Luke 23

Luke 23:26-56

Section 3. (Luke 23:26-56.)The Offering up and its Fruits. In the story of the Cross the peculiar character of Luke is unmistakable. He omits most of the Lord’s suffering from the mere wickedness of men. We do not read of the scourging or the crown of thorns. The mockery round the cross is more briefly given. The darkness falling upon the land is noticed, but there is no cry to One who has forsaken Him. On the other hand, the fruits of His work of atonement are seen all through: in the prayer for the forgiveness of His murderers; in the story of the dying robber; as well as in the rending of the veil of the temple. Even His last words, “Father, into Thy hands I commit My spirit,” have their own significance in this way. The Gospel of the Manhood is seen also. The centurion’s testimony is to the “righteous Man.” And the lament of the women of Jerusalem is in accordance with this: that human sympathy too simply natural for the Lord, spite of its manifestation of the better side of man’s nature, unreservedly to accept.

1. This lamentation of the women is the first thing here, after the account, given in all the synoptists, of the cross being laid upon Simon: the need of cross-bearing by the disciple being a necessary thing to hold up before us all. To the women He replies with lamentation for lamentation. They have more cause to weep for themselves and their children than for Him, for the day of their sorrow was near at hand in which the blessing would be theirs who had no children. In the midst of a generation the fire of whose wrath could kindle after this sort in the green and fruitful tree, what must be the lot of those who were like the dry wood, fit fuel for the flame? This is not divine wrath of which He is speaking, though divine wrath indeed might give them up to it, but what they would inflict one upon another. The sufferings of those shut up in the cauldron of that besieged city are matters of common history. The Lord would lead them to consider the state before God in which the nation as a whole was, already putting their hand to that which as the consummation of their guilt would ensure the awful doom that was just at hand.
2. The cross is reached, and He is placed upon it, two malefactors with Him, one on either side. And now He pleads for those who have placed Him there the ignorance in which they have done it: a thing which leaves them yet the possibility of shelter in the city of refuge; and which the apostle accordingly takes up afterward with the people in his pleading with them to repent and turn to God (Acts 3:17), as Paul applies it to himself also: “Howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly, in unbelief” (1 Timothy 1:13). Thus the Lord has fulfilled His own parable (Mark 13:6-9): the barren fig-tree is to be digged about and dunged, in order that it may yet be seen if it will bring forth fruit. This, notwithstanding His sentence pronounced upon it (Matthew 21:19), which He will give them still the opportunity to avert, as Nineveh averted theirs. And such is the mercy of God. Heedless and heartless, they part His garments among them, casting the lot. Luke is briefest of all as to this, of which John will show us another side. The superscription over him in the languages of wisdom-seeking, of empire, of religion; publishes His title to the world. And now the cry begins to ring out, though in mockery, of salvation. “He saved others” say the rulers: “let Him save Himself, if He be the Christ, the chosen of God.” Even the soldiers take it up after their own fashion: “If thou be the King of the Jews, save Thyself.” And then one of the robbers makes the impossible conjunction: “If Thou be the Christ, save Thyself and us.” Truly impossible to put these things together. But the rulers know no more of salvation than the soldiers or the robber. A Christ who would save Himself could not be the Christ predicted by the prophets, or the Saviour of others, and Isaiah had pictured exactly what was passing before their eyes. Who could doubt the application of such words as we find here? “Therefore will I divide Him a portion with the great, and He shall divide the spoil with the strong: because He hath poured out His soul unto death; and was numbered with the transgressors, and bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors” (Isaiah 53:12). Here was the secret of the Cross unveiled as the mystery of salvation; and for the Jew with his ritual of sacrifice not to understand it seems to us now almost incomprehensible. The veil was upon their heart, as the apostle declares. Pharisaic pride refused the humbling of the gospel. A Christ crucified was to the Jew a stumbling-block. But it pleased God to give a lesson of salvation which was to accompany the story of the Cross, just in the place where every eye directed to that Cross should see it. Suddenly the voice of one of the malefactors rebukes his fellow. He, a dying man involved in the same sentence, does he not fear God, before whom he is soon going? does he not fear with that sin upon him which had brought them both justly where they were? but here was One who had done nothing amiss. Then with this guilt upon himself also, and confessing it, he turns with the boldest possible prayer to this confessed Sinless One. “Jesus,” he says, -“Jehovah Saviour,” -he could not be ignorant of the meaning Of the name he uttered -“Jesus, remember me when Thou comest in Thy Kingdom.” Immediately he is answered -more than answered -“Verily I say unto thee, Today shalt thou be with Me in Paradise.” We can imagine many things, of course, as to what had inspired him with a faith like this. Whatever he may have known of the Lord, however, at a former time, both Matthew and Mark assure us that “those who were crucified with Him reviled Him.” The fair meaning of this has been denied without reason. The fact seems mentioned as if for the purpose of cutting off those methods of making faith easier (and therefore less notable) in the dying man, and the grace of God necessarily, at the same time, less conspicuous also. We all are familiar with the saying, that “there was one such case, that none might despair; and there was but one, that none might presume.” Let us rather say that here is a pattern case of salvation, outlined in the sharpest manner that could be imagined, and placed in the most conspicuous place that could be given to it. Without works, except bad works, -without sacrament or ritual of any kind, -by no slow process and by no conditional salvation, -this condemned malefactor is given at once the perfect assurance of a place that very day with his Lord in Paradise.*
   Thus the answer of grace goes beyond even the boldness of such a prayer; and when indeed does not grace exceed all possible expectations? Who could have asked or thought that God would give His Son to die for sinners? and He who has done this, “how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?” How perfectly does all this suit the peace-offering Gospel! The mockery and insult call forth no response from the blessed Sufferer: He seems all unconscious of it. The need that sought Him, the faith that recognized under such disguise the Lord of glory, drew from the smitten Rock the living waters.
3. The record of divine accomplishment in that hour is told in the briefest way. The darkness that comes over the land is just mentioned, and traced to its cause, the darkening of the sun itself. There follows as connected with it the end of spiritual darkness. With the veil of the temple rent, the sanctuary is open, and God is in the light. This is the characteristic of Christianity, and the result of His entrance into that darkness of which the darkness of nature was but the external sign. Luke places the cause and effect together here, ignoring, as so often elsewhere, the order of time. But with the cry of “Father,” the darkness is ended: the cry of abandonment has been answered; the cup which alone He dreaded is drained (compare the notes on Matthew and Mark); He has but now in peace to depart. The death lying upon man has still to be taken for the perfecting of atonement: God must be owned in regard to the whole penalty on sin, and Matthew has shown us the resurrection of the saints as connected with this. For doctrinal statements of all that is involved here we must wait for the epistles; but here we have the work itself whose meaning, they explain. The word used in Luke for His dying is, as in Mark, “He expired” -“breathed out.” It is the simple reality of death as man endures it, quite different from the terms used in Matthew and John. It is passive endurance; in the others activity of will, though in surrender. Here, as true Man; He dies like other men; committing His spirit to His Father, His work accomplished.
4. The faith of the Gentile centurion is recorded in a different form to that which it takes in the other Gospels: “he glorified God, saying, In very deed this Man was righteous.” Righteous He is emphatically, not merely, as with others, in the comparative sense: this all that he has seen attests. Prompt and out-spoken in his confession; the Gentile takes the first place now, as he has since done for many centuries. He is the first sign of the change impending. But Luke shows us also a multitude of Jews returning heart-smitten from the spectacle of the cross. For Israel also there is hope in this precious death. We have learned also something of the significance of these ministering women who are seen waiting as the darkness lifts. Things are in transition: if the nation has rejected her King, God too is moving; His purposes in connection with His Son are not to be defeated.
5. The intervention of God is seen more evidently in the provision of a sepulchre suited for that incorruptible body: a sepulchre that has never seen corruption. His grave appointed Him with wicked men, He is delivered from it, and is with the rich man after He has died. He is buried by a Joseph from Elkanah’s and Samuel’s city, Ha-Ramathaim, (or Arimathea,) the city of the “two heights”: names which cannot but speak to us of the elevation which is to be His, and to which He is to lift His people, as the true Joseph in the advancement following His sufferings (See Sam. 1, notes). In this connection the burial of Christ will have for us a deep significance, as the apostle shows us; but it would carry us too far now to speak of it. The women still are here as watchers; and even though the new day has not shined upon them, they are heralds of it.

