You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘miracles’ tag.
The Fifth Sunday in Lent, Passion Sunday, is March 26, 2023.
Traditionally, the Fifth Sunday in Lent — Passion Sunday — begins a two-week season called Passiontide, which encompasses Palm Sunday (next week) and Holy Week.
Some traditionalist churches cover crosses and images with dark or black cloth from this Sunday throughout most of Holy Week. Crosses and crucifixes can be uncovered after Good Friday services. Statues remain covered until the Easter Vigil Mass takes place on Holy Saturday.
Readings for Year A can be found here.
The Gospel is as follows (emphases mine):
John 11:1-45
11:1 Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha.
11:2 Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill.
11:3 So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.”
11:4 But when Jesus heard it, he said, “This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”
11:5 Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus,
11:6 after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.
11:7 Then after this he said to the disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.”
11:8 The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?”
11:9 Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world.
11:10 But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them.”
11:11 After saying this, he told them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.”
11:12 The disciples said to him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right.”
11:13 Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep.
11:14 Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead.
11:15 For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.”
11:16 Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”
11:17 When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days.
11:18 Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away,
11:19 and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother.
11:20 When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home.
11:21 Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.
11:22 But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.”
11:23 Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”
11:24 Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”
11:25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live,
11:26 and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
11:27 She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”
11:28 When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.”
11:29 And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him.
11:30 Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him.
11:31 The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there.
11:32 When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
11:33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.
11:34 He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.”
11:35 Jesus began to weep.
11:36 So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!”
11:37 But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”
11:38 Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it.
11:39 Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.”
11:40 Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?”
11:41 So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me.
11:42 I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.”
11:43 When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!”
11:44 The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”
11:45 Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.
Commentary comes from Matthew Henry and John MacArthur.
Part 1 of this exegesis covers the first 19 verses.
When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went to meet Him; Mary stayed at home (verse 20).
John MacArthur describes what it was like at home during this time of grief and mourning:
Let me give you kind of a picture. When someone died, as I said, they put them in the ground right away. Burial followed death immediately. As a result of the death, people would be notified. They would come to the house. There would be a procession, a procession to wherever they were going to place the body. They’re not necessarily digging a hole, but like Jesus who was buried in a cave. There were many caves in the Bethany area as well as around Jerusalem. Many believers were buried this way all over the ancient world around the Mediterranean.
So it’s very likely they put Him in some kind of cave on some kind of shelf, which is typically what they did in catacombs kind of places. He would be placed there. The procession would then go back to the house and mourners would stay for seven days, seven days. This is how long the initial part of the funeral lasted. For seven days, people would be sitting in the house. Now, they couldn’t eat until the body was taken to be buried. They didn’t want any kind of levity. They didn’t want any kind of joy being expressed. They didn’t want any kind of normalcy until the body had been buried, and then they would serve a meal. They actually had designed a meal of bread, hard-boiled eggs and lentils, kind of a traditional meal to feed the people who were going to stay.
Then they would continue to have to care for those people or others would bring food as the mourners stayed for seven days. What they did was not just sit quietly like Job’s friends and say nothing. They wailed out loud. They mourned. They wailed loudly. Women led this, so it was kind of a screaming, wailing situation. They saw this as comfort because of the sympathy behind it. It was traditional. They expected it. For seven days, this wailing went on.
So when Jesus comes and Lazarus has been dead four days, this is still in full bloom. Sympathy was everybody’s duty. It was really a beautiful custom. By the way, at the end of the seven days, the wailing, sort of the formal wailing – and by the way, there were hired mourners as well, people who were professional wailers who sort of led the rest. They embraced that family for seven days, and then after the seven days of really intense wailing, they would also carry on mourning for 30 days. There would be some expressions openly, publicly of mourning for 30 days as those friends and those people came around. During the time of wailing and mourning, there would be reminiscences and eulogies and remembrances. There would be the sharing of stories and whatever was necessary to comfort. It really was a beautiful custom.
MacArthur offers possibilities on how Martha would have heard Jesus was there:
… maybe the messenger who came with them ran ahead. Do you remember the messenger who went to tell Jesus that Lazarus was sick? He must have come back with them. Maybe he waited the two days they waited, and then came back with them and maybe ran ahead a little bit. We can’t be certain about that, but somebody informed her that Jesus was near, but not quite at the village.
She heard that Jesus was coming, went to meet Him, but Mary stayed at the house. Now, here we come to these two sisters again, and they perform kind of according to their personality and their temperament. If you go back to Luke 10 for a minute, this is where we meet them earlier in the ministry of Jesus, quite a bit earlier in the ministry of Jesus. Jesus and His disciples are traveling along and He enters a village. By the way, it’s Bethany, that same village, and a woman named Martha welcomed Him into her home. She knew about Him, must have known about Him. We don’t know at this point how much. She welcomed Him into her home. “She had a sister called Mary who was seated at the Lord’s feet, listening to His word.”
… And she came up to Him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister had left me to do all the serving alone?” I mean that’s a pretty bold lady. “Then tell her to help me.” Whoa. “But the Lord answered and said to her, ‘Martha, Martha.”
You know, when anybody repeats your name twice, you know you’re in trouble? My mother was just, “Johnny, Johnny.” “Martha, Martha, you’re worried and bothered about so many things.” They don’t matter. “Only one thing is necessary, for Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her.” No way I’m going to tell her to go to the kitchen and fuss around. She’s chosen the right thing. So there’s the initial characterization. Mary is the pensive, thoughtful, inward, melancholy kind of personality and Martha is the busy one, the active one, the aggressive one. So we see that again.
Go back to John 11. The word comes. She gets the word that the Savior is on the way, and as soon as she gets the word that He’s on the way, she charges in that direction. Verse 20, Mary stays back. She’s melancholy. She’s broken hearted. She’s sad. She’s pensive, in deep sorrow. She doesn’t even know Jesus is coming. She doesn’t even know that because she doesn’t find it out until verse 28 when Martha comes back and tells her. She’s just caught up in the loss of her brother, the agonizing loss of this brother that she loved.
Martha said to Jesus that, if He had been there, Lazarus would not have died (verse 21).
MacArthur thinks that that thought was going around in Martha’s head since Lazarus died:
… as Martha reached Jesus, the thought that had no doubt plagued her brain and she had shared it with Mary for the four days, was that Jesus should have been there; and if Jesus hadn’t left, this wouldn’t have happened … “If you had been here my brother would not have died.” Here she is telling Him what to do again. This is definitely her. This is her. The first time she said anything to Him, she told Him what to do. The second time, she scolds Him again and tells Him if He’d had done what He should have been doing, He would have been there, and this never would have happened.
Even so, she said, she knew that God would give Jesus whatever He asked of Him (verse 22).
MacArthur says:
This lady got a solid Christology while she was in the kitchen overhearing what He was saying to Mary. She got it. By the way, Jesus no doubt stayed at their home Many times, but somehow with all that she knew, there was this pain that testifies to a faith that comes short of believing His power to raise the dead. She says, “I know you can ask the Father and you can do that now, and God will give you if it’s His will.”
Matthew Henry’s commentary says much the same:
How weak her faith was. She should have said, “Lord, thou canst do whatsoever thou wilt;” but she only says, “Thou canst obtain whatsoever thou prayest for.” She had forgotten that the Son had life in himself, that he wrought miracles by his own power.
Jesus told Martha that her brother would rise again (verse 23).
Martha took that to mean that he would rise again in resurrection on the last day (verse 24).
Henry explains, linking those verses to today’s first reading, Ezekiel 37:1-14, about the resurrection of the dry bones into an army:
Thy brother shall rise again. First, This was true of Lazarus in a sense peculiar to him: he was now presently to be raised; but Christ speaks of it in general as a thing to be done, not which he himself would do, so humbly did our Lord Jesus speak of what he did. He also expresses it ambiguously, leaving her uncertain at first whether he would raise him presently or not till the last day, that he might try her faith and patience. Secondly, It is applicable to all the saints, and their resurrection at the last day. Note, It is a matter of comfort to us, when we have buried our godly friends and relations, to think that they shall rise again. As the soul at death is not lost, but gone before, so the body is not lost, but laid up. Think you hear Christ saying, “Thy parent, thy child, thy yoke-fellow, shall rise again; these dry bones shall live.”
… As bone shall return to his bone in that day, so friend to his friend.
Jesus stated that He is the resurrection and the life; those who believe in Him, even though they die will live (verse 25) and everyone who lives and believes in Him will never die. Then He asked Martha if she believed that (verse 26).
MacArthur says:
I just want to affirm to you, folks, there will be a resurrection. This is not a misinterpretation of Scripture because Martha got the same thing from Jesus. It is the truth. You will rise to life or damnation. You will receive a body for eternity. Then our Lord says, “Martha, look, I am the resurrection and the life.” Listen, not, “I will be.” I – what? “I am.” This is the fifth of seven I ams in the gospel of John.
I AM\\\am. That’s the Tetragrammaton, the name of God. I am the resurrection and the life. He doesn’t say, “I can raise the dead.” I am the resurrection. I can pray the Father to give life. I am life. “He who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?” So here is this great claim, this claim to be the I am, to be the one who is the source of life. I am the embodiment of life. I am the life.
Just as in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Not in the future, “I will be.” In the present, “I am.” Here is the I am. Jesus is the life itself. He is everlasting life. That everlasting life, by the way, that resurrected life in heaven is for anyone who believes. Do you believe? That’s the compelling question. Do you believe? If you do not believe, you are without excuse. If you do not believe that He is the resurrection and the life, you are without excuse. Why? You must believe He is the life. He created everything that lives. You must believe He is the resurrection because He not only raised the dead, but He himself was raised from the dead; and because He lives, we live also.
Martha affirmed her own faith, saying, ‘Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world’ (verse 27). That is what the Old Testament teaches.
MacArthur says:
She didn’t even know about the cross yet because He hadn’t died. She didn’t know about His resurrection yet because it hadn’t happened, but she believed everything that had been revealed up to that point. She is an Old Testament saint. She is an Old Testament believer. I do believe. I do believe.
After Martha professed her belief in Jesus, she went back to the house to fetch her sister Mary, telling her privately, ‘The Teacher is here and is calling for you’ (verse 28).
Henry says:
[2.] She called her secretly, and whispered it in her ear, because there was company by, Jews, who were no friends to Christ. The saints are called into the fellowship of Jesus Christ by an invitation that is secret and distinguishing, given to them and not to others; they have meat to eat that the world knows not of, joy that a stranger does not intermeddle with. [3.] She called her by order from Christ; he bade her go call her sister. This call that is effectual, whoever brings it, is sent by Christ. The Master is come, and calleth for thee. First, She calls Christ the Master, didaskalos, a teaching master; by that title he was commonly called and known among them. Mr. George Herbert took pleasure in calling Christ, my Master. Secondly, She triumphs in his arrival: The Master is come. He whom we have long wished and waited for, he is come, he is come; this was the best cordial in the present distress. “Lazarus is gone, and our comfort in him is gone; but the Master is come, who is better than the dearest friend, and has that in him which will abundantly make up all our losses. He is come who is our teacher, who will teach us how to get good by our sorrow (Ps 94 12), who will teach, and so comfort.”
When Mary heard what Martha said, she rose quickly to go to Him (verse 29).
Jesus was still not in the village at that point, but at the place where Martha had met Him (verse 30).
The Jews who were in the house consoling Mary saw her get up quickly and leave; they followed her because they thought she was going to her brother’s tomb to weep there (verse 31). In other words, they wanted to be available to console her at the tomb and not leave her on her own.
Now we have a body of witnesses for the upcoming miracle.
Henry says:
Those Jews that followed Mary were thereby led to Christ, and became the witnesses of one of his most glorious miracles. It is good cleaving to Christ’s friends in their sorrows, for thereby we may come to know him better.
Note that Mary says the same thing to Jesus as had Martha in verse 21, the big difference being that Mary knelt at His feet when she spoke those words (verse 32).
Henry points out:
Now here, [1.] Her posture is very humble and submissive: She fell down at his feet, which was more than Martha did, who had a greater command of her passions. She fell down not as a sinking mourner, but fell down at his feet as a humble petitioner. This she did in presence of the Jews that attended her, who, though friends to her and her family, yet were bitter enemies to Christ; yet in their sight she fell at Christ’s feet, as one that was neither ashamed to own the veneration she had for Christ nor afraid of disobliging her friends and neighbours by it. Let them resent it as they pleased, she falls at his feet; and, if this be to be vile, she will be yet more vile; see Cant 8 1. We serve a Master of whom we have no reason to be ashamed, and whose acceptance of our services is sufficient to balance the reproach of men and all their revilings. [2.] Her address is very pathetic: Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. Christ’s delay was designed for the best, and proved so; yet both the sisters very indecently cast the same in his teeth, and in effect charge him with the death of their brother.
When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping, He was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved (verse 33).
Both our commentators say that Jesus experienced a deep, groaning inner pain. In today’s secular world, we would call it an existential pain in the truest sense of the word: a yawning chasm of sorrow.
MacArthur tells us:
“He was deeply moved,” deeply moved. Literally weeping is klaiō in the Greek. It means to sob. And when He sees all this sobbing, He was deeply moved. That is a very interesting word, deeply moved. It can mean being emotional. It can mean being angry. It can mean being indignant. It can mean groaning, feeling inner pain and turmoil. This is deep emotion. This is a word that sort of grabs everything. There is sorrow, sadness, indigence, anger, suffering. It’s just every emotion grips Him in His spirit, in His inner person, His person, and He was troubled, reflexive verb, troubled in Himself or He allowed Himself to feel the trouble. He let Himself feel everything.
This is like what Hebrews says, “He is in all points tempted like as we are.” He’s been touched with the feelings of our infirmities as our great High Priest. He’s sad because He’s lost His friends. Now, He loved Lazarus. It says that back in verse 3, and it’s phileō. It’s, He had an affection for him, human. He lost His friend.
He loved Mary and Martha. There’s no question that He loved them. Everybody recognized how much He loved them. But there’s more there than that. It’s not just the pain that He feels in the loss of a friend. It’s not just the pain that He feels as He identifies with these two sisters. He feels a far more transcendent pain. He feels a cosmic pain. He understands that He is surrounded by unbelievers, who are representative of a nation of unbelievers who are all being catapulted into eternal judgment because they will not receive Him. He understands that looking down through human history. He understands the pain and suffering of all humanity that faces the same inevitable hour of human loss. He understands that how severe this loss is when you know you’re losing one to hell forever.
I mean this is a massive moment of agony. Maybe a little bit like His agony in the garden as He anticipates the sin-bearing. He deeply enters in, not only to the wounded hearts and sorrows of people who are broken because they’ve lost the one they love; but He sees way more than that. He understands what sin has done to the world and what unbelief has done to these people who are gathered around Him.
Henry offers this analysis:
… Christ not only seemed concerned, but he groaned in the spirit; he was inwardly and sincerely affected with the case. David’s pretended friends counterfeited sympathy, to disguise their enmity (Ps 41 6); but we must learn of Christ to have our love and sympathy without dissimulation. Christ’s was a deep and hearty sigh.
[2.] He was troubled. He troubled himself; so the phrase is, very significantly. He had all the passions and affections of the human nature, for in all things he must be like to his brethren; but he had a perfect command of them, so that they were never up, but when and as they were called; he was never troubled, but when he troubled himself, as he saw cause. He often composed himself to trouble, but was never discomposed or disordered by it. He was voluntary both in his passion and in his compassion. He had power to lay down his grief, and power to take it again.
Jesus asked where they had placed Lazarus, and the mourners replied, ‘Lord, come and see’ (verse 34).
Jesus began to weep (verse 35).
It’s even better in the King James Bible, which gives us the shortest sentence in Scripture:
35 Jesus wept.
Henry tells us:
A very short verse, but it affords many useful instructions. [1.] That Jesus Christ was really and truly man, and partook with the children, not only of flesh and blood, but of a human soul, susceptible of the impressions of joy, and grief, and other affections. Christ gave this proof of his humanity, in both senses of the word; that, as a man, he could weep, and, as a merciful man, he would weep, before he gave this proof of his divinity. [2.] That he was a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief, as was foretold, Isa 53 3. We never read that he laughed, but more than once we have him in tears. Thus he shows not only that a mournful state will consist with the love of God, but that those who sow to the Spirit must sow in tears. [3.] Tears of compassion well become Christians, and make them most to resemble Christ. It is a relief to those who are in sorrow to have their friends sympathize with them, especially such a friend as their Lord Jesus.
The Jews said (verse 36), ‘See how he loved him!’
But some of them asked (verse 37), ‘Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?’
Henry rightly calls this remark ‘sly’:
Here it is slyly insinuated, First, That the death of Lazarus being (as it seemed by his tears) a great grief to him, if he could have prevented it he would, and therefore because he did not they incline to think that he could not; as, when he was dying, they concluded that he could not, because he did not, save himself, and come down from the cross; not considering that divine power is always directed in its operations by divine wisdom, not merely according to his will, but according to the counsel of his will, wherein it becomes us to acquiesce. If Christ’s friends, whom he loves, die,—if his church, whom he loves, be persecuted and afflicted,—we must not impute it to any defect either in his power or love, but conclude that it is because he sees it for the best. Secondly, That therefore it might justly be questioned whether he did indeed open the eyes of the blind, that is, whether it was not a sham. His not working this miracle they thought enough to invalidate the former; at least, it should seem that he had limited power, and therefore not a divine one. Christ soon convinced these whisperers, by raising Lazarus from the dead, which was the greater work, that he could have prevented his death, but therefore did not because he would glorify himself the more.
Serendipitously, we had the reading of Christ curing the blind man last week in the reading for the Fourth Sunday in Lent, Laetare Sunday, Year A (2023) here and here.
Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb, which was a cave with a stone lying against it (verse 38).
Henry explains why our Lord was disturbed:
Christ repeats his groans upon his coming near the grave (v. 38): Again groaning in himself, he comes to the grave: he groaned, (1.) Being displeased at the unbelief of those who spoke doubtingly of his power, and blamed him for not preventing the death of Lazarus; he was grieved for the hardness of their hearts. He never groaned so much for his own pains and sufferings as for the sins and follies of men, particularly Jerusalem’s, Matt 23 37. (2.) Being affected with the fresh lamentations which, it is likely, the mourning sisters made when they came near the grave, more passionately and pathetically than before, his tender spirit was sensibly touched with their wailings. (3.) Some think that he groaned in spirit because, to gratify the desire of his friends, he was to bring Lazarus again into this sinful troublesome world, from that rest into which he was newly entered; it would be a kindness to Martha and Mary, but it would be to him like thrusting one out to a stormy sea again who was newly got into a safe and quiet harbour. If Lazarus had been let alone, Christ would quickly have gone to him into the other world; but, being restored to life, Christ quickly left him behind in this world. (4.) Christ groaned as one that would affect himself with the calamitous state of the human nature, as subject to death, from which he was now about to redeem Lazarus.
Then we come to another famous verse — the previous one being verse 35 — one which I have also committed to memory in the King James Version.
Jesus said, ‘Take away the stone’, and Martha said that, after four days, there was a stench (verse 39).
The King James Version is far superior:
39 Jesus said, Take ye away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith unto him, Lord, by this time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days.
It was a very typical thing of Martha, a practical woman, to say.
Henry explains why she said it:
Probably Martha perceived the body to smell, as they were removing the stone, and therefore cried out thus …
It is not so easy to say what was Martha’s design in saying this. [1.] Some think she said it in a due tenderness, and such as decency teaches to the dead body; now that it began to putrefy, she did not care it should be thus publicly shown and made a spectacle of. [2.] Others think she said it out of a concern for Christ, lest the smell of the dead body should be offensive to him. That which is very noisome is compared to an open sepulchre, Ps 5 9. If there were any thing noisome she would not have her Master near it; but he was none of those tender and delicate ones that cannot bear as ill smell; if he had, he would not have visited the world of mankind, which sin had made a perfect dunghill, altogether noisome, Ps 14 3. [3.] It should seem, by Christ’s answer, that it was the language of her unbelief and distrust: “Lord, it is too late now to attempt any kindness to him; his body begins to rot, and it is impossible that this putrid carcase should live.“ She gives up his case as helpless and hopeless, there having been no instances, either of late or formerly, of any raised to life after they had begun to see corruption. When our bones are dried, we are ready to say, Our hope is lost. Yet this distrustful word of hers served to make the miracle both the more evident and the more illustrious; by this it appeared that he was truly dead, and not in a trance; for, though the posture of a dead body might be counterfeited, the smell could not. Her suggesting that it could not be done puts the more honour upon him that did it.
Henry also tells us why Jesus asked for the stone to be moved:
He would have this stone removed that all the standersby might see the body lie dead in the sepulchre, and that way might be made for its coming out, and it might appear to be a true body, and not a ghost or spectre. He would have some of the servants to remove it, that they might be witnesses, by the smell of the putrefaction of the body, and that therefore it was truly dead. It is a good step towards the raising of a soul to spiritual life when the stone is taken away, when prejudices are removed and got over, and way made for the word to the heart, that it may do its work there, and say what it has to say.
Jesus perceived Martha’s doubt because He reminded her (verse 40), ‘Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?’
MacArthur makes an excellent observation:
You say you believe. If you believe, you’re going to see the glory. Get your eyes off the corpse and on the Christ. Set your heart on the Lord. Wait to see the glory revealed. We need to live in that kind of expectancy. We’re not looking for miracles, but I will tell you this, folks. When you really believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, you see Him display His glory throughout all of your life. I tell people all the time: I live in the middle of a glory display all the time. I’ve never seen a miracle, but I live in the middle of a glory display by the amazing, astounding, incomprehensible providence of God by which He orders every circumstance, every day of my life to reveal His purposes and His will. The complexity of it is more staggering than if He interrupted natural law and did a single miracle. How many miracles does it take to create a complex reality out of all kinds of contingencies of the non-miraculous? It’s what He does every day.
My whole life is a glory display. I just go from one day to the next, to the next, to the next. And if you’re looking and believing, you will see the same thing. You will see God in your life. You will see God in circumstances. You will see God working His purposes. That’s what He called upon her to look for.
So they took away the stone and, looking upward, Jesus prayed, ‘Father, I thank you for having heard me’ (verse 41)’; ‘I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me’ (verse 42).
Henry says:
Thus he stirred up himself to take hold on God in the prayer he was to make, that he might offer it up with strong crying, Heb 5 7. Ministers, when they are sent by the preaching of the gospel to raise dead souls, should be much affected with the deplorable condition of those they preach to and pray for, and groan in themselves to think of it …
1. He applies himself to his living Father in heaven, so he had called him (ch. 6 17), and so eyes him here.
(1.) The gesture he used was very significant: He lifted up his eyes, an outward expression of the elevation of his mind, and to show those who stood by whence he derived his power; also to set us an example; this outward sign is hereby recommended to our practice; see ch. 17 1. Look how those will answer it who profanely ridicule it; but that which is especially charged upon us hereby is to lift up our hearts to God in the heavens; what is prayer, but the ascent of the soul to God, and the directing of its affections and motions heavenward? …
(2.) His address to God was with great assurance, and such a confidence as became him: Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me.
[1.] He has here taught us, by his own example, First, In prayer to call God Father, and to draw nigh to him as children to a father, with a humble reverence, and yet with a holy boldness. Secondly, In our prayers to praise him, and, when we come to beg for further mercy, thankfully to acknowledge former favours. Thanksgivings, which bespeak God’s glory (not our own, like the Pharisee’s God, I thank thee), are decent forms into which to put our supplications.
[2.] But our Saviour’s thanksgiving here was intended to express the unshaken assurance he had of the effecting of this miracle, which he had in his own power to do in concurrence with his Father: “Father, I thank thee that my will and thine are in this matter, as always, the same.” Elijah and Elisha raised the dead, as servants, by entreaty; but Christ, as a Son, by authority, having life in himself, and power to quicken whom he would; and he speaks of this as his own act (v. 11): I go, that I may awake him; yet he speaks of it as what he had obtained by prayer, for his Father heard him: probably he put up the prayer for it when he groaned in spirit once and again (v. 33, 38), in a mental prayer, with groanings which could not be uttered.
When He had said that prayer, Jesus cried with a loud voice (verse 43), ‘Lazarus, come out!’
MacArthur gives us the emphasis from the original manuscript:
If you were reading this in the original language, it would read like this: “He yelled in a loud voice with a loud voice.” Why the double statement? He is literally at the pinnacle of His voice, and He had a powerful voice, you can be certain. He was a teacher. He taught every day. He taught in the open air, no amplification, except that which was natural. He could speak to crowds of 20,000 people and be heard. A powerful voice. I’m convinced that probably was the most melodious voice ever created. How could it be anything less than that. And with that loud, commanding voice, maybe like the voice of many waters in the imagery of Revelation chapter 1, He yells at the top of His voice without distorting His words and says, “Lazarus, come forth.”
The dead man then came out, his hands and feet bound in strips of cloth and his face wrapped in a cloth; Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, and let him go’ (verse 44).
I envision Lazarus wrapped like a mummy.
Henry tells us that this resurrection miracle not only recalls Ezekiel 37 but also our Lord’s resurrection and his Second Coming, when we shall be joined with our bodies once more for eternity:
By his word, he saith to souls, Live, yea, he saith to them, Live, Ezek 16 6. Arise from the dead, Eph 5 14. The spirit of life from God entered into those that had been dead and dry bones, when Ezekiel prophesied over them, Ezek 37 10. Those who infer from the commands of the word to turn and live that man has a power of his own to convert and regenerate himself might as well infer from this call to Lazarus that he had a power to raise himself to life. Secondly, Of the sound of the archangel’s trumpet at the last day, with which they that sleep in the dust shall be awakened and summoned before the great tribunal, when Christ shall descend with a shout, a call, or command, like this here, Come forth, Ps 50 4. He shall call both to the heavens for their souls, and to the earth for their bodies, that he may judge his people.
Many of the Jews who had accompanied Mary to Lazarus’s tomb and had seen what Jesus did believed in Him (verse 45).
MacArthur says that Lazarus might have lived another 30 years:
Tradition says he lived another 30 years. Maybe that’s true. Certainly, he lived for a while. This was not a temporary resurrection in that sense, in a human sense. We don’t know anything about the reunion of Mary and Martha. We don’t know anything about the shock and awe that must have just literally roared through the mourners. We don’t know anything about that. We don’t know anything about the conversations that Lazarus had after this.
Wikipedia states that the Eastern Orthodox tradition says that:
Mary’s brother Lazarus was cast out of Jerusalem in the persecution against the Jerusalem Church following the martyrdom of St. Stephen. His sisters Mary and Martha fled Judea with him, assisting him in the proclaiming of the Gospel in various lands.[17] According to Cyprian tradition, the three later moved to Cyprus, where Lazarus became the first Bishop of Kition (modern Larnaca).[18] All three died in Cyprus.[citation needed]
Whatever happened, the main point is, as MacArthur says:
All we’re interested in is the glory of the Son, and when He said, “Lazarus, come out,” and in a moment Lazarus was standing there, that’s the point of the story. The rest is irrelevant. In fact, in verse 40, Jesus says to Martha, “Didn’t I say to you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?” and they did. The purpose of this was to bring glory to God, and glory to God incarnate, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Ending on verse 45, how many are the ‘many’ that believed in Jesus?
MacArthur says:
I don’t know what the number is. Maybe it’s dozens. Maybe it’s multiple of 20. Maybe it’s 100 or more. I don’t know what the “many” is, but many mourners came, and they have been there now four days already, filling up the first seven days when everybody would be there. Now the resurrection has happened, and the mourners are still there. They have known the family. They have known Lazarus. They know he was dead. They know he’s been in the grave four days. They know what that means because Jews don’t embalm. They get it …
They believed and they were given the right to become children of God. Their sins were forgiven. They were redeemed. They became the children of God. They ceased being the children of the devil. They are the believing many, many in a relative sense. Many of the number that were there; not many of the nation. Many of the number that were there. They believed.
However, not everyone believed. John 11:46 says:
46 But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done.
A few verses later we read:
53 So from that day on they planned to put him to death.
54 Jesus therefore no longer walked about openly among the Jews but went from there to a town called Ephraim in the region near the wilderness, and he remained there with the disciples.
His hour had come.
The Fifth Sunday in Lent, Passion Sunday, is March 26, 2023.
Traditionally, the Fifth Sunday in Lent — Passion Sunday — begins a two-week season called Passiontide, which encompasses Palm Sunday (next week) and Holy Week.
Some traditionalist churches cover crosses and images with dark or black cloth from this Sunday throughout most of Holy Week. Crosses and crucifixes can be uncovered after Good Friday services. Statues remain covered until the Easter Vigil Mass takes place on Holy Saturday.
Readings for Year A can be found here.
The Gospel is as follows (emphases mine):
John 11:1-45
11:1 Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha.
11:2 Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill.
11:3 So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.”
11:4 But when Jesus heard it, he said, “This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”
11:5 Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus,
11:6 after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.
11:7 Then after this he said to the disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.”
11:8 The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?”
11:9 Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world.
11:10 But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them.”
11:11 After saying this, he told them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.”
11:12 The disciples said to him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right.”
11:13 Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep.
11:14 Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead.
11:15 For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.”
11:16 Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”
11:17 When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days.
11:18 Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away,
11:19 and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother.
11:20 When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home.
11:21 Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.
11:22 But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.”
11:23 Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”
11:24 Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”
11:25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live,
11:26 and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
11:27 She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”
11:28 When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.”
11:29 And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him.
11:30 Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him.
11:31 The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there.
11:32 When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
11:33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.
11:34 He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.”
11:35 Jesus began to weep.
11:36 So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!”
11:37 But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”
11:38 Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it.
11:39 Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.”
11:40 Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?”
11:41 So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me.
11:42 I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.”
11:43 When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!”
11:44 The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”
11:45 Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.
Commentary comes from Matthew Henry and John MacArthur.
As this is most of John 11, I will write this in multiple posts.
This last great miracle of resurrection was late in our Lord’s ministry and was His final truly public miracle. His last miracle was healing the Roman soldier’s ear in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before He was crucified.
John’s Gospel is the only one that has the story of Lazarus’s resurrection.
Matthew Henry’s commentary explains possible reasons for that:
In this chapter we have the history of that illustrious miracle which Christ wrought a little before his death—the raising of Lazarus to life, which is recorded only by this evangelist; for the other three confine themselves to what Christ did in Galilee, where he resided most, and scarcely ever carried their history into Jerusalem till the passion-week: whereas John’s memoirs relate chiefly to what passed at Jerusalem; this passage therefore was reserved for his pen. Some suggest that, when the other evangelists wrote, Lazarus was alive, and it would not well agree either with his safety or with his humility to have it recorded till now, when it is supposed he was dead. It is more largely recorded than any other of Christ’s miracles, not only because there are many circumstances of it so very instructive and the miracle of itself so great a proof of Christ’s mission, but because it was an earnest of that which was to be the crowning proof of all—Christ’s own resurrection.
John MacArthur says:
It was J.C. Ryle, the English cleric, who looked at this chapter and wrote these words, “For grandeur and simplicity, for pathos and solemnity, nothing was ever written like it.” It’s a pretty amazing statement from a man such as he was. This is an amazing chapter. It is the account of the miracle of our Lord raising Lazarus from the dead. And while the story, of course, in short is very familiar to us, in its detail, it is much more rich. So we want to make sure that we cover the detail. This is the climactic, culminating, fitting sign to end John’s list of signs in this gospel that point to the deity of Christ.
John’s purpose, we all know that, is to present Jesus Christ so that you might believe that He is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing, you might have life in His name. He has an apologetic purpose that you might believe Jesus is the Christ, and he has an evangelistic purpose that in believing you might receive eternal life, but it’s all about Christ. It’s all about Christ. Here, in chapter 11, we come to the last and most monumental public miracle that Jesus did. It’s the climactic one for John. There is one later miracle, but it’s in the dark and very private because of how it happened. It’s in the garden and it was Jesus reaching over and giving Malchus a new ear after Peter had hacked it off. But apart from that miracle in the dark, this is the last great public miracle that Jesus did …
If you look at verse 15 in this passage, Jesus says about not being there when he died, “I’m glad for your sakes, I was not there so that you may believe.” This miracle not only is an undeniable permanent evidence of the deity of Christ. It was for the purpose of producing greater faith in the disciples.
A certain man, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha, was ill (verse 1).
This is not the same Lazarus of Luke 16, whom the rich man in hell saw nestled in Abraham’s bosom. Nonetheless, our commentators find it of interest that Jesus chose the name Lazarus for that parable.
MacArthur says:
His name, Lazarus, not to be confused with the Lazarus in the beggar story, but an interesting parallel, isn’t it? That it was an issue of resurrection that was brought up in that story about that other Lazarus. That was a fictional Lazarus in the story that Jesus invented. But why two named Lazarus? It was a very common name, a very common name from the Old Testament name, Eleazar, Eleazar, a very familiar Old Testament Hebrew name. It means, whom God helps, whom God helps.
