who had been disputing with Christ were Sadducees—engaged Christ in public debate on the topic of resurrection. Unlike the Pharisees the Sadducees did not believe in resurrection (see Acts 23:8) and they tried to show that in the light of the sane, practical commands of holy Scripture the whole idea of resurrection made nonsense. For argument's sake they supposed the case of a woman whose first husband died without producing a son and heir. The law (see Deut 25:5–10) required the deceased's brother to marry his widow and produce a son who should be counted as the deceased's son and heir. This therefore was done. But the second husband also died without producing a son, and so did all the others, seven in all, who attempted to fulfil their obligations under the law. 'Then', said the Sadducees, advancing what they thought was an irrefutable objection to the idea of a resurrection, 'in the resurrection whose wife shall she be, for the seven had her to wife?'
Now we have no means of telling whether the Sadducees had perceived that in the parable of the vineyard and in the citation of Psalm 118 Christ was implying that after his execution by the authorities he would rise again, and were therefore wanting to scotch the idea before it took hold of the popular imagination (see Matt 27:62–66), or whether they were simply anxious to win a debate [p 340] with this Galilaean prophet on a major doctrine of their theological school. But of this we may be certain: the synoptic evangelists will have seen the crucial importance and relevance of this question to Jesus' claim to be the Messiah and Saviour of the world. If there is no such thing as resurrection, Jesus is neither Messiah nor Saviour and there is little or nothing in Christianity (see 1 Cor 15:12–19). All three Synoptics therefore record at length both the question and Christ's answer to it.
According to Christ (see Luke 20:34–40) the Sadducees' objection was based on two false presuppositions. The first was that conditions in the world to which resurrection admits a man are simply a continuation of this life, and that therefore the marriage relationships which people have contracted here will continue there. That, of course, is not so. In the resurrection the redeemed will be like the angels in two respects: they will never die, and they will not marry.
The second mistaken presupposition lay at the other extreme. It implied that the relationship formed between God and men in this life was only temporary. But that is not so. God being eternal, the relationships he forms are eternal. Centuries after Abraham, Isaac and Jacob lived, God was announcing himself to Moses, so Christ pointed out, as the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob (see Luke 20:37). The eternal cannot be characterized by something that no longer exists. Resurrection then is not a fantasy dreamed up by the wishful thinking of less than rigorous theologians; resurrection is a necessary outcome of the character and nature of God.
Christ, however, was not content to leave the matter there, but went over to the offensive and in his turn cited a passage from the Old Testament. In Psalm 110:1, Christ observed, David called Messiah his Lord. What sense could that possibly make if (1) Messiah was not already existent in David's day, and (2) if by the time Messiah was born, David had completely ceased to exist? How could David call a non-existent Messiah his Lord? How could Messiah be Lord of a non-existent David? Moreover no oriental father, let alone an oriental monarch, would ever call one of his own sons Lord. Joseph's brothers might eventually call him Lord; [p 341] Jacob never did! But David called Messiah his Lord: how could he therefore be simply his son?
The rest of the New Testament supplies the answer to these questions: Messiah was not simply the son of David. He was and is both the Root and Offspring of David (see Rev 22:16). He could have said with reference to David what he said with reference to Abraham: 'Before Abraham was I am' (John 8:58). It was, therefore, impossible for him to be executed and then to cease to exist. He was the owner's beloved Son in the fullest possible sense of the term. His death would inevitably be followed by his resurrection.
If we go further and ask what the programme was to be for the setting up of his kingdom, the rest of Psalm Luke 110:1 will tell us. The command from God to the Messiah, 'Sit at my right hand' would be pointless if in fact Messiah had always uninterruptedly been sitting there. The command implies a time when Messiah came forth from the Father (see John 16:28), and was not sitting at the right hand of God; and it equally implies his subsequent resurrection, ascension and session at the right hand of God. The verse then indicates that there will be an interval between his ascension and the time when his enemies are put as a footstool beneath his feet (see Heb 10:13). How and when that operation is to be staged will be the function of Movement 4 to tell us.
iii. Assessment of temple offerings (Luke 20:45–21:4)
At Luke 19:45–46 Christ denounced the priests for turning the temple into a den of robbers. Now he denounces a similar abuse on the part of the scribes who were the experts in the interpretation of holy Scripture (see Luke 20:46–47). His charge against them was that they used the authority which their expert knowledge of Scripture gave them to demand from a not altogether willing public excessive adulation for themselves; and secondly that their professional prayers were often mere camouflage over their unscrupulous and hard-hearted extortion of money, not only from the well-to-do, but from defenceless widows. It is to be noticed (see Luke 21:1–4) that these grave abuses of Israel's religious system did not blind Christ's eyes [p 342] to the genuine piety, indeed the spectacular devotion of many private individuals such as the widow to whose sacrifice of two mites he gave eternal commendation and universal fame. At the same time it is evident from his denunciations that the Judaism of his day was gravely distorted by corruptions such as in later centuries have proved so great a scandal in Christendom (see 1 Tim 6:5). These very corruptions, unrepented of, would one day destroy the temple.
We should, therefore, notice the relevance of Christ's critique of Israel's temple worship to the political question with which this Movement 3 began. In Jeremiah's day there were many who thought that no matter how corrupt their religious, social and commercial behaviour was, God would never allow the great Gentile empire of the day to overrun and destroy the temple in Jerusalem. Jeremiah, therefore, was directed by God to stand in the gate of the Lord's house and to warn all who came in to worship that that was precisely what God would allow the Gentiles to do (see Jer 7). The temple would afford them no protection. In Christ's day the religious leaders, and particularly the aristocratic high-priestly class, professed to be afraid that if they allowed Jesus to continue to propagate his messianic claims, it might lead to a popular political rising, and the Romans would retaliate by destroying both the city of Jerusalem and the temple (see John 11:47–53). Actually, as Movement 3 has already shown, Christ's messianic claims posed no threat either to the Roman Caesar or to the Jewish temple. What was beginning to make the destruction of the temple inevitable was, first, the corruption of Israel's worship at the hands of the religious leaders and, secondly, the treatment which they were plotting to hand out to the Messiah. They would in fact succeed in getting the Romans to execute Jesus; a generation later those same Romans would ruthlessly destroy their temple.
4. Jerusalem and the second coming of the king (Luke 21:5–38)
Movement 1 made it clear from the very beginning that when Christ came officially to Jerusalem riding ceremonially on the ass as [p 343] Zion's long-prophesied king, he was under no illusions as to what was going to happen. Jerusalem, he knew, would reject both him and his salvation (see Luke 19:41–44). Immediately on entering the city he had gone to the chief trouble-centre, the temple and its perversion of the worship of God (Luke 19:45–46); and since then Movements 2 and 3 have enlarged on the determination of Israel's religious leaders to destroy him. In those circumstances there could be no thought of Christ's proving himself to be Zion's Saviour by delivering Jerusalem from Gentile domination. All the major prophets had declared that God himself had deprived Israel of her political independence and theocratic constitution because of her sins. Christ was certainly not going to wave a magic wand and deliver Israel from Gentile domination in spite of the fact that she still had not repented and was at this moment intending to murder the owner of the vineyard's Son. Daniel in the ninth chapter of his prophecy had recorded the solemn lesson that God's promises to restore Jerusalem would never be completely fulfilled as long as Israel remained obdurate in her sin and in her rejection of her Messiah; and in Movement 3 we have heard Zion's king himself tell Israel to continue paying taxes to the Gentiles since Gentile domination was to continue indefinitely.
Now we come to Movement 4, and we shall hear more solemn things still. Israel will not only continue under the Gentile yoke, but after Messiah's murder the temple, the headquarters so to speak of Israel's rebellion against her Messiah and her God, will be swept away and Jerusalem city overrun by the Gentiles.
But all is not gloom. Daniel in his seventh chapter had prophesied of the time when Israel should finally be set free from Gentile imperial domination, and he had associated that deliverance with the coming of the Son of Man in the clouds of heaven (see Dan 7:13). Here in Movement 4 our Lord will affirm Daniel's prophecy: Jerusalem's redemption shall eventually take place at the coming of the Son of Man in a cloud with power and great glory (see Luke 21:27–28). [p 344]
i. The coming of false messiahs (Luke 21:5–19)
Granted the solemn fact of the temple's impending destruction and the glorious prospect of Jerusalem's future redemption at the second coming of Christ, the main question to which the detail of Movement 4 addresses itself, is the order of events that shall lead to these two momentous happenings.