Luke 23:56-24

Subdivision 3. (Luke 23:56; Luke 24:1-53.)Resurrection and Ascension to Heaven. The sorrow is past; the suffering is over; upon it all rises the glory of a serene and perfect day. The Lord risen; there is peace with God accomplished, acceptance in the Beloved; and with ascension; not only heaven opened, but (as another has said) “heaven furnished for us.” What strikes one especially in these resurrection scenes in Luke, as compared with the other Gospels, is the large place the word of God has in them. This is still, no doubt, the continuation of that Human Face which, as we have seen abundantly, the third Gospel presents to us. The word of God, as that by which in his true life man lives, (as He Himself affirms from Deuteronomy,) was that by which He walked and to which He ever appealed, which He honored and held up, whether before His own, or His enemies. In these last scenes it assumes peculiar prominence. In the journey to Emmaus it is that by which He leads the perplexed disciples to a firmer faith before He manifests Himself to them in the breaking of bread. Afterwards with the eleven He refers to what is written in the Law of Moses and in the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Himself, and opens their understanding to understand the Scriptures.

His ascension is to be a new light over all, the basis of mysteries hidden in the Old. Testament itself and which necessitate a new testimony afterwards to be committed to a fresh apostle sent forth from Christ in glory, and which is distinctively what he calls it in one place, “the gospel of the glory of Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:4, R.V.).