Henry explains how the name Lazarus evolved out of Eleazar:
… his Hebrew name probably was Eleazar, which being contracted, and a Greek termination put to it, is made Lazarus. Perhaps in prospect of this history our Saviour made use of the name of Lazarus in that parable wherein he designed to set forth the blessedness of the righteous in the bosom of Abraham immediately after death, Luke 16 22.
Our commentators have a few notes on Bethany.
Henry says:
They lived at Bethany, a village nor far from Jerusalem, where Christ usually lodged when he came up to the feasts. It is here called the town of Mary and Martha, that is, the town where they dwelt, as Bethsaida is called the city of Andrew and Peter, ch. 1 44.
MacArthur says there were two villages named Bethany:
They lived in the village of Bethany. That’s another interesting note because at the time that Jesus gets this message, He’s in another Bethany. The tenth chapter ends in verse 40. “He went away again beyond the Jordan to the place where John was first baptizing and was staying there.” That place, according to 1:28 of John was also called Bethany. So there was a Bethany beyond Jordan a day away from the Bethany of Lazarus and his two sisters.
Bethany is a small village. It means, house of the poor, house of poverty. That would be characteristic of that village. Perhaps that’s characteristic of the other village where Jesus was currently ministering. And by the way, many were coming and believing in Him. That’s how chapter 10 ends. Once He got out of Jerusalem, and out beyond the Jordan back where John started to minister, He began to reap the harvest of what John had planted in proclaiming Him. And the people out there said everything John said about Him is true, and they came to believe. That’s how chapter 10 ends …
Bethany, two miles from the eastern wall of Jerusalem, down the back slope of the eastern wall, across the Kidron brook, up the Mount of Olives around the bend and you’re in this little village of Bethany …
I can remember many years ago when Patricia and I were there and a number of times visiting there myself, but Patricia and I were there. I would say when we were there to find the traditional site of the grave of Lazarus and to go down the deep stairs into what is traditional said to be the place where he was entombed. I remember it was an Arab village at the time. There were Arabic women living there, Palestinian women living there, and we had the very bizarre occasion – Patricia will remember this – of having a lady offering us the opportunity to purchase her baby.
Now, I don’t know whether that was something she used as a device, but we were not interested in buying her baby. But that village, to this very day, is in Arabic named after Lazarus. So that’s the little village, and it is as nondescript, the last time I was there perhaps as it was even in ancient times.
Mary was the one who anointed our Lord with perfume; her brother Lazarus was ill (verse 2).
Was she Mary, the fallen woman who anointed His feet similarly at the Pharisee’s house?
Henry does not think so:
Here were two sisters, Martha and Mary, who seem to have been the housekeepers, and to have managed the affairs of the family, while perhaps Lazarus lived a retired life, and gave himself to study and contemplation. Here was a decent, happy, well-ordered family, and a family that Christ was very much conversant with, where yet there was neither husband nor wife (for aught that appears), but the house kept by a brother, and his sisters dwelling together in unity.
One of the sisters is particularly described to be that Mary which anointed the Lord with ointment, v. 2. Some think she was that woman that we read of, Luke 7 37, 38, who had been a sinner, a bad woman. I rather think it refers to that anointing of Christ which this evangelist relates (ch. 12 3); for the evangelists do never refer one to another, but John frequently refers in one place of his gospel to another. Extraordinary acts of piety and devotion, that come from an honest principle of love to Christ, will not only find acceptance with him, but gain reputation in the church, Matt 26 13.
Henry refers to Luke 7:36-50.
Nor does MacArthur:
What’s going on here? That story doesn’t come until chapter 12. But listen, that’s okay because that story had already been told in detail in Matthew and already told in detail in Mark and Matthew and Mark had been circulating for a very long time by the year 90 in the first century when John writes this gospel. And so even though he hasn’t yet given his account of it, he knows they know that that Mary is the one he’s talking about.
And so he literally builds his comment on the knowledge of Matthew and Mark, gospels written very much earlier.
MacArthur is referring to Matthew 26 and Mark 14, when Mary anointed our Lord in the house of Simon the leper.
Mary — Miriam — was as common a name then as it is now, so the Mary of Luke 7 is probably not the same as the Mary of John 11 and 12, Matthew 26 and Mark 14.
In any event, the Catholic, Episcopal and Lutheran churches’ feast day for Mary, Martha and Lazarus is July 29.
Mary and Martha sent a message to Jesus that Lazarus — ‘he whom you love’ — was ill (verse 3).
In Henry’s and MacArthur’s Bible translations the verse is as follows:
3 Therefore his sisters sent unto him, saying, Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick.
MacArthur looks at ‘behold’:
So this is going to take a day, a day to get from Bethany one to Bethany two. The message is very cryptic, very short. “Lord,” they acknowledge He is Lord. “Behold,” which means, this is urgent; this is sudden; this demands immediate response. “He whom you love is sick.” That’s the whole message. “He whom you love is sick.”
Since Jesus had left back in verse 40 of chapter 10 some weeks earlier, this man had become sick.
Henry elaborates on ‘he whom you love’:
His sisters knew where Jesus was, a great way off beyond Jordan, and they sent a special messenger to him, to acquaint him with the affliction of their family … The message they sent was very short, not petitioning, much less prescribing or pressing, but barely relating the case with the tender insinuation of a powerful plea, Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick. They do not say, He whom we love, but he whom thou lovest. Our greatest encouragements in prayer are fetched from God himself and from his grace. They do not say, Lord, behold, he who loveth thee, but he whom thou lovest; for herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us. Our love to him is not worth speaking of, but his to us can never be enough spoken of.
MacArthur explains the word ‘love’ in that verse:
They talk only of Jesus’s love for Lazarus. They think that will catch His heart, and here’s a very important insight: “He whom you love.” The word love here is not agapaō, not divine love. This is phileō, the love of a friend, personal affection, human love. Jesus loved this man as a friend. He had personal affection for him. It’s obvious that as God, He loves the world, that as God He loves His own who are in the world, and He loves them to perfection. He will tell them that in the upper room, but that’s not the thought here. That thought comes later. The thought here is this is a man for whom Jesus had deep affection. This is a man who filled a need in his own life for a friend.
When Jesus heard the message, He said that Lazarus’s illness would not lead to death but rather to God’s glory, in that the Son of God would be glorified through it (verse 4).
Henry says that this refers to the upcoming miracle:
It was for the glory of God, for it was that the Son of God might be glorified thereby, as it gave him occasion to work that glorious miracle, the raising of him from the dead. As, before, the man was born blind that Christ might have the honour of curing him (ch. 9 3), so Lazarus must be sick and die, that Christ may be glorified as the Lord of life.
Serendipitously, we had the reading of Christ curing the blind man last week in the reading for the Fourth Sunday in Lent, Laetare Sunday, Year A (2023) here and here.
John says that Jesus loved Martha, her sister and Lazarus (verse 5).
MacArthur points out that the Greek word for ‘love’ here is different to that in verse 3:
This time the word changes. This is agapaō. This is divine love. He loved this man Lazarus, about which we don’t know anything. He loved an obscure man like a man loves a friends. But he also loved this whole family with a divine love because they belonged to Him spiritually, like He loves His own who are in the world even to the maximum. So much love. He loves with a divine love and He loves with a human love.
MacArthur has an observation on our Lord’s humanity:
I know we talk about the humanity of Jesus and we have to, and He’s fully human. But almost all the time you hear someone talk about the humanity of Jesus they say, “Well, He lived and He hungered, and He thirsted, and He slept, and He was weary, and He died.” And all of those are human things, but what makes humans unique is relationships, and this is explains why when He gets to the grave, He cries. He cries at the thought that His friend is dead. This is a beautiful insight into the full humanity of Jesus. He is a man and like every person, He requires a friend, somebody who cares about Him. A perfect man with all the needs of a man.
You see, this is part of what makes Him such a merciful, faithful High Priest able to be touched with all the feelings of our infirmities because some of our infirmities have nothing to do with physical well-being. They had to do with relationships, right? Right? I mean isn’t the worst of it all? Isn’t that where the most pain comes from? You could probably take the cancer if all the relationships were what they should be, but His sympathy extends to understanding relationships. He’s been there. His friend that He had great affection for was sick, seriously sick.
After hearing that Lazarus was ill, Jesus stayed two days longer in the place where he was (verse 6).
I never understood why until I read Henry’s and MacArthur’s reasons for the delay. It was to bolster the Apostles’ faith, as we see later on.
In verse 4, John uses the word ‘accordingly’ — ‘as such’. He inserted parenthetical information about our Lord’s love for the three. Then comes verse 5, stating the delay: ‘Accordingly … Jesus stayed two days longer in the place where he was’.
Henry explains:
Now one would think it should follow, When he heard therefore that he was sick he made all the haste that he could to him; if he loved them, now was a time to show it by hastening to them, for he knew they impatiently expected him. But he took the contrary way to show his love: it is not said, He loved them and yet he lingered; but he loved them and therefore he lingered; when he heard that his friend was sick, instead of coming post to him, he abode two days still in the same place where he was … If Christ had come presently, and cured the sickness of Lazarus, he had done no more than he did for many; if he had raised him to life when newly dead, no more than he had done for some: but, deferring his relief so long, he had an opportunity of doing more for him than for any. Note, God hath gracious intentions even in seeming delays, Isa 54 7, 8; 49 14, etc. Christ’s friends at Bethany were not out of his thoughts, though, when he heard of their distress, he made no haste to them. When the work of deliverance, temporal or spiritual, public or personal, stands at a stay, it does but stay the time, and every thing is beautiful in its season.
Christ had raised two people from the dead soon after they died: Jairus’s daughter and the son of the widow of Nain. The raising of Lazarus would be even greater because he had been dead for four days.
After the two days had elapsed, Jesus said to the disciples, ‘Let us go to Judea again’ (verse 7).
The disciples countered, no doubt bewildered, asking why He would want to go to Judea again when the Pharisees had only recently tried to stone Him (verse 8). That is recorded in John 8:59.
Jesus responded, asking them if there were not 12 hours of daylight, therefore, those who walk during the day do not stumble because they see the light of this world (verse 9), but those who walk at night stumble because the light is not in them (verse 10).
MacArthur explains those two verses:
He answers with a very interesting Proverb. Verses 9 and 10, “Are there not twelve hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he doesn’t stumble. That is, nothing bad happens to him because he is in the light and he can see what he is doing and where he is going. But if anyone walks in the night, he stumbles. Bad things happen because the light is not in him.” What is the point of that sort of strange introduction?
Well, at this point we are now moving from the man, the critical man and the concerned sisters to the disciples. Now, they are puzzles. Why would you step back into this and here’s His answer. It’s a proverb, and the proverb is simple, very simple proverb. You can’t lengthen the daylight. You can’t shorten the daylight, right? Nothing any friend can do can lengthen the daylight. Nothing any enemy can do can shorten the daylight. It is what it is and it is fixed by God, and so is my life. No enemy can shorten it. No friend can lengthen it. It is what it is. And in that light of life which God has ordained for me, I will not stumble. That is to say, nothing will happen to me that is outside the plan. I’m not going in the dark. I’m going in the light of God’s divine day. A day can’t finish before it’s ordained end.
The time allotted to me to accomplish my earthly ministry is fixed. It’s fixed by God …
Jesus knew that His hour was coming, but it hadn’t come yet, and many times He’d said, “My hour hasn’t come. My hour hasn’t come.” And He escaped all of the plots and all of the mob violence. This has great application for us I think to realize that if you’re walking in the Spirit and serving the Lord, you have your day. Being a coward and taking all kinds of precautionary steps and not being faithful isn’t going to lengthen it; and being bold in the face of enemies isn’t going to shorten it because it is what God has ordained it to be.
Jesus then told the disciples that ‘our friend’ — meaning that they all knew him — Lazarus had fallen asleep, but He was going there to awaken him (verse 11).
The disciples took Jesus literally, because they said, ‘Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right’ (verse 12).
Jesus had been speaking about Lazarus’s death (verse 13). He then told the disciples plainly, ‘Lazarus is dead’ (verse 14).
Then He added, ‘For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him’ (verse 15).
That verse seems puzzling, but Jesus meant that the disciples’ faith would not have been increased had He been in Bethany and raised Lazarus from the dead sooner.
Henry says:
If he had been there time enough, he would have healed his disease and prevented his death, which would have been much for the comfort of Lazarus’s friends, but then his disciples would have seen no further proof of his power than what they had often seen, and, consequently, their faith had received no improvement; but now that he went and raised him from the dead, as there were many brought to believe on him who before did no (v. 45), so there was much done towards the perfecting of what was lacking in the faith of those that did, which Christ aimed at: To the intent that you may believe.
MacArthur adds:
The disciples were always struggling with faith, weren’t they? “O ye of little faith, O ye of little faith, O ye of little faith. Why don’t you believe?”
Yes, they believed in Him. Yes, they had affirmed that He was the Christ, the Son of God, but they needed faith to be strengthened and strengthened and strengthened. I mean it wasn’t just that they would believe, but that Mary and Martha would have their faith strengthened. And then down in verse 45, many Jews who came to Mary and got the whole story of the resurrection first hand, and were eyewitnesses of the living brother, believed in Him. This is a glory display that’ll produce faith, and it’ll also produce hostility that drives Him to the cross right on schedule.
Referring back to verses 7 and 8 about the return to Judea despite the dangers there, Thomas the Twin — Didymus — said to his fellow disciples, ‘Let us also go, that we may die with him’, meaning Jesus (verse 16).
Henry’s Bible phrases the verse as follows:
16 Then said Thomas, which is called Didymus, unto his fellow disciples, Let us also go, that we may die with him.
MacArthur says:
He gets a lot of bad press for that, but just think about this. This is a courageous pessimist. This is not a cowardly pessimist. He didn’t say, “Let’s get out of here or we will all die with Him.” He said, “Let’s go and die with Him.” This man has great faith, and this man knows what Luke 9:23 means. “If you want to come after Me, deny yourself. Take up your – “what? “ – cross.” It might cost us our lives, men. Let’s go.
Henry explains the names Thomas and Didymus:
Thomas in Hebrew and Didymus in Greek signify a twin; it is said of Rebekah (Gen 25 24) that there were twins in her womb; the word is Thomim. Probably Thomas was a twin.
When Jesus arrived in the Bethany of Lazarus and his sisters, He found that his friend had been in the tomb for four days (verse 17).
Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away (verse 18).
MacArthur gives us the timeline:
And so they go, and when they arrive he’s been dead four days; the day the messenger came, the two days, the day back, four days.
Henry has more:
When he came near the town, probably by the burying-place belonging to the town, he was told by the neighbours, or some persons whom he met, that Lazarus had been four days buried. Some think that Lazarus died the same day that the messenger came to Jesus with the tidings of his sickness, and so reckon two days for his abode in the same place and two days for his journey. I rather think that Lazarus died at the very instant that Jesus, “Our friend sleepeth, he is now newly fallen asleep;” and that the time between his death and burial (which among the Jews was but short), with the four days of his lying in the grave, was taken up in this journey …
MacArthur tells us what happens to the human body once it has been dead for four days:
Some might argue that since there was no way to be certain someone was dead, perhaps this was just a resuscitation of someone who was temporarily in that condition. But in the case of Lazarus, that’s not possible because this is someone who’s been dead four days, four days. Now, that really does matter. I mean it matters a lot.
And just to help you know how much that matters, I did a little research this week to find out what happens to a body in four days. Very interesting. This was not a theological resource, but as I opened up some research material, I was amazed to find out that all of the bad stuff happens by 72 hours. What happens in four days?
The Jews did not embalm. The Jews did nothing to stop the decay. They wrapped the body and sprinkled spices on it to mitigate the smell. That’s it. Here’s what happens in four days, pretty grisly stuff. The heart has stopped beating. The body cells are then deprived of oxygen, and they begin to die. Blood drains from throughout the circulatory system and pools in the low places. Muscles begin to stiffen in what is known commonly by the Latin, rigor mortis. That sets in after three hours.
By 24 hours, the body has lost all its heat. The muscles then lose their rigor mortis in 36 hours, and by 72 hours rigor mortis has vanished. All stiffness is gone and the body is soft. Looking a little bit deeper, as cells begin to die, bacteria go to work. Your body is filled with bacteria, but that’s another subject. The bacteria in the body of a dead person begin to attack, breaking the cells down. The decomposing tissue takes on a horrific look and smell and emits green liquids by the 72nd hour. The tissue releases hydrogen sulfide and methane as well as other gases. A horrible smell is emitted. Insects and animals will consume parts of the body if they can get at it.
Meet Lazarus. That’s the condition he’s in when Jesus arrives. That’s important. Everyone knows he is dead. As Martha says in verse 39, “Lord, by this time there will be a stench,” or as the King James said, “He stinketh,” because he’s been dead four days.
Look, they lived in a world of death. They didn’t live in a sterile world of mortuaries and undertakers and embalming fluids and all of that where the body disappears and you never see anything but somebody in a casket who looks like the horizontal member of a cocktail party with a suit and tie and dressed up and make up.
People lived with death. They lived with the realities of death. They lived with the horrors of death. That’s very important. It’s also very important to understand that there was a certain expectation, and it became a reality in this case of what a funeral was like. When someone died, family, friends, neighbors, even connected strangers poured into their life. Everybody showed up.
As such, many of the Jews went to Martha and Mary to console them about the loss of their brother (verse 19).
This exegesis concludes with part 2.
The Fourth Sunday in Lent, Laetare Sunday, is March 19, 2023.
Readings for Year A, including an explanation of Laetare Sunday — the joyful Sunday in Lent — can be found here.
The Gospel reading is as follows (emphases mine):
John 9:1-41
9:1 As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth.
9:2 His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
9:3 Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.
9:4 We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work.
9:5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
9:6 When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes,
9:7 saying to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see.
9:8 The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?”
9:9 Some were saying, “It is he.” Others were saying, “No, but it is someone like him.” He kept saying, “I am the man.”
9:10 But they kept asking him, “Then how were your eyes opened?”
9:11 He answered, “The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ Then I went and washed and received my sight.”
9:12 They said to him, “Where is he?” He said, “I do not know.”
9:13 They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind.
9:14 Now it was a sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes.
9:15 Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how he had received his sight. He said to them, “He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see.”
9:16 Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not observe the sabbath.” But others said, “How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?” And they were divided.
9:17 So they said again to the blind man, “What do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened.” He said, “He is a prophet.”
9:18 The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight
9:19 and asked them, “Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?”
9:20 His parents answered, “We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind;
9:21 but we do not know how it is that now he sees, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself.”
9:22 His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue.
9:23 Therefore his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.”
9:24 So for the second time they called the man who had been blind, and they said to him, “Give glory to God! We know that this man is a sinner.”
9:25 He answered, “I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.”
9:26 They said to him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?”
9:27 He answered them, “I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?”
9:28 Then they reviled him, saying, “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses.
9:29 We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.”
9:30 The man answered, “Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes.
9:31 We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will.
9:32 Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind.
9:33 If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.”
9:34 They answered him, “You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?” And they drove him out.
9:35 Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”
9:36 He answered, “And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.”
9:37 Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.”
9:38 He said, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped him.
9:39 Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.”
9:40 Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, “Surely we are not blind, are we?”
9:41 Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.
Commentary comes from Matthew Henry and John MacArthur.
This is the second of a two-part series. You can read Part 1 here. That said, this is also a long post as there is much to cover.
The Pharisees asked the man once more what Jesus did to him and how He opened his eyes (verse 26).
John MacArthur points out the irony here:
Well, this is pretty significant, folks, because now they just admitted what? That he was healed. They’ve just admitted that he was blind, and his eyes were opened. What did He do to you? How did He open your eyes? Maybe they were probing for some trick. Who knows?
The man said that he had already told them once before and that they would not listen; he asked them why they wanted to hear his answer again and if they wanted to become His disciples (verse 27).
MacArthur points out the man’s righteous sarcasm:
This is an outcast talking to the in-crowd. “Why do you want to hear it again? You don’t want to become His disciples too, do you?” Sarcasm. He just nails their sarcasm, their hypocrisy. This is a man who’s feeling the joy, feeling the confidence, feeling the strength of the conviction that he knows he’s dealing with a man who is from God, who is a prophet. And as the story goes, he comes to fully believe in Him for salvation …
Then the Pharisees came out with one of their favourite attacks, saying that he was one of Christ’s disciples, yet they, the notional religious grandees, were disciples of Moses (verse 28).
They added that they knew God had spoken to Moses but, as for ‘this man’ — Jesus — they knew not from whence He came (verse 29).
The Pharisees created the chasm between Judaism and Christianity that still exists today:
There’s that breach again. Moses and Christ, the church and the synagogue, Judaism and Christianity. Still at odds. We know this man is a sinner. We are from Moses … I think they knew He was from Nazareth, Galilee. They should’ve known where He was from in John 6 when He preached the sermon on the bread of life, He said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven. I have come down from heaven to give My life for the world.” He had said again, and again, and again, “I come from heaven.” He even mocked them by saying, “You think you know where I’ve come from.” Chapter 7. “But you really don’t know My heavenly origin.” When they said, “We don’t know where He’s from,” they simply meant, not so much the town, but we don’t know the origin of this man. We’re unwilling to say it’s God. In fact, they were convinced that He was satanic. Satanic.
I mean, this is the character of unbelief.
The man answered back, saying that what they were saying was astonishing; they did not know where He came from, yet He healed him (verse 30).
Henry elaborates on ‘an astonishing thing’:
First, He wonders at their obstinate infidelity (v. 30); not at all daunted by their frowns, nor shaken by their confidence, he bravely answered, “Why, herein is a marvelous thing, the strangest instance of wilful ignorance that ever was heard of among men that pretend to sense, that you know not whence he is, and yet he has opened mine eyes.” Two things he wonders at:—1. That they should be strangers to a man so famous. He that could open the eyes of the blind must certainly be a considerable man, and worth taking notice of. The Pharisees were inquisitive men, had a large correspondence and acquaintance, thought themselves the eyes of the church and its watchmen, and yet that they should talk as if they thought it below them to take cognizance of such a man as this, and have conversation with him, this is a strange thing indeed. There are many who pass for learned and knowing men, who understand business, and can talk sensibly in other things, who yet are ignorant, to a wonder, of the doctrine of Christ, who have no concern, no, not so much as a curiosity, to acquaint themselves with that which the angels desire to look into. 2. That they should question the divine mission of one that had undoubtedly wrought a divine miracle. When they said, We know not whence he is, they meant, “We know not any proof that his doctrine and ministry are from heaven.” “Now this is strange,” saith the poor man, “that the miracle wrought upon me has not convinced you, and put the matter out of doubt,—that you, whose education and studies give you advantages above others of discerning the things of God, should thus shut your eyes against the light.” It is a marvelous work and wonder, when the wisdom of the wise thus perisheth (Isa 29 14), that they deny the truth of that of which they cannot gainsay the evidence. Note, (1.) The unbelief of those who enjoy the means of knowledge and conviction is indeed a marvelous thing, Mark 6 6. (2.) Those who have themselves experienced the power and grace of the Lord Jesus do especially wonder at the wilfulness of those who reject him, and, having such good thoughts of him themselves, are amazed that others have not. Had Christ opened the eyes of the Pharisees, they would not have doubted his being a prophet.
The man continued, in all boldness. He said that God does not listen to sinners, but He does listen to those who obey His will (verse 31).
He went further, saying that, never since the world began had anyone been cured of blindness (verse 32), therefore, if this man were not from God, He would not have been able to do anything (verse 33), meaning effecting a miracle.
This man is a role model in the way he attacks the wilful ignorance of the religious authorities.
MacArthur says:
So, he’s become the preacher. He’s taken over the meeting. He’s talking to the leaders. First, he’s sarcastic, and now he’s specific, and clear-headed, and clear-minded, and faithful to the Old Testament, and even referring to the Old Testament that God doesn’t hear the prayers of sinners. He’s giving them an explanation of reality, a sensible, reasonable, logical explanation.
Henry analyses these verses in full:
a. He argues here, (a.) With great knowledge. Though he could not read a letter of the book, he was well acquainted with the scripture and the things of God; he had wanted the sense of seeing, yet had well improved that of hearing, by which faith cometh; yet this would not have served him if he had not had an extraordinary presence of God with him, and special aids of his Spirit, upon this occasion. (b.) With great zeal for the honour of Christ, whom he could not endure to hear run down, and evil spoken of. (c.) With great boldness, and courage, and undauntedness, not terrified by the proudest of his adversaries. Those that are ambitious of the favours of God must not be afraid of the frowns of men. “See here,” saith Dr. Whitby, “a blind man and unlearned judging more rightly of divine things than the whole learned council of the Pharisees, whence we learn that we are not always to be led by the authority of councils, popes, or bishops; and that it is not absurd for laymen sometimes to vary from their opinions, these overseers being sometimes guilty of great oversights.”
b. His argument may be reduced into form, somewhat like that of David, Ps 66 18-20. The proposition in David’s argument is, If I regard iniquity in my heart, God will not hear me; here it is to the same purport, God heareth not sinners: the assumption there is, But verily God hath heard me; here it is, Verily God hath heard Jesus, he hath been honoured with the doing of that which was never done before: the conclusion there is to the honour, Blessed be God; here to the honour of the Lord Jesus, He is of God.
(a.) He lays it down for an undoubted truth that none but good men are the favourites of heaven (v. 31): Now we know, you know it as well as I, that God heareth not sinners; but if any man be a worshipper of God, and does his will, him he heareth. Here,
[a.] The assertions, rightly understood, are true. First, Be it spoken to the terror of the wicked, God heareth not sinners, that is, such sinners as the Pharisees meant when they said of Christ, He is a sinner, one that, under the shelter of God’s name, advanced the devil’s interest. This bespeaks no discouragement to repenting returning sinners, but to those that go on still in their trespasses, that make their prayers not only consistent with, but subservient to, their sins, as the hypocrites do; God will not hear them, he will not own them, nor give an answer of peace to their prayers. Secondly, Be it spoken to the comfort of the righteous, If any man be a worshipper of God, and does his will, him he heareth. Here is, 1. The complete character of a good man: he is one that worships God, and does his will; he is constant in his devotions at set times, and regular in his conversation at all times. He is one that makes it his business to glorify his Creator by the solemn adoration of his name and a sincere obedience to his will and law; both must go together. 2. The unspeakable comfort of such a man: him God hears; hears his complaints, and relieves him; hears his appeals, and rights him; hears his praises, and accepts them; hears his prayers, and answers them, Ps 34 15.
[b.] The application of these truths is very pertinent to prove that he, at whose word such a divine power was put forth as cured one born blind, was not a bad man, but, having manifestly such an interest in the holy God as that he heard him always (ch. 9 31, 32), was certainly a holy one.
(b.) He magnifies the miracles which Christ had wrought, to strengthen the argument the more (v. 32): Since the world began was it not heard that any man opened the eyes of one that was born blind. This is to show either, [a.] That it was a true miracle, and above the power of nature; it was never heard that any man, by the use of natural means, had cured one that was born blind; no doubt, this man and his parents had been very inquisitive into cases of this nature, whether any such had been helped, and could hear of none, which enabled him to speak this with the more assurance. Or, [b.] That it was an extraordinary miracle, and beyond the precedents of former miracles; neither Moses nor any of the prophets, though they did great things, ever did such things as this, wherein divine power and divine goodness seem to strive which should outshine. Moses wrought miraculous plagues, but Christ wrought miraculous cures. Note, First, The wondrous works of the Lord Jesus were such as the like had never been done before. Secondly, It becomes those who have received mercy from God to magnify the mercies they have received, and to speak honourably of them; not that thereby glory may redound to themselves, and they may seem to be extraordinary favourites of Heaven, but that God may have so much the more glory.
(c.) He therefore concludes, If this man were not of God, he could do nothing, that is, nothing extraordinary, no such thing as this; and therefore, no doubt, he is of God, notwithstanding his nonconformity to your traditions in the business of the sabbath day. Note, What Christ did on earth sufficiently demonstrated what he was in heaven; for, if he had not been sent of God, he could not have wrought such miracles. It is true the man of sin comes with lying wonders, but not with real miracles; it is likewise supposed that a false prophet might, by divine permission, give a sign or a wonder (Deut 13 1, 2), yet the case is so put as that it would carry with it its own confutation, for it is to enforce a temptation to serve other gods, which was to set God against himself. It is true, likewise, that many wicked people have in Christ’s name done many wonderful works, which did not prove those that wrought them to be of God, but him in whose name they were wrought. We may each of us know by this whether we are of God or no: What do we? What do we for God, for our souls, in working out our salvation? What do we more than others?
The Pharisees were offended, saying that a man born entirely in sins, a reference to their belief that disability was a divine curse, was trying to teach them, the notional experts; with that, they threw him out (verse 34).
MacArthur picks up what he said earlier about unbelief often resulting in violence:
That’s the disdain of it all. So, it gets physical. They threw him out. Be prepared to face this when unbelief investigates a miracle. This is how it acts. This will be a disappointment. It has been a disappointment already in your life, I’m sure. Major disappointment through the years to any of us who walked with Christ for a long time. We accumulate this kind of disappointment.
What can we do except to pray for lost souls? MacArthur tells us:
What is there to do about this? How can it change? Well, the only answer is where Jesus went in John 6, three times. He said this: “All that the Father gives to Me will come to Me. No man comes to Me unless the Father draws him.” And then, verse 64 of John 6, He summarized it again. “For this reason I have said to you, no one can come to Me unless it has been granted him from the Father.” The only way an unbeliever can be released and delivered from this kind of bizarre captivity and bondage to what is evil, and irascible, and intolerant, and irrational; the only way an unbeliever can be delivered from this is by the power of God. So, what do we do? We plead with God to be gracious, don’t we? We plead with the sinner to believe, and we plead with God to be gracious. Because the natural man, Paul says, understands not the things of God. To him, they’re foolishness, because they’re spiritually appraised, and he’s spiritually dead.
So, we don’t go out to evangelize with any hope, really, that we have the power in our reason or the power in our facts or the power in our truth to shatter the blindness and the darkness and the bondage of unbelief. We go with the truth, and we cry out to God to draw the sinner out of this bondage of unbelief.
MacArthur points out the transition that takes place at this point:
Verses 1 through 34 are about physical light, physical sight. But also, there are overtones of spiritual blindness and spiritual darkness manifest by the Pharisees. When we come to verses 35 to 41, the subject changes from physical sight and light, completely, to spiritual sight and light, and spiritual blindness and darkness.
Now, as we look at these just brief verses, straightforward and simple, I just want to break them into two sections: spiritual sight, verses 35 to 38, that’s the beggar; spiritual blindness, verses 39 to 41, that’s the Pharisees. You have here a comparison build on this miracle, between spiritual sight, which the beggar receives, and spiritual darkness, in which the Pharisees remain.
Now, let’s look at the spiritual sight and the beggar, the opening verses 35 to 38. Just to give you a little bit of a pattern to follow, four things define this spiritual sight, okay? Four things. He’s going to be an illustration of one who not only sees physically for the first time, but who will see spiritually for the first time. There are four elements. First of all, and this is very important. The first element is: spiritual sight requires divine initiative. Spiritual sight requires divine initiative. This man doesn’t have any capability to make himself see physically, nor does he have any capability to make himself see spiritually. That’s why this transition is made, because it’s such a graphic illustration. He can’t do anything to help himself. There’s no such thing in those ancient times as a surgeon who can fix something in his eye and enable him to see. There’s no way that he can have spiritual sight on his own. It can’t happen. Humanly speaking, it can’t happen on a temporal, physical, natural level. If he is going to see, heaven has to come down and find him, locate him, and that’s exactly what happens.
Jesus heard that the Pharisees had driven the man out of their midst, and when He found him, he asked (verse 35), ‘Do you believe in the Son of Man?’
In Henry’s translation, the verse reads:
Jesus heard that they had cast him out; and when he had found him, he said unto him, Dost thou believe on the Son of God?
Henry calls our attention to the fact that Jesus sought the man who had given Him such a bold defence as the author of the healing miracle:
I. The tender care which our Lord Jesus took of this poor man (v. 35): When Jesus heard that they had cast him out (for it is likely the town rang of it, and everybody cried out shame upon them for it), then he found him, which implies his seeking him and looking after him, that he might encourage and comfort him, 1. Because he had, to the best of his knowledge, spoken so very well, so bravely, so boldly, in defence of the Lord Jesus. Note, Jesus Christ will be sure to stand by his witnesses, and own those that own him and his truth and ways. Earthly princes neither do, nor can, take cognizance of all that vindicate them and their government and administration; but our Lord Jesus knows and observes all the faithful testimonies we bear to him at any time, and a book of remembrance is written, and it shall redound not only to our credit hereafter, but our comfort now. 2. Because the Pharisees had cast him out and abused him. Besides the common regard which the righteous Judge of the world has to those who suffer wrongfully (Ps 103 6), there is a particular notice taken of those that suffer in the cause of Christ and for the testimony of a good conscience. Here was one poor man suffering for Christ, and he took care that as his afflictions abounded his consolations should much more abound. Note, (1.) Though persecutors may exclude good men from their communion, yet they cannot exclude them from communion with Christ, nor put them out of the way of his visits. Happy are they who have a friend from whom men cannot debar them. (2.) Jesus Christ will graciously find and receive those who for his sake are unjustly rejected and cast out by men. He will be a hiding place to his outcasts, and appear, to the joy of those whom their brethren hated and cast out.
