Luke 21

Subdivision 2. (Luke 21:37-38; Luke 22:1-71; Luke 23:1-56.)The Cross and its Salvation. We have now, as in the other Gospels, the descent to the cross, but which takes here, as has been already stated, that peace-offering character which is so entirely in unison with all that has been before us in the book. The shadow on the cross itself is in no wise what Matthew and Mark have pictured. It is just indicated, but not felt as there. The glory of its accomplishment shines through it and irradiates it. Correspondingly the descent thither is less protracted, the detail is less minute. In Gethsemane, indeed, the effect of the conflict upon His human frame is given; as not elsewhere: for Luke’s is, as we know, the Gospel of His humanity; but the conflict itself is not so fully brought before us. Upon the cross there is suffering, but not distance; and the Saviour and His salvation are completely manifested.

Luke 21:37-22

Section 1. (Luke 21:37-38; Luke 22:1-62.)Anticipations. Anticipations of the cross naturally fill now the short space of time which yet remains before it. He is a willing sacrifice; not taken unawares, but with the full consciousness of all that is to come upon Him. The disciples on the other hand, in spite of all His forewarnings of what would so profoundly affect their whole future, are still unprepared for it. He is occupied, therefore, here in setting it before them, with its consequences and lessons. We must wait, indeed, for John; to see how perfectly He does this; and how at this time His human heart overflows towards them with divine fulness. Luke, of all the synoptists, is nearest John; but here, on that very account, seems to be limited by him; while he is yet outside the sphere of the previous Gospels.

1. We see first how many consenting wills lead Him onward to the cross. The wicked wills of men; pursuing independently their wretched ends, are yet under the control of that divine will which in holiness and loving-mercy governs all. A suited preface this to that which follows. The first thing we are apt to see is man’s will, and that under the government of Satan; as it was here: and these things are just as truly to be owned, with all their consequences in responsibility and judgment, as if they were the whole truth, which they are so far from being. We may consider them by themselves, or as simply against the will of God; which in their wickedness they were.