The disciples were warned in the first place against the many false messiahs that would come preaching the imminence of the end (see Luke 21:8) on the basis of quite fallacious evidence. To save them from such deceptions Christ informed his disciples that the signs of the imminence of that end would be nothing less than a combination of wars, earthquakes, famines, plagues, along with terrifying cosmic disturbances (see Luke 21:11).
In the second place the disciples were to know not only that the destruction of Jerusalem would take place long before the second advent and before the end (see Luke 21:24–27) but also that there would have to be a period of time after Christ's departure even before Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed (see Luke 21:12–19). The reason for that was that before the destruction took place, the nation would be given an opportunity to repent together with new and altogether exceptional evidence designed to lead it to repentance. That evidence would take the form of the supernaturally inspired witness of the early Christians at all levels of society, and the maintenance and growth of that witness by divine power in spite of severe and often unnatural persecution. Israel should thus have such powerful evidence that they had been mistaken in crucifying Jesus and such compelling offers of forgiveness and reconciliation, that they would have no excuse for continued opposition, nor ground for complaint when God eventually allowed both their city and temple to be destroyed.
ii. The destruction and redemption of Jerusalem (Luke 21:20–33)
We know from the Acts of the Apostles that some thousands of individual Jews took advantage of the period given them for repentance; but officially the nation persisted in its rejection of Jesus. Christ, of course, foresaw it would, and so did the prophet Daniel. [p 345] In his famous chapter on Jerusalem city Daniel had forecast that: '. . . the Anointed One will be cut off and will have nothing. The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come like a flood. War will continue until the end, and desolations have been decreed' (Luke 9:26 NIV).
So now Christ indicated that the time given for Jerusalem to repent would come to its end, and in its place there would come her desolation (see Luke 21:20) and 'the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled' (Luke 21:22). When the disciples saw the Gentile armies approaching, they were to abandon the city. They were not to hope for some miracle of divine deliverance. The time for the execution of God's wrath had come: they were not to try to resist it (see Luke 21:20–22). In his compassion he lamented again, as he had done earlier (see Luke 19:41–44), the terrible human suffering that would be inflicted on the city, and particularly on the women and children, as the city's inhabitants were either slaughtered or else taken into captivity and exile (see Luke 21:23–24). But with the precision of divine righteousness he pointed out the chief form which the divine wrath upon Jerusalem would take: '. . . they shall be led captive into all the Gentiles, and Jerusalem shall be trodden down by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled' (Luke 21:24). One cannot escape the solemn repetition. Jerusalem had once represented all that was distinctive from the Gentile way of life and from its system of values. But now her official religion had become corrupt, as Gentile in spirit as any pagan religion. Jerusalem's religious leaders were about to take their Messiah and force the Gentiles against their will (see Luke 23:1–25) to execute him. It was appropriate therefore that her streets should suffer what her values had already suffered. God was going to allow Jerusalem not so much to be destroyed as to be overrun and trodden down by the Gentiles. Jerusalem, the holy city, would become a Gentile city, run by Gentiles according to Gentile values.
The temple would of course be destroyed, its age-long testimony to God obliterated (see Luke 21:5–6). But when its chief priests took the Father's well-beloved Son and killed him God was not prepared to [p 346] allow their temple to continue indefinitely as an alternative witness to the true God. A religion which officially denies that Jesus is the Son of God 'has not the Father', says John (see 1 John 2:23).
Here we should perhaps make the obvious, naive point that the destruction of Jerusalem was not something which God gave to the Christians to do: he gave the task to pagan Gentiles, as in earlier centuries he had given it to the Assyrians (see Isa 10:5–15). The anti-Semitism of mediaeval and modern so-called Christian countries has been nothing but diabolical and satanic in its origin.
But next we should notice that divine mercy had limited the divine wrath on Jerusalem even before it began: Jerusalem, said Christ, was to be trodden down by the Gentiles but only 'until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled' (Luke 21:24). The times of the Gentiles would be marked by centuries of opportunity for the Gentiles to hear of the Saviour and of the gospel which Judaism had officially rejected; and, as we now know, millions would respond. But in themselves the pagan nations would prove to be no better, or less sinful, than Israel; their opportunity to receive the gospel would not last for ever either, nor their ascendancy over Jerusalem. Moreover, as Paul later had to remind his Gentile fellow-Christians, apostasy would eventually rob Christendom of its role as the leading witness to God in the earth as surely as it had robbed Judaism of it; and Israel being at last converted would be restored to her place of witness for God (see Rom 11:13–32). One day, then, Jerusalem's desolations shall be over. The Son of Man shall come in power and great glory (see Luke 21:27) amid premonitory cosmic disturbance; redemption shall be completed (see Luke 21:28); the kingdom of God shall come (see Luke 21:31). The long waiting will be past.
At Luke 19:29, 37, 41 Luke carefully recorded the increasing nearness of our Lord's approach at his first official ceremonial 'Coming' to Jerusalem. Here at Luke 21:28, 30–31 he records likewise the signs which Christ gave of the nearness of the approach of his second coming. As surely as men standing in Jerusalem once saw him slowly descending the Mount of Olives and then ascending the opposite hill into the city, so surely shall the world one day see the Son of Man [p 347] descending the heavens. Not then shall he come as the meek and lowly: he shall come with power and great glory. Not then shall he come riding on an ass: he shall come in a cloud, the emblematic carriage of deity. Not then shall he have to borrow a donkey: then his advance preparations shall be the roaring of the sea and the shaking of the powers of the heavens.45
iii. Final admonition in the temple (Luke 21:34–38)
It is a fact much noted by commentators that the setting of our Lord's prophetic discourse is different in Luke from what it is in Mark and Matthew. Mark (see Mark 13:1–2) and Matthew (see Matt 24:1–2) both relate that as Jesus was going out of the temple his disciples called his attention to the mighty stones of which the temple was built. Luke does not tell us that Jesus went out of the temple. At Luke 21:5 Christ is still inside the temple, and what the people call his attention to is not only the stones of the temple but the votive offerings which of course would be hanging inside the temple. At the end of the discourse, moreover Luke places two summary verses (see Luke 21:37–38) which seem to indicate that the teaching he has recorded [p 348] from Luke 20:1–21:36 was all of it given during our Lord's daily teaching sessions in the temple. It is altogether likely that Christ began his prophetic discourse inside the temple in the hearing of the general public, and that when he went out and sat on the Mount of Olives his disciples came to him privately, as Matthew and Mark say, and in answer to their request for further elucidation Christ went over much of the same ground but with appropriate additions and differences of emphasis. It is the kind of thing that still happens with lecturers and students during conferences nowadays.
Be that as it may, one cannot escape the emphasis that Luke has placed on the temple throughout these chapters. Every movement so far has ended with a description of some perversion or other in the temple (see Luke 19:45–48; 20:19; 20:45–21:4); and now Movement 4 ends fittingly enough with a warning against another perversion. The movement began (see Luke 21:5), as we have noticed, with people calling our Lord's attention to the votive offerings in the temple. It is understandable that such beautiful things, expressive of great religious devotion, should excite people's admiration. But it is all too possible for such admiration to be nothing more than an aesthetic appreciation which because it produces feelings of awe and delight is mistaken for true spirituality, when all the while it leaves a person's self-indulgence and worldliness unchanged and the person morally and spiritually unprepared for the coming of Christ (see Luke 21:34–36). Rather than that the glories of the temple should lull unregenerate hearts into complacent unpreparedness for Christ's coming, it were better for it to be swept away.
The movements: second suite
5. The king eats in Jerusalem: symbols of his suffering and death (Luke 22:1–38)
i. Preparations for the feast (Luke 22:1–13)
The first suite of movements has taken our minds from the official coming of the king to Jerusalem through the story of his rejection, [p 349] the prophecy of his death and vindication and on in thought to the destruction of the temple, the overrunning of Jerusalem and finally to the glorious second coming of the Lord.
Now as the second suite opens Luke brings our thoughts back to the situation as it was in Jerusalem just before the Passover at the end of Holy Week. The religious authorities naturally had their preparations to make for the celebration of the national feast. Pressing even more urgently on their minds, however, was the necessity of isolating Jesus from the crowds so that they could destroy him. Presently Judas gave them the opportunity they were looking for, and they went ahead with their preparations for the kill.