II. The comfortable converse Christ had with him, wherein he brings him acquainted with the consolation of Israel. He had well improved the knowledge he had, and now Christ gives him further instruction; for he that is faithful in a little shall be entrusted with more, Matt 13 12.
1. Our Lord Jesus examines his faith: “Dost thou believe on the Son of God? Dost thou give credit to the promises of the Messiah? Dost thou expect his coming, and art thou ready to receive and embrace him when he is manifested to thee?” This was that faith of the Son of God by which the saints lived before his manifestation. Observe, (1.) The Messiah is here called the Son of God, and so the Jews had learned to call him from the prophecies, Ps 2 7; 89 27. See ch. 1 49, Thou art the Son of God, that is, the true Messiah. Those that expected the temporal kingdom of the Messiah delighted rather in calling him the Son of David, which gave more countenance to that expectation, Matt 22 42. But Christ, that he might give us an idea of his kingdom, as purely spiritual and divine, calls himself the Son of God, and rather Son of man in general than of David in particular. (2.) The desires and expectations of the Messiah, which the Old-Testament saints had, guided by and grounded upon the promise, were graciously interpreted and accepted as their believing on the Son of God. This faith Christ here enquires after: Dost thou believe? Note, The great thing which is now required of us (1 John 3 23), and which will shortly be enquired after concerning us, is our believing on the Son of God, and by this we must stand or fall for ever.
MacArthur continues reinforcing the idea that heaven had to find the man:
Verse 35. The buzz around the temple area and wherever it was that this interrogation took place is still going on, so Jesus hears that they had put him out. And I love this. “And finding him.” This is parallel. You remember back in chapter 5, the man at the Pool of Bethesda picked up his bed and walked, ran into the Pharisees, the same kind of interrogation, the same kind of encounter. And it says there in that same chapter, chapter 5, and I think it’s verse 14, “Jesus found him.” Jesus found him. This is how you receive spiritual sight. It all started in a divine initiative. It all started by a sovereign purpose in the mind of God. Luke 19:10. Jesus says the Son of Man is come to seek and save that which was lost. Not just the saving, but the seeking. Romans 3, no man seeks after God. We wouldn’t know where to go, wouldn’t know who to look for. So he’s the seeker. He says to His apostles in John 15:16, “You have not chosen Me. I have chosen you.” Matthew 18, “The Son of Man has come to save that which was lost.” That’s why He came. He’s the finder. He’s the one who is seeking us …
And so, Jesus finds the man. This is where spiritual sight begins. This is a powerful illustration of it, a very powerful illustration, because this is a helpless, hopeless man, and so is every sinner. So is every sinner.
So He finds him, and He initiates a conversation. Very short. This, again, is cryptic. These accounts in the New Testament are condensed. We don’t think the conversation was limited to this, but this is the essence that God has revealed to us. He says, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”
MacArthur tells us that this Messianic title came from the prophet Daniel:
Listen to what Daniel chapter 7 says. Daniel is given a vision, and it’s in the night. Chapter 7:13. I kept looking in the night visions, and behold with the clouds of heaven, one like a Son of Man was coming. That’s a Messianic title. This introduces the coming of Messiah to establish His kingdom. He came up to the ancient of days, that’s God the Father, was presented before him, to Him was given dominion, glory, and a kingdom that all the peoples, nations, and men of every language might serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which will not pass away, and His kingdom is one which will not be destroyed. And this is not God, because this is one who comes to God. This is one to whom God gives this eternal, everlasting universal kingdom. It is the Messiah, and He is the Son of Man, which is a prophecy that He will be incarnate.
But the Jews all understood the Messianic title, the Son of Man. By the way, it appears 13 times in the gospel of John because it’s familiar in the conversation of the Jews because they know Daniel 7 is referring to the Messiah. So, our Lord says to him, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” Do you believe in the Messiah? Do you believe in Messianic theology? Do you believe the Messiah is coming to establish His kingdom? Do you believe that?
The man answered Jesus, asking him (verse 36), ‘And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him’.
Henry’s verse 36 reads as follows:
He answered and said, Who is he, Lord, that I might believe on him?
The man could not see who cured him, so he thought that Jesus was one of the Messiah’s disciples.
MacArthur says:
The second thing that I want you to see here in this case of spiritual sight, is that spiritual sight not only begins in divine initiative, but it requires faith. It requires faith, verse 36. This is just an amazing statement. He answered, “Who is He, Lord, that I may believe in Him?” What an amazing statement. Here is a man who is ready to believe. He just wants to know who to believe in. I wish I had the time to develop that as a theology, because what you’re seeing here is the essence of the doctrine of regeneration at work. This man is ready to believe. He just wants to know what to believe. This is not easily understood. It is not because of what we say that people believe. It is because of what God has done to open them to believing that they respond to what we say. This is an amazing thing. Here is a man who is saying, “I’m ready to believe. Who do I believe in? Show me who to believe in.” That’s a prepared heart. That’s good soil.
MacArthur discusses the title of address in this verse:
See the word Lord there, and it’s lower-case sense, sir? He doesn’t know who He is, so he’s not calling Jesus Lord in the upper-case sense. The word kyrie can be used at “sir,” like you would see it in an Old English, the lords and ladies kind of idea. So, here, I think he is still using it in the common sense. Who is He, sir, that I may believe in Him? Something has been happening in his heart. This divine initiative is not only physical, not only Jesus finding him, but God, by the power of the Holy Spirit is opening his heart to believe, and all he needs. It’s like Lydia, whose heart the Lord opened. Remember in the Book of Acts? The man’s heart is opened. All he wants to knowis: who?
Jesus said to the man (verse 37), ‘You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he’.
MacArthur brings in a third element of spiritual sight:
There’s a third feature in spiritual sight. It starts in divine initiative. It requires faith. Thirdly, spiritual sight confesses Jesus as Lord. Where there is the miracle of spiritual sight, there will be a confession of Jesus as Lord.
Notice verse 37. Jesus said to him, he’s saying, who do I believe in? “You have both seen Him.” You’ve seen Him. You’re looking at Him, “and He’s the one who is talking with you.” Wow. It’s interesting to me that I don’t know how much this man had heard Jesus teach. Certainly, he hadn’t seen any miracles. Something, there were lots of people who saw miracles. The whole population saw miracles. Couldn’t overcome spiritual darkness. But God is overcoming his spiritual darkness by giving him faith. And all he wants to know is who he’s supposed to put that faith in. Jesus says, “You’ve seen Him, and He’s the one talking with you.” It is I. Remember back in chapter 4 when the woman at the well, the Samaritan woman said, well, we know that the Christ is going to come, and Jesus responds by saying, “I who speak to you am He.” I’m the One. And she believed, and the whole village of Sychar believed.
The Samaritan woman’s conversion was last week’s — Year A’s — reading for the Third Sunday in Lent in 2023: John 4:5-42 (parts 1 and 2).
The man replied to Jesus saying, ‘Lord, I believe’, and he worshipped Him (verse 38).
MacArthur looks at the title the man uses here:
And he said, “Lord, I believe.” And now, Lord gets an upper-case. It’s Kyrie in the upper-case. He’s gone from sir, to the Lord of lords.
This is Lord in its fullest and most lofty and elevated sense. Lord, I believe. And even though the word is the same, there’s a huge difference. When he says “Lord” in verse 36, he’s asking a question. Who do I believe in? Now, he believes, and he says “Lord” in a completely different sense because he immediately does what? Worships.
How do you know when spiritual sight comes to someone? Well, it’s initiated by God, the heart is prepared, the heart opens up to accept the truth and confesses Jesus as Lord. It’s just an astounding and marvelous miracle, like the miracle of physical sight.
MacArthur recaps the episodes in Christ’s ministry that John has given us thus far:
We’re starting to accumulate a little roll call here of believers, aren’t we? Back when we began the gospel of John, it was Peter and Andrew, and Philip and Nathaniel. And then, Nicodemus showed up, and maybe not a believer yet, but he’s on the way. And eventually becomes a believer, shows up in the burial of our Lord. But as of now, we’d have to limit it to Peter, Andrew, Philip, Nathaniel, and then that Samaritan woman in chapter 4, and then the folks from the village of Sychar. And then some true disciples in chapter 6. And now we can add the blind man to our little roll call of true believers. Every one of them is a divine and supernatural miracle.
Interestingly, Year A (2023) has had some of these Gospel readings. I gave you the one of the Samaritan woman a few paragraphs ago. Peter, Andrew and John’s conversion was the reading for the Second Sunday after Epiphany (John 1:19-42). Nicodemus’s story was the one for the Second Sunday in Lent (John 3:1-17).
I love serendipity, especially when it involves the Bible. We can really make proper connections then.
Our Lord’s discourse with the man concludes at this point. Henry says:
None but God is to be worshipped; so that in worshipping Jesus he owned him to be God. Note, True faith will show itself in a humble adoration of the Lord Jesus. Those who believe in him will see all the reason in the world to worship him. We never read any more of this man; but, it is very likely, from henceforth he became a constant follower of Christ.
Jesus then directed His thoughts elsewhere, saying that He came into this world for judgement, so that those who do not see may see and those who do see may become blind (verse 39).
He spoke of the Pharisees in the second half of the verse. They were wilfully blind to Him.
MacArthur says:
Obviously a play on words on this whole concept of blindness, which is, as I said, is all over the Scripture. When Jesus sees this man worshiping Him, He compares this humble, confiding, trusting, believing heart of the beggar with the hostile, stubborn hatred of the Pharisees. And He admits: this is how it’s going to be in my coming. Even though the Son of Man is come to seek and to save the lost, even though He doesn’t come for judgment, as He says in John 3, He didn’t come to judge the world but to save the world.
MacArthur reminds us that Simeon prophesied similarly when the infant Jesus was presented at the temple 40 days after His birth (Luke 2:22-32 and Luke 2:33-40). We remember this day on February 2, the feast of Candlemas:
34And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, “Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed 35(and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.”
MacArthur tells us that salvation becomes division:
… even though He came in His incarnation to save, His salvation in itself becomes a dividing reality. There is a judgment bound up in it. Like Simeon said, “This child is for the rising and the falling of many.” He’s the divider. This is not final judgment. This is a kind of immediate judgment that happens at the point at which the gospel is introduced, at which Christ is introduced. There is a dividing that takes place between the believer and the unbeliever. Yes, He didn’t come to judge in the sense of final judgment. He came to save. He came to be humbled, and go to the cross, and rise from the dead to save. But even that is a judgment rendered. In fact, in John 3, He says, “If you reject Him, you judge yourself.” You judge yourself. You’re already judged. If a person sees in Jesus who died on the cross for salvation, nothing desirable, nothing that that person wants, that is a judgment on that person. That’s a self-condemnation.
If a sinner sees in Jesus nothing to desire, nothing to long for, nothing to want, nothing to put trust in, that’s a self-condemnation. That’s the Pharisees. They didn’t need anything. They could see clearly. They saw it all. They knew God. They knew the truth. They knew that Jesus was a vile sinner, a satanic, demonic, insane man. Because they thought they see, they are totally blind. So that’s the point of verse 39.
Some of the Pharisees heard Jesus and said to him (verse 40), ‘Surely we are not blind, are we?’
Whether they scoffed at Jesus or scorned Him, they resented His words.
Henry rewords the text to give it fuller meaning:
“Now,” say they, “we know that the common people are blind; but are we blind also? What we? The rabbin, the doctors, the learned in the laws, the graduates in the schools, are we blind too?” This is scandalum magnatum—a libel on the great. Note, Frequently those that need reproof most, and deserve it best, though they have wit enough to discern a tacit one, have not grace enough to bear a just one. These Pharisees took this reproof for a reproach, as those lawyers (Luke 11 45): “Are we blind also? Darest thou say that we are blind, whose judgment every one has such a veneration for, values, and yields to?” Note, Nothing fortifies men’s corrupt hearts more against the convictions of the word, nor more effectually repels them, than the good opinion, especially if it be a high opinion, which others have of them; as if all that had gained applause with men must needs obtain acceptance with God, than which nothing is more false and deceitful, for God sees not as man sees.
MacArthur tells us about spiritual blindness:
The first thing then, about spiritual blindness is: spiritual blindness brings judgment. Spiritual blindness brings judgment. Tragic. Judgment. Now, and in the future. Spiritual blindness, secondly, is stubborn, verse 40. “Those of the Pharisees who were with Him heard these things and said to Him, ‘We’re not blind too, are we?’“ Again, speaking metaphorically, they refused to admit their blindness. We’re not blind in the sense that, they say this with disdain, and arrogance, and scorn. You’re not saying we, the most learned, erudite, righteous, holy, virtuous, representatives of God, you’re not saying we’re blind, are You? Well, that’s exactly what He was saying. This man was spiritually blind, but now he can see, spiritually. You think you can see spiritually, which simply demonstrates that you are spiritually blind. Blindness, the idea of spiritual blindness to them is a joke.
Jesus replied, saying that, if they were blind, they would not have sin; however, now that they say they see, their sin remains (verse 41).
Henry explains:
This very thing which they gloried in, Christ here tells them, was their shame and ruin. For,
1. If you were blind, you would have no sin. (1.) “If you had been really ignorant, your sin had not been so deeply aggravated, nor would you have had so much sin to answer for as now you have. If you were blind, as the poor Gentiles are, and many of your own poor subjects, from whom you have taken the key of knowledge, you would have had comparatively no sin.” The times of ignorance God winked at; invincible ignorance, though it does not justify sin, excuses it, and lessens the guilt. It will be more tolerable with those that perish for lack of vision than with those that rebel against the light. (2.) “If you had been sensible of your own blindness, if when you would see nothing else you could have seen the need of one to lead you, you would soon have accepted Christ as your guide, and then you would have had no sin, you would have submitted to an evangelical righteousness, and have been put into a justified state.” Note, Those that are convinced of their disease are in a fair way to be cured, for there is not a greater hindrance to the salvation of souls than self-sufficiency.
2. “But now you say, We see; now that you have knowledge, and are instructed out of the law, your sin is highly aggravated; and now that you have a conceit of that knowledge, and think you see your way better than any body can show it you, therefore your sin remains, your case is desperate, and your disease incurable.” And as those are most blind who will not see, so their blindness is most dangerous who fancy they do see. No patients are so hardly managed as those in a frenzy who say that they are well, and nothing ails them. The sin of those who are self-conceited and self-confident remains, for they reject the gospel of grace, and therefore the guilt of their sin remains unpardoned; and they forfeit the Spirit of grace, and therefore the power of their sin remains unbroken. Seest thou a wise man in his own conceit? Hearest thou the Pharisees say, We see? There is more hope of a fool, of a publican and a harlot, than of such.
MacArthur contrasts the way Jesus uses blindness in verse 40 with verse 41:
This is continuing this little play on words on the notion of blindness. But Jesus is using the term in a completely different way. In verse 40, you are blind. You are blind, in the sense that you don’t see your sin. You are blind. You are blind. But in verse 41, you’re not blind. How do you do that? You’re not blind. “If you were blind, you would have no sin.” What does that mean? You are not blind as to the truth. If you were blind to the truth, if you had no knowledge of the truth, no revelation of the truth, if you didn’t have the Scripture, didn’t have the Old Testament, the law, all the prophets and holy writings, didn’t have Me, didn’t have all the demonstration of who I am, your sin would not be so severe. This would be like the times of the past when God overlooked people’s sin because the revelation was incomplete. There’s less punishment, a less severe judgment falls on those who have no knowledge. But you’re not blind. You are blind in the sense that you don’t see your own sin. You are not blind in the sense that you have been exposed to the truth. You have the law, the prophets, the covenants, everything. The promises, the Old Testament. You’ve had Me. You’ve heard My words. You’ve seen the miracles. You have no excuse. Yes, blind to your own sin; no, not blind to the truth.
Spiritual blindness then, receives judgment, refuses to admit its blindness, rejects the offer of light and sight when it’s given, such as they had received. Finally, results in doom, end of verse 41. “But since you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.”
You’re doomed. You are accepting the condition you’re in, of spiritual blindness, as spiritual sight. You are doomed. You are hopeless. If you think you can see, you’re doomed. Amazing play on words. Your sin remains. Finality. So, the light shines in the darkness. The darkness cannot extinguish it. The darkness cannot put it out, but the darkness rejects it. Came to His own, His own received Him not. He’s in the world. The world was made by Him. The world knew Him not.
They are the religious elite. They are in the darkness. And a blind beggar, who’s a total outcast, sees physically; more importantly, sees spiritually.
MacArthur gives us something to consider as we contrast the blind beggar with the Pharisees:
How do you know when someone’s a believer? Because he becomes a what? Worshiper. How do you know you’re Christian? Not because you prayed a prayer. Not because you asked the Lord to do something for you. Not because you got emotionally moved in a meeting and felt sentimental about Jesus. How do you know you’re a believer? How do you know you’ve been transformed? Because you have become a worshiper, a worshiper. That’s why I said to you earlier: this narcissistic, sentimental, self-centered approach to the gospel creates an endless dependency that the system that offered originally the answer to what everybody wants keep giving that person what that person wants. It’s relentless. How do you turn that person into one who is a totally selfless worshiper?
This man falls on his knees in adoration. The opposite, back in verse 59 of chapter 8, when Jesus declared who He was to the Pharisees, they picked up stones to stone Him. That’s what spiritual blindness produces. This is what spiritual sight produces. So, if you’re asking the question: how do I know if I’m saved? Ask yourself if you love Christ, if you love God, if you love the Holy Spirit, if you desire to be obedient, if you desire to honor, to please the Lord, if you’re a worshiper. We were talking in the elder’s meeting the other night about some few people who don’t come to church, and when we contact them, they give all kinds of kind of lame, well, you know, I’ve got other things, and so and so bothers me, and blah, blah, blah. The bottom line is: those people, very likely, aren’t believers, because believers worship. That’s the priority of their life. And I’m not saying that the only place you worship is in the collective assembly of the church. That’s not. But this is what lifts you up and strengthens you and encourages you for the rest of those hours when you worship as an independent person. This is critical. This fulfills the longing of our heart, to honor the Lord, to hear from the Lord, to exalt the Lord, to praise the Lord. Worshipers.
May all reading this (far!) have a blessed day.
Forbidden Bible Verses returns tomorrow
The Fourth Sunday in Lent, Laetare Sunday, is March 19, 2023.
Readings for Year A, including an explanation of Laetare Sunday — the joyful Sunday in Lent — can be found here.
The Gospel reading is as follows (emphases mine):
John 9:1-41
9:1 As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth.
9:2 His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
9:3 Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.
9:4 We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work.
9:5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
9:6 When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes,
9:7 saying to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see.
9:8 The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?”
9:9 Some were saying, “It is he.” Others were saying, “No, but it is someone like him.” He kept saying, “I am the man.”
9:10 But they kept asking him, “Then how were your eyes opened?”
9:11 He answered, “The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ Then I went and washed and received my sight.”
9:12 They said to him, “Where is he?” He said, “I do not know.”
9:13 They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind.
9:14 Now it was a sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes.
9:15 Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how he had received his sight. He said to them, “He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see.”
9:16 Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not observe the sabbath.” But others said, “How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?” And they were divided.
9:17 So they said again to the blind man, “What do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened.” He said, “He is a prophet.”
9:18 The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight
9:19 and asked them, “Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?”
9:20 His parents answered, “We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind;
9:21 but we do not know how it is that now he sees, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself.”
9:22 His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue.
9:23 Therefore his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.”
9:24 So for the second time they called the man who had been blind, and they said to him, “Give glory to God! We know that this man is a sinner.”
9:25 He answered, “I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.”
9:26 They said to him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?”
9:27 He answered them, “I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?”
9:28 Then they reviled him, saying, “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses.
9:29 We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.”
9:30 The man answered, “Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes.
9:31 We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will.
9:32 Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind.
9:33 If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.”
9:34 They answered him, “You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?” And they drove him out.
9:35 Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”
9:36 He answered, “And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.”
9:37 Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.”
9:38 He said, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped him.
9:39 Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.”
9:40 Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, “Surely we are not blind, are we?”
9:41 Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.
Commentary comes from Matthew Henry and John MacArthur.
This is the first of a two-part series. That said, this is a long post as there is much to cover.
In John 7 and John 8, we see the stubbornness of the Jewish hierarchy.
In John 8, they insult Jesus and try to stone Him:
48 The Jews answered him, “Aren’t we right in saying that you are a Samaritan and demon-possessed?”
49 “I am not possessed by a demon,” said Jesus, “but I honor my Father and you dishonor me. 50 I am not seeking glory for myself; but there is one who seeks it, and he is the judge. 51 Very truly I tell you, whoever obeys my word will never see death.”
… 57 “You are not yet fifty years old,” they said to him, “and you have seen Abraham!”
58 “Very truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I am!” 59 At this, they picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself, slipping away from the temple grounds.
Still near the temple in Jerusalem, Jesus walked along and saw a man blind from birth (verse 1).
John MacArthur has more:
Jesus is in Jerusalem. He’s going through one of the temple entrances, temple gates. And He comes across a blind man who has been born blind. He’s never seen. He has some kind of congenital blindness. He is reduced to being a beggar. So, he sits there with the rest of the beggars at the temple entrance because that’s where most people come and go who are concerned about honoring God, and who may be more sensitive to doing what they should do, doing right, and giving alms to beggars. And so, those entrances and exits were occupied by beggars. Jesus comes across this man who is blind, who obviously can’t see Him.
Our Lord’s disciples asked Him whether the blind man had sinned or his parents had sinned, hence his disability (verse 2).
Any Jew with a disability was an outcast, because they considered it a sign of serious sin.
MacArthur explains the issue with blindness:
… the greatest ancient contributor to blindness was gonorrhea. And since there was no treatment for that, when a mother had gonorrhea, a baby passing through the birth canal could come out blind, essentially. This was epidemic. Even in the modern world, where in third-world countries, there is no remedy for that. Silver nitrate, or whatever is used; there’s no remedy for that. Blindness is multiplied.
There was a time not many years ago, according to one source I read, where 90 percent of the blind, born blind, were from venereal disease. And again, even today in countries where they don’t have the ability to care for that, blindness is increased. So were they saying something about the sin of the mother or the father? Something about a transmitted disease? Maybe that was in their mind, but probably more likely it was theological, rather than physiological.
The rabbis were convinced that the sins of the parents were visited upon the children. Where did they get that? They got that because they misinterpreted Exodus 20 ... But they believed that parents’ sins could show up in children’s guilt and punishment.
Jesus, in His omniscience, answered them saying that neither the man nor his parents had sinned; he had been born blind so that God’s works could be revealed in him (verse 3).
God’s ways are not our ways.
Matthew Henry’s commentary says:
This man was born blind, and it was worth while for him to be so, and to continue thus long dark, that the works of God might be manifest in him. That is, First, That the attributes of God might be made manifest in him: his justice in making sinful man liable to such grievous calamities; his ordinary power and goodness in supporting a poor man under such a grievous and tedious affliction, especially that his extraordinary power and goodness might be manifested in curing him. Note, The difficulties of providence, otherwise unaccountable, may be resolved into this—God intends in them to show himself, to declare his glory, to make himself to be taken notice of ... Secondly, That the counsels of God concerning the Redeemer might be manifested in him. He was born blind that our Lord Jesus might have the honour of curing him, and might therein prove himself sent of God to be the true light to the world. Thus the fall of man was permitted, and the blindness that followed it, that the works of God might be manifest in opening the eyes of the blind. It was now a great while since this man was born blind, and yet it never appeared till now why he was so. Note, The intentions of Providence commonly do not appear till a great while after the event, perhaps many years after. The sentences in the book of providence are sometimes long, and you must read a great way before you can apprehend the sense of them.
Jesus said that He — and we — must work the works of the Father who sent Him while it is day, as night is coming when no one can work (verse 4).
Henry looks at this in a literal and practical way, of that 24-hour day and of our obligations as believers:
[2.] Now was his opportunity: I must work while it is day, while the time lasts which is appointed to work in, and while the light lasts which is given to work by. Christ himself had his day. First, All the business of the mediatorial kingdom was to be done within the limits of time, and in this world; for at the end of the world, when time shall be no more, the kingdom shall be delivered up to God, even the Father, and the mystery of God finished. Secondly, all the work he had to do in his own person here on earth was to be done before his death; the time of his living in this world is the day here spoken of. Note, The time of our life is our day, in which it concerns us to do the work of the day. Day-time is the proper season for work (Ps 104 22, 23); during the day of life we must be busy, not waste day-time, nor play by day-light; it will be time enough to rest when our day is done, for it is but a day.
[3.] The period of his opportunity was at hand, and therefore he would be busy; The night comes when no man can work. Note, The consideration of our death approaching should quicken us to improve all the opportunities of life, both for doing and getting good. The night comes, it will come certainly, may come suddenly, is coming nearer and nearer. We cannot compute how nigh our sun is, it may go down at noon; nor can we promise ourselves a twilight between the day of life and the night of death. When the night comes we cannot work, because the light afforded us to work by is extinguished; the grave is a land of darkness, and our work cannot be done in the dark. And, besides, our time allotted us for our work will then have expired; when our Master tied us to duty he tied us to time too; when night comes, call the labourers; we must then show our work, and receive according to the things done. In the world of retribution we are no longer probationers; it is too late to bid when the inch of candle is dropped. Christ uses this as an argument with himself to be diligent, though he had no opposition from within to struggle with; much more need have we to work upon our hearts these and the like considerations to quicken us.
Jesus said, ‘As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world’ (verse 5).
Henry tells us:
He had said this before, ch. 8 12. He is the Sun of righteousness, that has not only light in his wings for those that can see, but healing in his wings, or beams, for those that are blind and cannot see, therein far exceeding in virtue that great light which rules by day. Christ would cure this blind man, the representative of a blind world, because he came to be the light of the world, not only to give light, but to give sight. Now this gives us, First, A great encouragement to come to him, as a guiding, quickening, refreshing light. To whom should we look but to him? Which way should we turn our eyes, but to the light? We partake of the sun’s light, and so we may of Christ’s grace, without money and without price. Secondly, A good example of usefulness in the world. What Christ saith of himself, he saith of his disciples: You are lights in the world, and, if so, Let your light shine. What were candles made for but to burn?
Before we get to this healing miracle, MacArthur tells us about the miracles in the Old Testament, which were few and far between:
… if you go to the Old Testament, these corrupt influences falling on physical life are so dominating and so normal, and so unabated and uninterrupted, that throughout the entire Old Testament, miraculous healing is so rare, it is virtually non-existent.
There was the healing of Naaman the leper, who was a border terrorist attacking the Jews. That’s in 1 Kings. And then, there was King Hezekiah who had a terminal illness, and God spared him and cured him of that terminal illness. That’s 2 Kings. And then, in Numbers 21, God sent snakes that bit the children of Israel with a deadly poison. They would’ve died, except the Lord was merciful to them, and healed their snakebites …
And as far as an outright individual healing, very, very rare and unusual. When you come into the New Testament, as the New Testament begins, there are a couple of other physical miracles of healing. One happens to Elizabeth so that she who has been barren all her life is enabled to have a baby, John the Baptist. That is a healing miracle. And then, there of course is Mary, and Mary’s is not a healing, but Mary is given the right, and the privilege, and the power to bear a child without a father, a human father, the virgin birth. But when you look at the Old Testament, you’ve got six occasions where an actual, physical miracle brought about a change in someone’s physiology.
In the Old Testament, you have three resurrections. That’s all. Three. The widow’s son in 1 Kings 17, the Shunammite widow’s son in 2 Kings 4, and the man in Elijah’s grave in 2 Kings 13. Three resurrections. That’s it. Very, very rare through the entire history, from the Fall, to the arrival of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And by the way, you say, well, that’s just the Old Testament. Yes, but if you just took the Old Testament, that would be religion central, wouldn’t it be? That would be where God is most active. That would be where God is working, God is acting through the fathers, through the prophets, through the history of Israel, the nation of Israel. And in all of that period of history where God is acting, miracles don’t happen except on extremely rare occasions, miracles of healing.
Until Jesus shows up. And when Jesus showed up, miracles explode in every direction throughout His three-year ministry. By the way, He did no miracles for the first 30 years of His life. None. Because, when He reached the age of 30 and He went to a wedding in Cana, and turned water into wine, the Bible says this is the first miracle Jesus did. So, these nonsense, gnostic, false gospels that have Jesus doing miracles as a boy are nothing but foolish. We just don’t have healings in history. You don’t have miraculous reversing of disease and deformity. You don’t have resurrections. You don’t have people coming back from the dead. This is a very rare occasion.
Then you come into the life and ministry of Christ, and healings are happening virtually on a daily basis. This is an explosion intended to demonstrate that the Messiah, the Son of God, God in human flesh, has arrived in the world. Matthew 12:15 says He was healing all. He was healing all. So, He was healing all the people in all the places. That’s why I’ve said many times that He banished illness, essentially, from the land of Israel.
Returning to today’s reading, Jesus spat on the ground, made mud with His saliva and spread the mud on the blind man’s eyes (verse 6).
Henry says:
1. The preparation of the eye-salve … He made clay of his own spittle, because there was no water near; and he would teach us not to be nice or curious, but, when we have at any time occasion, to be willing to take up with that which is next hand, if it will but serve the turn. Why should we go about for that which may as well be had and done a nearer way? Christ’s making use of his own spittle intimates that there is healing virtue in every thing that belongs to Christ; clay made of Christ’s spittle was much more precious than the balm of Gilead.
2. The application of it to the place: He anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay. Or, as the margin reads it, He spread (epechrise), he daubed the clay upon the eyes of the blind man, like a tender physician; he did it himself with his own hand, though the patient was a beggar. Now Christ did this, (1.) To magnify his power in making a blind man to see by that method which one would think more likely to make a seeing man blind. Daubing clay on the eyes would close them up, but never open them. Note, The power of God often works by contraries; and he makes men feel their own blindness before he gives them sight. (2.) To give an intimation that it was his mighty hand, the very same that at first made man out of the clay; for by him God made the worlds, both the great world, and man the little world. Man was formed out of the clay, and moulded like the clay, and here Christ used the same materials to give sight to the body that at first he used to give being to it. (3.) To represent and typify the healing and opening of the eyes of the mind by the grace of Jesus Christ. The design of the gospel is to open men’s eyes, Acts 26 18. Now the eye-salve that does the work is of Christ’s preparing; it is made up, not as this, of his spittle, but of his blood, the blood and water that came out of his pierced side; we must come to Christ for the eye-salve, Rev 3 18. He only is able, and he only is appointed, to make it up, Luke 4 18. The means used in this work are very weak and unlikely, and are made effectual only by the power of Christ; when a dark world was to be enlightened, and nations of blind souls were to have their eyes opened, God chose the foolish things, and weak, and despised, for the doing of it. And the method Christ takes is first to make men feel themselves blind, as this poor man did whose eyes were daubed with clay, and then to give them sight. Paul in his conversion was struck blind for three days, and then the scales fell from his eyes. The way prescribed for getting spiritual wisdom is, Let a man become a fool, that he may be wise, 1 Cor 3 18. We must be made uneasy with our blindness, as this man here, and then healed.
Jesus told the man to wash in the pool of Siloam, which means Sent; the man went, washed and came back able to see (verse 7).
Both our commentators tell us about the significance of the pool of Siloam.
Henry says:
Concerning the pool of Siloam observe, [1.] That it was supplied with water from mount Zion, so that these were the waters of the sanctuary (Ps 46 4), living waters, which were healing, Ezek 47 9. [2.] That the waters of Siloam had of old signified the throne and kingdom of the house of David, pointing at the Messiah (Isa 8 6), and the Jews who refused the waters of Shiloah, Christ’s doctrine and law, and rejoiced in the tradition of the elders. Christ would try this man, whether he would cleave to the waters of Siloam or no. [3.] The evangelist takes notice of the signification of the name, its being interpreted sent. Christ is often called the sent of God, the Messenger of the covenant (Mal 3 1); so that when Christ sent him to the pool of Siloam he did in effect send him to himself; for Christ is all in all to the healing of souls. Christ as a prophet directs us to himself as a priest. Go, wash in the fountain opened, a fountain of life, not a pool.