Yet the whole mystery of sacrifice in heathendom, coming into light in the Old Testament, and crowned with the glory of prophecy, guides on the course of human history to the Great Sacrifice which was to come. The Son of man goeth as it was determined; yet most freely following out the will of God; and now faith looks back in the memorial instituted by Himself, to this as the centre of the ages: the salvation of man, the manifestation of God. (1) In the temple day by day, teaching as never man taught, the crowds hanging upon His lips, those who looked little below the surface might say with the priests themselves, “The world goes after Him. “But the more they feared, the more they were inflamed against Him, seeking His death. An awful colleague appears: Satan; in Judas the “trafficker,”* ready to make merchandise of his Lord. And these all take their own way, follow their own will, as if God had none, or knew nothing. Yet Satan knows and trembles (James 2:19); and goes on as if he knew not: such is the infatuation of sin.
(2) The type-shadow of that in which they thus were to have their part was now brooding over them. Other eyes were watching it with what mingled feelings. It was the shadow upon the dial-piece of time which had now reached the decisive moment when it was to pass into the brightness which should illuminate all else. But how pass? Thank God, that is not any more a question. Follow where the man with the water goes in, and there you will find the place prepared which only He can fill. For the Old Testament leads thus to the New; the pitcher merely of water to where presently flow out the living streams in their fulness. This seems to be the meaning which we cannot doubt there must be in the sign given to the disciples here. Christ was going to the place already prepared for Him. (3) When the hour is come, the Lord takes His place, and the apostles with Him. It is striking how many times more, compared with the other Gospels, the official title of the twelve is used in Luke. We might have expected this rather in Matthew; but there, as in Mark and John; it occurs but once, while Luke has it six times. And we can understand, I think, clearly why this is so, when we consider the evangelic character which Luke has throughout. The heart being filled, the going forth of the “good news” which had filled it necessarily follows. The recurrence of the word here is therefore the very opposite of officialism. It is love which calls to and qualifies for and necessitates the mission, -the overflowing of the heart of God towards men. Here the Lord shows how His heart goes out. The strong Hebrew iteration most fittingly expresses it: “With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer.” He is closing, as the words following intimate, His earth-sojourn with them, and the old dispensation together. He closes it with honor, magnifying it by His celebration of it, while longing for the better thing beyond, its glorious fulfilment in the Kingdom of God. His suffering was the only way to this fulfilment, and itself the assurance, the fullest that could be given; of His longing after it. He celebrates the old feast, therefore, before He institutes the new; in which He emphasizes, as none of the other Gospels do, its character as a remembrance. As the passover in its full meaning was anticipative, though a memorial of the deliverance from Egypt, the Supper, on the contrary, has its blessedness in being commemorative only. The work of which it speaks is done -complete for ever: the joy is to realize that it is finished. The work is central, closing the old, bringing in the new economy, the new covenant; displacing the temporal with the eternal. The language used in Luke here is also characteristic in its evangelic appropriateness. “My blood shed for many” in Matthew and Mark both, is here “shed for you;” as the bread also is “My body which is given for you.” The appropriation is here not by them, but to them. He would have them realize all the consolation -all the tenderness of it. With a pang comes the realization that the hand of the traitor is with Him on the table. The Son of man was, indeed, going in the way determined; but that altered nothing as to the guilt of him who in his wickedness had set himself to accomplish what was the purpose of God. “Woe to that man,” He says, “by whom the Son of man is betrayed.” But Luke touches this less than any other of the evangelists, and he only notices in a general way the questioning that arises among the disciples on account of the Lord’s words. 2. There follow what, I think, stand here together as lessons of the Cross; in which are plainly the roots of the Lord’s teaching. But the Cross is indeed, as has been said, the great central point of light in human history, and therefore the lesson of lessons: God and man alike displayed in it; God and man come together, man opposed, and reconciled. What have we not in the Cross? In a sense, all lessons are lessons of it; but here, it is with the Cross in view that they are given; and none the less that disciples show themselves even yet as knowing nothing of it. How much do we know of it yet? And is it the gilded cross of the church fane? or the bare and bloody cross of the Christ of the Gospels? (1) The controversy among the disciples as to who was to be accounted the greatest among them is peculiar to Luke as to the form and place in which we find it here. But it is the echo of what we find elsewhere in Matthew and Mark, and the manifestation of a spirit which would naturally show itself upon other occasions. In the history of the Church, how terribly has it shown itself all through: of which Matthew also has given us Luke’s forewarning (24: 49). Whether it is given by Luke in the sequence of time or not, it is evident that we are to read it as here given: brought into plain; naked opposition to the spirit of Him who was now descending so manifestly to the lowest depths of His humiliation, -to that which, above all, our necessity and His love united to bring Him into. For them the Kingdom of God was still but as the kingdoms of the nations, and they knew not that the humbling oneself as a little child was the way of greatness in it. The Lord, as He had done before, reminds them of the essential difference between dignity among fallen men; and that where divine love ruled.