1. The light of the resurrection morning dawns with comparative slowness in Luke’s Gospel. Even because it is the Gospel of peace, we are made to see all the exercise and perplexity about it, and have that upon which all peace rests established upon the surest foundations. Here at first we have but the announcement, “He is alive,” carried to the apostles by those who had themselves been only taking their spices to the grave to complete His burial, and hide away for ever their best hopes! The angels, announcement has in the very fact that it is by angels an air of distance in it, intensified by the reserve and reproof pervading the message. They do not even promise a meeting with Him: He is alive; had He not told them He would rise? why seek the living One among the dead? The women are perplexed and terrified; the apostles sceptical: these are tales, idle tales, bred in the minds of enthusiastic and visionary women: just the thought of a noted sceptic of these latter days. Peter runs, however, to the sepulchre: nothing is said of his companion; John, who will relate the visit in his own Gospel. He sees the linen clothes lying, their tenant gone, and departs, wondering.
2. We are now made to accompany two disciples, of whom we have heard nothing before and shall hear nothing again; and of whom we only know the name of one, Cleopas, upon a sorrowful walk to Emmaus, a village sixty furlongs outside Jerusalem. Their backs upon the city at such a time, and under the peculiar circumstances which they themselves relate, is surely significant. Perplexity and discouragement have taken hold of them; and in such a condition a backward course is inevitable.*
   While, then, they were on the road discussing the events that had happened, “Jesus Himself drew near and went with them.” It is a sign of their condition that “their eyes were holden, that they did not know Him.” In answer to His inquiries, the whole thing comes out, and “we trusted that it had been He who is going to redeem Israel” tells the tale of doubt and trouble. Yet they have heard the women’s story of His being alive, and of Peter’s visit to the sepulchre. What to think they know not. Then, with a reproof for their unbelief, He begins to unfold the long prophetic burden of the ages past, through Moses and all the prophets following: their hearts burning within them as faith is rekindled at the sacred fire. They reach the village while He is reciting; and there they stay the wondrous Stranger from passing on; as He appears ready to do. Constrained by their solicitude, He enters the house to abide with them. There, in the breaking of bread He is revealed to them at last. It is striking the character of all this: the first announcement made to women; here, before the apostles, two simple disciples are taken up to be ministered to, and with painstaking earnestness to bring them back to simplicity of faith. When they come back to Jerusalem, they find that He has appeared unto Simon; and we realize that here there is more pastoral work of the same tender sort. This appearing, however, is not given us any where at large, as we might have expected. They meet, as it were in secret, the Lord and His failed disciple, before He meets them together, Peter and the rest of the eleven. The tender style of all this, how like the Lord it is! How unofficial, too.

It is plain that this is One who is going to be Himself the Shepherd of every individual soul of His, and not put them into the hands of some ecclesiastical go-between. It is, “One is your Teacher, even Christ; and all ye are brethren.” Scripture is used, and they are built up with it: no miracles take the place of it: we hear again the Voice that said, “If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead.” 3. (1) But the time is now come for fuller manifestation; and we see Him presently in the midst of the gathering of His people, inviting them to assure themselves fully of the reality of what they behold. With the doors shut, as John expressly tells us, His appearance in the midst impresses itself upon them as that of His bodiless spirit rather than the reappearance of the One they knew so well as He had lived and moved among them. In the tenderest way He invites them to make proof of His being in the body, to look at and handle Him, with the very wounds He had received still upon Him. When even yet, because of the greatness of the joy, they cannot realize it, he takes of the food they give Him and eats before them. It is the blessed fact and its full certification to those who are to be His witness that are put before us in Luke, and not yet the doctrines in connection with it, which are to be given us elsewhere. (2) The Word is again appealed to, and His solemn testimony given to the written Word as it existed in His day, His sufferings and resurrection being a special part of this prophetic witness. Repentance and remission of sins are to be preached to all nations in the name of the Risen One; Jerusalem, guilty above all, to be first addressed. Thus Luke maintains its character to the end. Nothing is said of miraculous attestation, nor of baptism: the gospel is left in its own sufficiency. But they, its witnesses, are to be clothed with the power of the Spirit, the promise of the Father, sent by Himself: a step in advance of both Matthew and Mark, and in the line of the Acts and Paul. (3) The gospel is to be first addressed to Jerusalem, but He does not ascend from thence, but from Bethany. “From thence He had set out to present Himself as King to Jerusalem. It was there that the resurrection of Lazarus had taken place; there that the family which present the character of the remnant -attached to His Person, now rejected, with better hopes -in the most striking manner received Jesus. It was thither He retired when His testimony to the Jews was ended; that His heart might rest for a few moments among those He loved; who, through grace, loved Him. It was there that He established the link (as to circumstances) between the remnant attached to His Person and heaven. From thence He ascends.” (Synopsis.) He ascends with His hands stretched out in blessing, to take that place before God in which He abides, the Representative of His people, the Head of blessing for them. While Israel and the earth wait for His return to find what the Old Testament has pledged in their behalf, His place in heaven is the sign of a new order of blessing which the “mysteries” of Christianity are to take up and unfold to us. Luke is here again the precursor of Paul while John has first his own glories to display, which, while seen on earth, are essentially of heaven; and at last will unite heaven and earth together, as surely as He in whom we recognize them unites already in His Person; in one indissoluble perfection; God with Man.