Last week, in Year A’s reading for the Third Sunday in Lent, we had the reading about Christ’s conversion of the Samaritan woman, that of living waters in John 4:5-42 (parts 1 and 2).
Of the waters of Siloam, MacArthur adds this:
So, this spoke of God’s provision. It spoke of God’s cleansing, spoke of the water of life. It’s really a beautiful picture, and it was water sent into the city, another wonderful symbol. The waters flow from the temple hill and are regarded, even in the Old Testament, as symbolic of spiritual blessing. Isaiah 8 talks about that.
So when a man went to wash at Siloam, there was an analogy there. He was going to the one who was the true Siloam, the spring of life water from God. Christ is the true Siloam. That, He even said back in chapter 7 verse 37. “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink.” Beautiful imagery, beautiful analogies.
This is how salvation works in this analogy. Sovereign grace confronts a blind and helpless, hopeless begging sinner. He can’t see, can’t see God, can’t see Christ. But sovereign grace comes to him, places His glorious, merciful hand on his sightless soul, asks only a response of simple faith, prompts that response. He finds his way to the cleansing waters, which is an emblem of Messianic salvation in Isaiah, and he comes back, and he can see, spiritually. It’s really a beautiful picture.
The people’s reaction is interesting. They asked whether the healed beggar was the same man they had seen before (verse 8). Some said it was; others said it was someone who looked like him, so the beggar spoke up and kept saying that he was that man (verse 9).
That poor man. He must have been so exhiliarated at being able to see everything around him, and yet people doubted that he was the one who begged at the temple gates.
The people asked him how he was able to see, how his eyes had been opened (verse 10), an interesting choice of words, implying to us that a spiritual opening had also taken place.
Henry says:
We may apply it spiritually; it is strange that blind eyes should be opened, but more strange when we consider how they are opened; how weak the means are that are used, and how strong the opposition that is conquered.
The man replied, sticking to the facts: the man called Jesus made mud, spread it on his eyes and told him to wash in the waters of Siloam, which he did, and he then received his sight (verse 11).
MacArthur says that the rest of the story concerns unbelief, which we have already seen in verse 9, with some doubting it was the same man:
First of all, I want you to see that unbelief is inimical, inimical. You probably haven’t used that word today or any day for that matter. But it’s a really good word, and it means “hostile.” It means adverse, it means pernicious, ill-disposed. It could even be dangerous. Unbelief is not benign. You need to understand that. When you’re dealing with unbelievers, you’re not dealing with some benign reality. This is an aggressive attitude to take. When you don’t believe in the Gospel, and you don’t believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, you inevitably are hostile toward that. That is why it is unbelievers who ultimately persecute Christians …
It starts intellectual, becomes emotional, then becomes verbal, and ends up physical. That’s what’ll happen in the story. It starts as a discussion about facts. It then becomes emotional. And the man starts sarcastically firing away at them. And then it becomes them firing at him, reviling then, and eventually physically, they throw Him out. Those are the sequences of conflict. And unbelief, if pressed, can go down that path pretty fast …
Secondly, verses 17 to 24, we’re going to work through this quickly. Unbelief is intractable. And what does intractable mean? Will not bend. Cannot be convinced. The blind man told him exactly what happened. I was blind. I can see. Jesus came, he names Jesus in the first testimony back in verse 11. He came, He told me to go to the pool. I went to the pool. I washed the mud out of my eyes, and I see. And he is literally staring at them, and they at him, as he gives this testimony. And there are all kinds of people around affirming the reality of this. But it is the nature of determined, willful unbelief that it wants more evidence, but never wants to do anything with it. It’s really on a mad search to discredit. It keeps probing, not because it seeks the truth, but because it seeks justification for its conclusion. In Deuteronomy 32 and verse 20, Moses called apostates “children in whom is no faith.” Children in whom is no belief.
… and thirdly, unbelief is irrational. With … facts, if you come to a wrong conclusion, you’re irrational. Unbelief is irrational. You face this all the time in trying to proclaim the Gospel to people. You give them the facts; you lay out the facts systematically like Peter did on the day of Pentecost. People reject it, because unbelief is irrational.
The people asked the man where Jesus was, and he said he did not know (verse 12).
Henry tells us why they asked that question:
Where is he? Some perhaps asked this question out of curiosity. “Where is he, that we may see him?” A man that did such cures as these might well be a show, which one would go a good way for the sight of. Others, perhaps, asked out of ill-will. “Where is he, that we may seize him?” There was a proclamation out for the discovering and apprehending of him (ch. 11 57); and the unthinking crowd, in spite of all reason and equity, will have ill thoughts of those that are put into an ill name. Some, we hope, asked this question out of good-will. “Where is he, that we may be acquainted with him? Where is he, that we may come to him, and share in the favours he is so free of?” In answer to this, he could say nothing: I know not. As soon as Christ had sent him to the pool of Siloam, it should seem, he withdrew immediately (as he did, ch. 5 13), and did not stay till the man returned, as if he either doubted of the effect or waited for the man’s thanks … Thus in the work of grace wrought upon the soul we see the change, but see not the hand that makes it; for the way of the Spirit is like that of the wind, which thou hearest the sound of, but canst not tell whence it comes nor whither it goes.
The people took the man to the Pharisees (verse 13).
When I read that verse, I thought of Luke 17:11-19, which is the Gospel for the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity in Year C. Jesus healed ten lepers, and told them to visit the priest (Luke 17:14). Henry’s commentary states:
As the ceremonial law was yet in force, Christ took care that it should be observed, and the reputation of it kept up, and due honour paid to the priests in things pertaining to their function; but, probably, he had here a further design, which was to have the priest’s judgment of, and testimony to, the perfectness of the cure; and that the priest might be awakened, and others by him, to enquire after one that had such a commanding power over bodily diseases.
Perhaps some of the people had that in mind, too. However, John tells us that it was the Sabbath (verse 14), when no work was to be done. So, there was undoubtedly on the part of some in the crowd a malicious intent in bringing the man before the Pharisees so that they could further condemn Christ.
The Pharisees asked the man how he obtained his sight; the man responded with the facts, saying that He put mud on his eyes, then he washed and then he could see (verse 15).
Henry expresses the mood perfectly. His thoughts mirror those of MacArthur’s with regard to unbelief:
So much passion, prejudice, and ill-humour, and so little reason, appear here, that the discourse is nothing but crossing questions. One would think, when a man in these circumstances was brought before them, they would have been so taken up in admiring the miracle, and congratulating the happiness of the poor man, that they could not have been peevish with him. But their enmity to Christ had divested them of all manner of humanity, and divinity too. Let us see how they teased this man.
The Pharisees were divided (verse 16), as they were in John 7:
45 Finally the temple guards went back to the chief priests and the Pharisees, who asked them, “Why didn’t you bring him in?”
46 “No one ever spoke the way this man does,” the guards replied.
47 “You mean he has deceived you also?” the Pharisees retorted. 48 “Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed in him? 49 No! But this mob that knows nothing of the law—there is a curse on them.”
50 Nicodemus, who had gone to Jesus earlier and who was one of their own number, asked, 51 “Does our law condemn a man without first hearing him to find out what he has been doing?”
52 They replied, “Are you from Galilee, too? Look into it, and you will find that a prophet does not come out of Galilee.”
Returning to today’s reading, the Pharisees asked the man what he thought of ‘him’, meaning Jesus; the man stated, ‘He is a prophet’ (verse 17).
MacArthur says:
… he was right. He knew his Old Testament. There’s not one single healing of a blind man in the entire Old Testament. It was unheard of. He knew that …
So this man has caught the wind of this man, Jesus. He knows His name from verse 11. He knows He’s a prophet. He now believes He’s a prophet from God because of His miracle power. And so, He gives them a straightforward, sensible answer, which should’ve been the end of the investigation. Here’s the man. He can see. This must reveal Jesus as a Prophet.
This hardened the Pharisees against the man who then refused to believe that he had ever been blind, so they called in his parents (verse 18). The Pharisees asked the parents whether the man was their son who was born blind and, if so, how it was that he could see (verse 19).
MacArthur says:
Now remember, they’ve heard from the man, and the man is surrounded by all the strangers and neighbors who knew him and brought him and all that testimony collectively. And they still don’t believe because again, unbelief is intractable. I’m telling you this because you need to understand this is what you’re going to face when you give the Gospel. Most of the people are going to reject what you tell them about the Gospel, throughout your whole life of ministry and evangelism, most people will not accept what you say. Then, there is an element of hostility toward the Gospel, and there’s an element of being intractable and immovable against the Gospel. This is what we face. The way is narrow. Few there be that find it.
So, this is the predisposed viewpoint. They say look, we’re going to dig deeper into this, because they will not give up the notion that this man is a sinner and he is not from God. So, there must be something about the story that they’re not seeing yet. There’s some kind of cover-up here. There’s some kind of lie. There’s some kind of deception. We’ve got to get to the bottom of this.
Henry has more:
This they did in hopes to disprove the miracle. These parents were poor and timorous, and if they had said that they could not be sure that this was their son, or that it was only some weakness or dimness in his sight that he had been born with, which if they had been able to get help for him might have been cured long since, or had otherwise prevaricated, for fear of the court, the Pharisees had gained their point, had robbed Christ of the honour of this miracle, which would have lessened the reputation of all the rest. But God so ordered and overruled this counsel of theirs that it turned to the more effectual proof of the miracle, and left them under a necessity of being either convinced or confounded.
The questions that were put to them (v. 19): They asked them in an imperious threatening way, “Is this your son? Dare you swear to it? Do you say he was born blind? Are you sure of it? Or did he but pretend to be so, to have an excuse for his begging? How then doth he now see? That is impossible, and therefore you had better unsay it.” Those who cannot bear the light of truth do all they can to eclipse it, and hinder the discovery of it. Thus the managers of evidence, or mismanagers rather, lead witnesses out of the way, and teach them how to conceal or disguise the truth, and so involve themselves in a double guilt, like that of Jeroboam, who sinned, and made Israel to sin.
The parents affirmed that the man was their son and that he had been born blind (verse 20).
They said they did not know how he came to see, nor by whom, so they told the Pharisees to ask him themselves, as he was an adult and could speak for himself (verse 21).
Our commentators point to the cowardice of the parents, but, we discover that they were afraid of the Jews, who had already agreed that anyone who confessed that Jesus was Messiah would be thrown out of the synagogue (verse 22). Therefore, his parents said, ‘He is of age; ask him’ (verse 23).
MacArthur explains why the parents said that:
They knew what it was to be thrown out of the synagogue, by the way, because their son had lived outside the synagogue. They knew what the ban was, what the curse was, with all its implications. They knew what being an outcast was, and they didn’t want that.
… Can’t throw him out of the synagogue. He’s not in the synagogue.
MacArthur also explains how awful being thrown out of the synagogue was for worshippers. Essentially, you lost not only your fellowship of worshippers but all of your social contacts. The synagogue was every practising Jew’s meeting place:
Now, being thrown out of the synagogue was a big deal. A very big deal. If you were in Jewish society and you weren’t in the synagogue, you were like a leper. There were three kinds of excommunication, but each of them had social implications, economic implications, and religious implications. The first, according to the Talmud, there were three kinds of Shamatha, which means destruction. That’s considered destruction, when you’re thrown out of the synagogue, cut off from God, the life of the country. There is Nezifah, which was 7 days to 30 days. 7 days to 30 days, a week to a month. You were out of the synagogue. You were a pariah for those days. Second, there was Niddui. 30 days and up. That could last a long time. Months, maybe years, depending on the crime. And if you died under that ban, you had no funeral. You were seriously dishonored. The worst was Herem, which was an indefinite, permanent ban. The rabbis used to say that being banned was far worse than being flogged, ‘cause of its implication socially and economically, as well as religiously.
So, they didn’t want to get anywhere near having to experience what he experienced. And since they couldn’t throw him out, they said, “Ask him; he’s of age.”
The Pharisees called the man in again and asked him to recant giving Jesus the credit for his sight, which is why they said, ‘Give glory to God! We know that this man is a sinner’ (verse 24).
The man wisely answered that he did not know whether the one who healed him was a sinner, only that he was blind and now he can see (verse 25).
That verse was the inspiration for Amazing Grace, the fascinating story of which I will relate in a future post.
My exegesis concludes here.
Reign of Christ — Christ the King — Sunday is on November 20, 2022.
Readings for Year C can be found here.
The Gospel reading is as follows (emphases mine):
Luke 23:33-43
23:33 When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left.
23:34 Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” And they cast lots to divide his clothing.
23:35 And the people stood by, watching; but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!”
23:36 The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine,
23:37 and saying, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!”
23:38 There was also an inscription over him, “This is the King of the Jews.”
23:39 One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!”
23:40 But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation?
23:41 And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.”
23:42 Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
23:43 He replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”
Commentary comes from Matthew Henry and John MacArthur.
Apologies in advance for another long post, but what our commentators have to say will open our eyes to the true depth of this reading.
John MacArthur says that the story of the penitent thief is found only in Luke’s Gospel:
The story of the penitent thief is not in Matthew, Mark or John. It is only in Luke. This is all we have. And in a sense, as we look at verses 39 to 43 and consider this miraculous conversion of a thief hanging on a cross next to Jesus, we might conclude that this is a rather cryptic account. Perhaps we would wish that Matthew had given us another look at it or Mark or both or John, but this is all we have …
… we come to the conversion at Calvary, the story of the salvation of a crucified thief. And as I said, as you first look at it, it seems a bit brief and perhaps not very revealing, but you will find by the time we’re done that it is anything but that.
MacArthur explains that our Lord’s crucifixion was set up to play out as a comedy for both Romans and Jews:
I understand that’s a stunning notion, that this is a comedy, but it is precisely that which was intended by the crucifiers. To them, Jesus was an object of absolute ridicule. As a king, he was laughable. This whole thing was intended to be a mockery of the fact that he was a king. He had no army. He had no sovereignty over anything or any place. He had meager and minimal followers. He had conquered no one and nothing and delivered no one. There was nothing about him that looked as if he was a massive power, but rather he was increasingly weaker and weaker and weaker. And so the whole thing was so comedic they turned it into a kind of burlesque. Here, those that are gathered around the cross are mocking, sneering and hurling abuse at Jesus with sarcasm. They’re endeavoring to treat the Son of God with as much dishonor as they can muster, with as much disrespect and disdain and shame as they can possibly generate.
Along with Judas’s betrayal a few days beforehand, this is one of history’s greatest sins. Both show how horrible spiritual blindness truly is:
Here is sin at its apex. Here is sin at its ultimate. Here is blasphemy at its pinnacle. Mocking deity, sneering at the incarnate God, and with glib satisfaction piling sarcastic scorn on the Creator and the Redeemer – the true King; the true Messiah. Sinners cannot to worse than this. Nothing that sinners can do could more offend God than this. Blasphemy can’t be worse than this. We might ask that in light of the heinousness of this, maybe this is time for God to act. We should be expecting a holy, righteous God to react to this kind of ultimate blasphemy by pouring out wrath and vengeance and fury on those who are perpetrating this on him …
Judgment will come 40 years after this in the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. Many, if not most of these people, gather today who are still alive 40 years later will perish in that judgment. Many will die before that ever comes. But doesn’t this seem like an undue patience? Just how tolerant is holiness? Just how patient is righteousness? Just how enduring is divine mercy and grace? If ever there seemed to be a time when God’s wrath would be justified if it came swiftly, this would be it.
Well, in a strange irony, His judgment did come swiftly at the cross, but it didn’t come on the crowd, it came on Jesus on behalf of those who blasphemed him. The Old Testament is clear about blasphemy. It says this in Leviticus 24:16, “Anybody who blasphemes my name shall die.” It is a capital crime to blaspheme the name of God. They are blasphemers. They know that. They’re content to blaspheme Him, to pronounce curses on Him, to heap abuse on Him. That is exactly what they are doing. In a perverted twist, however, they accuse him of being the blasphemer. When earlier in his ministry Jesus demonstrated the power to forgive sin, Matthew 9, they said this man blasphemes. You come to the end of Matthew – or toward the end of Matthew in chapter 26, Jesus says, “You’ve said it yourself, nevertheless I tell you that you shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven. And the high priest tore at his robes saying, “He has blasphemed. What further need do we have of witnesses. Behold, you have heard the blasphemy. He is deserving of death.” And they spit in his face and beat him with their fists and slapped him.
They are the blasphemers, but in a perverted twist, they make him into the blasphemer and they are the ones who think they’re upholding righteousness.
MacArthur reminds us of God’s infinite patience:
When you run out of patience, God does not. When you look, at something and think the patience of God must be exhausted because my patience would have been long ago exhausted, God’s is not. And the answer is that God is far beyond us, infinitely beyond us, in how He thinks and how He acts. The uniqueness of God is this: when He is massively offended and when He is relentlessly offended, He still comes to the offenders, and warning them of the judgment to come offers them forgiveness and mercy and grace and compassion and makes them His children and takes them to His holy heaven forever. It is that God who is hanging on the cross. That God whose patience is far beyond ours because His ways are not our ways, His thoughts are not our thoughts. The stunning contrast at Calvary is the contrast between the merciless insults of the crowd and the merciful intersession of the Christ, and those are the two points I want you to look at. The merciless insults of the crowd, verse 35. We’re going to look at the merciless insults of the crowd. The crowd is made up of four groups. There’s the people, the leaders, the soldiers and the thieves and they all have the same response to Jesus. They’re literally without sympathy. They are heartless, cruel, brutal.
When the Romans — ‘they’ — came to the place that is called The Skull, or Golgotha, they crucified Jesus with the two criminals, one on His right and one on His left (verse 33).
Matthew Henry’s commentary says:
… he was crucified at a place called Calvary, Kranion, the Greek name for Golgotha—the place of a skull: an ignominious place, to add to the reproach of his sufferings, but significant, for there he triumphed over death as it were upon his own dunghill. He was crucified. His hands and feet were nailed to the cross as it lay upon the ground, and it was then lifted up, and fastened into the earth, or into some socket made to receive it. This was a painful and shameful death above any other.
Our Lord’s place in the middle of the two men was significant:
… he was crucified in the midst between two thieves, as if he had been the worst of the three. Thus he was not only treated as a transgressor, but numbered with them, the worst of them.
Jesus interceded to His Father asking Him to forgive them because they didn’t know what they were doing; the soldiers cast lots to divide His clothing (verse 34).
MacArthur says that casting lots for a criminal’s belongings was normal:
That’s standard procedure, by the way. The executioners were given the right to keep the possessions, the final possessions of clothing and things of the people who were executed. That was sort of a small job benefit, I guess, a perk. Now there’s a little more detail on this back in John because John gives us some insight into exactly what the soldiers did. In 19 John 23, “The soldiers, therefore, when they crucified Jesus, took his outer garments and made four parts.” There would be four parts. There would be four garments that a man would wear in that day. There would be an outer cloak that you kept warm with, like a jacket, and you slept on and used as a blanket. There would be shoes or sandals. There would be a headpiece. There would be a sash or a belt. Four pieces.
Psalm 22 prophesied this would happen:
We know that there were four Roman soldiers assigned to a crucifixion. If you look in 12 Acts 4, you read about a squad of Romans. It’s a quaternion made up of four. In fact a full one was four units of four, so it’s very likely that there were four soldiers in a death squad. That’s why the four garments could be divided one to each of the four, but there was also a tunic which would have been his regular garment and the tunic was seamless, woven in one piece, so they said let’s not tear it. Let’s cast lots for it to decide whose it shall be. That the scripture might be fulfilled they divided my outer garments among them and for my clothing they cast lots. That, too, in Psalm 22.
Out of the four groups of people there that MacArthur wants us to look at, we see the soldiers first:
We might expect cruelty out of Roman soldiers because they did this all the time.
The people stood by watching, and the leaders scoffed at Jesus, saying that if He saved others, let Him save Himself if He is the Messiah of God, His Chosen One (verse 35).
Here Luke shows us the crowd and the leaders.
Remember that every Jew possible was in Jerusalem for the Passover, so it was a huge crowd.
Of them, MacArthur gives us something to think about:
… these are the people, probably, who had been healed by Jesus of certain diseases. These might be people who had had experiences of other miracles that Jesus had performed in the area of Judea and Jerusalem, and there were lots of them from, of all places, Galilee in the north. There may have been, and surely were, people in the crowd who were fed among the 5,000 when Jesus made the food. There were certainly people who knew well those who had been healed, maybe been given their hearing or their sight, or raised up to walk from a state of paralysis. I mean wouldn’t we expect to find something sympathetic out of them and didn’t they hear Jesus teaching, and didn’t they experience the meekness and gentleness of Christ and the love of Christ that was so manifest in the beauty and magnificence of what he taught?
But even the crowd is merciless. You say, “Wait a minute. All it says in that verse is the people stood by looking on.” Well, that’s not all that can be said about the merciless crowd, I’m sorry to say. This is a large crowd. They’ve come from everywhere. It’s Passover. The city has swelled by hundreds of thousands of people and the crowd moving toward Calvary from the public trial early in the morning is growing and growing and growing, because Jesus is the most popular person in the country by far and he’s drawing a massive crowd that are now collected around the cross. These are people who were there to hail him as the potential king on Monday when he came into the city. They were the same people who were there to scream, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” earlier in the day, and now they sort of appear to be exhausted, I guess, sort of blank stares from what Luke tells us. But Matthew and Mark tell us more. Matthew and Mark tell us what we need to know. Matthew 27:39, “And those passing by, the milling crowd, were hurling abuse at him, wagging their heads, a gesture of taunting, and saying, “You who are going to destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself. If you are the son of God, come down from the cross in the same way,” the priests, etc.
MacArthur thinks the leaders influenced the crowd:
Mark 15 verse 29, “And those passing by the milling crowd were hurling abuse at him saying, “Ha!” Wagging their heads, “You are going to destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days. Save yourself and come down from the cross.” Again, in the same way which sorts out the rulers from the passing, milling crowd. The crowd were in it. They had been orchestrated by the leaders. They’re easily seduced by their evil hearts of unbelief, easily seduced by the manipulation of their leaders. They’d picked up the comedic game and they pour out the venomous sarcasm on Jesus. They never do the right thing, this crowd. They haven’t done the right thing all week. Here they’re just vicious, merciless, to the merciful son of God. It’s amazing. It’s amazing. This is the worst possible conduct by the people of Israel. So the merciless crowd, then the merciless rulers – back to Luke 23:35, “And even the rulers were sneering at him.” Of course they had orchestrated all of it, “Saying he has saved others, let him save himself if this is the Christ of God, His Chosen One.” Then they use to Messianic terms, The Christ of God, the Anointed; the word Messiah, and His Chosen One a Messianic title taken from Daniel chapter 9. The Old Testament expressions related to the Messiah are in reference – in general reference when they use the term the Christ of God. The specific words, “His Chosen One” comes from Daniel 9 and definitely is a Messianic title.
The soldiers joined in the mocking, offering him sour wine (verse 36) in His moment of greatest thirst and taunting Him, saying that if He were the King of the Jews, He should save Himself (verse 37).
Of the sour wine, Henry says it was a taunting invitation to drink with them:
They mocked him (v. 36, 37); they made sport with him, and made a jest of his sufferings; and when they were drinking sharp sour wine themselves, such as was generally allotted them, they triumphantly asked him if he would pledge them, or drink with them.
MacArthur discusses the Greek word for ‘taunt’ and the sour wine:
The actual Greek word empaiz is to taunt. Inflicting even more pain on him to his face as he hangs in agony. And in a mock act of obeisance and service to him as if he were a king, they offer him sour wine. Now there are a couple of occasions that are clearly identified when Christ was crucified in which he was offered something to drink. The first one was when they got him to the place to be crucified, you remember they offered him a drink that had a sedative in it, that would probably be used to sedate the person a little bit so it would be easier to nail him to the cross and he wouldn’t fight. And Jesus refused that, remember?
And then when he comes to the very end of his dying, six hours later, at the very end, at 3:00 in the afternoon when he’s about to die, he says, “I’m thirsty,” and they lift up to him a drink on a sponge on the end of a stick. This seems to me to be something different from both of those. This seems to me to be part of the game they were playing. This is certainly not their giving him the wine in response to his asking. This does not appear to be the sedative because he’s already there and the mockery is already full scale. It seems to me that they are offering him sour wine and saying at the same time, if you’re the King of the Jews, save yourself. It’s a pretend act of obeisance, as if they were bringing royal wine to the king. The mockery just reaches ultimate proportions. Roman soldiers drank a cheap form of wine. They offered it to him, mimicking the rulers, mimicking the people, spewing out the same taunts.
MacArthur looks at Matthew’s account and prophecies from the Old Testament:
According to Matthew’s account, Matthew 27:42, “He saved others, he can’t save himself. He is the King of Israel. Let him now come down from the cross and we’ll all believe him. He trusts in God, let Him deliver him now if he is taking pleasure in him, for he said, “I am the son of God.” You know, they say these things and they just have no idea what they’re saying. Listen to this. Psalm 22 looks at the cross of Christ. It’s prophecy. It starts out this way. Here’s the beginning of 22 Psalm, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Does that sound familiar? The very words of Jesus on the cross. But go down to verse seven, 22nd Psalm 7, “A reproach of men despised by the people, all who see me sneer at me. They separate with the lip. They wag the head.” That’s exactly what they did. “Saying commit yourself to the Lord. Let Him deliver him. Let Him rescue him because he delights in him.” All that sarcasm was predicted in the Psalm. They fulfilled it to the letter.
They knew about the title of the Chosen One, because Jesus had applied it to Himself during His ministry:
… you can go back to the ninth chapter of Luke and in verses 20 and 35 you will see that Jesus did take the title The Christ of God and he did take the title His Chosen One. They knew he claimed it.
Paul said that the Jews would find Jesus to be a stumbling block and the Gentiles would find Him foolish, things that are still true today. MacArthur addresses that and dying on a tree, the ultimate curse for a Jew:
Remember, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1 that a crucified Messiah is to a Jew a stumbling block, and of course to the gentile, foolishness. They thought of someone hanging on a tree according to 21 Deuteronomy 23 as cursed by God and Jesus was cursed by God, and so they heap on him all the scorn of this notion that he is the true Messiah and King that they’ve been waiting for. How could that possibly be true? It’s absurd. The leaders orchestrate this and egg on the mindless crowd. Little did they know, as I said, that he was being cursed by God. That was true. Further, 53 Isaiah 4 says, “He was smitten by God and afflicted,” and verse 10 says, “The Lord was pleased to crush him, putting him to death.” Paul looks back on that and said he was made a curse for us. But it was all nonsense to the people.
Henry says this mocking of Jesus was a moment of unity between Roman and Jew:
… they said, If thou be the king of the Jews, save thyself; for, as the Jews prosecuted him under the notion of a pretended Messiah, so the Romans under the notion of a pretended king.
There was an inscription over Jesus: ‘This is the King of the Jews’ (verse 38).
Although Luke doesn’t say so, it was written in Latin, Greek and Hebrew. Our commentators place great emphasis on it being in those three languages.
Henry says that it was part of God’s plan to spread the Gospel:
That the superscription over his head, setting forth his crime, was, This is the King of the Jews, v. 38. He is put to death for pretending to be the king of the Jews; so they meant it; but God intended it to be a declaration of what he really was, notwithstanding his present disgrace: he is the king of the Jews, the king of the church, and his cross is the way to his crown. This was written in those that were called the three learned languages, Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew, for those are best learned that have learned Christ. It was written in these three languages that it might be known and read of all men; but God designed by it to signify that the gospel of Christ should be preached to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem, and be read in all languages. The Gentile philosophy made the Greek tongue famous, the Roman laws and government made the Latin tongue so, and the Hebrew excelled them all for the sake of the Old Testament. In these three languages is Jesus Christ proclaimed king. Young scholars, that are taking pains at school to make themselves masters of these three languages, should aim at this, that in the use of them they may increase their acquaintance with Christ.
MacArthur explains why Pontius Pilate wanted the inscription to read just that:
We know historically that when people were crucified, their crime was posted and since Jesus committed no crime there could be no crime posted over him. So Pilate decided what was going to go on the sign. Pilate, 19 John 19, Pilate wrote an inscription and put it on the cross. This was Pilate’s thing and this is what it said, “Jesus, the Nazarene” or Jesus of Nazareth, “The King of the Jews.” If you combine Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, it actually says, “This is Jesus of Nazareth, The King of the Jews.” It was all placarded there. Well, therefore this inscription many of the Jews read for the place Jesus was crucified was near the city, again reason for the huge crowd. It was written in Hebrew, Latin and Greek. Pilate wanted everybody to know it and so the chief priests and the Jews were saying to Pilate, “Do not write the King of the Jews, but that he said, “I am King of the Jews.” Pilate answered, “What I have written I have written.” Pilate wouldn’t change it because this is Pilate’s way to mock them. They had mocked him. They had backed him into the proverbial corner and blackmailed him into a executing a man he knew was innocent. Even his wife said wash your hands of this innocent man. Pilate said multiple times, “I find no fault in him.” Herod found no crime. And Pilate had been made to look like a fool and he wasn’t going to leave it at that, so he wanted to turn the tables and make them look like fools. It was Pilate’s little joke. This is Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews. They said take that down and put up he said he’s the King of the Jews and he said what I have written I have written. So you have the people mocking Jesus and Pilate mocking the people.
Then we meet the last group, the two criminals on crosses next to Jesus.
One of them also joined in the mocking, saying Jesus that, if He were the Messiah, He should save Himself — and them (verse 39).
MacArthur tells us that in Matthew’s and Mark’s accounts, both thieves had been mocking our Lord:
One of the thieves, only one is quoted by Luke, but Matthew and Mark tell us the rest of the story. Here’s what Matthew says, 27 Matthew 44, “The robbers were also insulting him with the same words,” both of them; plural. 15 Mark 32, “Those who were crucified with him were also insulting him.” They both joined in; the whole crowd, all the rulers, all the soldiers, both thieves. All Luke does is record for us what one of the two said, but they were both involved. “Are you not the Christ?” again with scorn and sarcasm, “Save yourself and us.”
The silent thief rebuked the other, asking him if he did not fear God, for both were under the same sentence of condemnation (verse 40).
The penitent thief told his companion that both of them were justly condemned but that ‘this man’ — Jesus — had done nothing wrong (verse 41).
Henry points to divine grace in the spiritual transformation of the penitent thief:
2. He owns that he deserves what was done to him: We indeed justly. It is probable that they both suffered for one and the same crime, and therefore he spoke with the more assurance, We received the due reward of our deeds. This magnifies divine grace, as acting in a distinguishing way. These two have been comrades in sin and suffering, and yet one is saved and the other perishes; two that had gone together all along hitherto, and yet now one taken and the other left. He does not say, Thou indeed justly, but We. Note, True penitents acknowledge the justice of God in all the punishments of their sin. God has done right, but we have done wickedly. 3. He believes Christ to have suffered wrongfully. Though he was condemned in two courts, and run upon as if he had been the worst of malefactors, yet this penitent thief is convinced, by his conduct in his sufferings, that he has done nothing amiss, ouden atopon—nothing absurd, or unbecoming his character. The chief priests would have him crucified between the malefactors, as one of them; but this thief has more sense than they, and owns he is not one of them. Whether he had before heard of Christ and of his wonderous works does not appear, but the Spirit of grace enlightened him with this knowledge, and enabled him to say, This man has done nothing amiss.
MacArthur describes what happened to the penitent thief physically and spiritually:
As the hours passed on the cross, one of the two most thoroughly degenerate people on the mountain, at the scene, a man devoted to violent robbery, a wicked criminal, has a massive transformation. It is shocking; 180 degrees. His taunting goes silent and while his body is in horrible trauma and agony, the unparalleled suffering of crucifixion, his mind might be assumed to go foggy as he tries to deal with the pain. And as some kind of shock would set in, just to protect him from agonies that would be totally unbearable, and we know the body has the capacity to send us into shock in order to mitigate those kinds of excruciating experiences, but in the moment of the worst imaginable kind of agony, his mind becomes crystal clear with a clarity and perception of reality and truth that he’d never experienced in his life. With a clarity and a perception of truth and reality that he hadn’t experienced a moment before. Something has happened. All of a sudden, he turns to his friend and rebukes him for doing what he had just been doing. What has happened?