The title of “benefactor,” Euergetes, is that by which one of the Ptolemies is known in history, and was often bestowed upon the Roman emperor. But this flattery was not to be among His disciples; but the greater as the younger, and the leader as in the servant’s place. Who was the greater in men’s thoughts, the one who was at table or the one that served there? In Him what did they see? The Greatest was the One who served them all! But on His part He was not unconscious of their faithful continuance with Him in His temptations at the hands of men and Satan throughout His ministry. They were thus shown to have after all another spirit than what their present contention would imply. Love had wrought in them also, and love would exalt them to a place in His Kingdom at His table, appointed to a kingdom as the Father had appointed Him, and to sit on thrones judging under Him the tribes of Israel. So far as rule is service, love may desire rule; and where need is, the love that serves does rule; while that which seeketh not its own can have a pleasure which it seeks, and as love, joy in love. Thus the table and the throne can be rewards in the Kingdom of God, looked for and sought after, while not departing from the Saviour’s rule. The way appointed for the Kingdom is the Cross, the sacrifice of love; and “if we suffer, we shall also reign with Him.” (2) In the next lesson there is shown a ministry which is not of love, and yet love reigns in it: the sifting of God’s wheat by a skilful, but not a friendly hand. “Satan has demanded to have you,” says the Lord; “that he may sift you as wheat.” It is in that character the accuser of the brethren, as with Job of old, would test their pretension; and he found that it was no light thing to be in Satan’s sieve. For Simon the Lord has to pray that his faith, sore tried as it is, may not fail; it is in danger, it would seem, of fatal lapse. Nay, he has really turned aside; he must be “turned back”; but then with a gain, for he is now able, spite of the weakness he has shown; to strengthen others: “when thou hast turned back, strengthen thy brethren.” Would it not seem as if, after all, Satan had nearly succeeded? too nearly, surely, for Peter to claim a victory. His faith has not altogether failed, but that is due only to the intercession of Another: he has in fact a terrible fall. What gain can there be in all this? how can he have learned how to strengthen others, -himself just proved so feeble! and what did Satan’s sieve accomplish? or did it accomplish anything? if not, why was it permitted? All is answered by the fact of what faith is; and of where, being what it is, its strength is found. Faith is dependence upon another; self-distrust, the consciousness of inherent weakness, is therefore necessary to it. We see, then, how it would be possible for defeat to be a victory; how Satan’s sieve would then be that strange ministry of evil of which the Cross is the fullest example: for Simon the bringing him out of a strength which was but weakness, into a conscious weakness which would he strength, and in which his lesson learnt would enable him not only to stand himself, but to strengthen his brethren. Thus all is plain; and in that which follows the Simon who needed this is unveiled to us. Honest, earnest, zealous -all that, -his “Lord, I am ready to go with thee both to prison and to death” displays the Simon whose faith in Christ needed to be strengthened by a fall. The end of this story is not yet reached; but the comforting assurance is read plainly in it that (as Paul proved it at a later day) the “messenger of Satan” may be God’s missionary too, to do His needed work in the souls of His own. Yet, had he taken warning, Peter might have escaped, not without his lesson learnt, but by learning it from the lips of the Lord. That before cock-crowing he would thrice deny Him, might have been so accepted as the revelation of his weakness and danger as to save him from it, by delivering him from the need. Instead of this, he resisted the gracious Voice that would have shielded him from the evil; and the prophecy had to take effect. Even then there remained for him, when strength and pride were smitten down together, the comfort of the exhortation: “thou, when thou hast turned back, strengthen thy brethren.” (3) The Lord goes on to warn His disciples of the altered circumstances in which now they would find themselves. The cross was His definite rejection both by Israel and the world. He was submitting to it, and they must submit, and expect to find the full edge of its opposition. When He had sent them forth before, they had lacked nothing: He had effectually provided for them. Now, although His faithful love could not cease, yet they were to be permitted to feel the condition of things. Accordingly, they were to take with them what they had, and go armed, as in a hostile country: better have no garment than no sword.

He uses the figurative language so common with Him, and by which He would exercise their hearts with regard to all His utterances; indeed, ours as well as theirs. Presently Peter is using his sword; appealing evidently to the words here, as so many have appealed since, only to find how sadly he had misinterpreted them. “The weapons of our warfare are not carnal,” says the apostle afterwards, “but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds.” The sword does not naturally symbolize mere defensive warfare; and the spiritual sword is the word of God alone. The true disciple will not meet the opposition of the world with a passive resistance merely, but with that which has power over the conscience and heart. If the world is in active opposition to Christ we are to be His soldiers; and that which is the food of mighty men furnishes at the same time for the battle-field. Thus no one can properly assimilate the bread of God, without becoming so far a champion. The disciples did not understand it. “Lord, behold,” they said, “here are two swords.” He replied, “It is enough.” For the present, it was of no use to press it further. When the Spirit of God should bring to their remembrance all that He had said to them, they would understand it better. 3. He goes out, as He was accustomed to the Mount of Olives, and we have now (more briefly than in the other Gospels,) the mystery of Gethsemane. We have already sought to show the character of the suffering there, so far as it is permitted to us to enter into it. The depths who can penetrate? The mysteries of His Person and of His work combine here to make us realize that “no one knoweth the Son but the Father,” and the danger of any speculation as to these divine things. Luke, from the character of his Gospel, does not enter so fully into this suffering, for the same reason that the Cross itself does not exhibit the cup in its bitterness, as the previous Gospels do.