And now we are to behold the most spectacular demonstration of the way God governs a rebellious universe. Human rebellion, initially induced in Eden's garden by Satan, is at this stage in history by Satan's continued inspiration (see Luke 22:3) determined that Jesus shall die. And Jesus for his part in order to counter that rebellion and to establish God's kingdom here on earth in the very teeth of that rebellion is determined—to die! To that end he once more makes preparations to enter Jerusalem, and sends two disciples, not this time to borrow an ass on which to ride in ceremonial procession as Zion's king, but to borrow a room in which to eat the Passover. The Passover, of course, had to be eaten at night; but, humanly speaking, it was dangerous for Christ to be in the city at night without the protection of the crowds around him, which is why all through the past week as soon as evening came and the crowds dispersed our Lord had left the city and disappeared into the dark shadows of the Mount of Olives to avoid premature arrest (see Luke 19:47–48; 21:37–38). His entry into the city at night and the place where he would eat the Passover had to be kept secret. The two disciples were therefore given certain pre-arranged signals that would eventually bring them to an unnamed man who was prepared to lend Christ a room in his house in which to celebrate the Passover in Jerusalem. It was the king's own capital city; but the authorities had a price on his head and Jerusalem was now the earthly headquarters of rebellion against the king. [p 350]
ii. Eating with his disciples (Luke 22:14–34)
So 'when the hour was come, he sat down and the twelve apostles with him' (Luke 22:14). We notice the precision of the timing. Messiah was about to suffer (see Luke 22:15); but it was neither an accident nor unforeseen. The Son of Man was about to go (see Luke 22:22); but the going had been foreordained before the foundation of the world (see 1 Pet 1:20). In the course of history therefore when Israel had needed deliverance from Egypt God had ordained that the deliverance should be effected by the blood of a literal Passover lamb. Thereafter the annual celebration of Passover served two functions. It was a memorial of Israel's original deliverance which was of course a genuine historical event of immense significance in its own right. At the same time it was designed as a prototype and promise of that immensely more significant deliverance that God would eventually effect through the sacrifice and blood of his Son.
And now in the course of God's government (see Luke 22:16) the time had come to redeem the promise. The final preparations had all been carefully made and the king came with a strong desire to eat the last Passover before Passover's promise should be fulfilled. The anticipation of his suffering had long weighed heavily upon him (see Luke 12:50), and the prospect that now it would soon be over doubtless contributed something to that desire. But in addition, the eating of that Passover on the eve of his death would allow him to imprint on the minds of his apostles and on the minds of all his followers ever afterwards, that his death was no disaster, nor simply the sad achievement of human envy, satanic power lust and religious perversion. Rather it was the divinely foreordained sacrifice for the deliverance of men from their bondage to those very lusts and perversions and for their reconciliation with God. So effective indeed would that sacrifice be that however long it took before the kingdom of God should finally come (see Luke 22:18), he should never again need to drink of the fruit of the vine either as a common meal or as a Passover symbol: the great redemptive sacrifice would be complete, his work on earth would be finished.
Moreover, in addition to celebrating the Passover in Jerusalem, [p 351] Christ also instituted a completely new ordinance, the Lord's Supper (see 1 Cor 11:20). It was to serve his disciples until he came again as a set of vivid symbols to remind them of his body and blood given for them and for their deliverance; it was to serve also as a sign of the new covenant that he was about to inaugurate in his blood (see Luke 22:19–20).
The terms of the new covenant, published by God through Jeremiah (see Luke 31:33–34), had long since made its nature and purpose clear. Like the old covenant which it replaced it was to be an instrument of government: 'I will put my laws into their minds and on their heart also will I write them: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people: and . . . all shall know me, from the least to the greatest of them. For I will be merciful to their iniquities, and their sins will I remember no more.' In handing his disciples the cup of the new covenant in his blood Christ was doing nothing less than announcing the inauguration of his kingdom into which those who accepted redemption through his blood, would be admitted, and there by the regeneration, teaching and power of the Holy Spirit would be trained in obedience to their Lord and king. The establishment of this spiritual phase of his kingdom moreover would not need to wait until his second coming: it could begin as soon as the blood of the covenant sacrifice sealed the covenant.
Christ had no sooner announced the establishment of his kingdom, however, than he called attention to a great irony. Satan had infiltrated his agent Judas into the very upper room and he now sat with his hand on the table (see Luke 22:21) to mark Christ's every movement, to plan Christ's arrest, to facilitate Christ's crucifixion and death; and the very table on which the traitor's hand lay carried symbols which being now decoded by the king proved to be announcing that it had been God's eternal purpose all the way along that the king should die and by that death break Satan's power and inaugurate his own kingdom. Judas' sin was inexcusable; but his traitorous hand would but serve the plan of God for the destruction of the power of his diabolical master.
The king went further. In addition to announcing the establishment of his laws in the hearts of his disciples he disclosed his [p 352] plans for training them to share in his government both here and hereafter. They were to be schooled to renounce the Gentile concept of government as domination over others, and to follow the ideal which he had set before them, that of the servant-king (see Luke 22:24–27). Their schooling done and their loyalty to the king tested by the sharing of his suffering, they were to be rewarded in the age to come with the delight of close personal fellowship with him in his glory and with active participation with him in the government (see Luke 22:28–30). Meanwhile the disciples were not to be shielded from Satan's attacks, and they would suffer temporary, partial defeats; but the vital lifeline of their personal faith in the Saviour would be maintained by the intercessions of their king-priest as in the case of Peter; and the lessons learned in defeats would be turned to the further strengthening of the group (see Luke 22:31–34). The king would not only defeat his enemy: he would use Satan's opposition for the perfecting of his own disciples.
iii. Provision for mission (Luke 22:35–38)
If the nation's rejection of the king meant that he had to announce the inauguration of the kingdom in the secrecy of the upper room, it did not mean that the vigorous missions of the past years must now cease. Far from it. Instead of being confined to Israel, Christian missions would now be extended to cover the world (see Luke 24:47). But the fact that the king himself was about to be outlawed and executed by the nation, meant that his missionaries could no longer expect the nation to meet the costs of their maintenance as on previous occasions (see Luke 9:1–6; 10:1–16); they would have to pay their own expenses and fight their own way with no financial help from the nation or the unconverted.
Misunderstanding his metaphorical reference to the need for a sword, the disciples found two swords and offered them to him. He brushed them aside without further explanation: the next few hours would show them quite clearly that he was not talking of literal swords, or advocating violence, either in the propagation, or in the defence, of the faith (see Luke 22:49–51). But the new situation, and [p 353] the new relationship which it would necessitate between Christian missions and the world were, he pointed out, no unforeseen, temporary difficulty. This too was a fulfilment of what Scripture had long since indicated should happen (see Luke 22:37). The fact that at the cross 'Christ was reckoned with the transgressors' is the very basis of the gospel of forgiveness and peace; but that same cross has of necessity set up a relationship between the king and his followers on the one hand and the world on the other which likewise is a fundamental part of the gospel of the crucified. The relationship cannot be compromised without compromising the gospel (see 1 Cor 1:1–2:5; Gal 6:14).
With this Christ completed the announcement of his programme and strategies for the establishment of his kingdom. But symbols, programmes and prophecies are no use if they are not put into action and fulfilled. 'What is written must be fulfilled in me', said Christ, '. . . for that which concerns me has an end' (Luke 22:37). And when he had said that, the king went out to set up his kingdom.
6. The king arrested and tried by the religious authorities (Luke 22:39–71)
i. Arrest: priests and the authority of darkness (Luke 22:39–53)
When the king came out from the upper room, he went, so we are told (see Luke 22:34), 'as his custom was' to 'the place' (Luke 22:40) on the Mount of Olives where every day throughout the past week he had gone when he left the temple at nightfall, the place which Judas knew well and to which he would soon come with the arresting party. There was no thought of running away. If the kingdom of God was going to be set up, then the battle with the powers of darkness must be fought and the sooner it was joined the better.
'Pray', said Christ to his disciples, 'that you enter not into temptation'. Hell itself would now unite all its forces and combine with human evil to prevent, if possible, the will of God from being done. And this would be their temptation: to avoid facing the battle, to give in, to run away, to fail to do the will of God. [p 354]
So then, as if to make clear where at this crucial, fateful hour in the history of the universe the battle-centre lay, he withdrew from his disciples about a stone's cast (see Luke 22:41). The battle and its outcome would depend on him alone. If he failed all would for ever be lost: if he triumphed, he secured irreversible victory.
And he kneeled down. What a sight! What a victory! The king kneeling on the Mount of Olives! Only a few days ago he had come riding down this same Mount of Olives in royal procession rightly acclaimed as the king (see Luke 19:35–38). But he had found Jerusalem his capital city in the hands of rebels, the temple infested with robbers. How could such opposition be overcome? How could such rebels be saved from the condemnation of God and the penalty of their rebellion, and restored to obedience and the worship of God? Riding on the royal mount through the streets of the city would hardly do it. Pomp and ceremony never yet turned a rebel into a saint. If ever Jerusalem, Israel and the world were to be brought back to God's obedience, it must all start here: Messiah must himself establish the will of God on earth by obeying it himself.