I’ll tell you what has happened. A divine, sovereign miracle has happened. There is no other explanation. You want a parallel to this? Paul on the Damascus Road. That’s the best parallel. His thoughts of Jesus are thoughts of hate. His thoughts toward those who confess the name of Jesus are thoughts of persecution and execution. Paul has papers. He’s on his way to Damascus to persecute and execute those who named the name of Christ. And while he’s on his way with his papers in his hand, God invades his life, slams him to the dirt, blinds him and saves him. That’s how salvation works, folks. It is a sovereign miracle. Not always that dramatic, but sometimes that dramatic …
The penitent thief is a form of the Prodigal Son:
If you want to connect this with somebody else, this man would be the prodigal. This is a wicked man, but all of a sudden in the moment he is dramatically transformed and it becomes immediately evident what has happened. He goes from blaspheming Jesus to being horrified at the other criminal blaspheming Jesus. His whole perception of how you treat Jesus is completely changed and that’s where the story begins. The other criminal has had no such change, hanging there hurling abuse at Jesus with the same mocking sarcasm, “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us.” It must have shocked him to hear from the other side of Jesus, his friend, verse 40, who answered and rebuking him said, “Do you not even fear God since you’re under the same sentence of condemnation? And we, indeed, justly for we’re receiving what we deserve for our deeds. But this man has done nothing wrong.” This must have been a shock to the other thief who was hurling the abuse. What happened to you? What happened to you since you were nailed up there? The transformed man finds the taunts coming out of the mouth of his companion criminal repulsive to him and frightening to him and they had just come out of his mouth. What this man says is the evidence of his changed heart. Salvation is a divine miracle and it manifests itself. There’s a lot more here than you might think.
First of all, he becomes very, very aware of God and the fear of God. Then he openly acknowledges his own sin. Then he confesses the sinlessness of Christ and affirms his messiah-ship and his savior-hood. It’s an amazing thing. And all of these are responses to the miraculous sovereign work of the spirit of God on his dark heart. This is the light of the glorious gospel of Christ shining in the midst of the darkness and dispelling it. I want to sort of unpack those elements that are the manifest evidences that God has done the work of transformation. The other sinner, no fear of God, no fear of judgment, no sense of sinfulness, no sense of justice, no sense of guilt, no desire for forgiveness, no longing for righteousness, no desire for reconciliation. And the thief who has been transformed confronts that tragic condition, which moments before had been his own condition. He can’t understand it any more. In a moment of time he went from being a part of it to not being able to comprehend it. How can you act like that? How can you talk like that? Don’t you fear God? Don’t you know you’re getting what you deserve? Don’t you know this man is righteous? What a transformation. Let’s look a little more closely at it.
While the one criminal is hurling abuse at Jesus, the other answered and rebuking him said – rebuking is a very strong word. Epitima. He said, “Do you not even fear God?” Let me tell you the first evidence that God is doing the work of conversion: the fear of God. The fear of God. If someone is converted to Christ, if someone is regenerate and someone is born again, made new, Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:17 he becomes a new creature, old things pass away and all things become new. Boy, do we see that here. And the first thing you see in a real conversion is a heightened awareness that God is a threat. To be afraid of God, literally to fear God. He really is not seeking someone to get him off the cross. He’s not trying to find someone who can save him from physical death. He wants to make sure he is saved from divine judgment. His problem is not really what’s happening to him on the earth, it’s what’s going to happen to him when he comes to the throne of God. He’s a Jew, no doubt, raised to know the laws of God, to understand God – God’s holiness, God’s law, obedience to God’s law. He is a violator of God’s law. He is an open violator of God’s law. He is a known violator of God’s law. He is a tried and proven violator of God’s law and he’s dying a death that is just and he says it. And the law of men was a reflection of the law of God, certainly in Israel, and so he knows that if this is what men to do him for breaking the law of God, what in the world is God going to do to me? All of a sudden he has clarity on what he had learned about the law and guilt and sin and judgment. He knew he was a violator. He was internally convicted by the work of the Holy Spirit, to be aware that what he was getting from a human judge was only a small sampling of what he was going to get from a divine judge. And to add to his guilt, which put him on the cross, you can add that he had been blaspheming the Messiah and he now knows it, producing an even greater guilt. From this place of clarity he can’t even imagine that he did that, that he said what he said to Jesus and he can’t understand how his friend can say that. He says in verse 40, “Do you not even fear God since you’re under the same sentence of condemnation?” They’re two of a kind. Look, we’re getting exactly what we deserve. Don’t you have a fear of what’s going to happen when we wind up before God? As Jesus said in Luke 12:4-5, “I don’t fear those who destroy the body, but fear him who destroys both soul and body in hell.” I will tell you this, and you need to remember this, Romans 3:18 says this when it defines the inherent nature of fallen man and his sinfulness, “there’s none righteous, no not one, there’s none that understand, none that is good,” etc. That text from verse 10 of Romans 3 to verse 18, ends in verse 18 with this statement: “There is no fear of God in their eyes.” It is characteristic of the unregenerate not to fear God. This is a typical unregenerate comment, “I’ve lived a pretty good life. Certainly God will take me to heaven.” Like the Jews in Romans 10 who didn’t understand the righteousness of God. The sinner does not live under the fear of God. He must be brought under the fear of God by the convicting power of God. This thief who is still hurling abuse at Jesus has no fear of God like all other sinners. But the sinner who comes to salvation has been brought by the power of the Spirit of God to a deadly fear of divine judgment. And friends, as we communicate the gospel with sinners, you can’t hold back that reality. The gospel is not telling sinners that Jesus will make them happy or Jesus will give them a better life or Jesus will fix up the pain and bring fulfillment and all of that. The message of salvation is you are a violator of God’s law and you are headed for eternal punishment under the wrath of God. You’d better fear God. That’s the message. And when you see a real conversion, you see this and it’s reminiscent, isn’t it, of Luke 18. What is the public doing as he pours his head down and looks at the ground and pounds his breast saying, “Lord, be” – what – “merciful to me, a sinner.” Don’t give me justice. Don’t give me judgment …
… All of a sudden, he had crystal clarity in his mind on the fact that he was going to stand before God as a sinner with nothing that could rescue him. That’s the first evidence of a work of salvation in the heart. The second one is a sense of one’s sinfulness. They go together. The fear of God coupled with a sense of one’s guilt. Verse 41, we indeed, justly, we’re receiving what we deserve for our deeds. He says I’m a lawbreaker. I know that. It’s a true assessment of his condition. Like the prodigal, who in getting down with the pigs and trying to eat and be on the brink of death, he says – and Jesus told the story in Luke 15 – he came to his senses. That’s where true repentance begins, when you come to your senses. He’s guilty, he’s aware of his sinfulness, he’s in a sense saying I am a sinner. I know I am a sinner. I am receiving what I deserve for my deeds. This is the attitude of a true repenter. He understands that if justice is operating in his life, then he is going to get exactly what he’s getting. No excuses. He’s not saying I was led astray and there were evil influences in my life. I was molested when I was four or whatever it might be. He’s saying look, we’re receiving exactly what we deserve for our deeds. Justice is operating and it will operate not only in the human world, in the world of men, but it will operate in God’s realm as well. Spiritual reality makes clear that in spite of the system of Judaism teaching salvation by works, salvation by self effort, salvation by ceremony, etc., the true convert pleads nothing but confesses his utter guilt and absolute bankruptcy. He has nothing to offer God; nothing to commend himself. Like the prodigal he comes back stinking and dying. He needs mercy, he needs grace and he knows it. He’s an unworthy sinner. These are the evidences of a saving work of God. He needs mercy and it’s never been this clear. By the way, sin never becomes as clear to the sinner as when he’s in the presence of righteousness. Like Isaiah, who in the presence of God, who was holy, holy, holy, said, “damn me, for I am a man of unclean lips.” He had a clear perception of the judgment of God which he was deserving and a clear perception of his great guilt.
There’s a third element that becomes in evidence for us of the work of God in his heart and that is that he believed in Christ. He believed in Christ. We talk about two things that make up a real conversion repentance under the fear of divine wrath and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and we see that. The things that he says about Christ, though brief, are really quite stunning. The end of verse 41 he does what the sinner must do. He compares himself with the perfection of Christ. “We’re getting exactly what we deserve for our deeds. But this man has done nothing wrong.” Here the story moves from an assessment of his own condition to an assessment of Jesus Christ. That’s what happens in a true conversion. And he goes beyond saying Jesus isn’t guilty of the crime for which he’s being crucified to saying something far broader than that. He has done nothing wrong. I don’t know how much he knew about all the attempts to try and find a crime for which they could legitimately crucify Christ and they never could find one. I don’t know what exposure he had to Christ. I don’t know what he heard other people say about the perfections of Jesus Christ, but our Lord had been on display for three years with all of his perfections and no one had ever been able to lay any legitimate charge against him. He is given, by the power of the Spirit of God, clarity to understand that he is hanging on a cross as a sinner who is getting what he deserves next to someone who is righteous and is getting what he doesn’t deserve. He believes, then, in the righteousness of Christ.
The repentant thief asks Jesus — by name — to remember him when He comes into his kingdom (verse 42).
It’s a highly humble request.
Henry also says the request showed that the man believed in the righteousness of Christ:
1. Observe his faith in this prayer … Christ was now in the depth of disgrace, deserted by his own disciples, reviled by his own nation, suffering as a pretender, and not delivered by his Father He made this profession before those prodigies happened which put honour upon his sufferings, and which startled the centurion; yet verily we have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel. He believed another life after this, and desired to be happy in that life, not as the other thief, to be saved from the cross, but to be well provided for when the cross had done its worst. 2. Observe his humility in this prayer. All his request is, Lord, remember me. He does not pray, Lord, prefer me (as they did, Matt 20 21), though, having the honour as none of the disciples had to drink of Christ’s cup and to be baptized with his baptism either on his right hand or on his left in his sufferings when his own disciples had deserted him he might have had some colour to ask as they did to sit on his right hand and on his left in his kingdom. Acquaintance in sufferings has sometimes gained such a point, Jer 52 31, 32. But he is far from the thought of it. All he begs is, Lord, remember me, referring himself to Christ in what way to remember him. It is a request like that of Joseph to the chief butler, Think on me (Gen 40 14), and it sped better; the chief butler forgot Joseph, but Christ remembered this thief. 3. There is an air of importunity and fervency in this prayer. He does, as it were, breathe out his soul in it: “Lord, remember me, and I have enough; I desire no more; into thy hands I commit my case.” Note, To be remembered by Christ, now that he is in his kingdom, is what we should earnestly desire and pray for, and it will be enough to secure our welfare living and dying. Christ is in his kingdom, interceding. “Lord, remember me, and intercede for me.” He is there ruling. “Lord, remember me, and rule in me by thy Spirit.” He is there preparing places for those that are his. “Lord, remember me, and prepare a place for me; remember me at death, remember me in the resurrection.“ See Job 14 13.
MacArthur looks at the thief’s calling Jesus by name:
“Jesus, yeshua.” What does that mean? Jehovah saves. “We shall call him Jesus for he will save his people from their sins,” Matthew 1:21. Yeshua. He recognizes Jesus as righteous. He recognizes Jesus as a source of forgiveness and grace and mercy. He recognizes that Jesus is so merciful and gracious that he’s not even holding the sin of these people against them, but rather desirous of their forgiveness. And he sees, I think, all of this with clarity given only by the spirit of God who drew, perhaps out of his background, perhaps out of conversations – who knows where it came from – to focus the clarity because he had to know the truth about Christ. Then when he says, “Jesus,” there’s a lot in that word. He recognizes Jesus as the Savior. How do you know that? Why would he then ask him to remember him when he comes into his kingdom unless he thought he was the one who could save him? He doesn’t say to him, “Dear sir, could you find somebody that could save me.” He doesn’t say, “Could you connect with whoever’s in charge of saving people like me?” He says, “Jesus. Yeshua.” Save me. Remember. More than a thought. We think about remember, it’s a hazy, foggy kind of thing. That’s not what he’s talking about. Much, much more than that. It’s a plea of a broken penitent, an unworthy sinner, for grace and forgiveness. And what he’s really saying is save me from the judgment of God. Save me from what I deserve. Forgive me. You’ve prayed it. Can I be one of those that’s in answer to your prayer?
And then I love this. Boy, he’s got a pretty comprehensive Christology because he says, “Remember me when you come in your kingdom.” He’s got the Old Testament eschatology. What did the Old Testament teach? That the Messiah would come in the end of the age, gloriously, and establish a kingdom, right, fulfilling all the promises to Abraham, all the promises to David and fulfilling all the reiterated promises of the Old Testament that are rehearsed again and again by the prophets, including the new covenant salvation to Israel, and that there would be a kingdom established on earth that’s defined and described in great detail in the Old Testament … Nobody survived crucifixion, so he also believed that Jesus would die and what, rise again and bring his kingdom. That’s pretty good Christology. That’s exactly what he was saying. Remember me when you come in your kingdom. He is saying this isn’t the end of you. Like the Centurion, remember, who says surely this is the son of God. He’s convinced.
Jesus replied, beginning with ‘Truly I tell you’ — meaning emphatically and sincerely — that the repentant thief would be that day, with Him, in Paradise (verse 43).
Paradise was the third of the heavens referred to in that era. It meant the highest heaven.
MacArthur discusses our Lord’s reply and promise:
Did he have a right to be with Christ? Are you kidding me? With me? Today. What had he done to earn it? Nothing. He’d be dead before he could do anything. This is grace, isn’t it? This is the father kissing the son. This is full reconciliation; instantaneous. Today. Paradise, paradeisos, an old Persian word for garden. It’s a synonym for heaven. In 2 Corinthians 12 Paul says in verse two, “I was called up to the third heaven.” And in verse four he says he was called up to paradise. Same thing. Third heaven, first heaven, atmospheric, second heaven, celestial, third heaven the abode of God. That’s paradise. Or in relation to seven, Jesus says, “To him who overcomes I will grant the tree of life which is in the paradise of God.” If you turn to Revelation 21 and 22, the tree of life is in heaven. So he’s not saying anything but you’re going to be with me in heaven today. There’s no waiting place. There’s no transitional place. Absent from the body, present with the Lord, to depart and be with Christ. If that is not the great illustration of grace I don’t know what is. This is a man whose whole life qualified him for hell. And in one moment a sovereign God swept down, gave him complete clarity on himself and on Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit rescued him from divine judgment and that same day met him in heaven and fellowshipped with him.
Henry has this analysis:
1. Christ here lets us know that he was going to paradise himself, to hades—the invisible world. His human soul was removing to the place of separate souls; not to the place of the damned, but to paradise, the place of the blessed. By this he assures us that his satisfaction was accepted, and the Father was well pleased in him, else he had not gone to paradise; that was the beginning of the joy set before him, with the prospect of which he comforted himself. He went by the cross to the crown, and we must not think of going any other way, or of being perfected but by sufferings. 2. He lets all penitent believers know that when they die they shall go to be with him there. He was now, as a priest, purchasing this happiness for them, and is ready, as a king, to confer it upon them when they are prepared and made ready for it. See here how the happiness of heaven is set forth to us. (1.) It is paradise, a garden of pleasure, the paradise of God (Rev 2 7), alluding to the garden of Eden, in which our first parents were placed when they were innocent. In the second Adam we are restored to all we lost in the first Adam, and more, to a heavenly paradise instead of an earthly one. (2.) It is being with Christ there. That is the happiness of heaven, to see Christ, and sit with him, and share in his glory, John 17 24. (3.) It is immediate upon death: This day shalt thou be with me, to-night, before to-morrow. Thou souls of the faithful, after they are delivered from the burden of the flesh, immediately are in joy and felicity; the spirits of just men are immediately made perfect. Lazarus departs, and is immediately comforted; Paul departs, and is immediately with Christ, Phil 1 23.
What an amazing illustration of forgiveness, divine grace and salvation.
MacArthur has an interesting observation on the Jews’ misunderstanding of Passover during that era. This ties in with the Crucifixion:
There’s another irony, that the Jews want him dead so they can get on with the celebration of the Passover that points to his death. The Jews want to get on with the slaying of the lambs that can never take away sin while rejecting the one, true lamb of God how alone can take away the sin of the world. While they are busy killing the lambs who had no power, God was by their hands, killing the lamb to whom all salvation power belongs. The Jews looked at Passover as God rescuing them from Pharaoh. That really wasn’t what the Passover was. They looked at the Passover as God rescuing them from the power of Pharaoh in Egypt. It was really far more than that. While there was a deliverance from Egypt, there was a far greater deliverance in the Passover. Do you remember what the Passover was? The word came from God that he was going to come in sweeping judgment on both Egyptians and Jews, and the only people who would be protected from that judgment would be those who put the blood of the lamb on the door post and the lintel. Otherwise, the judgment of God would hit that house and take the life of the first born. And God did not discriminate between the Jews and the Egyptians. He would take the life of any first born. He would bring wrath and judgment on any household that was not covered by the blood of the Passover lamb. The night of the Passover, then, was not truly a deliverance from the power of the Pharaoh and the wrath of Pharaoh, it was a deliverance from the wrath of God. Somehow they had skewed that thinking that they were delivered from the wrath and power of Pharaoh. They celebrated that part of it and they forgot that the real Passover was a deliverance from the wrath of God. And all sinners are always deserving of wrath unless they’re covered by the blood, and the blood of bulls and goats can’t take away sin and can’t really cover the sinner. So they had no idea what as going on at their cross of Calvary when the true Passover lamb was dying so that his blood might become the protection of all who believe in him.
So in not saving himself, Jesus was able to save others, exactly opposite their assumption that he couldn’t save anybody because he couldn’t even save himself. How twisted their perception. How wrong. And the whole scene was feeding this twisted perception. There was no clarity anywhere. The leaders didn’t have clarity. The people didn’t have clarity. The Romans didn’t have clarity. The high priests didn’t have clarity. The chief priests didn’t have it. Nobody had it. Everybody had a twisted and perverted understanding of what was happening and in the midst of all of this, one man gets clarity. In spite of everything that’s going on around him in which he’s been a participant, the light dawns. Life comes out of death. Knowledge comes out of ignorance. Light dispels the darkness. And that’s the story of this man that we call the penitent thief. It’s a personal story. It’s a very personal story. It’s about one man. It’s a personal story of salvation, but it’s also the pattern of the story of all people’s salvation …
MacArthur sums up these verses as follows for what to remember about the Crucifixion and what happened at the first Pentecost:
Without argument what is being spewed out of these evil hearts and evil mouths right at the son of God is the supreme blasphemy, the ultimate desecration of holiness, the lowest sin every committed, wickedness at its lowest, and it is deserving of divine cursing, divine threatening, divine vengeance, divine judgment, divine damnation. This is injustice without parallel, transgression without equal. This is heresy above heresy, irreverence above irreverence, profanity above profanity, sacrilege beyond comprehension. We would expect Jesus to pour out furious denunciations on all of them, to judge them, to make them pay for their outrageous, extreme iniquity immediately on the spot, but he doesn’t.
Contrary to that he says, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they’re doing.” He asks God to provide forgiveness for them. Now Jesus spoke seven things from the cross. He spoke to one of the thieves and said, “Today you’ll be with me in paradise.” Then he spoke to his mother and John and said, “Behold your mother, behold your son,” and gave the care of his mother to the apostle John who were standing far, far away. And then for three hours the whole earth was dark and he spoke not at all. And after the darkness he spoke to God and he said, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And then he spoke to the soldiers and said, “I’m thirsty,” and they gave him the sponge. And then he spoke to himself and said, “It is finished.” And then he spoke to God and said, “It’s at thy hands I commit my spirit.” But the first thing he said, before any of those was, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” His first words were words seeking divine forgiveness for the world’s most wretched sinners. Certainly this is Jesus, the Father, running to embrace the stinking prodigal, isn’t it? This is not surprising. Jesus even said that the more someone is forgiven the more they love, so he set himself up to forgive great sinners so that he might experience from them great love.
Peter says that when he was reviled he was reviled not again and that when he was being abused he did not cry out for vengeance, 1 Peter 2:23 and 24. Stephen picked up on this and when Stephen saw life was being crushed out by the bloody stones, Stephen, following his Lord said, “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.” This is a general prayer. To understand what he meant by this, it is a general prayer for all the world to know that there’s no sin against the son of God that is so severe it cannot be forgiven if one will repent. That’s the message. If there is forgiveness for these people, there is forgiveness for anyone. You can’t get beyond this. But it’s more than just a general prayer, it’s a specific prayer. When he said, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they’re doing,” he knew who the “them” were because on the day of Pentecost, 3,000 Jews in Jerusalem were converted to Christ and baptized and the church was begun. Within a few weeks another 5,000 men and more and more and it moves into tens of thousands of people in Jerusalem who embrace the faith of Jesus Christ, and there must have been many of those who came to Christ in those weeks after the resurrection who were there in that crowd, so that it is a general prayer telling the whole world that the sinner who repents and comes to Christ can be forgiven of the worst crime ever committed. But it is also a specific prayer that God knows in His mind from before the foundation of the world, who in that crowd He will truly forgive. A church was born out of these people who stood at the foot of Calvary and mocked the son of God. They became the first church. Not only that, there was a soldier among the soldiers. One of them came to salvation. 23 Luke 47 when the Centurion saw what had happened, he began praising God saying, “Certainly this man was innocent.” And Matthew says he said something besides that, he said, “This was the son of God.” And by the way, don’t think it was just that Centurion. Listen to 27 Matthew 54, “Now the Centurion and those who were with him keeping guard over Jesus said, “Truly, this was the son of God.” The prayer was answered on the spot. Some in the crowd formed the first church. Some among the soldiers affirmed the deity of Jesus Christ, and a Roman Centurion praising the true God of Israel and affirming the reality of His son and others with him? By the way, some of the leaders also were saying it. In 6 Acts 7, “The word of God kept on spreading. The number of the disciples continued to increase greatly in Jerusalem.” Listen to this: “And a great many of the priests were becoming obedient to the faith.” And by the way, there was one of the two thieves who said, “Remember me when you come into your kingdom,” and to him Jesus said today, “I’ll meet you in paradise.”
In one sense it’s a general prayer that throws open the forgiveness of God for all who have rejected Christ no matter how great the crimes committed against him, but on another level this is a very specific prayer that was immediately answered among the crowd, among the soldiers, among the thieves and even among the priests. The great irony of Calvary is that while all this scorn was being heaped on Christ, he was bearing the curse of God far worse than anything they could put on him. You think it’s bad to be cursed by men, he was being cursed by God. But in taking both the curses from men and the curse from God, he provided the very atonement which makes the forgiveness he prayed for possible.
Christ the King: truly He is, now and forever.
This is the last Sunday in the 2021-2022 Church year. Next Sunday, a new Church year begins with the season of Advent, and a new set of Lectionary readings from Year A.
May everyone reading this have a blessed Sunday.
The Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity is on October 9, 2022.
Readings for Year C can be found here.
The Gospel reading is as follows (emphases mine):
Luke 17:11-19
17:11 On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee.
17:12 As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance,
17:13 they called out, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”
17:14 When he saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were made clean.
17:15 Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice.
17:16 He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan.
17:17 Then Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they?
17:18 Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?”
17:19 Then he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”
Commentary comes from Matthew Henry and John MacArthur.
As regular readers of this series of exegeses for Year C during the season of Trinity know, we have been studying our Lord’s lessons to His disciples and others from Luke 9 onwards. We will soon reach their conclusion in Luke 19.
In those chapters, Luke takes us through the last six months of our Lord’s ministry.
John MacArthur says:
During this period of Jesus’ journeys which really began in chapter 9 verse 51 when it’s recorded that He moved in the direction of Jerusalem, we’re in the final months of Jesus’ life. It isn’t a direct route. It’s taking months to finally arrive for the last time in Jerusalem. He will make that arrival in chapter 19 verse 28. He will go into Jerusalem through Jericho in the 18th chapter, so we’re getting close to that great moment.
During this time of months and months of ministry there were many healings, and many miracles, and many casting out of demons. And there were multiple times of teaching and ministering as He moved with His disciples and apostles around the land. Luke, however, records five miracles for us. They aren’t the only five by any means. During the time of His ministry, He nearly banished disease from the whole of Israel. There is no way to even calculate the number of His miracles. Even the New Testament testifies to the fact that the things that He said and done couldn’t be contained in the books of the world.
But we do have five miracles during this journey period. This is the fourth miracle. The first three involve one person. The last one involves two in Jericho when Jesus heals two blind men. Luke focuses on one; Matthew fills us in on the other one. But here is a miracle that involves ten people, ten people with the most terrible disease. The disease is leprosy.
Matthew Henry’s commentary tells us that Luke is the only Gospel writer to record this particular miracle, mentioning that Jesus went out of His way to find these lepers in order to heal them. Leprosy was considered a severe divine curse for sin:
We have here an account of the cure of ten lepers, which we had not in any other of the evangelists. The leprosy was a disease which the Jews supposed to be inflicted for the punishment of some particular sin, and to be, more than other diseases, a mark of God’s displeasure; and therefore Christ, who came to take away sin, and turn away wrath, took particular care to cleanse the lepers that fell in his way. Christ was now in his way to Jerusalem, about the mid-way, where he had little acquaintance in comparison with what he had either at Jerusalem or in Galilee. He was now in the frontier-country, the marches that lay between Samaria and Galilee. He went that road to find out these lepers, and to cure them; for he is found of them that sought him not.
On His way through the region between Samaria and Galilee (verse 11), ten lepers approached him from a distance (verse 12).
If there is any mercy in leprosy, it is in the death of nerve endings. A leper cannot feel his extremities drop off.
Today, this horrifying disease is still active, for the most part in Asia and Africa.
MacArthur tells us more about leprosy, which, among modern medics, is called Hansen’s Disease, or HD:
Leprosy can be a general word, lepis in the Greek, meaning scaly and is a word that can be used to describe a number of skin diseases. They could be of various kinds, not very serious to the worst kind which is created by a bacillus, a bacteria, that is the disease we know as leprosy. This is such a serious and such a communicable disease that the Old Testament made proscriptions about people who had it. And, in fact, this is a very ancient disease. It has been found in mummies, so it goes way back. Medical historians believe that leprosy originated in Egypt where it was found in a very ancient mummy.
Leviticus chapter 13 and 14 lays out a very long and careful prescription for determining whether somebody had this disease. And the local health inspectors were the priests. That was part of their function. Since they were responsible to know the law of God and apply the law of God and since this was laid out in the law of God, if you had a skin disease of any kind, you went to the priest and you went through a process of all that was required in Leviticus 13 and 14 so there could be a determination as to what exactly you had. And if it is discovered that you have that communicable disease called leprosy that’s so horrific, you were then removed from all social contact and the only people you could ever associate with were other lepers. It was the worst, the absolute worst. The people you needed most, the loving family and friends, you couldn’t come near. You couldn’t associate with other people in the synagogue or any social environment whatsoever. You were an alien from all of life and left only with others in your same horrific misery. So these were the most miserable of all people, believing that they had been cursed by God and cursed by man as well. And when Jesus comes, they are healed. It is an astounding and incredible healing from all human viewpoints.
Let me just tell you a little bit about leprosy without going into unnecessary detail. This severe type of leprosy is caused by a bacteria. It attacks the nerves and the skin. It anesthetizes the body and the limbs so that feeling is lost. And then the potential for serious injury becomes large. It starts, we’re told, with a white or pink patch of skin usually on the brow, the nose, the ear, the cheek, the chin and the head. The patch then begins to spread in all directions, a portion of the eyebrows disappears; spongy, tumorous swellings grow, first of all, all over the face and then begin to descend all over the body as the disease becomes systemic. It becomes also involved with the internal organs as well as the skin. Fingers and toes can be absorbed into the body, literally absorbing themselves into the body because of the bacillus invading the bone marrow, impairing blood supply, causing the bones to shrivel and the rest of the body to shrivel as well. With the accompanying loss of feeling in the body due to nerve disease, the victim destroys his own tissue because he has no feeling. The bacillus can destroy the eye, causing blindness; penetrates the teeth so they fall out, penetrates all the bodily organs and affects the larynx so that one winds up with a weak and raspy voice.
The medical history on this is abundant. Just a few things that might help you understand this plight. The skin loses its original color, becomes thick, glossy, and scaly. As the sickness progresses, the thickened spots become dirty sores and ulcers due to poor blood supply. The skin, especially around the eyes and ears, begins to bunch with deep furrows between the swelling so that the face of the afflicted individual begins to resemble that of a lion. Fingers drop off or are absorbed. Toes are affected similarly. Eyebrows and eyelashes drop out. By this time, one can see the person in this pitiable condition is truly a leper. By the touch of the finger one can feel it. One can even smell it for a leper emits a very unpleasant odor, open sores. Morever, in view of the fact that the disease-producing agent frequently attacks the larynx, says this writer, the leper’s voice acquires a grating quality.
Dr. Paul Brand is the modern, world-renowned expert on leprosy, gives us some wonderful insight in a modern up-to-date look. It’s called Hansen’s Disease, HD. It is cruel, not at all the way other diseases are. It primarily acts as an anesthetic, numbing the pain cells of hands, feet, nose, eyes, ears. Not so bad really, one might think; most diseases are felt because of their pain. What makes a painless disease so horrible? Hansen’s Disease’s numbing quality is precisely the reason it is so horrible. For thousands of years people thought this disease caused the ulcers on hands and feet and face which eventually led to rotting flesh and loss of limbs. Mainly through Dr. Brand’s research it’s been established that in 99 percent of the cases HD only numbs the extremities, the destruction follows solely because the warning system of pain is gone. Basically people destroy their own limbs.
How does the decay happen? In villages of Africa and Asia, a person with HD has been known to reach directly into a charcoal fire to retrieve a dropped potato. Nothing in his body tells him not to. Patients at Brand’s hospital in India would work all day gripping a shovel with a protruding nail or extinguish a burning wick with their bare hands or walk on splintered glass. Watching them, Brand began formulating his radical theory that HD was chiefly anesthetic and only indirectly a destroyer. On one occasion he tried to open the door of a little storeroom but a rusty padlock would not yield. A patient, an undersized, malnourished, ten-year-old approached him smiling, “Let me try, Sahib Doctor,” he offered and reached for the key. With a quick jerk of his hand, he turned the key in the rusty lock. Brand was dumbfounded. How could this weak youngster show more strength than him? His eyes caught a tell-tale clue. Was that a drop of blood on the floor? Upon examining the boy’s fingers, Brand discovered the act of turning the key had gashed the finger open to the bone. Skin, fat, and joint were all exposed yet the boy was completely unaware of it.
The daily routine of life grinds away at the HD patient’s hands and feet. No warning system alerts him. If an ankle is turned, tearing tendon and muscle, he will adjust and walk crooked. If a rat chews off a finger in the night, he will not discover it even missing until the next morning. And so the sad story goes.
Stanley Stein went blind because of another quirk of HD. Each morning he would wash his face with a hot washcloth. But neither his hand nor his face was sensitive enough to temperature to warning him that he was using scalding water, gradually destroyed his eyes. That’s how it worked.
The disease went from ten to thirty years with victims usually dying from low resistance, other diseases, or infections. It can be easily transmitted by inhalation or bodily contact or even contact with the clothing. That’s why the clothing are involved in Leviticus 13 prescriptions. Since 1982, by the way, so you know that, there has been an effective treatment that can kill the bacterium. Still there are probably a million and a half cases in the world, mostly in third world countries where they don’t have that kind of protection. This disease is still with us.
There were times when God cursed individuals in the Old Testament with leprosy:
In biblical times the effect was so severe and the potential for wiping out a population was so great that God laid down proscriptions. “Command the children of Israel that they put out of the camp every leper.” Put him out. This is too horrific, too horrible to leave these people in any proximity to the healthy. God even used leprosy as a punishment. The Jews had a reason that they saw it as a curse of God. Naaman was a leper by divine punishment … Uzziah was a leper by divine punishment. Being a leper was the worst, and they had a lot of lepers in Israel, as Luke 4:27 says. There were many lepers in the day of Elijah and Elisha; obviously they were still there in the day of Jesus. Religiously, socially defiled in every way; no family, no job, no friends, no worship, no hope, they were walking illustrations of sin, they were walking illustrations of divine judgment, horrific life. Little wonder that when Jesus came to their village, they cried out to Him collectively.
Before going further, did anyone read this as both a real-life account and a parable? Those readers who did would be correct in their assessment.
MacArthur tells us that this miracle is a sign:
… of divine power, to reverse that disease, to bring it to a screeching halt and restore fully all ten people to their pure and whole condition. As in the case of all of Jesus’ miracles, they were instantaneous and complete. It is also an astounding story of ingratitude, shocking. It is also a wonderful story, more importantly, of gratitude, worship and salvation.
I want us to look at the story as a story. But I can’t help but think this story is intended by the Spirit of God to be more than just a story for its own sake. I have to believe that this is also a parable. Most of Jesus’ parables were stories that He invented. But many other things that happened in His life are marvelous analogies and illustrations, and this certainly is one. First, the story, then we’ll see its broader implications.
The lepers called out (verse 13), no doubt in raspy voices, ‘Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!’
Henry points out that they did not ask for a cure, only for His mercy on them:
Those that expect help from Christ must take him for their Master, and be at his command. If he be Master, he will be Jesus, a Saviour, and not otherwise. They ask not in particular to be cured of their leprosy, but, Have mercy on us; and it is enough to refer ourselves to the compassions of Christ, for they fail not.