And we must not mistake for this the physical effects upon Him which Luke alone describes. Even the significant name of the place, Gethsemane, the “oil-press,” is not given here; and John makes no mention either of this or of the agony endured there. Each writer is divinely guided in what he gives or withholds, and the only evangelist who was one of the three selected by the Lord to watch with Him in that hour of agony is the only one who omits all notice of it. Those who dwell most upon the bitterness of the “cup” that was before Him, are they who tell us of the hymn before their starting out. Luke, who dwells upon the effects for others, emphasizes by repetition the Lord’s warning, “Lest ye enter into temptation.” But he does not speak of the selection of the special three to be with Him; a selection which shows, as in the transfiguration, the sanctuary character of that to which they are admitted. We do not hear the threefold repetition of the prayer, nor see Him prostrate on the ground as He utters it. The appearance of the angel also relieves the darkness. It is not the forsaking of the Cross, although His human frame is oppressed, and needing the ministry that He receives. We dare not say with some, that His soul required it.

He was going out to that in which He would be absolutely alone, and where all the blessing of man; all the fulfilment of the divine counsels, would depend upon His ability to endure it all. Who could imagine an angel helping Him on to this? But the body suffers, and presently the strain upon it is seen in the “sweat, as it were great drops of blood,” that fall down upon the ground. Laborer for God and man as He is, His labor is a warfare also: the enemy is here, as He presently says to those who come to apprehend Him: “This is your hour, and the power of darkness.” The Seed of the woman is planting His heel upon the head of the old serpent, but His heel is bruised in doing this. In the weakness of perfect Manhood He suffers, and conquers by suffering. The darkness of the hour is on the disciples also. Coming back to them, He finds them sleeping for sorrow. And again He has to urge on them the peculiar character of that which they are meeting: “Rise and pray, that ye enter not into temptation.” 4. Immediately a multitude are upon Him, headed by Judas, who, according to a preconcerted signal, draws near to kiss Him. Of all signs that could have been given, it was surely that of the most brazen; smooth-faced hypocrisy. The Lord shows His deep sense of the insult: “Judas, betrayest thou the Son of man with a kiss?” On the other hand the zeal of a disciple would do Him the wrong of defending Him. A sword is out and a servant of the high priest is smitten. The appeal they make to Him has evident reference to His own words: were they to arm themselves with swords without using them? But we must be in communion with Christ to use His word aright. Was He so weak as to need help at hands like theirs? He does not answer this as in Matthew, by any assertion of how the Father’s angels waited upon His will; but according to the manner of Luke puts forth His power in grace, and heals the wound. Yes, power He has; but now to lay down His life and take it again; they knew not yet the Cross as the symbol of fullest, widest, sweetest authority. He turns to the multitudes, to appeal against their treatment of Him as a robber, when day by day He had been openly with them in the temple, and they had not laid hold of Him. They had waited for their hour and found it; darkness had favored them: alas, in reality that “power of darkness” which brooded over and swayed men’s minds. They knew not what they were doing, or whither they were going, because that darkness had blinded their eyes. 5. The multitude lead Him to the house of the high priest; but the first thing we are called to see there is the conclusion of that story of Simon Peter which we have already heard announced to him by the Lord. It is a brief one. He follows His Master into the place of His mock trial, hoping to escape notice amid the crowd that had swarmed in after Him; but thus obliged already to deny Him with his looks, if not his words. The rest soon follows. He is seen in the light of the enemy’s fire, at which he is warming himself.

Accusation after accusation brings out denial. In the midst of it all, the crow of a cock startles him into remembrance, and he must have turned, spite of his danger, his eyes upon the well-known Figure, silent, patient, amid the rabble of His accusers. At that moment, “the Lord turned and looked upon Peter.” How the eyes met! Then the whole horror of his position burst upon him. “He went out and wept bitterly.”