So the king kneeled down. He would obey on his own behalf as always, but on behalf of Israel as well, on behalf of all the human race. 'For as through the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one should the many be made righteous' (Rom 5:19). There was in his prayer of obedience no pretence that the cup was sweet. Obedience in an unfallen world may, for all we know, be nothing but ecstatic pleasure. But when obedience was confronted in our world with the purpose of God for the redemption of fallen men, the cup could not be other than immeasurably bitter. In all sincerity Christ pleaded that the cup might be removed without his having to drink it. Here was no cheap unthought-out enthusiasm or superficial devotion like Peter's (see Luke 22:33) professing a readiness to suffer and die that was the product of irresponsible unrealism. For anyone to welcome the prospect of being made sin by God would be either fatuous ignorance or Promethean defiance of the all-holy. For holiness incarnate to welcome the prospect would be unthinkable. Sincerely [p 355] he prayed for the cup to pass—if it would be God's will. But if not, then even if every emotion in his heart, every fibre and cell in his flesh rose up against the prospect, and his body sweat blood in its agony, he would positively pray 'Not my will but thine be done'.
When he returned to his disciples, he found them sleeping for sorrow and he gently chided them. Yet their very failure will help us to see an important distinction. Under the weight of evil circumstances and sorrow they had given in to nature's weakness and the comfort of sleep. That of course did not make the evil go away, it made them only oblivious of it and unprepared for its onslaught. Christ gave in to nothing: he positively asserted the will of God in the face of all evil. His prayer as he knelt on earth, 'Thy will be done', was the cry of the conqueror: for 'he who does the will of God abides for ever' (1 John 2:17).
With that the arresting party arrived, and the sudden shock of seeing through Judas's sickening pretence and of realizing what was going to happen provoked an instantaneous reaction from the other disciples: 'Lord shall we use our swords on them?' One of them indeed did not wait for permission, but drew his sword and with poor aim but stout intention cut off the right ear of one of the high-priest's servants. This reaction was natural, the all too natural reaction of mere human nature, unprepared by prayer, ungoverned by the will and wisdom of God, and utterly inappropriate and inadequate to the nature of the conflict that was now upon them. What they were up against was not mere flesh and blood but principalities and powers, the world-rulers of this darkness (see Luke 22:53) whose power lies in twisting all that is genuinely human and true into a diabolical but specious lie. That is not a power from which a man can be delivered by physical weapons. Christ restrained his followers and healed the man's ear. One man at least should hear loud and clear, in spite of all the confusion in the garden that night, exactly what Christ really stood for, as Christ now exposed the deceit of the chief priests, captains of the temple and elders who were conducting the operation. There they stood professed ministers of God, guardians of his temple, upholders of his sanctity and truth, [p 356] making out they were on an expedition against some political activist. The whole thing was a deliberate pretence; and we can now see how beautifully Peter would have unthinkingly played into their hands, if he had been allowed to continue with his armed resistance. Then they could have told the public that they had caught Jesus at dead of night at the head of an armed band, engaged on some subversive guerrilla action, and that when challenged, he and his followers had attacked the authorities with weapons. How Satan would have laughed to see the Saviour of the world represented as a guerrilla fighter who thought that the problem of evil could be solved by political subversion and armed conflict.
The fact is that publicly in broad daylight they had been unable to find any basis for a political charge against him and they were obliged therefore to concoct one and try to pin it on him under cover of darkness. Their very tactics and the timing of their arrest proclaimed the source of their power: 'This is your hour', said Christ 'and the authority of darkness' (Luke 22:53).
ii. Christ is led away to the high priest's house (Luke 22:54–65)
By this time most of the disciples had run off and abandoned Christ. Peter, to his eternal credit be it said, had at least followed him; but all of a sudden he now found himself ranged on the wrong side in the battle. He had not intended it: but he had not perceived the nature of the battle nor the weapons and the resources with which it is ultimately won. The battle is between the truth and the lie, the truth being ultimately a person. It is settled not by physical force—how could it be?—but by spiritual strength (see 2 Cor 10:4). What is required of a man is to stand with the truth. Whatever the consequences, he has triumphed if he has remained standing with the truth; he has lost, if success has meant deserting the truth.
In the courtyard of the high priest's house the servants lit a fire and sat around it. Peter sat among them. Presently in the semidarkness the fire blazed up, the light shone on Peter's face, and his face gave him away (see Luke 22:56). They made him talk, and his Galilaean [p 357] accent gave him away (see Luke 22:59). 'In truth' the last servant said, confidently asserting what he knew to be true (Luke 22:59); and it gave Peter his last opportunity to win his battle and stand with the truth. But he denied the truth, taking refuge, as it felt at the time, in the shelter of pretended ignorance: 'I do not know him', 'I am not one of them'. 'Man, I do not know what you are talking about' (Luke 22:57–58, 60). Just then, when he had denied the truth for the third time and seemed to have cut off all connection between himself and Christ, somewhere out in the darkness of the night a cock crowed, and the Lord turned and looked on Peter. 'And Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how that he said unto him, "Before the cock crow this day, you shall deny me thrice"' (Luke 22:61).
Peter got up and in great distress fled out into the cover of the night. But now the darkness would never swallow him up completely: the link between Christ and him had been maintained, and Peter's faith in the truth of the word of Christ was actually at this moment stronger than ever. He had proved Christ's word to be true. And if Christ had been right about the denial, right too even about the detail of the cock crowing, he would be right in regard to the rest of his prophecy (see Luke 22:31–32): Peter would turn again and strengthen his brethren. The memory of that assured statement saved Peter from ruinous despair. The intercessions of the king-priest had secured for Peter that his faith did not fail (see Luke 22:32). They will do the same for every believer on every battlefield of life.
But now for the remainder of the night Jesus stood alone. His guards were cruel and coarse men who cared little about truth. To them religion was always good for a joke, particularly prophets who tried to scare you with warnings about a God who is supposed to be able to see everything you do, and will one day punish sinners. So they blindfolded Jesus. 'There now', they said, enjoying their new-found freedom to punch him without his being able to see who did it, 'prophesy now and tell us which of us it was who punched you'. It was crude thinking; but how were they to know that in Peter's denial a prophecy had just been fulfilled under their very eyes? [p 358]
iii. The decision of the council (Luke 22:66–71)
As soon as daylight came (see Luke 22:66) the religious authorities held what was ostensibly an investigative council. 'If you are the Messiah,' they said to Jesus, 'tell us,' In actual fact they were not interested in trying to find out the truth. They were not prepared either to believe what he said, or even to discuss the matter with him. It was pointless trying to explain things in detail, or to offer any defence. They were determined to find grounds for condemning him to death. Foreseeing their verdict Christ therefore stated his identity in terms of his resurrection and ascension. 'From henceforth shall the Son of Man be seated at the right hand of the power of God' (Luke 22:69).
They understood him to be claiming virtual equality with God, both in position and power, and they were delighted with the statement because to them it was the height of blasphemy and gave them ample grounds for having him executed. They just checked, however, to make sure that he was claiming to be the Son of God in the fullest possible sense of the term; and finding that he was, they concluded their investigation. Now they could get him executed. Ironically their execution of him would be but the first step in the process of translating their prisoner to his seat at the right hand of the power of God.
7. The king tried, sentenced and crucified by the political authorities (Luke 23:1–56a)
i. The civil trial: Pilate and the authority of Herod (Luke 23:1–25)
The religious authorities saw clearly that a charge of blasphemy would scarcely secure the verdict they wanted from the civil courts, so when they brought Christ before Pilate they charged him instead with subversion in the cause of political messianism (see Luke 23:2). It was a lie, of course, so obviously a lie that Luke does not trouble to point out the fact. Pilate examined the accused and soon concluded that the charge was baseless. Learning, however, that the prisoner belonged to Herod's authority Pilate referred him to Herod. The very suggestion that Jesus was a contender for political kingship struck [p 359] Herod as so ludicrous that he and his men made a mock of the whole business, dressed Jesus up in mock-royal garb, and eventually after much merriment sent him back to Pilate. There was nothing in the charge. Pilate reconvened the court and announced the verdict of the double enquiry; but then he found that the priests were not prepared to bow to his authority, nor Herod's either. They insisted that Jesus be executed and that a certain Barabbas be released.
The situation was beginning to become crazy. Here were priests demanding the execution of Jesus on the ground that he was attempting to overthrow the political authorities. Yet these very priests would not themselves bow to the political authorities; and what is more, they were calling for the release of a known political activist who in a recent civil disturbance in the city had committed murder. Pilate decided the time had come to assert his own will. 'Willing [Gk: thelōn] to release Jesus', he again addressed his accusers (see Luke 23:20). But they shouted, 'Crucify him.' Pilate made a third attempt to have his will done; but again they shouted him down and he gave in (see Luke 23:22–23).