MacArthur focuses first on their calling Jesus ‘Master’, then their request for mercy:
Of all the words they might have chosen, they chose “Master.” In the Greek it’s epistats. It’s used only by Luke and only here is it used to refer to Christ by any other than His followers. It was a word of some weight. It was a word of some honor. In fact, epistats is a word that speaks of someone who has notable authority, or notable power, even miraculous power, of course. And that’s why it’s used to apply to Jesus. So here these men are borrowing a word that affirms they recognized the notable authority and power of Jesus, which is to say that they had had some exposure to His power and His abilities. They knew His reputation; let’s put it that way. They may have known it from the massive healings that He had done in His Galilee ministry, or from His healings in the Judean ministry prior to that and since leaving Galilee in chapter 9 and coming through the area of Judea He had done many more miracles. His reputation was widely known.
This was their only hope. This was their only chance. They had no way out of their dilemma. There were no cures. There were no solutions. Their faith may be meager but they are desperate men. What other option do they have? And so they say, “Have mercy on us,” a phrase that recognizes that one is in a pitiful condition, that one is unable to solve a problem, that one is in a dilemma about which he can do nothing and must depend upon a superior power. That’s why they ask for mercy. Have mercy on us, a common expression. By the way, in Matthew, Mark and Luke this is commonly the expression used by people who are asking Jesus to heal them. And we’re going to find it again in the 18th chapter when the blind man says, “Have mercy on me,” meaning show me pity and power, You are one greater than I am, You are one who is known to have power to deal with my infirmity. It expresses a recognition of superior power and one who at the same time is approachable. Not just a recognition of power but to cry “Have mercy!” assumes that someone before has indicated to you that this man listens to people who cry for mercy. So His power and His compassion are widely known. They’re aware of it, aware enough of it to cry out to Him for healing.
Interestingly, Jesus told them to present themselves before the priest then, as they walked away, healed them (verse 14).
Henry says that He did so in order for them to obey:
He did not tell them positively that they should be cured, but bade them go show themselves to the priests, v. 14. This was a trial of their obedience, and it was fit that it should be so tried, as Naaman’s in a like case: Go wash in Jordan. Note, Those that expect Christ’s favours must take them in his way and method. Some of these lepers perhaps would be ready to quarrel with the prescription: “Let him either cure or say that he will not, and not send us to the priests on a fool’s errand;” but, over-ruled by the rest, they all went to the priest.
It is likely that Jesus told them to visit the priest before healing them so that the priest would be an indirect witness of His divine power:
As the ceremonial law was yet in force, Christ took care that it should be observed, and the reputation of it kept up, and due honour paid to the priests in things pertaining to their function; but, probably, he had here a further design, which was to have the priest’s judgment of, and testimony to, the perfectness of the cure; and that the priest might be awakened, and others by him, to enquire after one that had such a commanding power over bodily diseases.
Unlike His earlier healing of a leper, this time Jesus tells the healed men to present themselves to their priest.
MacArthur says that it was because His death was but a short time away:
In that miracle with regard to the leper in Luke 5, He told him not to tell anybody because it was such a stunning thing to heal a leper, not only from the sympathy side and the power side, but the overturning of what they perceived as a divine curse. He told that first leper in Luke 5 don’t tell anybody because it could foment overwhelming enthusiasm, unrealistic messianic expectations and bring to bear upon Him undue pressure that could force Him out of His Father’s timetable. But that was long ago. Here He doesn’t tell them that because it’s very near already to the Father’s timetable for the cross.
MacArthur says that our Lord’s healing miracle was a dramatic one of compassion, as He removed the divine curse of the disease:
Lepers were, of all people, the most to be avoided. Obviously these people had the real leprosy. That’s why it tells us they stood at a distance. Jesus then demonstrates on this occasion compassion, sympathy, and power. And also, undoes what the people would have assumed would be a divine curse. As we learned through the gospel record, the people had the idea that sickness came as a result of sin. And leprosy, of all things, so horrific, was viewed as a divine judgment. And so here is Jesus, sympathetic, compassionate, powerful and overturning divine judgment. In this case then you have a stunning miracle by all perspectives.
It was important for the priest to verify this miracle, not only to know the power of the Messiah but also to pronounce the men as clean individuals who could finally live a normal life.
MacArthur explains:
By the way, the leper in chapter 5 He went near and touched him. Jesus had no reluctance to go near lepers or to touch lepers. In this case, He didn’t do that. I don’t know what the circumstances were, but He didn’t go to them, He simply said to them, verse 14, “Go and show yourselves to the priest.” Now that seems like a very strange thing to say. Why didn’t He say, “Be healed”? Why did He say, “Go and show yourselves to the priest”? Because He’s doing a couple of things here. He’s testing their faith. It may have been a meager faith, but this is a good test. He’s also affirming the viability of divine law. He knew Leviticus 13 and 14, of course. And He is upholding that law. “Go show yourselves to the priest.” That’s exactly what He told the leper in chapter 5 verse 14, because leprosy required that. You had to go to the priest. There was a rather long and involved protocol you went through. The priests, as I said, were the health inspectors. You went to the priest. You went through the whole thing. It was an eight-day process that could be repeated another eight days and another. It could even lead to necessary sacrifices. It could even take you all the way to Jerusalem to make those sacrifices before the priest would pronounce you clean. So He says, “Go show yourselves to the priest.”
That is a pretty big assumption. You wouldn’t want to go anywhere near the priest if you still had leprosy. You’d be going to the wrong people. You’d be going to the health inspectors with your disease …
Leviticus 13 and 14…Leviticus 14 even prescribes what you do when it is verified. There are ceremonies and washings and sacrifices and all those kinds of things and lepers are touched in certain places, a tip of the ear, and it’s a huge thing when somebody is being certified that they’re cleansed from leprosy. And Jesus sent the first leper in chapter 5 to the priest and He sends these ten to the priest. And there’s a wonderful footnote on that. The priests who rejected Jesus, as you know… There were a few who believed on Him finally at the end, but en masse they pretty much rejected Jesus, the priests. And here come ten lepers and they’re going to have to validate this healing so they’re going to become very reluctant, very unwilling witnesses to the compassion and the power of Jesus and they’re going to be very clear eyewitnesses to the fact that Jesus overruled any assumption that these men were cursed by God. This is some kind of power. The priests would be forced to confirm the supernatural power of Jesus. Really if they were honest, forced to confirm His deity and as well His adherence to the law. So they became reluctant witnesses to His deity when the men arrived and went through the process. That part of it isn’t in the story. For eight days though, at least, the men would be living testimonies to the power of Jesus’ divine power. The priests would have to validate that publicly.
The final verses enter the realm of a parable, what we would call ‘life imitating art’.
One man turned back, a Samaritan — an outsider as far as the Jews were concerned. He did three things: a) praised God with a loud voice, b) prostrated himself at our Lord’s feet and c) thanked Him (verses 15, 16).
It’s not the nine Jews who turn back. No. It is the Samaritan, the outcast of mixed Jewish and Gentile blood.
MacArthur says:
So he comes back and he does three things. First, says, end of verse 15, “Glorifying God with a loud voice.” Perhaps a voice that now was able to do what it hadn’t been able to do for years. No more squeaky, raspy, leprosy-affected larynx. Now he could cry out with new vocal chords. This is a phns megals, a big loud voice. Luke likes that. He has Elizabeth doing that when she was filled with the Holy Spirit in chapter 1. Even has an unclean spirit shouting with a loud voice when confronted with the power of the Son of God, Luke 8:28. This is Luke’s way of expressing the idea of great emotion; it just burst out in a loud voice. He comes back at the top of his lungs glorifying God, meaning he knew where the power had come from, he knew who had healed him and he knew Jesus was more than a mere man because he doesn’t just glorify God, he…notice it…verse 16, fell on his face at His feet. He worships Him. And he knew, but they all knew, Samaritan and Jew, that God and God alone was to be worshiped. He takes a worshiping posture.
And, thirdly: giving thanks to Him. He knew that it was God in Jesus that had given him this gift. He could not restrain his praise, he could not restrain his worship, he could not restrain his thanks, but his posture is there saying, “I want a relationship with You, I want everything You have to give.” He knew he was in the presence of God.
Jesus asks where the other nine men were (verse 17), not expecting the Samaritan to know, but asking aloud, knowing that He healed them. Where was their praise and thanksgiving to Him and to God? There was only ‘the foreigner’ (verse 18).
This shows that the nine might have thought that the temple was the only place where God dwelt.
They were wrong, displaying once again the mistaken notions the Jews of our Lord’s time had of God. Yet, somehow, the Samaritan recognised that Jesus was the Messiah. Oh, the sad irony of it all.
MacArthur gives us this analysis:
Interesting way to look at that: What are the other nine guys doing? They’re moving toward the priests, maybe with a view, we’re going to go, we’re clean, he’s going to see it, we’re clean then we’re going to the temple. We’re going to the temple, because you ultimately have to go there to make the sacrifices that are required of one who’s been cleansed. We’re going to the temple and when we get to the temple, sure we’re grateful, we’re excited, we’re enthusiastic. This is an unbelievable thing. When we get to the temple we’ll…We’ll worship God where we should worship God, in the temple. We’ll thank God there and we’ll praise God when we get to the place where God dwells.
Hmm, guess what? God doesn’t dwell in that temple. God hadn’t been in that temple in a long, long time. Ichabod was written on that temple long ago when the glory departed. That was an apostate temple and an apostate form of religion. And that’s why Jesus said, “The time is coming when you won’t worship God in Jerusalem or in Mount Gerizim, because you’re going to worship God in spirit and in truth and you’re going to worship Him from the heart any place,” but most significantly this man knew where to worship God, where God really dwelt. And where God really dwelt was in Jesus Christ. That was the real temple. He goes back to the true temple of God. He recognizes that wherever the compassion of God is, God is. Wherever the power of God is, God is. Wherever the grace of God is, God is. And that’s where Jesus is and so that’s where God is. Jesus is the true temple. God doesn’t dwell in Jerusalem, He dwells in Jesus. And he knows it. And here’s the punch line. “And he was a Samaritan,” the least likely from a Jewish viewpoint to be healed, an outcast. The only reason he could associate with Jews at all was because they were all lepers and their common misery obviated the normal social separation.
According to John 4:9 the Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans, they hated each other. Samaritans had intermarried with Gentiles and from a Jewish standpoint polluted their race, polluted their religion. They had a strange, hybrid religion on Mount Gerizim that the Jews despised. They had no relationships with them at all. They were forced together in their misery. Surely no one would expect God to heal a Samaritan. But not only did God heal one, but God saved another one. Started out saving Samaritans, remember? The first person to whom Jesus revealed His messiahship was a Samaritan woman in John 4.
And so this man knows that God is not like the people he’s used to. God is not a racist. And he knows that God is a Savior and a Redeemer and he comes back and he worships. Verse 17, Jesus answered and said…and here are three rhetorical questions that drive home an important point of ingratitude and indifference. “Were there not ten cleansed?” The structure, by the way, expects a positive answer. “Were there not ten cleansed?” There were ten cleansed, weren’t there? That would be another way to say that. And then He asks a second rhetorical question, “But the nine, where are they?” The “where” is last in sort of a punctuation point place of primacy. In other words, it would read like this in the original, “But the nine, they are where?” They ought to be here. They’re where? No answer, presumably they’re on the way to the priest …
And then He asks a third question. “Was no one found who turned back to give glory to God except this allogens, The word ”foreigner” was a strong word. Nobody came back except this man of another race? It reminds me of John 1:11, “He came unto His own, His own received Him not.” By the way, that word allogens, “foreigner,” was written on the outer wall of the temple forbidding any foreigner from access to the temple precincts, the areas only allowed for the Jews. There was a Court of the Gentiles, but they couldn’t go anywhere beyond that. He is a foreigner. He is one outside the Covenant, outside the people of God, outside the promises, outside the adoption. That’s the… That’s the real jolt. He’s a Samaritan. He’s a foreigner. He can’t go into the forbidden, inner court of the temple, but instead he walks right back face-to-face with God Himself and goes into His own Holy of Holies. He couldn’t get near the inner court, let alone the holy place, let alone the Holy of Holies in the temple, but he went straight into the Holy of Holies, fell on his face before the Holy One Himself and worshiped in humility and joy.
It could also be that the nine Jews were interested only in the healing and nothing more:
They don’t have any interest in Jesus anymore. They got what they wanted out of Him. They’re very shallow, very superficial. They have no desire to worship Him, no desire to glorify Him, no desire to thank Him. They don’t see Him as God. They don’t fall down and give to Him what you only give to God. They don’t glorify Him as God. And again we’re face-to-face with this dominant attitude among these people that we see all through the ministry of Jesus. We are the people of God and God gives us what we deserve. Our souls are fine. No sense of sin. They’re like the rich young ruler. No sense of remorse, no sense of desperation. They are not looking for a Savior from sin. They’re looking for a political Messiah. They’re looking for somebody who will feed them free food. They’re looking for somebody who will heal all their diseases. They’ll take that, they’ll take the food, they’ll take the healing, they’ll take all that but they don’t want anything else. We’ve got a lot of people in the evangelical world today who are offering that kind of Jesus. This one man knew he needed a Savior. He knew he had come face-to-face with God and his soul was traumatized. He knew he was a sinner, but he knew that God had showed him mercy and compassion, kindness, power. He could process the implications of what had just happened. The others, hard-hearted, impenitent, satisfied with themselves; sought nothing more from Jesus. And you know, the sad thing is He really doesn’t have anything to offer you on a permanent basis unless it’s eternal life and salvation. If you don’t come to Him for that, you cheat yourself out of what really He came to bring …
And they walked away to their dead, blind, cold religion with no more interest in Jesus at all.
Jesus told the Samaritan to rise and be on his way, ‘Your faith has made you well’ (verse 19).
The Samaritan exhibited faith. He knew his sin, his spiritual weakness:
… he also knows that God offers more than just a physical healing. That isn’t the real issue in his life, that’s only a temporal detail. He returns not just to be thankful for a healing. He returns to seek what his soul really desired and needed, salvation. How do I know that? Because that’s exactly what Jesus gave him.
MacArthur says that the word ‘well’ in that verse does not accurately describe the spiritual healing the man also experienced. The man was not only healed physically but also saved:
The English is misleading. Many translations say, “Has made you well.” Everybody was made well, all ten were made well. That’s not a definitive ending to the story. The verb is not the word for “healed,” iaomai, which is used earlier in the story in verse 15. It’s not the word for “cleansed,” katharizo, which is used also back earlier in the story in verse 14. It’s the word sz. It’s the word sz. It is the word for “salvation.” In the gospels it’s used for that and in the epistles it’s the word that’s used for “saved” and “salvation.” It’s translated that way, and I don’t know why translators treat it arbitrarily. There are some contexts in which it can mean something less than salvation, but in the context where that’s obvious it should be translated that way. For example, in Luke 7 Jesus forgives the sins of a woman and in verse 50 He said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you.” Same word, your faith has saved you. Here it’s very obvious that this man has come back and he has come penitently, worshipfully and the Lord has healed his soul and given him salvation. It should then be translated as it is in chapter 7, verse 50: “Your faith has saved you.” This refers to a second miracle uniquely for this man.
MacArthur wraps up the context of the parable in this real-life miracle:
… it’s not just a story of an individual, it’s a parable. Of what? I can’t help but look at the nine and believe that the Spirit of God would want me to see in those nine the general attitude of the Jews toward Jesus. They are representative of the general attitude toward Jesus. Give us healing, give us food, deliver us from demons, do miracles, but do not expect worship. Do not expect praise, adoration, thanks. Do not expect us to acknowledge you as God. Listen, this man fell down glorifying God. I believe He knew God was in Jesus. Obviously his theology wasn’t fully developed. Then he worshiped, and knowing that worship belongs to God. And he knew God was the source of his miracle and he thanked Jesus, he thanked Him as well as worshiped Him. He came back with the right attitude. So while the ungrateful nine illustrate the general attitude of the Jews, we’ll take everything You give, we’ll take all the benefits, we’ll take all the miracles, just don’t expect worship. The one Samaritan is a picture of the outcasts, the remnant, the ten percent, like Isaiah 6, the tenth that will believe the doctrine of the remnant. The grateful Samaritan is a picture of the outcast who believed. Might be a Samaritan like the Samaritan woman in John 4, might be Jews who were tax collectors and sinners, the riff-raff, the scum, the thugs, the lowlifes, the prostitutes who surrounded Jesus and of whom He said He’d come to call the sinners not the righteous. Everybody heard the message. Everybody enjoyed the benefit of Jesus’ power. Everybody basked in the wonder of His teaching and His miracles. But only a few came, fell at His feet, glorified Him as God, worshiped Him, humbled themselves, and offered Him thanks. The majority, they were the takers. Small group were the ones who gave Him worship. The majority were content with fixing their life up a little bit, superficial, temporal. Small group wanted Him to change their souls, transform their hearts.
Well, the warning here is that you can experience the goodness and common grace of God and you do, the whole world does. He makes the sun rise on all of us, the rain to fall on the just and the unjust. He’s good to all men. You can be blessed by God in an earthly physical way. He is a Savior temporally of all men. You can be even blessed to hear the stories of Jesus and gospel truth and you can say I’ll take what I get, I’ll take my life I like it the way it is. OK, God gave it to me, I thank God for it. You hear people say that all the time, thank God that I’m healthy, thank God that I have my children, thank God for my job, etc., etc. And you can walk away right into eternal hell. Or you can come back and fall on your face before Jesus Christ and embrace Him as your Master and Savior. And the miracle that He did for that one man, He will do for you this day.
May everyone reading this enjoy a blessed Sunday.
The Tenth Sunday after Trinity is on August 21, 2002.
Readings for Year C can be found here.
The Gospel reading is as follows (emphases mine):
Luke 13:10-17
13:10 Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath.
13:11 And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight.
13:12 When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.”
13:13 When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.
13:14 But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.”
13:15 But the Lord answered him and said, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water?
13:16 And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?”
13:17 When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.
Commentary comes from Matthew Henry and John MacArthur.
Here we have an account about a bent over woman being made straight and bent theology that Jesus wanted to make straight.
Although neither of our commentators says so about this story, there was nearly always a spiritual element to our Lord’s miracles. For that reason, I think that Jesus healed her not only physically but spiritually, too, especially in light of the fact that a demon had caused her condition.
We are in the middle of Luke’s accounts of our Lord’s teaching the Apostles and disciples in the last six months of His ministry. These are in Luke 9 through much of Luke 19.
The Gospel writer does not tell us where this miracle took place other than in a synagogue where Jesus was teaching on the sabbath (verse 10).
Matthew Henry reminds us that Jesus often taught in a synagogue on the sabbath, therefore, we should not neglect public worship on Sundays:
We should make conscience of doing so, as we have opportunity, and not think we can spend the sabbath as well at home reading a good book; for religious assemblies are a divine institution …
In our Lord’s era, synagogues were places of worship but, unlike today, they were not led by rabbis.
John MacArthur gives us the background:
A synagogue is not the temple. It’s simply the word sunagōgēs in Greek. It means “a meeting place,” a gathering place. And there were many of them. Some historians tell us that in the Galilee, which was less populated than the southern part of Israel, Judea, in the Galilee there were as many 240 or 250 different synagogues. And in Jesus’ ministry over a year in Galilee, He went all through Galilee preaching and teaching in the synagogue. It was the perfect place to go to teach. A synagogue, by the way, was called a house of instruction. It wasn’t the temple. That’s where you went for the national ceremonies. That’s where you went to offer sacrifices. Synagogues had no sacrifices. They…They didn’t celebrate the Passover and the other feasts at the synagogue. It was just a gathering place.
They had no pastor, no preacher, no reigning priest. They had a lay board of elders and one of them was the ruler or the chairman of that board. He was responsible to oversee it, but he was the layman. It was a local gathering place for teaching the word of God, the Old Testament. They came into existence out of the Babylonian captivity, you remember? When the Jews were taken captive into Babylon, the time they were in Babylon, of course, they were separated from their house of worship, which was the temple. Before that, there was no such thing as a synagogue.
But while they were in captivity, they first, remember, were gathered together to hear Ezekiel. Ezekiel came in one of the early deportations. He gathered the people around and He talked about what was going on. What God was doing in this time in Israel’s life and Ezekiel spoke to the captives, those who’d been deported and that sort of began the…the gathering of God’s people to hear the meaning of God’s word. And synagogues began to develop among the Jews in exile. And when they went back under Nehemiah to rebuild the city and the temple, they took back the idea of the synagogue and they flourished. In Jerusalem alone there were about 500 synagogues in just that one city.
And so this was a perfect scenario for the ministry of Jesus, one of God’s timing issues. And when Jesus came, He could always find the Jewish people, the ones He wanted to reach with the truth of the kingdom gospel gathered on a Sabbath in a synagogue somewhere. And that’s where He went, but synagogues were getting less and less receptive to Him, even though He was still, as verse 17 indicates, popular with the crowd, who were just kind of stunned by the power that He displayed in His miracles. The synagogues were getting to be unwelcome and this is the last recorded experience of Jesus in a synagogue. We’re only months before His death. This is the last recorded opportunity that He has to speak in a synagogue.
Suddenly, a woman appeared, bent over by an evil spirit and unable to stand upright (verse 11).
Matthew Henry describes how undignified and painful this must have been for her. Yet, it did not deter her from going to worship God:
She had an infirmity, which an evil spirit, by divine permission, had brought upon her, which was such that she was bowed together by strong convulsions, and could in no wise lift up herself; and, having been so long thus, the disease was incurable; she could not stand erect, which is reckoned man’s honour above the beasts. Observe, Though she was under this infirmity, by which she was much deformed, and made to look mean, and not only so, but, as is supposed, motion was very painful to her, yet she went to the synagogue on the sabbath day. Note, Even bodily infirmities, unless they be very grievous indeed, should not keep us from public worship on the sabbath days; for God can help us, beyond our expectation.
MacArthur says that she would have been an outcast, because the Jews believed that a physical malady was a divine judgement:
Believe me, this woman was an outcast. The Jews had the…the theological viewpoint that if this was the condition you were in, you were a bad person.
Remember the blind man in John 9, and who sinned, this man or his parents? Remember Job? All his friends said well, Job, you’ve done something wrong. There’s some sin in your life. You’re not coming clean, buddy. That’s why you got all the suffering. The basic view of theology was if you suffer, you’re being punished by God. So here was a woman, who for eighteen years, had been looked at and scorned. Here was a woman doubled over in a terrible position physically, perhaps a more a terrible position socially. And to boot, she’s a woman. And women belonged out of sight and in the back of the synagogue.
Henry says that she had her crippling condition ‘by divine permission’. MacArthur agrees that Jesus was meant to heal her in front of the people at that synagogue to point out the hypocrisy of the Jewish religion of that era:
Jesus was the master of the moment, the sovereign Lord of every event and He’s going to use this woman to intensify the conflict and to bring it out in bold relief …
I don’t know how it was that she exposed herself to this demon or why this demon picked on her or why Satan did this to her at the front. I don’t know what the motive of hell was, but I do know that God allowed that to happen for this day.
From the very beginning in the synagogues, Jesus told the people and their local leaders who He was and that, in turn, enraged many:
And that’s why after they killed Him, the population of Jerusalem then went after the apostles, to stop this message. And what was it they hated about the message? Well, what they hated about the message was the indictment in it because it overturned their whole view. There are only two ways that you can believe you can come to God; either on the merits of Christ or on your own merits. It’s either by grace and grace alone or it’s by works or some mixture of grace and works. It’s only two things. There’s only two kinds of religion in the world. The religion of divine accomplishment, the religion of human achievement, Christianity, the true gospel is the religion of divine accomplishment: God does it all, you simply believe. Every other religious system in the world is a religion of human achievement. They were in human achievement. They had satisfied themselves with their own self-righteousness. They had self-esteem. They had all this pride about their religion, etc., etc., etc., and Jesus literally struck at the very heart of the system …
And Jesus went everywhere preaching salvation and that’s synonymous with coming into the kingdom. Come into God’s kingdom. “I am the way, the truth, the life.” But you have to recognize that you’re not there now, that you’re in the devil’s kingdom. Well, that was just more than they could bear. They hated Him for that. And so He was teaching in the synagogue and you know what He was teaching. He was teaching about the kingdom. And it wasn’t a brutal kind of teaching. It was gracious. It was compassionate. It was loving. It was merciful. It offered them salvation, but at the same time, it confronted the phoniness of their system, and the false hopes of their self-righteous, legalistic hearts.
And so this obviously set up conflict. And wherever the truth is taught, it produces conflict if it’s taught in a place where error prevails.
When Jesus saw the lady, He called her over and told her she was ‘set free’ from her ailment (verse 12).
He laid His hands on her and, immediately, she stood up straight and began to praise God (verse 13).
Note the word ‘immediately’. When Jesus healed, it was instantaneous and all-encompassing. It was not gradual. For many years and for whatever reason, I was never sure if the healing was immediate or gradual. And I was going to church all that time.
MacArthur makes it very clear:
… He always healed immediately. There’s no such thing as a lingering healing, a multiple phase healing. There’s no such thing as: I was healed and slowly, I’m getting better. He healed everything, everyone He wanted to heal, completely, instantaneously, and permanently. And it says immediately laying His hands upon her and saying what He said, she was made erect again.
Now, we’ll tell you this is more than just the casting out of a demon. Something had to happen to a spine to go up straight after 18 years in a bent position. You say whoa boy, after she was healed, she would need some serious therapy. Nobody healed by Jesus needs therapy, nobody. It’s contained in the deal. You bypass the therapy to the wholeness in the instant of the healing. All His miracles were like that.
MacArthur says of the woman and our Lord’s purpose:
Now all of a sudden she becomes the centerpiece of the whole day. And Jesus puts her front and center and makes her the focal point of everything. And I love this about Him. He… He reveals His utter indifference to their system of rank and status. He reveals His utter indifference to their perception of privilege. He reveals His complete indifference to their sense…sense of achievement. He had no affection for their honor system. He honors the outcast woman and He humiliates the ruler. He has no affection for their perverted Sabbath. And He supersedes their authority with His own. He has no interest in their self-righteousness, seeking to be elevated. And He elevates one they would seek to sweep away.
However, the leader of the synagogue was indignant because Jesus had cured someone on the sabbath, calling His merciful miracle ‘work’, telling the congregation that such things should be done on the other six days in the week (verse 14).
It sounds so cruel and so awful.
Henry points out that the leader did not dare to speak directly to Christ, so he addressed the congregation instead:
He had not indeed the impudence to quarrel with Christ; but he said to the people, reflecting upon Christ in what he said, There are six days in which men ought to work, in them therefore come and be healed, and not on the sabbath day. See here how light he made of the miracles Christ wrought, as if they were things of course, and no more than what quacks and mountebanks did every day: “You may come and be healed any day of the week.” Christ’s cures were become, in his eyes, cheap and common things. See also how he stretches the law beyond its intention, or any just construction that could be put upon it, in making either healing or being healed with a touch of the hand, or a word’s speaking, to be that work which is forbidden on the sabbath day. This was evidently the work of God; and, when God tied us out from working that day, did he tie himself out? The same word in Hebrew signifies both godly and merciful (chesed), to intimate that works of mercy and charity are in a manner works of piety (1 Tim 5 4) and therefore very proper on sabbath days.
MacArthur says:
… the synagogue official, he was an establishment man and he was going to wield the club and he was going to make it as tough as he could. Legalists do that, you know. They have little or no compassion for the suffering, and legalistic religion is harsh and brutal and merciless and loveless. This is sort of the archetypal legalist. He’s just seen a woman, a woman who needed mercy and compassion and tenderness and kindness, released. You would have thought he would have joined in on the chorus and said let’s all stand and sing glory to God. But Luke describes him with one word: synagogue official, indignant, aganakteō in the Greek text, intense displeasure.
They’ve broken the system. That by the way is exactly how the system felt about Martin Luther and everybody else who violated the system: anger, displeasure. Jesus had already unmasked and confronted error that day. He’d already unmasked and confronted the demon that day and now He was going to unmask false religion and boy He did. That’s the reaction of a man who has no heart, a man whose heart God has never changed. That’s not a godly reaction, because God is a God of compassion, is He not? Do you ever ask why did Jesus come and heal? Jesus could have done a lot of miracles to prove He was God. He could have done anything, right? He could have created a house. He could have created a temple. He could have created a mountain, could have caused the sea to disappear. Could have spun up in the air and spun around like a helicopter and flown around and landed.
Could have done a lot of things to prove He was God. What did He do? He healed people and He healed and basically banished illness from Israel. Why? Because He was not only showing divine power, but He was showing the heart of God as a heart of what? Compassion. But this is compassionless legalism. They make people suffer.
Jesus rebuked the leader and the congregation, calling them hypocrites and asking them whether they untie their ox or donkey on the sabbath in order for the beasts to get their water (verse 15).
MacArthur says:
Well, He got them, because they did that.
In fact, in the Mishnah, the codification of Jewish rabbinic law, it prescribes that you can do that. You can take your animal if you put no burden on his back and lead him to water or to eat. It even gives you a maximum of 200 cubits that you can go. And they even have some prescription about how wide the well is so you can see how they encumbered these things. But it was perfectly fine to do that. You phonies!
And by the way, this isn’t the first time He said this or the last. Calling them hypocrites was pretty routine because that’s what they are and all advocates of false religion are hypocrites. They don’t know God. They don’t know the truth. They are really the tools of Satan. It’s a terrible thing to say, but it’s the truth. You’re a phony, He said.
Jesus then asked why the woman, one of their own — ‘a daughter of Abraham’ — should be prevented from being set free from her bondage on the sabbath (verse 16).
MacArthur says that Jesus used a Jewish reasoning method:
Verse 16, “And this woman, a daughter of Abraham, as she is,” a Jewess, He says the same thing in Luke 19 about Zaccheus, a son of Abraham. It means a Jew or Jewess. “She’s one of your own people.” This is not a Gentile. “This woman, a daughter of Abraham, as she is, whom Satan has bound for eighteen long years,” Jesus says, emphasizing the terrible duration of this suffering, “should she not have been released from this bond on the Sabbath day?”
He takes the opposite view. This is the perfect day to do this, set her free. This is the best day to do that. And by what category was this work? What was the work? Jesus saying, “Woman you are freed from this weakness”? Or was the work her standing up? What was the work? It’s a very common way for the Jews to reason all through the New Testament from the lesser to the greater, from the animal to the woman, from bound for eighteen years to being released from being tied up to being freed. This was a great moment in the life of that woman.
When Jesus spoke those words, the leader and those who agreed with him were put to shame and the entire crowd rejoiced at all the marvellous things that Jesus was doing (verse 17).
MacArthur analyses the two responses — shame from one quarter and rejoicing from the other:
Verse 17 sums up the result. “And as He said this, all His opponents were being humiliated.” Boy they hated that. What could they say? They were dead in their tracks. The people knew what could be done on the Sabbath. Believe me they knew it well and they knew that they…they watered and fed their animals on the Sabbath. They knew that. And I’m sure they were trying to figure out where was the work here. They had been unmasked. They had been stripped. Their pretense had been uncovered. They looked like fools. They were… They were put to shame. That’s a compound verb, kataischunō, they were fully shamed, publicly; both that ruler and all who agreed with him, called the opponents of Jesus. They were all shamed. They were all humiliated. Now they weren’t humbled in the righteous sense. They didn’t become penitent and say wow, I am a hypocrite. I need to deal with this. I…maybe this is Son of God. Not that. All this did was make them more angry and more bent on getting Jesus out of the picture.
But there was another response. Look at the rest of verse 17, the entire multitude, those left “was rejoicing over all the glorious things being done by Him.” They were just absolutely blown away by what was happening. And I’m sure some of them who were there were already the followers of Jesus. Some may have been believers in Him. But this is their typical response. Back in Chapter 9, verse 43, they were all amazed at the greatness of God. Everyone was marveling at all that He was doing. I mean, that was pretty much the typical response. They were just stunned and floored by it. It doesn’t necessarily mean that they put their full trust in Christ. We could wish that that were true. Some did. Chapter 16, verse 16, some were pressing into the kingdom. And it is true in verse 31 of chapter 13, look at that, verse 31 of chapter 13, some of the Pharisees actually came to Jesus and told Him to go away and depart for Herod wants to kill you. There may have been some among the Pharisees who were beginning to see the light.
MacArthur reminds us that Jesus preached only about the kingdom of God, not social or political issues:
He always preached the kingdom. Thirty-one times in the book of Luke the kingdom of God is mentioned. And even after His resurrection, before His ascension and the forty days it says He spoke to them things pertaining to the kingdom of God. It was always about God’s kingdom, how to become a part of His kingdom, by confessing Jesus as Lord, Messiah, Savior.