At this crucial moment in the narrative we cannot help noticing the insistent repetitions in Luke's language: 'But they insisted with loud voices asking that he might be crucified. And their voices prevailed. And Pilate gave sentence that what they asked for should be done. And he released one who for insurrection and murder had been cast into prison, whom they asked for, but Jesus he delivered up to their will [Gk. thelēma].' It is only a few verses since we were listening to the prayers of another petitioner before another authority: 'If thou be willing, remove this cup from me; nevertheless not my will, but thine be done' (Luke 22:42). That was the king at prayer, and one day as a result of that prayer he would sit at the right hand of the power of God and have the government of the universe entrusted to him. How different the priests and the people. Standing before the properly constituted political authority (see Rom 13:1–7) whose sacred God-given task it was to protect the innocent and condemn the guilty, these priests insisted on overriding the will of the political authority and on having their own will done. Their [p 360] own will was that the innocent be condemned and a murderous insurrectionist be released. But whatever becomes of people who insist on their own will like that?
ii. The leading away and the crucifixion (Luke 23:26–49)
If Jesus Christ is indeed the Son of God, his crucifixion here on our planet obviously raises profound questions about God's moral government of the universe. And if, as we have been told (see Luke 22:20), Christ by his death was going to establish the new covenant as the basis of his government, it is hardly surprising to find that Luke's narrative of Christ's death draws our attention to some of the basic principles on which divine government operates.
The first matter to be noticed is how God gets his will done in a rebellious world. As Christ was led away to execution (see Luke 23:26) the Roman army press-ganged a passer-by and made him carry Jesus' cross. The man had no choice: the army wanted it done and they compelled the man to do it. And that was that. How different has God's method been. It was the divine will and foreordination that the Son of God should die as a ransom for sinners (see Luke 22:22). The high priest and the chief priests, Judas, Satan and the people have all had a part in bringing God's Son to his death. None of them has been forced by God to do it. All have their own reasons and their action is altogether voluntary. Yet in the end they do what God's power and will has decided beforehand should happen (see Acts 4:28).
The second matter is the law of inevitable consequences. Among the crowds who followed Jesus to his place of execution was a large number of women who bewailed and lamented him. It was, it seems, a psychological reaction to the sight of 'such a nice young man' being so rudely taken out to such a hideously cruel death. It had nothing to do with moral conscience or repentance. In a month's time they would have forgotten it. Christ wanted no such pity. He told them rather to weep for themselves and their children since before them lay such suffering as would reverse all nature's normal desires and values: childlessness would come to seem the happiest thing, and death to be preferable to life (see Luke 23:29–30). [p 361]
This is terrible; but it proceeds from the law of act and inevitable consequence, of sowing and reaping. The people of Jerusalem, led by their priests, elders and rulers, had just called on Pilate to condemn an innocent man to death and to release a murderous political activist in his place. When Pilate, in the name of just government, tried to refuse such an outrageous demand, they shouted and raved and insisted on having their own way against all justice and governmental restraint. They got what they called for. Alas they did. As a direct, if distant, consequence of calling for this injustice they would one day call again, this time for the mountains to fall on them to save them from the consequences of what they insisted on calling for the first time.
'For if they do these things in the green tree, what shall be done in the dry?' said Christ (Luke 23:31). If citizens, living in a reasonably civilized society under a fairly stable and reasonably just government, can overrule the government and insist on the execution of an innocent man, not to mention the fact that he was God's Son and their Messiah; if priests in a nationally recognized religion which stands for divine law, morality and ethical behaviour, can use lies to pressurize the civil power to commit judicial murder; what kind of behaviour will prevail in a society that has lost all respect for justice, law, morality, religion and God? It may take a long while to turn a green tree into a dried-up trunk, a paradise into a desert. But bleed the moral life-sap of a nation, and the result, however long-delayed, is inevitable.
These then would be the consequences of the nation's murder of Messiah. But sin brings more than consequences: it brings divine retribution. The owner of the vineyard, so Christ warned (see Luke 20:15–16), would not stand idly by after the contract-workers had taken his beloved Son, thrown him out of the vineyard and killed him. The owner would 'come and destroy these workers'. Yet solemn as is the fact of divine retribution, it allows the possibility of divine forgiveness, and the narrative now shows us on what conditions forgiveness is granted and how it affects the question of the consequences of sin. [p 362]
First come the soldiers who without realizing the significance of what they were doing crucified Christ along with two malefactors as if he were just another malefactor, and drove the nails through his quivering flesh. We should notice the grounds on which Christ prayed forgiveness for them: 'Father, forgive them for they know not what they do' (Luke 23:34). This prayer, uttered in the moment of fearful pain, on behalf of those who were causing the pain, has rightly moved the hearts of millions and become the ideal which has taught countless sufferers not to yield to blind retaliation, but to seek the good of even their enemies (see Matt 5:43–48). It detracts nothing, however, from the glory of Christ's prayer to point out that it was prayed on behalf of the soldiers who in all truthfulness did not know what they were doing. False sentiment must not lead us to extend the scope of his prayer beyond his intention. To pray forgiveness for a man who knows quite well what he is doing and has no intention of either stopping or repenting would be immoral: it would amount to condoning, if not conniving at, his sin. Christ certainly did not do that.
Next comes the principle on which Christ makes it possible for people to be saved from the wrath and retribution of God. We hear it first, distorted as a jibe, on the lips of the rulers mocking his inability to save himself: 'He saved others; let him save himself, if this is the Christ of God, his chosen' (Luke 23:35). They were thinking in physical terms. They admitted that at this level he had brought deliverance from disease to many in the nation. But now here he was physically nailed to a cross and apparently unable to free himself. How could he be the God-sent Messiah, God's chosen? If he could not prevent his enemies from crucifying him, or miraculously come down from the cross and deliver the nation from their political enemies, what use would he be as a Messiah?
At this the Roman soldiers joined in. They knew nothing of the terms 'Messiah of God, his chosen' and the meaning these terms would have for Jews who knew their Old Testament. But according to their own simple concepts a king who could not save himself was altogether a non-starter in the struggle for political power. If Jesus [p 363] was all that the Jews could put forward to contest the rule of Judaea with Caesar, the whole claim to kingship was ludicrous. In contempt they nailed over his cross an inscription: 'The King of the Jews this.' It was laughable; and until Christ comes again in power and great glory, all attempts to represent Christ and true Christianity as a political kingdom in competition with other political kingdoms will in the end incur similar contempt in the eyes of the Gentile powers.
But we know what neither the rulers nor the soldiers could know. When Christ entered the city at Luke 19:29–48 he certainly entered claiming to be king; but when he entered the city at Luke 22:7–38, he came to fulfil the Passover and effect that deliverance of which Passover was a prototype. Now the first Passover was of course a deliverance from the political oppression of Pharaoh; but even that literal, political deliverance necessitated two stages for its achievement. In the second stage Israel were delivered from the power of Egypt as God destroyed the Egyptian army in the Red Sea. But in the first stage, which was clearly the far more important of the two, Israel had to be delivered, not from the power of Pharaoh, but from the wrath of God. The night of the first Passover was a night of the execution of God's judgments (see Exod 12:12–13); and Exodus makes it very clear that when God rose up to execute judgment on Egypt, Israel was just as liable to the wrath of God as the Egyptians were. The distinction between oppressor and oppressed counted for little. All were sinners. Israel's firstborn would therefore have perished as certainly as the Egyptians' firstborn, had God not provided the blood of the Passover lamb as a protection against the destroying angel (Exod 12:21–23).
It was, then, as the true Passover lamb that Christ had deliberately come to Calvary to deliver sinful and guilty mankind by his blood from the wrath of God. Without that deliverance, all other deliverances would ultimately be in vain. To mock Christ, as the rulers and the soldiers did, was sublimely misconceived: they might as well have mocked a literal Passover lamb because, while it saved others, it could not save itself.
Granted then that Christ's death makes divine forgiveness possible, on what conditions does anyone receive that forgiveness? And [p 364] granted that forgiveness releases a man from divine retribution which is the eternal penalty of sin, what effect does that forgiveness have, if any, on the consequences of sin? Answers to these questions are now given in the narrative of the two malefactors.