He also raised — and will continue to raise — the lowly, like this woman:
The Lord passes by the religious and self-righteous, passes by those that say and think they’re good, passes by the religious leaders, and the Lord chooses the lowest of the low. One who would have been deemed to have been a sinner of some massive proportions to have suffered such a fate. He ignores the proud and He chooses the humble. The Lord sovereignly chooses. The Lord sovereignly delivers. The Lord sovereignly straightens up the one who is bent over. The Lord sovereignly produces praise.
This woman then is a picture of the sovereign work of the Lord in salvation, a picture of the enslaved, oppressed sinner under the burden and bondage of Satan, hiding in the shadows, aware every moment of suffering the weight and the burden of sin hopeless, robbed of dignity, bent over like an animal, the image of God defaced. So is the picture of the sinner shuffling one day into the presence of God to hear the word of God. She is met by the Lord and He out of His sovereign love delivers her, straightens her up. This is the picture of the work of God in salvation. God offers salvation to the outcast, the humbled, those bent over by the weight of sin, who will come and hear Him and He will turn them into true worshipers and He bypasses the curious and the self-righteous.
May all reading this have a blessed Sunday.
The First Sunday after Trinity is June 19, 2022.
Readings for Year C can be found here.
The Gospel reading is as follows (emphases mine):
Luke 8:26-39
8:26 Then they arrived at the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee.
8:27 As he stepped out on land, a man of the city who had demons met him. For a long time he had worn no clothes, and he did not live in a house but in the tombs.
8:28 When he saw Jesus, he fell down before him and shouted at the top of his voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me”–
8:29 for Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. (For many times it had seized him; he was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles, but he would break the bonds and be driven by the demon into the wilds.)
8:30 Jesus then asked him, “What is your name?” He said, “Legion”; for many demons had entered him.
8:31 They begged him not to order them to go back into the abyss.
8:32 Now there on the hillside a large herd of swine was feeding; and the demons begged Jesus to let them enter these. So he gave them permission.
8:33 Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned.
8:34 When the swineherds saw what had happened, they ran off and told it in the city and in the country.
8:35 Then people came out to see what had happened, and when they came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. And they were afraid.
8:36 Those who had seen it told them how the one who had been possessed by demons had been healed.
8:37 Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them; for they were seized with great fear. So he got into the boat and returned.
8:38 The man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him; but Jesus sent him away, saying,
8:39 “Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.” So he went away, proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him.
Commentary comes from Matthew Henry and John MacArthur.
This is the famous story of the Gadarene Swine, covered in the three Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke.
I wrote about Matthew’s version in Forbidden Bible Verses and also in my Apologetics Corner series, here and here.
In Luke 8, just before this tremendous episode, Jesus had calmed a sea storm. The disciples had been terrified by its power. Jesus rebuked them for having such little faith.
Matthew Henry’s commentary states:
5. Christ’s business is to lay storms, as it is Satan’s business to raise them. He can do it; he has done it; he delights to do it: for he came to proclaim peace on earth. He rebuked the wind and the raging of the water, and immediately they ceased (v. 24); not, as at other times, by degrees, but all of a sudden, there was a great calm. Thus Christ showed that, though the devil pretends to be the prince of the power of the air, yet even there he has him in a chain.
6. When our dangers are over, it becomes us to take to ourselves the shame of our own fears and to give to Christ the glory of his power. When Christ had turned the storm into a calm, then were they glad because they were quiet, Ps 107 30. And then, (1.) Christ gives them a rebuke for their inordinate fear: Where is your faith? v. 25. Note, Many that have true faith have it to seek when they have occasion to use it. They tremble, and are discouraged, if second causes frown upon them. A little thing disheartens them; and where is their faith then? (2.) They give him the glory of his power: They, being afraid, wondered. Those that had feared the storm, now that the danger was over with good reason feared him that had stilled it, and said one to another, What manner of man is this! They might as well have said, Who is a God like unto thee? For it is God’s prerogative to still the noise of the seas, the noise of their waves, Ps 65 7.
Henry introduces our Gospel reading:
II. His power over the devil, the prince of the power of the air. In the next passage of story he comes into a closer grapple with him than he did when he commanded the winds. Presently after the winds were stilled they were brought to their desired haven, and arrived at the country of the Gadarenes, and there went ashore (v. 26, 27); and he soon met with that which was his business over, and which he thought it worth his while to go through a storm to accomplish.
Luke tells us that the country of the Gerasenes is opposite Galilee (verse 26).
John MacArthur describes the scene for us:
Starting in verse 26, they sailed, remember now, the storm was stilled by Jesus, they finished their little trip across the north section of the lake, the Sea of Galilee, really seeking some rest from the huge crowds that just literally never left Jesus alone. Jesus had gotten in a boat with the apostles and disciples. There were a lot of other boats. There was a little flotilla of followers of Jesus going away for some rest and perhaps some private instruction. Jesus, remember now, from this point on in His ministry in Galilee spoke only in parables and only to His own disciples did He explain their meaning so there was always a public meeting and then a private meeting when the explanation was given. So off they went following Jesus on a clear night only to find that a storm came up. Jesus stilled the storm. It had blown them off course so they have to sort of regroup, head the direction they need to go and they arrive there probably just at daybreak, sailing to the country of the Gerasenes which is opposite Galilee. It’s opposite the Galilee which had to do primarily with the western part, the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. So they’re across on the eastern shore to the country of the Gerasenes.
I just need to comment on that. Luke and Mark use Gerasenes. Matthew calls them Gadarenes. Some Greek texts use Gergesenes. I don’t want to get into a big convoluted explanation of all of that. I think it’s relatively simple. There was a town there about six miles due east called Gerasa, or Gergesa, hence the Gerasenes, or the Gergesenes. The modern name is Kersa. There was another town called Gadara which explains why some of the writers refer to it as Gadara. Gadara was further south down the lake and further inland. It wasn’t on the edge of the lake and so it doesn’t provide the right topography to be the place where the pigs ran down the hill into the lake. Gadara, however, was a larger town and gave the name to the region, so that Gerasa or Gergesa was a town in the country of the Gadarenes. So, all of these terms essentially describe the same area. The focus is on the town of Gergesa or Gerasa because it suits the incident so perfectly. There are around Kersa, modern Kersa, in the hillsides many tombs still to this day to be seen and there is a slope that descends to the lake where the pigs could run…tombs being the place where this man was dwelling.
MacArthur says that the demons Jesus encountered during His ministry were unusual in both the Old and New Testaments:
It is a curiosity to me that if you go through the Old Testament you’re not going to find demon-possessed people with the exception of the very unique situation in the 6th chapter of Genesis where the sons of God and cohabitated with the daughters of men, that unique situation where apparently some fallen angels came upon some women. Apart from that… And those demons, you remember, according to what Peter said and Jude said were put into everlasting chains for doing that. But apart from that you don’t have any demon-possessed people in the Old Testament. You have a lying spirit, you have the appearance of a medium in connection with the demon, but you don’t have people manifesting that they’re full of demons. Interestingly enough that after the four gospels you only have two occasions, Acts 16 and Acts 19, where you have a demon-possessed situation. And it’s never even referred to in the epistles of the New Testament, never referred to. It wasn’t an issue in the churches to which the apostle Paul wrote, or John wrote, or Jude wrote, or Peter wrote or James wrote. But in the life of Christ and in the three years of His ministry there is a manifestation of demon possessions that is unlike anything in all of human history, to be exceeded only by the manifestation of demonic power in the time yet to come called the Great Tribulation, just prior to Christ’s Second Coming. And God Himself will aide that manifestation by opening up the pit of hell and the place of bound demons called the pit, the bottomless pit, the abussos, the abyss and letting it belch out some demons who have been bound there so that there is a greater force of demons in the time of the tribulation than ever before and they are allowed to run rampant over the earth in ways prior to which they have been restrained.
At His Second Coming, Jesus will subdue Satan and his angels.
Returning to our text, when Jesus reached land, a demon-possessed man from the city went to meet Him. It had been a long time since the man wore clothes; he lived not in his house but in the tombs (verse 27).
Students of the Gospels will ask whether there was one man or two.
MacArthur says:
In Matthew 8:28 Matthew says there were two men. There were two men. He had a compatriot, perhaps equally demon possessed and equally bizarre, and equally deadly and dangerous. But in all the accounts, the one man becomes the focus, so we really don’t know what happened to the second man. Two of them appeared. The focus of the story is on one man. Perhaps he was included in the deliverance, perhaps he was not.
MacArthur says the man was naked because he was possessed by these many demons and was far removed from his right mind:
I like to think of this man, I guess the best word I can think of to use is maniac. The definition of maniac is a person exhibiting extreme symptoms of wild behavior. And that’s exactly what you have here. This man is so out of control as not to even be defined in human terms. It’s just so bizarre, so far beyond … Here we’re going to see the greatest exhibition of power over the forces of hell to this point in Scripture. Jesus vanquishes this mass of demons in this horrific individual …
… Anybody without Christ then is under the rule of Satan and under the influence of his demons and therefore anybody who is a sinner who is not protected by salvation through Jesus Christ is therefore vulnerable. What the entry points are, I’m not sure I can be explicit about in every case. I can say this, that as you study the Scripture, idolatry seems to be a way to throw the door open. Tampering in the occult seems to be a way to throw the door open. But that is not so say the most tormented people were necessarily the worst sinners. This is a Gentile man outside of Israel, so he was involved, if in any religion at all, in some pagan religion. It may have been, as most of them were occultic, and that may have thrown the door open to him, but he’s not any worse. In fact, as the story ends, the people who are the worst people in the story are the townspeople who were sane enough to bind this man up but not willing to believe in the man who delivered him, the God-Man Jesus Christ. So who is really the maniac?
I don’t know that there’s any way to say except that God allows Satan to do his work and demons have their agenda. And within God’s allowance, they pick and choose who they will. It isn’t that these people are worse sinners because what happens to them is not just an expression of their evil heart; it is for them a demonic torment. This man wasn’t happy about his condition, he was tormented by it …
Now the person is not necessarily more evil and that gives entrance to the demon, but once the demons come in then evil becomes accelerated. Evil becomes manifest in some cases beyond what can even be discussed or described or understood humanly. They can become so infested by demons, so literally dominated by forces of unclean spirits as to conduct themselves in ways as we’ve been pointing out, that are absolutely beyond description humanly. And that’s this man. Let’s look at some of the characteristics of his conduct.
First of all, it says he hadn’t put on any clothing for a long time. You say, “Well that’s really strange. What’s that about?” Well it’s about perversion. It’s about shamelessness. You remember in the 19th chapter of Acts, I think it’s about verse 16, the evil spirit there pounces on these people and strips off their clothes? From the time that Adam and Eve sinned there has been a shame associated with human nakedness because from the time of their sin on they had lustful and perverted thoughts. And they knew that. And immediately the first thing they did was make coverings. But theirs was only temporarily made out of leaves. God came, killed an animal which is a picture of His Son who had become the final covering, and He covered them with a more permanent garment. And from then on uncovering someone’s nakedness was tantamount to sexual evil. That little phrase “uncovering someone’s nakedness,” you find it in the Pentateuch. It’s tantamount to sexual perversion and evil. The Bible is very clear about clothing and about modesty and about covering. Nakedness is a sign of shamelessness. It is a sign of sexual perversion. I’m talking all the way from the naturalists at the nudist colony to the pornographers at the other end and everything in between. It’s aberrant. But not only was it aberrant, it was also a torment for the man. It gets cold and it gets hot and there are extremes of weather in that part of the world. This was a kind of torment for him as the demons had dominated him and turned him into a shameless, perverted, evil person …
Now it says he was not living in a house but he was living in tombs. Obviously you couldn’t have somebody like this in a house. What would we do with him today? What would we do with somebody like him? We’d put him in prison, right? We’d put him in prison and then you have to isolate him so they can’t get near anybody, or put him in a padded cell. I remember some years back when people who behaved like this were put in straight-jackets. Remember that? I’ve seen people in those things in mental institutions. Now today what is done with people who have this kind of potentiality is they put them on drugs and when they slaughter a bunch of people, such as the Andrea Yates thing, we say the problem was, “She didn’t take her medication.” Demons can’t be medicated but since the human body can be medicated, it becomes less useful to them when it’s medicated. But in those days they couldn’t control them with medication. They didn’t have a mental institution to put them in. They didn’t have a padded cell to put them in.
… Furthermore, he was suicidal. He was a danger to himself. Mark 5:5 says, “Night and day he was gashing and hacking at his naked body with sharp stones.” He was mutilating himself because Satan is a murderer, is he not? He is a killer. He is an abaddon, he is a destroyer. And his demons are the same. Here is a man literally taking sharp rocks and gashing his body. Mark 5:3 and 4 says nobody could control him. The demon power was too great. He was violent and he was not only harmful to himself but he frankly was absolutely deadly to other people because he had murderous intent. In the account in Matthew it says he along with his friend, the two of them, were so exceedingly violent that no one could pass by the road. You couldn’t even walk along the road below where they were because they were so violent they would come screaming down the hill. It says they would scream, they would shriek, run down the hill nakedness with the intention of doing harm, taking life. They are really the most manifest bearers of the mark of satanic personality. They would then stay up in their tombs, as we’ll see, and when people came on the road, screaming and shrieking in nakedness they would run down the hill with the intent to attack, to maim and to kill. This is what Satan wants to do.
When the man saw Jesus, his demons spoke through him, saying to our Lord, ‘What business do you have with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg You, do not torment me’ (verse 28).
Note that even demons recognise that Jesus is Lord. Put that to your atheist and agnostic friends sometime. See how they react.
Demons know that they are living on borrowed time. One day, Jesus, through the power of God, will defeat them permanently.
Henry explains:
4. They are much enraged against our Lord Jesus, and have a great dread and horror of him: When the man whom they had possession of, and who spoke as they would have him, saw Jesus, he roared out as one in an agony, and fell down before him, to deprecate his wrath, and owned him to be the Son of God most high, that was infinitely above him and too hard for him; but protested against having any league or confederacy with him (which might sufficiently have silenced the blasphemous cavils of the scribes and Pharisees): What have I to do with thee? The devils have neither inclination to do service to Christ nor expectation to receive benefit by him: What have we to do with thee? But they dreaded his power and wrath: I beseech thee, torment me not. They do not say, I beseech thee, save me, but only, Torment me not. See whose language they speak that have only a dread of hell as a place of torment, but no desire of heaven as a place of holiness and love.
5. They are perfectly at the command, and under the power, of our Lord Jesus; and they knew it, for they besought him that he would not command them to go eis ton abysson—into the deep, the place of their torment, which they acknowledge he could easily and justly do. O what a comfort is this to the Lord’s people, that all the powers of darkness are under the check and control of the Lord Jesus! He has them all in a chain. He can send them to their own place, when he pleaseth.
MacArthur tells us:
“What do I have to do with You, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?” I’m telling you, the demons’ theology is orthodox. They know who Jesus is. There were disciples there who weren’t sure. The demons know. It is a strange and bizarre testimony to the reality of who Jesus Christ is. “What do I have to do with You, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?” It’s very much like that other demon in the 4th chapter who said essentially the same thing. In chapter 4 the demon said, “What do we have to do with You, Jesus of Nazareth. I know who You are, the Holy One of God.” And here in an amazing way God gives testimony to the identity of His Son through demons, amazing.
By the way, they are timeless, they are ageless. They were created at one time. They do not reproduce. They are as old as creation. They have vast knowledge. They were originally holy angels. They have vast knowledge of the personality of God and the Godhead, and they knew exactly who Jesus was.
“What do I have to do with You, Jesus? What’s this all about?” As if to say, “Why are You here? What’s this about? I beg You, do not torment me.” He calls Him, “Son of the Most High God.” We’ve discussed that term because it was used in chapter 1. When the angel came to announce the birth of the Messiah, he said He would be the Son of the Most High God and God would give to Him His kingdom. It’s a New Testament term taken from the Old Testament. The Most High God is El Elyon. It means “God, the sovereign one, God the sovereign Lord.” And so what they’re saying is, “Son of the sovereign Lord.” Often in the Old Testament “the Most High God” is followed by the statement, “possessor of heaven and earth.” They know this is the Lord of heaven and earth. This is the Creator God in human form. This is God the Son, the One who is Most High. The demons knew Him well. Even Satan knew Him well. Remember back in chapter 4 when Satan confronted Him, he said, “Since You are the Son of God,” do this, do this. Since You are the Son of God do this, do this. The devils know exactly who He is.
The demons had said that to Jesus because He commanded them to leave the man; the unclean spirit they made up within him caused him to break his shackles, which the townspeople had put him in, and go out into the wilderness, or the desert, in some translations (verse 29).
Jesus asked the man for his name, and the demons replied through him, ‘Legion’, for they were many (verse 30).
The demons numbered themselves as soldiers in the Roman Empire. The size of a Roman legion varied throughout the centuries, but, much of the time, there were more than 3,000 men in a single legion.
How this poor man must have suffered through the years, day after day. It’s horrible.
Because they knew the power of Jesus, they begged Him not to send them to the abyss, where they are eventually doomed in defeat (verse 31).
Their destiny is ultimately under our Lord’s control at all times. Note that they had to ask His permission not to go into the abyss.
On the hillside, a herd of swine were feeding, so the demons begged — yes, begged — His permission to enter them; Jesus granted them permission (verse 32).
MacArthur says:
… they didn’t want Him to send them, verse 31, to the abyss, to the abussos, the bottomless pit. It’s called the bottomless pit in the book of Revelation, you read about it in chapter 9, chapter 11, chapter 17. “Don’t send us into the abyss.” That is the present place of demon incarceration. As many demons as there are in the world, thankfully by the goodness of God, His providential common grace, not all the demons that exist are running loose in the world. In fact, 2 Peter 2:4 and Jude 6 and 7, both those places tell us that the demons that possess the people described in Genesis 6 were at that time put in everlasting chains and sent to that bottomless pit from which they will never be released. So there are eternally, or permanently bound demons, ultimately in the end they will all go to the final incarceration in the lake of fire. But there are today bound demons who are bound permanently. Also in this abussos, this bottomless pit there are some demons bound temporarily because in the ninth chapter of Revelation we find in the time of the Great Tribulation to come, God’s going to open up that bit and belching out of that pit are going to come forth some demons to add to the demon force that runs amuck on the earth during the time of the Great Tribulation when Satan has his final heyday under Antichrist. But there is a place where many of the demons are currently incarcerated so that their power is in some way limited in the world. These demons say, “We don’t want to go there before the time. Don’t send us there yet, we want our freedom. Please don’t send us there.”
Henry’s commentary raises an interesting point about the herd owners’ loss of an occupation:
When the devil at first brought man into a miserable state he brought a curse likewise upon the whole creation, and that became subject to enmity. And here, as an instance of that extensive enmity of his, when he could not destroy the man, he would destroy the swine. If he could not hurt them in their bodies, he would hurt them in their goods, which sometimes prove a great temptation to men to draw them from Christ, as here. Christ suffered them to enter into the swine, to convince the country what mischief the devil could do in it, if he should suffer him.
Therefore, this was a demonstration that the demons affected not only the poor man, but others in that town, who probably were a bit sanctimonious about themselves with regard to his plight.
The demons left the man and entered the swine, then the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake, where they all drowned (verse 33).
Henry says:
No sooner had the devils leave than they entered into the swine; and no sooner had they entered into them than the herd ran violently down a steep place into the lake, and were drowned. For it is a miracle of mercy if those whom Satan possesses are not brought to destruction and perdition.
When the swineherds saw what had happened, they ran into the city and adjoining countryside to tell everyone (verse 34).
It was an extraordinary event, as MacArthur explains:
Two thousand pigs careening down a hill, drowning? By the way, from what I’ve read, pigs can swim. But the point was, the demons slaughtered them all. Why? Well, first of all, to show that the man had been delivered, visual, physical proof. Secondly, to reveal the deadly intent of demons to kill. Also, as I said, to reveal the power of Jesus over the kingdom of darkness. That was a tremendous and dramatic illustration that this man had been delivered because the pigs acted in the kind of frenzy and self-destruction that characterized the man. They became maniac pigs. The testimony is convincing. This man definitely had demons. They’re gone because the pigs are behaving like the man did.
And that’s what people concluded. Verse 34, “When the herdsmen saw what had happened, they ran away and reported in the city and out in the country.” They were eyewitnesses. Whoever was working for the owner of the pigs, these men who were taking care of 2,000 pigs, they saw what happened, they reported it in the city and out in the country. The bottom line is it’s another way to say they couldn’t stop talking about it. Everywhere they went they...I mean, they had never seen anything like this in their entire lives, they were probably experienced with pigs and pigs don’t just uniformly all at once dive off a cliff and kill themselves. The most powerful, startling, amazing event of their lives by far and they spread it everywhere. They can’t stop talking about it, everywhere they went they said, “It…it’s inexplicable.” They heard the conversation between Jesus and the man, at least they saw the conversation going on because it says the pigs were nearby. They knew about this man, if they herded pigs in that area they knew about that man, they knew about the maniacal character of that man. And all of a sudden this thing takes place and it’s just the most amazing thing ever. And so they become heralds, as it were, telling everybody about it.
Naturally, people began coming to the site where this had happened, and they saw Jesus, with the now fully restored man, also fully clothed, sitting at His feet; they were afraid (verse 35).
MacArthur brings us back to the terror that people felt when Jesus performed other miracles and calmed storms. They instinctively knew that they were in the presence of the Most High God, and they were ashamed of their own weaknesses, especially their sins:
Well the reaction at the end of verse 35, “They became frightened,” from the word phobeo from which we get phobia. They were terrified is basically what it was. Here again we see the same thing. We see it all the way through the gospel of Luke, people who realize they’re in the presence of the power of God are scared, frightened, traumatized, terrified. And it is so throughout particularly this chapter, back in verse 25 when Jesus stilled the storm, stopped the wind and the waves. It says they were fearful, they were frightened there, they were panicked there. We see it throughout the rest of the chapter as we will note later that people are literally terrified every time Jesus does a miracle, whether it’s a healing or the raising of a dead person, it creates a certain amount of terror in people because they know they’re in the presence of the power of God and that is a holy presence and they are sinful people.
That leads us then to the third power demonstrated here, the damning power of sin…the damning power of sin. The demons exert a power, the Lord Jesus brings His great delivering power, but we also see the terrible damning power of sin. It is the nature of sin to blind. It is the nature of sin to hate the truth. It is the nature of sin to reject proof. It is the nature of sin to resist righteousness. It is the nature of sin to cling tightly to the love of iniquity. Here you have irrefutable evidence that Jesus is the power of God. Here you have a miracle that is so massive that demonstrates not His power over the physical realm, but His power over the supernatural realm, His power over the spiritual world, His power over the forces of evil, to deliver men from evil. You see this without any argument, without any debate. They don’t discuss it. They don’t debate it. They know what has happened. It terrifies them.
Those who had seen the miracle told these people how Jesus had healed the man (verse 36).
Interestingly, instead of thanking Jesus for restoring local peace at long last and inviting Him to stay, they all told Him to leave; they were that frightened. So, He went into the boat and left (verse 37).
Henry makes this observation:
Those lose their Saviour, and their hopes in him, that love their swine better.
They displayed the same spiritual blindness as did the Jewish hierarchy.
MacArthur expands on their extraordinarily negative response:
… instead of saying “thank you,” and “how do we get delivered?” you notice verse 36, “Those who had seen it reported to them how the man who was demon possessed had been made well.” This is an interesting verse. They want to know what happened…what happened…give us the details…how did this happen? They’re terrified of Jesus, what’s going on here? And so those who had seen it told them the full story of how the man who was demon possessed had been made well, esothe(?), from sozo, had been saved…sozo-to be saved. How the man had been delivered. And they gave them the full story, details of which aren’t given to us. I’m sure they said, “Well, you won’t believe how it happened. The guy came down the hill and…” And they, they must have been, as I said earlier, close enough to see the engagement and the encounter and to even hear what went on. The man had been delivered, not just from Satan, but I believe he’d been delivered from sin, or at least he was, when those people heard the discussion, beginning to awaken to the forgiveness and the salvation that Jesus had offered which I believe became completed, and I’ll show you why in a moment.
You know, you think sinners would really be convinced if you just had a powerful enough miracle. No, no, you don’t understand the power of sin. You know, if you could just figure a clever enough way to pronounce the gospel, if you could just figure an attractive enough way to present Jesus Christ, if you could just get a powerful enough exhibit of the life of Jesus Christ and His miracle might, boy, people would really be convinced. No…no, the damning power of sin just obliterates reality. The idea that sinners will be convinced by a powerful miracle…a powerful miracle isn’t true.
Well what did the Jews do? They saw miracle after miracle after miracle after miracle after miracle for three years. And at the end of that time what did they do? They wanted Him dead. The Gentiles weren’t any different. I can’t imagine a more powerful, clear example of the saving power of Jesus Christ than this. I can’t imagine a more dramatic event than sending thousands of demons out of a man with a word. And the proof of it in the drowning of this herd of pigs. I…rationally you’ve got to fall down and say, “This is the power of God.” But the truth of the matter is, this is hard soil back from Jesus’ story in the eighth chapter verses 5 and 12, hard soil, the seed of the truth falls just like falling on concrete, it doesn’t penetrate.
What was their reaction? Verse 37, “All the people,” apparently without exception, “All the people of the country of the Gerasenes and the surrounding district, everybody.” Apparently you’ve got a big crowd out there. “All of them asked Him to depart from them. Go away.”
Why? “For they were gripped with phobe, you know, fear megala, great fear, massive fear. What were they terrified of? After all, hadn’t He brought safety where there was danger? Hadn’t He brought peace where there was chaos? What was to be afraid of? What was to be afraid of was they knew they were in the presence of God? They knew they were seeing the great power of God and they knew it was a holy power, a purging, purifying, cleansing power that dispensed with evil and they therefore knew that they were exposed to sinners. And loving their evil so much they wanted to get rid of the intimidation. Even Peter had that reaction when Jesus commanded the fish to come to his boat and he said in Luke 5:8, “Depart from me, O Lord, for I am a…what?…sinful man.” It’s the intimidation of holiness in the presence of sin that causes them to want Jesus to go away. Instead of saying, “Thank You, thank You for delivering us, could You go up and get his friend up there, that other guy and do to him what You’ve done to this man? And could You tell us how we can be delivered from whatever satanic influences exist in our lives? And could You tell us how we can be forgiven of our sin? And could You tell us how this holy power could come upon us?”
They don’t say that. There’s not a word of thanks for the deliverance from the danger of the man. They see Jesus as a greater danger than that man. They would rather have a maniac than the Son of God. They would rather be terrified by Satan than terrified by God. They would rather endure the presence of demonic danger than the presence of divine deliverance. They preferred the unholy to the holy. They preferred a tomb dweller over the Lord of life. Just like Israel. They were not asking Jesus to go away because He messed with their economy, killing their pigs. They weren’t asking Him to go away because they were materialists and not spiritualists and they were mad at Him for what He had done. The whole town and the whole region wanted Him to go away because they were terrified of His holiness. You know, the world is really comfortable with pigs and maniacs, but it’s not comfortable with Jesus Christ, is it? Not the Son of God. David Gooding writes, “What a sad comment on man’s fallen and unregenerate state it is that man should feel more at home with demons than with the Christ who has the power to cast them out. Who would try to help a criminal or a drunkard, or if they should prove incorrigible would want the one imprisoned and the other put into a hospital find it embarrassing and somewhat frightening if that criminal or drunkard is saved by Christ and turned into a wholesome regenerate disciple.” That’s really true…it’s really true. They would rather have a maniac than a Christian. They would rather have the presence of Satan than the presence of Christ. This is the blindness and the damning darkness and ignorance of sin.
And so, sad note, it says verse 37, “He got into a boat and returned.” He never came back, by the way. One time…one day…one occasion…they said, “Get out.” He got into a boat and went back to Capernaum. Was it an insult? Yes. It was more, it was a damning rejection and Jesus never ever came back.
Not surprisingly, the man who had been healed begged Jesus to allow him to be a disciple, but Jesus sent him away, saying (verse 38) that he should return to his home and declare how much God has done for him. Obediently, the man went away, proclaiming to the city just how much Jesus had done for him (verse 39).
Henry says that it is possible that the man’s words might have gained traction once the Gerasenes recovered from what had happened:
Perhaps Christ knew that, when the resentment of the loss of their swine was a little over, they would be better disposed to consider the miracle, and therefore left the man among them to be a standing monument, and a monitor to them of it.
MacArthur says that Jesus told the man to stay because he would be the only witness in that place:
He’s the first Gentile missionary…the maniac who became a missionary. And as I said, if he knew enough to be saved, he knew enough to tell somebody else. And if that man had left with Jesus, there would have been no witness in that place. Here was grace in the face of rejection. Jesus sent him back to his own people and He said to him, “Describe what great things God has done for you, and he went away proclaiming throughout the whole city what great things Jesus had done for him.” How interesting. You tell them what God has done, he told them what Jesus had done because Jesus is God. He became a witness. When I get to heaven I want to ask him how successful he was, how fruitful. He went proclaiming throughout the whole city, kerusso, preaching throughout the whole city. This is personal evangelism, the story of what the Lord had done. Mark 5:20 says, “Everyone was amazed…amazed.”
Well that’s what Jesus does. He turns maniacs into missionaries. It shows us the power of the demons, the power of the delivering Lord, and the damning power of sin. What a story.
Perhaps we, too, are the only witnesses where we live:
If you have been delivered, you too are a missionary, amen? Tell the story.
I always wonder what sort of sermon I will hear when this Gospel passage is read. Perhaps you do, too.
I hope we will not be disappointed on Sunday morning.
The Third Sunday of Easter is May 1, 2022.
The readings for Year C can be found here.
The Gospel reading is as follows (emphases mine):
John 21:1-19
21:1 After these things Jesus showed himself again to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias; and he showed himself in this way.
21:2 Gathered there together were Simon Peter, Thomas called the Twin, Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples.
21:3 Simon Peter said to them, “I am going fishing.” They said to him, “We will go with you.” They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.
21:4 Just after daybreak, Jesus stood on the beach; but the disciples did not know that it was Jesus.
21:5 Jesus said to them, “Children, you have no fish, have you?” They answered him, “No.”
21:6 He said to them, “Cast the net to the right side of the boat, and you will find some.” So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in because there were so many fish.
21:7 That disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on some clothes, for he was naked, and jumped into the sea.
21:8 But the other disciples came in the boat, dragging the net full of fish, for they were not far from the land, only about a hundred yards off.
21:9 When they had gone ashore, they saw a charcoal fire there, with fish on it, and bread.
21:10 Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish that you have just caught.”
21:11 So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, a hundred fifty-three of them; and though there were so many, the net was not torn.
21:12 Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” Now none of the disciples dared to ask him, “Who are you?” because they knew it was the Lord.
21:13 Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish.
21:14 This was now the third time that Jesus appeared to the disciples after he was raised from the dead.
21:15 When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my lambs.”
21:16 A second time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Tend my sheep.”
21:17 He said to him the third time, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” And he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep.
21:18 Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.”
21:19 (He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.) After this he said to him, “Follow me.”
Commentary comes from Matthew Henry and John MacArthur.
John MacArthur says that this visit from Jesus took place around the time He gave the Apostles the Great Commission (Matthew 28:16-20):
The Great Commission
16 Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. 17 When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. 18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
MacArthur says that the Apostles did not go immediately to the mountain and, according to him, went fishing instead:
The problem is when this narrative opens they aren’t at the mountain, they’re at the lake. So immediately were confronted with their disobedience. They are not in the place He told them to be. They shouldn’t have been where they were.
In any event, John’s account of this fishing expedition and our Lord’s preparation of breakfast for the Twelve shows, in MacArthur’s words that He will be there to provide for them — and for us:
He’s going to be there to provide. He’s going to be there to meet their needs. Even the simplest needs of their hunger, He’s going to care for them; that’s not going to change. Even though it’s after the resurrection, even though He’s in a glorified form, He will have the same compassion and care, and make the same provisions for them that they’ve known Him to make.
This is John’s third recorded account of our Lord appearing to the Apostles (verse 14).
Jesus showed Himself — manifested Himself, in some translations — to the Apostles again at the Sea of Tiberias, which is the Sea of Galilee, later renamed for the Roman emperor (verse 1).
MacArthur tells us what happened after they saw Jesus for the second time in the room where Thomas saw His wounds (last week’s reading):
Sometime between the eighth day when Jesus appeared to the apostles, and the fortieth day when He ascended into heaven, this third appearance occurred – third as it’s designated in verse 14.
We know from Acts 1:3 that He was with them for forty days. It doesn’t mean that He was with them all forty of those days, because there are only three times that He appeared to them up to this incident, and this incident happened in Galilee. They had to go from Judea to Galilee, which could be a journey that might take them some time. Before, they had seen Him in Judea in the upper room; now they’re in Galilee. They’ve been waiting awhile for Him; finally He makes an appearance. So to say that He taught them the things concerning the kingdom throughout a period of forty days is not to say that it was all forty days. Sometime between the eighth and fortieth day Jesus manifested Himself.