The first malefactor was suffering the consequence of his misdeeds in the form of temporal punishment inflicted by the government of the day. For all his pain there was with him apparently no fear of God, no confession of guilt before God, no expression of repentance, no request even for divine forgiveness. He was prepared to believe that Jesus was the Messiah if he would do a miracle and release him from the temporal punishment that was the consequence of his crimes. When Jesus made no attempt to do that he cursed him and his religion as a cheat. But to save people simply from the temporal consequences of their sins without first bringing them to repentance and reconciliation with God, would be no true salvation at all. It would but encourage people to repeat their sins under the impression that any ugly or inconvenient consequences could and would be miraculously removed by a fairy godmother. No paradise could be built on such an irresponsible attitude to sin. It was different with the second malefactor. Reflection on the fact that Christ was innocent and yet was suffering along with the guilty convinced his conscience that there must be in the world to come a judgment in which the injustices of this world are put right. That in turn awoke in his heart a healthy fear of God, which led him to repentance and a frank acknowledgement of his sinfulness. Even the temporal punishment inflicted by the state, he owned, was well deserved and he made no request for a miracle to be done to let him off the consequences of his sins (see Luke 23:40–41). Again reflection on the fact that Christ was suffering innocently led him to believe that he was indeed Messiah the king; and that if he was Messiah and there was a God who cared about justice, then all he had heard about resurrection must be true: Messiah would be raised from the dead and 'come in his kingdom'. Perhaps it was hearing Christ's prayer to his Father to forgive the soldiers who crucified him; perhaps it was an instinct born of the Holy Spirit; but whatever it was [p 365] that caused it, there arose in his heart the faith to realize that while there was no question of his being released from the temporal consequences of his crimes, there was every possibility of his being delivered from the wrath of God and from the eternal penalty of sin. With that there also came a change deep within his heart. He no longer wanted to be a rebel; he wanted nothing more than to be allowed to become a subject of the king in his eternal kingdom, if the king would have him. 'Jesus,' he said, 'remember me when you come into your kingdom' (Luke 23:42).
The king's reply granted not only immediate forgiveness but also spelled out for the dying malefactor, and for all who repent and believe, what forgiveness involves: immediate and complete acceptance with God; the assurance that upon death he would be received directly into the presence of the king, without any interval he would be 'with Christ'; and admission to paradise where there shall be no more pain, crying, sin or curse (Luke 22:43). 'Today', said Christ, 'you shall be with me in paradise.' A rebel had been converted: is not that the true work of a king?
Finally Luke shows us that the government of God arranged that there should be vindication for Christ even in his suffering and death. His resurrection, of course, would provide further and greater vindication; but at his death there were two divine interventions, one in the realm of nature and one in the realm of religion (see Luke 23:44–45).
The darkness that came cannot be explained as an eclipse, but its effect on those who had witnessed the spectacle of the crucifixion (see Luke 23:48) and now witnessed this eerie disturbance in nature must have been profound. Let the normal processes of nature be unaccountably disturbed, and men's sense of insecurity will make them conscious, if ever they are going to be, of their own littleness, and of the awesomeness of God, and it will induce in them a consciousness of guilt and an honesty at least with themselves over moral issues.
Now the centurion in charge of the execution squad was merely doing his duty, and may at first have taken little interest in the issue at stake between the Jewish leaders and Jesus, beyond being [p 366] aware that it involved certain religious questions. The darkness obviously deepened his interest and set this crucifixion for him in a profounder context. Luke does not tell us of Christ's cry of dereliction; he records simply the confidence and peace with which Christ went to meet God, as a son going to his Father (see Luke 23:46). It was this that finally decided things for the centurion. 'Surely this was a righteous man,' he said; right not only in his dispute with the Jewish religious leaders, but right in relation with God. A man who could die like that in those circumstances and conditions must be right. The effect on the crowd was the natural corollary of this: the innocent sufferings of Christ, the manner of his death amid the unnatural disturbance of nature brought them by contrast to consciousness of, and self-condemnation of, their own sinful state: they went away beating their breasts (see Luke 23:48).
Few people standing round the cross would have been aware that the veil in the temple had been torn in two; but when it did become known, that not only had it happened, but that it had happened when Jesus died, the phenomenon took on profound symbolic meaning. Without the veil to hide the presence of God, no Jewish priest would have dared to enter the holy place of the temple. The tearing of the veil made the Jewish system of worship temporarily unworkable. Later as people came to see that they could have forgiveness through the death and sacrifice of Christ, and immediate acceptance with God and spiritual access into his presence (see Heb 10:19–22), their very enjoyment of those spiritual realities made them feel that Judaism's symbolic sacrifices and temple were now obsolete. By that same token it made them feel that the cross of Christ and what he has achieved by it are the chief of all his glories.
iii. The decision of a councillor (Luke 23:50–56a)
The next step in the vindication of our Lord was his burial in a separate tomb by himself. Had his body been flung into a mass grave along with other bodies, it would subsequently have been impossible to point to the empty tomb as clear evidence of the resurrection. As it was, Luke carefully indicates how and where the body was [p 367] laid (see Luke 23:53) and further emphasizes that the women who had followed Jesus from Galilee saw both the tomb and exactly how the body was laid in it (see Luke 23:55). When upon their return they found the tomb empty, it would not be because they had mistakenly come to the wrong tomb or because they had not originally known exactly how or where within the tomb the body was laid.
For the moment, however, interest centres on the way God achieved this necessary part of his Son's vindication. He achieved it through the effect of the death of Christ on the moral conscience of one of the Jewish councillors, Joseph of Arimathaea.
He, Luke tells us (see Luke 23:50–51), was 'a good man and a righteous' and had dissented from the counsel and deed of the council, obviously on the grounds that he regarded the council's act as totally unjust. But the council was a national body, their act a public act; and Joseph was a member of the council. He came to see therefore that it was not enough to dissent privately: if he wished to free himself from implication in the judicial murder of Christ, he must publicly dissociate himself from the council's act.
But Joseph was, so Luke explains (see Luke 23:51), more than 'a good man and a righteous': he was also 'looking for the kingdom of God', that is, he was a man who on the ground of the Old Testament expected the coming of the Messiah to inaugurate the kingdom of God. Now many a man might wish to maintain that Jesus had been unjustly executed, as indeed many do today, without wishing to go further and assert that Jesus was that Messiah. Moreover at the council Jesus had claimed an utterly unique relationship with God, to be the 'Son of God', destined to share the throne of God. If this was not true it was blasphemy and, according to Jewish law, worthy of death and Joseph ought to have agreed with the sentence.
If on the other hand Jesus was the Messiah, it was not enough simply to protest that his execution was unjust. Joseph realized that both logic and loyalty demanded that he confess his faith in the truth of Jesus' claim and publicly associate himself with Jesus now in this moment of his profound humiliation, if he wanted to be owned by Christ at his exaltation, whenever and however that [p 368] exaltation should be brought about. So he went to Pilate, and he buried Jesus, and doubtless very soon the council knew all about it, and saw not only the moral, but the theological and religious implication of Joseph's act.
The so-called dying thief was taken to paradise within a few moments of confessing faith in Christ, and so was not called to demonstrate the sincerity of his faith. We who like Joseph are left to live in a world where God's Son was crucified, might well ask ourselves what we have done and are doing to make it clear publicly where we stand in relation to the claims of Christ.
8. The king eats in Jerusalem: evidence of his resurrection (Luke 23:56b–24:53)
All four evangelists, as is natural, record the triumphant fact that on the third day Jesus our Lord rose from the dead. The special feature of Luke's record is without doubt his story of the journey to Emmaus. Apart from a brief possible reference to this journey in Mark 16:12–13 there is nothing like it in any of the other gospels. The story occupies the centre of Luke's resurrection narrative and plays a key role in the development of its thought. It lies between the perplexity, disbelief and puzzled surprise of the apostolic band at Luke 24:4, 11–12 and the final dispersal of all disbelief by our Lord's appearance to the apostolic band at Luke 24:36ff. (see especially Luke 24:41). It starts with two disciples in deep disillusionment; their unbelief in the resurrection was, we may suppose, typical of the rest. It then shows the Lord analysing the causes of their unbelief, banishing it and replacing it with joyous and unshakable faith. Finally it records that it was as they were recounting their experience to the apostolic band that the Lord suddenly appeared among them, demonstrated the nature of his resurrection body and briefed them for their worldwide mission (see Luke 24:44–49).
It is not of course accidental that the story which Luke has chosen to fill the centre of his resurrection narrative is the story of a journey; but Luke is anxious that we should notice that the journey was not simply to Emmaus. It was from Jerusalem to Emmaus and [p 369] back again to Jerusalem. As the two disciples leave Jerusalem he tells us that the distance to Emmaus was about seven miles (see Luke 24:13); and at the end of the story he tells us that no sooner had the Lord disappeared than they got up at once and returned to Jerusalem in spite of the distance and the fact that it was now night (see Luke 24:29, 33). In the immediate and in the greater context of the Gospel both their leaving Jerusalem and their return are highly significant.
At the very outset of his narrative of our Lord's journey from earth to heaven Luke told us that Christ 'resolutely determined to go to Jerusalem' (Luke 9:51); and after that he kept reminding us that Christ and his followers were on their way to Jerusalem (see Luke 13:22; 17:11; 18:31; 19:11). Christ's arrival there showed us why it was so important that he should come to the city: he came to Jerusalem as Zion's king, and to publicize the fact he had the great crowd of his disciples escort him into Jerusalem with royal honours and acclamation.
Now two disciples were leaving Jerusalem and going back home for reasons which carried the most serious implications. They had virtually decided that the crucifixion of Jesus by the authorities had proved that he was not the king after all (see Luke 24:19–21) and they were in danger of abandoning not only Jerusalem but all the hopes they originally expressed by escorting Christ into the city. Christ could obviously not allow that retrograde journey to end in Emmaus; he must bring them back to Jerusalem. As Zion's king he had not done with Jerusalem yet. True, the religious authorities 'had thrown him out of the vineyard and killed him' (Luke 20:14–15); but there was another side to that story. His death at Jerusalem had been his own deliberate strategy for the establishment of the new covenant and the setting up of his kingdom. Now that his Passover sacrifice had been completed, he had his 'exodus' to accomplish (see Luke 9:31).46 He was not going to retreat from Jerusalem as a thwarted and defeated king and complete his journey to heaven from some other point in Palestine. His exodus should be accomplished, as previously announced to Moses and Elijah, at Jerusalem. He had come to Jerusalem as king; he would leave from Jerusalem [p 370] as triumphant Lord. It was at Jerusalem therefore that he would appear to the eleven and brief them for their world-wide mission (see Luke 24:36–39). Jerusalem, he would direct, must be the starting point for the spread of the gospel (see Luke 24:47). It would be to Jerusalem that the Holy Spirit would come to empower them for their mission and they were to wait in the city until he came (see Luke 24:49). It would be from Jerusalem that Christ himself would finally lead them out to witness his ascension (see Luke 24:50); and it would be to Jerusalem that they returned (see Luke 24:52) and to its temple in which they constantly assembled in joyful praise from the ascension to Pentecost.
First, however, he had to rally his dispirited disciples and convince them that he was risen; and it will be the function of the first two paragraphs of the movement to explain why that was necessary and why it was at first so difficult.
i. Unnecessary preparations (Luke 23:56b-24:12)
When the women came to the tomb of Jesus on the first day of the week, they were carrying spices with which to embalm the Lord's body. Obviously they were not expecting him to rise from the dead; and therefore when they found first the stone rolled away and then no body in the tomb they were perplexed. Presently two angels appeared and pointed out the cause of their perplexity: they had not remembered what Christ had plainly told them while he was in Galilee—and these women came from Galilee (see Luke 23:55)—about his impending death and resurrection (see Luke 24:5–8).
We should notice how Luke's careful phraseology presses this fact on our attention. When at Christ's instructions two disciples had gone to borrow an ass 'they found just as he had said' (Luke 19:32). When at his word two disciples had gone to borrow an upper room 'they found as he had said and there they made their preparations for the Passover' (Luke 22:13). If the apostles and disciples had listened to the Lord's words in Galilee, the women would not have prepared any spices or brought them to the tomb; and if they still had come to the tomb they would not have been surprised to find it even as he said—empty. [p 371]
When the eleven were reminded of our Lord's Galilean prediction of his death and resurrection by the women's report, it still apparently made no difference. They simply refused to believe that the women had seen any angels or that the angels had announced that the Galilean prediction had been fulfilled (see Luke 24:11). Peter did go to the tomb and find it, as the women had said, empty except for the grave-clothes (see Luke 24:12). That surprised and puzzled him; but it still did not make him think that Christ's prophecy of his resurrection had come true.
Why the apostles found it so difficult to believe the Lord's words about his resurrection will be explained in the next story. For the moment we should grasp the significance of the facts which this first paragraph is relating. Luke will presently tell us that the gospel which the apostles were commissioned to take to the world was the offer of forgiveness to the repentant on the basis of Christ's death and resurrection (see Luke 24:46–47). In this first paragraph he is emphasizing the fact that this gospel originated with Christ. It is not true to say, as some have said, that the message which Jesus preached was the simple lesson of God's love for man and man's love for God and his neighbour, and that it was his apostles who subsequently invented the gospel which claims that Christ died for our sins and rose again the third day (see 1 Cor 15:3–4). Jesus could have preached love to God and man without going anywhere near Jerusalem. But it was an essential prerequisite for the gospel that he was about to launch on the world that he should go up to Jerusalem, be crucified there and rise again; and that being so, the purpose of the journey, so Luke solemnly affirms, was stated by Christ in Galilee before the journey began. The disciples did not invent it: for some time, in fact, they neither understood it nor believed it. It originated with Christ.
ii. Eating with his disciples (Luke 24:13–43)
It was kind of the Lord, having journeyed from Galilee and entered Jerusalem as king, to travel back with two of his disciples down the road of their disillusionment and listen to all their reasons why they [p 372] now doubted whether after all Jesus was king. Before they left they had heard the women's report of the empty tomb and the message of the angels, and they were able to tell the stranger that some of the apostolic band had checked Jesus' tomb and found it empty, adding with tremendous unconscious irony as they looked the stranger straight in the face: 'But they did not see him' (see Luke 24:24). They even pointed out to the stranger that this was the third day since Jesus had been crucified (see Luke 24:21), and still the idea that the resurrection had taken place seemed not to register with them as a serious possibility. Why not?
First there was the fact that for ordinary members of the public, the priests and religious authorities still carried enormous influence. Their decisive dismissal of the evidence on which the disciples had built their hopes and their execution of Jesus were obviously a severe blow to the disciples' faith that Jesus was the Messiah (see Luke 24:19–20).
More important still was the fact that death and resurrection formed no part of their concept of Messiah's office and programme, which is why they had not really taken in what Jesus had said about his coming death. They were hoping for a Messiah who would break the imperialist domination of the Romans by force of arms. A Messiah who managed to allow himself to be caught by the Jewish authorities, handed over to the Romans and crucified before he had even begun to organize any guerrilla operations, popular uprising or open warfare—what use was he? If the Old Testament prophesied a liberator who should not die, but be triumphant, Jesus was already disqualified: he had died. After that, it was almost irrelevant to talk of resurrection.
The first thing the risen Lord had to do, therefore, in order to establish for Cleopas and his companion the fact of his resurrection was to demonstrate that according to the Old Testament the Messiah had to die; and secondly that the kind of redemption which Messiah was to effect could only be effected by his dying. Their expectations of a triumphant Messiah were not wrong, of course, but they were built on a very selective reading of the Old [p 373] Testament. They had fastened on to those passages which talked of victory over Israel's enemies and the restoration of Israel's land, king and independence. The passages that talked of Messiah's sufferings and death had not made sense to them—even supposing they had read them; and they had passed them over: they formed no part of their expectations of the Messiah. They had believed what the prophets had spoken: they had not believed all that the prophets had spoken (see Luke 24:25).
And so the stranger had to demonstrate at length and in detail that the programme laid down for the Messiah was that he must 'suffer these things and enter into his glory' (Luke 24:26–27): that is to say, his sufferings were to be the actual means by which he should enter into his glory. His death would not be an obstacle in the way of his redeeming Israel, but the very method by which that redemption should be accomplished. In the upper room (see Luke 22:14–20) Christ had referred to the typology of the Passover and to Jeremiah's prophecy of the new covenant. Now he took our two disciples through all the types and prophecies of the Old Testament (see Luke 24:27) which spoke of redemption in terms of forgiveness of sins and reconciliation with God through Messiah's sacrificial death.
Throughout the conversation so far, however, the disciples had been kept from recognizing who the stranger was. What the stranger had established was simply that Jesus' death was no obstacle to his being Messiah: rather it made Jesus' claim to be the Messiah more compelling and the report of his resurrection more credible. But if Jesus was alive again, where was he? And how could anyone recognize him and be sure it was he, if they saw him.
This latter question is perhaps of even greater interest to us than it was to the two disciples. If it was widely recognized that according to the Old Testament Messiah had to die and then rise again, what was to prevent some religious opportunist after Jesus' death from dressing himself up like Jesus and deceiving the early Christians into thinking that he was Jesus come back from the dead? How in fact, we ask, did the stranger convince the two disciples that he was Jesus? [p 374]
Certainly not by simply saying, 'I am Jesus'. Any impostor could have said that. He did it by an action that no impostor would have thought of, and in a way that was so characteristic of Jesus and so eloquent of the very heart of what he had secretly told his disciples about himself that no impostor could have known about it, let alone have done it.
Seated at table, he took the bread in his hands, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them. That inevitably called their attention to his hands, and maybe, as it did so, they would have seen the nail marks in his wrists. But it was not the nail marks which they afterwards cited to the apostles as the means by which they had known him, but rather the action of breaking the bread itself: 'they related . . . how he was known to them in the breaking of the bread'.
On two exceedingly significant occasions the Lord had broken bread in his hands and distributed it to his disciples. The first occasion was at the feeding of the five thousand (see Luke 9:16). The disciples who were close enough to see what was happening would never have forgotten the astounding sight as the bread multiplied itself in those hands. What is more, the miracle had been subsequently used by the Lord as a parable of the giving of his flesh and blood for the life of the world (see John 6:32–59). Now the stranger, who had just completed a long survey of the Old Testament showing that the divine plan was for Messiah to give his body for his people's sins, took the bread into his hands, blessed, broke and distributed it to them. At once they knew him: it was an inimitable gesture of self-revelation.
The second occasion had been in the upper room at the celebration of the last Passover and the institution of the Lord's Supper. Cleopas was not present on that occasion; for all we know he may not have been present at the feeding of the five thousand either. He would certainly have heard of both. The mysterious talk on both occasions of Christ's giving of his body and blood had obviously not made sense to the apostles let alone to Cleopas, not even after he died, until just now the stranger had demonstrated that the Old Testament was full of prophecies, ceremonies, types and prototypes [p 375] of Messiah's destined sacrificial self-giving. Now as the stranger once more broke the bread and gave it to them, it all came together and made sense. 'Their eyes were opened and they knew him.'
Still today, though at a deeper level, we recognize the authentic Saviour of the world by that same gesture: none other in the world of human history offered up his body for our personal redemption.
That same night the two disciples returned to Jerusalem. The last time they had gone up to Jerusalem they had been hoping that Jesus would prove to be king and redeem Israel (see Luke 24:21). This time it was different. Now they knew he was king. Now they had become aware of a redemption infinitely bigger than the limited political deliverance they had originally been hoping for. And now their faith and hopes were based on a foundation that neither opposition nor even death itself could overthrow.
In Jerusalem they found the eleven and others gathered together and reporting that the Lord had indeed risen and appeared to Simon. Then he appeared again, and this time they were temporarily terrified. On the road to Emmaus he had come alongside them naturally as any fellow-traveller might have done; but on this occasion he suddenly appeared in the midst of them. Instinctively they thought that this must be a spirit and not the man, Jesus of Nazareth, whom they had known; and they felt that terror which human beings sense in the presence of bodiless or disembodied spirits.
To calm their fears he demonstrated, insofar as they could grasp it, what 'resurrection' means. He first asserted his essential identity with the Jesus they had known: 'it is I myself', he said (Luke 24:39). Moreover the identity was not merely at the level of the human spirit, but at the physical level of the body. 'See my hands and my feet', he said. John tells us they still carried the marks of the nails (see John 20:27); but what Luke records is that Christ invited his disciples to use their sense of touch to establish that in resurrection he still possessed a body of flesh and bone. They still found it too good to be true; so he asked for something to eat, and ate the fish they gave him, in order to demonstrate further that while in one sense even as he stood in their midst he was no longer with [p 376] them (see Luke 24:44), but was already in another world, subject to different physical laws from theirs, yet he was the same Jesus as he was when he was with them.
He had eaten with them before he suffered (see Luke 22:15–16) the literal Passover lamb which bespoke his death. He ate now (see Luke 24:43) a literal fish to demonstrate the physical reality of his resurrection. When, therefore, we hear the king promise (see Luke 22:30) that we shall eat and drink with him at his table in his kingdom, we might be unwise to suppose that 'eating' is absolutely nothing more than a metaphor for spiritual fellowship. Doubtless eating there will be a very different thing from eating here. But different as that world may be from this, it is not completely different: it now holds the real, glorified, but still human, body of Jesus Christ our Lord.
iii. Briefing for mission (Luke 24:44–53)
At Luke 22:35–38 at the end of the Passover meal Christ had briefed his apostles for their world mission. Now at the end of this meal he briefs them again. On the former occasion he had concentrated largely on the question of the source of supply of the money and other material things necessary for their missionary work. On this occasion he concentrated on the spiritual aspects of their mission. First, the basis and content of the gospel they were to preach. Their message was not a philosophy built by logic on the basis of general axioms. It was a gospel based on certain historical events prophesied in the Old Testament and fulfilled in history by Jesus, namely the sufferings, death, burial and resurrection of the Messiah; and the fact that his life, death, burial and resurrection fulfilled those biblical predictions was itself to be part of the gospel (see Luke 24:44–46).
Secondly, their gospel was to offer to all who would repent forgiveness in the name of Jesus: not in general terms in the name of God's general kindness and love but specifically in the name of the historical person Jesus who suffered died and rose again (see Luke 24:47).
Thirdly, this gospel of forgiveness was to be preached worldwide to all mankind without discrimination of any kind. At the [p 377] same time the preaching of this gospel was to start from Jerusalem (see Luke 24:47). The gospel was not to spring up simultaneously in several different parts of the world as though it were based on some general or universal self-evident truth that might simultaneously occur to different people in different times and in different places. The preaching was to start from Jerusalem because the forgiveness it offered was based and should for ever remain based on what took place when God's incarnate Son suffered, died and rose again just outside the city of Jerusalem. And the proclamation of this unique salvific event was to be made in the first instance by men who could act as witnesses to its historical truth (see Luke 24:48).
Fourthly, there was the question of the empowering of the mission (see Luke 24:49). Important as the historical basis of the proclamation was, the kingdom of the king was not to be advanced by a simple recitation of the historical events. The messengers were to be empowered in their witness by the Holy Spirit sent upon them by the ascended Saviour; and conversion to Christ would be effected in the hearers by his supernatural work of regeneration.
Such then was the briefing which Christ gave to his apostles and disciples after his resurrection in Jerusalem.
And now the last stage of the king's journey on earth is complete, and he must proceed to the goal that was always in view from the time the journey began: the king 'having suffered these things will now enter into his glory'. Today he must go alone, and leave his servants to do his service, preach his gospel and spread his kingdom here on earth; one day he will return and introduce them too into his glory. With this Luke comes to describe that indescribably august event, the ascension of the king:
'And he led them out until they were over against Bethany: and he lifted up his hands and blessed them': no dumb priest he, like Zechariah silent before a bewildered people (see Luke 1:22), but true high priest, who at his ascension drew from his people such a response of praise to God as shall never die away.
'And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he parted from [p 378] them, and was carried up into heaven. And they worshipped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple, blessing God'.
For the moment there is nothing more to be said. Let us join them, and all the great multitude of the redeemed, in their joy and worship of the king.
Notes
45 Our Lord's affirmation that 'this generation shall not pass away until all these things happen' (Luke 21:32) has led to much debate on the meaning of the term 'generation'. For a full discussion of the problem see Marshall, Luke, 779–81. The event has shown that 'generation' was not intended in its temporal sense. Of the other possible interpretations perhaps the best is to take the whole phrase as a strong asseveration that all these things shall be accomplished, in the same spirit as the next verse (Luke 21:33): i.e. this nation would perish first before these things should fail to find fulfilment. Another way would be to follow the Jewish usage in which certain generations were thought and spoken of as peculiarly wicked, notably the generation of the flood, whom God had to destroy, and the generation in the wilderness, who apostatized from God and were condemned never to enter the promised land. Of all the perverse generations ever to have lived that surely was the most perverse that rejected its King Messiah and delivered him over to the Gentiles to be put to death. Christ himself called it an evil generation (Luke 11:24), and affirmed that from it should be required the blood of all the Old Testament martyrs (Luke 11:50–51). In saying, then, that this generation should not pass away until his second advent, our Lord may have been indicating that the nation that rejected him would continue officially to reject him until his second coming. There would be no qualitative change.
On the other hand he could have been using the term 'generation' in its other (Greek) meaning i.e. 'race' or 'nation', and so meaning that in spite of all the scattering of Israel for their rejection of their Messiah, the race itself should not perish before the destined redemption and reconciliation should take place at the second coming.
46 KJV, RV 'decease', NIV, ESV 'departure'= Gk. exodos. [p 383]
English (US) · 