He uses that term twice in verse 1: manifested, manifested. You have to understand this: as a supernatural, sudden, startling appearance of Christ as if out of nowhere. In the same way, He appeared to those on the road to Emmaus, the same way He appeared to Mary Magdalene and the others, the same way He appeared to the apostles in the upper room, coming into the room and appearing instantaneously with the door shut and locked. He is now in His glorified resurrection form. He manifests Himself.
And I remind you that even though He could be seen because He was alive physically, He was not known, because His body was different. His glorified body was different. Mary Magdalene thought He was somebody else; she thought He was the gardener. The disciples on the road to Emmaus had no idea who He was, and not a glimpse, but rather a long drawn out conversation with Him in the daylight, and then in the house and around the table, and they still didn’t know who He was.
And here, again, He appears, and they don’t know who He is, because they couldn’t know who He was in the glorified form, because the glorified form is so different. He has to therefore disclose Himself. He has to identify Himself, and He does that on this occasion. His body is so different. It is a body for eternity, not a body for time. It is a body for heaven, not a body for earth.
So this time He manifests Himself in Galilee by the Sea of Tiberias. Can I just comment on that? That is a lake 12 miles long, about 7 miles wide, 650 feet below sea level in the northern part of the land of Israel in Galilee, surrounded pretty much by mountains on the west, north, and east. It is familiar in the Old Testament. It’s called Kinneret or Chinnereth or sometimes Gennesaret Lake. It is also the Sea of Galilee as we know it, because it is in the region of Galilee. The Romans renamed it to honor Tiberius Caesar and they called it the Sea of Tiberias as its Roman name.
Jesus had told the disciples to go to Galilee back in Matthew 28 after He had appeared to them from His resurrection. He said, “You need to leave for Galilee,” – Matthew 28:10 – “and there you will see Me. You go to Galilee, you’ll see me there.”
Verse 16: “The eleven disciples proceeded to Galilee, to the mountain which Jesus had designated.” So they not only were told to go to Galilee, they were told to go to Galilee to a mountain, the very mountain Jesus designated. We don’t know what it was, but perhaps it was what we know as the mountain where there was the Sermon on the Mount, and can’t be certain about that. But that’s one very near that slopes up from the sea to the north. The problem is when this narrative opens they aren’t at the mountain, they’re at the lake. So immediately were confronted with their disobedience. They are not in the place He told them to be. They shouldn’t have been where they were.
A familiar list of names shows up in verse 2, ones we have run across before: Simon Peter, Thomas called the Twin (Didymus, in some translations, which means ‘twin’), Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples.
MacArthur says:
… this is the group – the six of them minus Thomas – this is the group that Jesus first called as His disciples back in chapter 1. This is the group that discovered they have found the Messiah, so we know them very well ... Interestingly enough, this doubting Thomas and this denying Peter are the first two named. They’re given prominence in the list, and that’s an illustration of grace: Simon Peter the denier and Thomas the doubter. Didymus mean he was a twin, he had a twin.
MacArthur thinks they had all gone to the mountain as Jesus instructed, then decided to leave when Peter announced he was going fishing and they agreed to accompany him, although they caught nothing that night (verse 3):
Well, they’re up in the mountain for awhile; we don’t know how long, we don’t have time indicators here. “Simon Peter said to them, ‘I’m going fishing.’” And in the form of the original language that’s a final statement: “I’m going back to my old career. I’m going fishing.”
I read it differently, but I am not a Bible scholar. Fishermen went about their business at night, when waters were cooler. They also could not preach and teach at night, when people would have been asleep.
Incidentally, Matthew Henry says there was no rebellion among the Apostles and that they did the right thing by going fishing, calling it ‘an instance of their humility’:
Their agreement to go a fishing. They knew not well what to do with themselves. For my part, says Peter, I will go a fishing; We will go with thee then, say they, for we will keep together. Though commonly two of a trade cannot agree, yet they could. Some think they did amiss in returning to their boats and nets, which they had left; but then Christ would not have countenanced them in it with a visit. It was rather commendable in them; for they did it, (1.) To redeem time, and not be idle. They were not yet appointed to preach the resurrection of Christ. Their commission was in the drawing, but not perfected. The hour for entering upon action was to come. It is probable that their Master had directed them to say nothing of his resurrection till after his ascension, nay, not till after the pouring out of the Spirit, and then they were to begin at Jerusalem. Now, in the mean time, rather than do nothing, they would go a fishing; not for recreation, but for business. It is an instance of their humility. Though they were advanced to be sent of Christ, as he was of the Father, yet they did not take state upon them, but remembered the rock out of which they were hewn. It is an instance likewise of their industry, and bespeaks them good husbands of their time. While they were waiting, they would not be idling. Those who would give an account of their time with joy should contrive to fill up the vacancies of it, to gather up the fragments of it. (2.) That they might help to maintain themselves and not be burdensome to any. While their Master was with them those who ministered to him were kind to them; but now that the bridegroom was taken from them they must fast in those days, and therefore their own hands, as Paul’s, must minister to their necessities and for this reason Christ asked them, Have you any meat? This teaches us with quietness to work and eat our own bread.
Henry is generous about this gathering of apostolic fishermen and commends their model to us:
Observe here, 1. It is good for the disciples of Christ to be much together; not only in solemn religious assemblies, but in common conversation, and about common business. Good Christians should by this means both testify and increase their affection to, and delight in, each other, and edify one another both by discourse and example. 2. Christ chose to manifest himself to them when they were together; not only to countenance Christian society, but that they might be joint witnesses of the same matter of fact, and so might corroborate one another’s testimony. Here were seven together to attest this, on which some observe that the Roman law required seven witnesses to a testament. 3. Thomas was one of them, and is named next to Peter, as if he now kept closer to the meetings of the apostles than ever. It is well if losses by our neglects make us more careful afterwards not to let opportunities slip.
As for the Apostles catching nothing, which some may interpret as divine payback, Henry says that these things happen, often out of divine providence — and for good reason:
Even good men may come short of desired success in their honest undertakings. We may be in the way of our duty, and yet not prosper. Providence so ordered it that all that night they should catch nothing, that the miraculous draught of fishes in the morning might be the more wonderful and the more acceptable. In those disappointments which to us are very grievous God has often designs that are very gracious. Man has indeed a dominion over the fish of the sea, but they are not always at his beck; God only knows the paths of the sea, and commands that which passeth through them.
Just after daybreak, Jesus stood on the beach, but the disciples did not recognise Him (verse 4). Again, that refers to His glorified body, which they could not identify.
Henry says this tells us that Jesus is nearby when we need Him most:
Christ’s time of making himself known to his people is when they are most at a loss. When they think they have lost themselves, he will let them know that they have not lost him … It is a comfort to us, when our passage is rough and stormy, that our Master is at shore, and we are hastening to him.
As to why Jesus did not walk on water towards the boat, scholars through the ages say that His work in that respect had now been accomplished with the Resurrection. However, the Apostles’ toil in ministry — and persecution — had only just begun:
Some of the ancients put this significancy upon it, that Christ, having finished his work, was got through a stormy sea, a sea of blood, to a safe and quiet shore, where he stood in triumph; but the disciples, having their work before them, were yet at sea, in toil and peril.
Jesus knew they had no fish but asked them nonetheless, addressing them as ‘children’, or, in British English, ‘lads’; they responded in the negative (verse 5).
Henry discusses His affectionate address and question at length, as well as the Apostles’ terse reply:
He called to them, Children, paidia–“Lads, have you any meat? Have you caught any fish?” Here, (1.) The compellation is very familiar; he speaks unto them as unto his sons, with the care and tenderness of a father: Children. Though he had now entered upon his exalted state, he spoke to his disciples with as much kindness and affection as ever. They were not children in age, but they were his children, the children which God had given him. (2.) The question is very kind: Have you any meat? He asks as a tender father concerning his children whether they be provided with that which is fit for them, that if they be not, he may take care for their supply. Note, The Lord is for the body, 1 Corinthians 6:13. Christ takes cognizance of the temporal wants of his people, and has promised them not only grace sufficient, but food convenient. Verily they shall be fed, Psalms 27:3. Christ looks into the cottages of the poor, and asks, Children, have you any meat? thereby inviting them to open their case before him, and by the prayer of faith to make their requests known to him: and then let them be careful for nothing; for Christ takes care of them, takes care for them. Christ has herein set us an example of compassionate concern for our brethren. There are many poor householders disabled for labour, or disappointed in it, that are reduced to straits, whom the rich should enquire after thus, Have you any meat? For the most necessitous are commonly the least clamorous. To this question the disciples gave a short answer, and, some think, with an air of discontent and peevishness. They said, No; not giving him any such friendly and respectful title as he had given them. So short do the best come in their returns of love to the Lord Jesus. Christ put the question to them, not because he did not know their wants, but because he would know them from them. Those that would have supplies from Christ must own themselves empty and needy.
Jesus told them to cast their net to the right side of the boat and they would find fish; there were so many that they were not able to haul in their catch (verse 6).
MacArthur says that this would have reminded the Apostles of the time three years earlier when He first called them to follow Him:
They were to drop their nets, stop fishing for fish and start fishing for men. Luke 5, listen: “Crowds pressing Jesus, He’s on the edge of the lake. He saw two boats lying at the edge of the lake. The fishermen had gotten out of them, washing their nets. So He got into one of the boats, the boat was Simon’s boat. Got into Peter’s boat and asked him to put out a little way from the land. He had to push off from the shore because the crowd was pressing Him, and He needed a little distance and the water’s a pretty good conductor of voice. So when he had finished speaking from Peter’s boat He said to Simon, ‘Put out in the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.’
“Simon answered Him and said, ‘Master, I need to inform you about fishing. We worked hard all night and caught nothing; this doesn’t make sense. I know you’re not a fisherman, but I’m telling You we’ve been there, done that; this is not a good time to fish. But’ – he says – ‘I will do as you say and let down the nets. I’m going to go prove my point that I know more about fishing that You do.’
“When they had done this, they enclosed a great quantity of fish, and their nets began to break; so they signaled to their partners in the other boat” – probably belonged to some of the other disciples – “for them to come and help them. And they came and filled both of the boats, so that they began to sink. But when Simon Peter saw that, he fell down at Jesus’ feet, saying, ‘Go away from me Lord, for I’m a sinful man!’” He knew who he was dealing with: Lord God, and he saw his own wretched sinfulness. He was so sinful in the attitude that he had conveyed to the Lord.
“Amazement had seized him and all his companions because of the catch of fish which they had taken, and they were James and John and Peter. And then Jesus says to them” – in verse 10 – ‘Don’t be afraid. From now on you will be catching men.’ When they brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed Him.” Now they’re going to go catch men …
Well, they got so many fish that it was shocking; and, of course, this had happened three years earlier, so they knew who He was immediately. So now you know that this is the same Christ, risen from the dead, performing a miracle very much like at the beginning of His relationship with them.
MacArthur says this is the only post-Resurrection creative miracle that Jesus performed, although He did enter the Apostles’ room in Judea twice after rising from the dead by passing through a wall:
… this is the one post-resurrection miracle, apart from walking through walls, which is simply the supernatural body of Christ and its capability.
Henry says this miracle is an illustration of our Lord’s generosity in the age of the New Covenant, although we must be diligent:
As a mystery, and very significant of that work to which Christ was now with an enlarged commission sending them forth. The prophets had been fishing for souls, and caught nothing, or very little; but the apostles, who let down the net at Christ’s word, had wonderful success. Many were the children of the desolate, Galatians 4:27. They themselves, in pursuance of their former mission, when they were first made fishers of men, had had small success in comparison with what they should now have. When, soon after this, three thousand were converted in one day, then the net was cast on the right side of the ship. It is an encouragement to Christ’s ministers to continue their diligence in their work. One happy draught, at length, may be sufficient to repay many years of toil at the gospel net.
The huge haul of fish caused John, the author of this Gospel — ‘that disciple whom Jesus loved’ — to exclaim to Peter that this was the Lord; Peter, having stripped down to bare essentials, put on some clothes and jumped into the sea (verse 7).
Looking at John’s character and recalling that he was the only Apostle to be at the Crucifixion, Henry says:
John had adhered more closely to his Master in his sufferings than any of them: and therefore he has a clearer eye and a more discerning judgment than any of them, in recompence for his constancy. When John was himself aware that it was the Lord, he communicated his knowledge to those with him; for this dispensation of the Spirit is given to every one to profit withal. Those that know Christ themselves should endeavor to bring others acquainted with him; we need not engross him, there is enough in him for us all.
Peter was in a conflicted state of mind at this time. How could he forget that he denied Jesus three times in the early hours of Good Friday? He loved our Lord, yet he had denied Him. He was weak, as we all are, often at the most crucial times. He felt badly and probably wanted His personal forgiveness in words.
Henry says:
… John tells Peter particularly his thoughts, that it was the Lord, knowing he would be glad to see him above any of them. Though Peter had denied his Master, yet, having repented, and being taken into the communion of the disciples again, they were as free and familiar with him as ever.
2. That Peter was the most zealous and warm-hearted disciple; for as soon as he heard it was the Lord (for which he took John’s word) the ship could not hold him, nor could he stay till the bringing of it to shore, but into the sea he throws himself presently, that he might come first to Christ. (1.) He showed his respect to Christ by girding his fisher’s coat about him that he might appear before his Master in the best clothes he had, and to rudely rush into his presence, stripped as he was to his waistcoat and drawers, because the work he was about was toilsome, and he was resolved to take pains in it. Perhaps the fisher’s coat was made of leather, or oil-cloth, and would keep out wet; and he girt it to him that he might make the best of his way through the water to Christ, as he used to do after his nets, when he was intent upon his fishing. (2.) He showed the strength of his affection to Christ, and his earnest desire to be with him, by casting himself into the sea; and either wading or swimming to shore, to come to him. When he walked upon the water to Christ (Matthew 14:28), it was said, He came down out of the ship deliberately; but here it is said, He cast himself into the sea with precipitation; sink or swim, he would show his good-will and aim to be with Jesus. “If Christ suffer me,” thinks he, “to drown, and come short of him, it is but what I deserve for denying him.” Peter had had much forgiven, and made it appear he loved much by his willingness to run hazards, and undergo hardships, to come to him. Those that have been with Jesus will be willing to swim through a stormy sea, a sea of blood, to come to him …
The other Apostles stayed in the boat, dragging the net full of fish; they were only about 100 yards from the shore (verse 8).
Henry says that we all have our own personalities and characteristics; God makes use of all of these in the Church:
Now here we may observe, (1.) How variously God dispenses his gifts. Some excel, as Peter and John; are very eminent in gifts and graces, and are thereby distinguished from their brethren; others are but ordinary disciples, that mind their duty, and are faithful to him, but do nothing to make themselves remarkable; and yet both the one and the other, the eminent and the obscure, shall sit down together with Christ in glory; nay, and perhaps the last shall be first. Of those that do excel, some, like John, are eminently contemplative, have great gifts of knowledge, and serve the church with them; others, like Peter, are eminently active and courageous, are strong, and do exploits, and are thus very serviceable to their generation. Some are useful as the church’s eyes, others as the church’s hands, and all for the good of the body. (2.) What a great deal of difference there may be between some good people and others in the way of their honouring Christ, and yet both accepted of him. Some serve Christ more in acts of devotion, and extraordinary expressions of a religious zeal; and they do well, to the Lord they do it. Peter ought not to be censured for casting himself into the sea, but commended for his zeal and the strength of his affection; and so must those be who, in love to Christ, quit the world, with Mary, to sit at his feet. But others serve Christ more in the affairs of the world. They continue in that ship, drag the net, and bring the fish to shore, as the other disciples here; and such ought not to be censured as worldly, for they, in their place, are as truly serving Christ as the other, even in serving tables. If all the disciples had done as Peter did, what had become of their fish and their nets? And yet if Peter had done as they did we had wanted this instance of holy zeal. Christ was well pleased with both, and so must we be. (3.) That there are several ways of bringing Christ’s disciples to shore to him from off the sea of this world. Some are brought to him by a violent death, as the martyrs, who threw themselves into the sea, in their zeal for Christ; others are brought to him by a natural death, dragging the net, which is less terrible; but both meet at length on the safe and quiet shore with Christ.
When the Apostles reached the shore, they found that Jesus had made breakfast for them — bread and fish — with the aid of a charcoal fire (verse 9). How wonderful! It was the best tasting breakfast in history, because He made it.
The resurrected Jesus was still serving His disciples. How many other religions can say that their original leader did the same? Not one.
Of this creative miracle, Henry says:
When they came to land, wet and cold, weary and hungry, they found a good fire there to warm them and dry them, and fish and bread, competent provision for a good meal. (1.) We need not be curious in enquiring whence this fire, and fish, and bread, came, any more than whence the meat came which the ravens brought to Elijah. He that could multiply the loaves and fishes that were could make new ones if he pleased, or turn stones into bread, or send his angels to fetch it, where he knew it was to be had. It is uncertain whether this provision was made ready in the open air, or in some fisher’s cabin or hut upon the shore; but here was nothing stately or delicate. We should be content with mean things, for Christ was. (2.) We may be comforted in this instance of Christ’s care of his disciples; he has wherewith to supply all our wants, and knows what things we have need of. He kindly provided for those fishermen, when they came weary from their work; for verily those shall be fed who trust in the Lord and do good. It is encouraging to Christ’s ministers, whom he hath made fishers of men, that they may depend upon him who employs them to provide for them; and if they should miss of encouragement in this world, should be reduced as Paul was to hunger, and thirst, and fastings often, let them content themselves with what they have here; they have better things in reserve, and shall eat and drink with Christ at his table in his kingdom, Luke 22:30. Awhile ago, the disciples had entertained Christ with a broiled fish (Luke 24:42), and now, as a friend, he returned their kindness, and entertained them with one; nay, in the draught of fishes, he repaid them more than a hundred fold.
Jesus instructed the men to bring some of the fish they had just caught (verse 10).
Henry says this is because He wanted them to enjoy the fruits of their labour:
The command Christ gave them to bring their draught of fish to shore: “Bring of the fish hither, which you have now caught, and let us have some of them;” not as if he needed it; and could not make up a dinner for them without it; but, [1.] He would have them eat the labour of their hands, Psalms 128:2. What is got by God’s blessing on our own industry and honest labour, if withal God give us power to eat of it, and enjoy good in our labour, hath a peculiar sweetness in it. It is said of the slothful man that he roasteth not that which he took in hunting; he cannot find in his heart to dress what he has been at the pains to take, Proverbs 12:27. But Christ would hereby teach us to use what we have. [2.] He would have them taste the gifts of his miraculous bounty, that they might be witnesses both of his power and of his goodness. The benefits Christ bestows upon us are not to be buried and laid up, but to be used and laid out. [3.] He would give a specimen of the spiritual entertainment he has for all believers, which, in this respect, is most free and familiar–that he sups with them, and they with him; their graces are pleasing to him, and his comforts are so to them; what he works in them he accepts from them. [4.] Ministers, who are fishers of men, must bring all they catch to their Master, for on him their success depends.
Peter boarded the boat and hauled the net ashore, full of 153 fish, the weight of which did not tear the net (verse 11), unlike the first time three years before.
These fish are now called St Peter’s fish (John Dory). The dark, round mark each has is said to be St Peter’s thumbprint.
Peter must have been a large and strong man to bring the net in himself.
MacArthur says:
This is where he gets the term “the big fisherman.” Years ago there was even a book and a movie when I was a little kid called The Big Fisherman, and I used to ask, “Why does everybody think Peter is big?” This is it right here, because six guys have been dragging this thing in, the other disciples in verse 8.
But in verse 11 it says, “Simon Peter went up and drew the net to land, full of large fish, large fish.” A large fish in the Sea of Galilee, I’ve eaten those fish; some of you have been there. They’re now called St. Peter’s fish; they weren’t then, but they are now, obvious reason. They can get as big as two pounds plus.
The number is fascinating to me. This is something Scripture does very frequently to let you know the reality of it. This isn’t mystical, this is actually 153 fish, times two pounds, you’re looking at three hundred pounds of fish in wet nets and paraphernalia; and this is where Peter gets the name “big fisherman,” because he pulls it ashore by himself. He’s a formidable guy. So he drags in 153 fish, and even though there were so many, too many for the nets to hold, the net was not torn – which is another part of the miracle.
Jesus invited the Apostles to breakfast; none of them asked who He was because they knew it was He (verse 12).
Jesus then took the bread and gave it to them before doing the same with the fish (verse 13). Note that He continued to serve them throughout. He did not ask them to help themselves.
MacArthur makes an important point:
… the risen Christ is not some detached ethereal being. The risen Christ can sit down and have breakfast with His disciples; and more importantly, He’s not all of a sudden disinterested in them, because He’s back in His heavenly mode and they don’t matter anymore. He makes sure they have breakfast and He serves it to them.
John makes it clear that this was the third time Jesus had appeared to them after the Resurrection (verse 14).
After breakfast, our Lord turned His attention to Peter, knowing what remorse was in the Apostle’s heart (verse 15); He addressed him by his birth name, Simon son of John, or Simon bar-Jona(s), as a way of humbling him, which Peter certainly would have understood.
‘Bar’ means ‘son’. ‘Bat’ means ‘daughter’. Hence, Bar Mitzvah and Bat Mitzvah. In Arabic, the equivalents are ‘bin’ and ‘bint’.
Henry explains Peter’s state of mind and Christ’s tenderness towards him, waiting until after breakfast to talk to him:
It was after they had dined: they had all eaten, and were filled, and, it is probable, were entertained with such edifying discourse as our Lord Jesus used to make his table-talk. Christ foresaw that what he had to say to Peter would give him some uneasiness, and therefore would not say it till they had dined, because he would not spoil his dinner. Peter was conscious to himself that he had incurred his Master’s displeasure, and could expect no other than to be upbraided with his treachery and ingratitude. “Was this thy kindness to thy friend? Did not I tell thee what a coward thou wouldest prove?” Nay, he might justly expect to be struck out of the roll of the disciples, and to be expelled the sacred college. Twice, if not thrice, he had seen his Master since his resurrection, and he said not a word to him of it. We may suppose Peter full of doubts upon what terms he stood with his Master; sometimes hoping the best, because he had received favour from him in common with the rest; yet not without some fears, lest the chiding would come at last that would pay for all. But now, at length, his Master put him out of his pain, said what he had to say to him, and confirmed him in his place as an apostle. He did not tell him of his fault hastily, but deferred it for some time; did not tell him of it unseasonably, to disturb the company at dinner, but when they had dined together, in token of reconciliation, then discoursed he with him about it, not as with a criminal, but as with a friend. Peter had reproached himself for it, and therefore Christ did not reproach him for it, nor tell him of it directly, but only by a tacit intimation; and, being satisfied in his sincerity, the offence was not only forgiven, but forgotten; and Christ let him know that he was as dear to him as ever. Herein he has given us an encouraging instance of his tenderness towards penitents, and has taught us, in like manner, to restore such as are fallen with a spirit of meekness.
Jesus asks Peter if he loves Him more than ‘these’ (verse 15).
MacArthur says that Jesus is not speaking of the other ten Apostles gathered but of boats and fishing:
He says, “Do you love Me more than these?” These what, these men? No, because they had all done the same thing. They were all guilty of a loveless disobedience. He means nets, boats, fish. “Do you love Me more than these things that go with your former life? Are you prepared to give this up, to abandon all your successes, your chosen career? Are you willing to give it all up? Do you love Me enough to do that?”
Then, there is the word that Jesus used for ‘love’:
… the word He uses is agapaó. That’s that high love – the noblest, purest, best; the love of the will. We talk about agape love; that’s a noun form of it. It is love in its fullest sense, love in its deepest sense, love in its greatest sense, love, I guess you could say, in its purest form – divine love.
“Do you really love Me, Peter, at the highest level?” That is the critical question. And that is the key to commitment …
“Do you love Me enough to live for Me? Do you love Me enough to walk away from this? Are you constrained by loving Me? Do you have a love for Me” – in the words of Paul in Ephesians 6:24 – “that is incorruptible love? Do you really love Me in the fullest sense?”
Peter answered in the affirmative (verse 15) but used a milder word for love, because he did not want our Lord to call him out for hypocrisy:
So Peter replies, “He said to Him, ‘Yes, Lord; You know that I love You.’” But he changed the word. Jesus used the word agapaó, Peter used the word phileó, he dropped down a notch. Phileó is a kind of brotherly love, kind of warm affection, a friendship love.
Look, Peter couldn’t say, “Yes, You know that I love You at the highest level of love.” That just wouldn’t fly. I mean he had denied Him, and now He had disobeyed Him, and he had enough sense not to be an absolute hypocrite and say, “Of course, I love You at the highest level.” So he says, “Lord, I have great affection for You.” He dared not claim agapaó, but he did claim phileó. But even with that, he has to lean on omniscience: “Yes, Lord; You know that I love You.”
Our Lord asked Peter if he loves Him a second time, as if this were to make up for Peter’s second denial of Him. Peter again said, ‘Yes, Lord. You know that I love you’, to which Jesus replied, inviting him to tend His sheep (verse 16).
Notice that Jesus refers to ‘My sheep’.
MacArthur makes these observations:
This is amazing. He said to him, “Tend” – or – “feed” – boskó is the verb – “pasture My lambs, pasture My lambs.” Amazing. With a less than perfect love, with a less than ideal love, with a less than noble love, with a less than elevated love, the Lord accepts him and says, “Pasture My lambs. Feed My lambs.”
And I just want to call to your attention that personal pronoun is very important, because whoever we shepherd doesn’t belong to us. This is a calling that Peter reminds all of us about in 1 Peter 5 when he writes and he says, “We are all under-shepherds and Christ is the Chief Shepherd.”
If you’re in ministry, if you’re caring for any other believers in any way, you are shepherding His sheep, not yours. No congregation belongs to a pastor or an elder. No Sunday School class belongs to a teacher. No believers in a family belong, in a spiritual sense, to parents. They’re His. It’s a stewardship that in some ways is really frightening. That’s why in Matthew the Lord tells us to be careful how we treat each other, because not only do they belong to Christ, but Christ is in them. So many people don’t understand pastoral ministry as caring for His sheep.
Jesus asked Peter the same question a third time, which hurt Peter, because he knew our Lord was referring to Peter’s three denials of Him; Peter replied the same way, although acknowledging His omniscience in his answer, and Jesus told him to feed His sheep (verse 17).
Peter is the Apostles’ leader and our Lord has restored him to the fold in order to carry out that mission.
MacArthur says:
Back in chapter 10 He talked about how He loved the sheep, how He gave His life for the sheep, how the sheep knew Him and He knew them. And now He’s handing them over to Peter. “I’m entrusting you with them, and I need to know that you love Me more than you love this, so that you’re going to be faithful to give your life for them.”
Henry makes these observations:
Three times Christ committed the care of his flock to Peter: Feed my lambs; feed my sheep; feed my sheep. [1.] Those whom Christ committed to Peter’s care were his lambs and his sheep. The church of Christ is his flock, which he hath purchased with his own blood (Acts 20:28), and he is the chief shepherd of it. In this flock some are lambs, young and tender and weak, others are sheep, grown to some strength and maturity. The Shepherd here takes care of both, and of the lambs first, for upon all occasions he showed a particular tenderness for them. He gathers the lambs in his arms, and carries them in his bosom. Isaiah 40:11. [2.] The charge he gives him concerning them is to feed them. The word used in John 21:15; John 21:17, is boske, which strictly signifies to give them food; but the word used in John 21:16; John 21:16 is poimaine, which signifies more largely to do all the offices of a shepherd to them: “Feed the lambs with that which is proper for them, and the sheep likewise with food convenient. The lost sheep of the house of Israel, seek and feed them, and the other sheep also which are not of this fold.“ Note, It is the duty of all Christ’s ministers to feed his lambs and sheep. Feed them, that is, teach them; for the doctrine of the gospel is spiritual food. Feed them, that is, “Lead them to the green pastures, presiding in their religious assemblies, and ministering all the ordinances to them. Feed them by personal application to their respective state and case; not only lay meat before them, but feed those with it that are wilful and will not, or weak and cannot feed themselves.” When Christ ascended on high, he gave pastors, left his flock with those that loved him, and would take care of them for his sake … the particular application to Peter here was designed, First, To restore him to his apostleship, now that he repented of his abjuration of it, and to renew his commission, both for his own satisfaction, and for the satisfaction of his brethren … Secondly, It was designed to quicken him to a diligent discharge of his office as an apostle. Peter was a man of a bold and zealous spirit, always forward to speak and act, and, lest he should be tempted to take upon him the directing of the shepherds, he is charged to feed the sheep, as he himself charges all the presbyters to do, and not to lord it over God’s heritage, 1 Peter 5:2; 1 Peter 5:3. If he will be doing, let him do this, and pretend no further. Thirdly, What Christ said to him he said to all his disciples; he charged them all, not only to be fishers of men (though that was said to Peter, Luke 5:10), by the conversion of sinners, but feeders of the flock, by the edification of saints.
Jesus ended by telling Peter how he would die, beginning with ‘Very truly’, meaning that it would be a certainty. He told the Apostle that when he was younger, he was in charge of his own life, but, as an older man, he would stretch out his hands — meaning crucifixion, which happened in Rome some years later — and someone else would fasten his belt, taking him to a place he did not wish to go (verse 18).
John confirms that verse 18 meant a martyr’s death, one that would glorify God; after that, Jesus told Peter, ‘Follow Me’ (verse 19).
Some might wonder why Jesus told him that.
MacArthur says it was to let Peter know that he would continue to glorify Christ — and, by extension God, throughout his ministry:
… it’s important to tell him that. He needed to know what? He needed to know that the next time he got in a life and death situation he would not deny his Lord. He needed to know that. He needed to know that when they took him and captured him, and tied him up, and stretched out his hands, and nailed him to a cross, he would glorify God.
I think he lived the rest of his life with a newfound confidence that overcame his self-doubt, because he had been such a failure at the trial of Christ. I think this put power into his life. I think this put hope into his heart. I think this added confidence to him and boldness. I think he may have otherwise feared that, “If I ever get into that situation again, what am I going to do?” and that would have sucked all of his confidence out. This is a great gift to this man: “You’re going to be arrested, crucified. You’re going to die, but in it, you’re going to glorify God.” Good news.
This is the ultimate sacrifice, and that’s how believers live. This is the extreme requirement for a committed life. Peter had said, Luke 22, “I’m ready to go with you to prison and death.” Didn’t work out that way first time; it would work out that way the last time. In the end, he will die for his Lord. This is a beautiful life-changing promise. Peter has to be ecstatic, thrilled. His heart has to be soaring. His hopes are flying. His boldness is being elevated as he heads toward a triumphant encounter with those who will kill him for his faithfulness to Christ. That’s what dedication is.
The third thing: a life that is truly dedicated to the Lord is compelled by love for Christ, characterized by sacrifice for Christ, and content with following Christ. The end of verse 19: “When Jesus had spoken the words about Peter’s death, He said this to him, ‘Follow Me! Follow Me!’” So important: “Follow Me!” Simple enough.
I have read and heard this passage many times before, but the expositions from Matthew Henry and John MacArthur really gave it new meaning.
I hope that you benefited similarly, especially those of us, like myself, who have more Petrine than Pauline in our personalities.
The Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany is February 6, 2022.
Readings for Year C can be found here.
The Gospel reading is as follows (emphases mine):
Luke 5:1-11
5:1 Once while Jesus was standing beside the lake of Gennesaret, and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God,
5:2 he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets.
5:3 He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat.
5:4 When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.”
5:5 Simon answered, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.”
5:6 When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break.
5:7 So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink.
5:8 But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”
5:9 For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken;
5:10 and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who are partners with Simon. Then Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.”
5:11 When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.
Commentary comes from Matthew Henry and John MacArthur.
Last week’s reading concluded the story in Luke 4 of Jesus at His hometown synagogue in Nazareth, where the congregation wanted to throw Him off a cliff.
He then went to Capernaum.
John MacArthur summarises the rest of Luke 4:
… in chapter 4 He had preached in the synagogue in Capernaum and He had cast a demon out of a man there. That was His first miracle, the first one recorded by Luke. And then, you remember, He went, after the synagogue service home to the house of Simon where his mother-in-law was ill and He healed his mother-in-law of a very great infection that had produced a high fever. And then at the end of the Sabbath day the people in the city were bringing everybody who was sick with every imaginable disease and He was healing them all and He was casting demons out of many. That all occurred on one day in the synagogue in Capernaum and in the home of Peter.
Sometime later — ‘Once’ — Jesus was standing near the Lake of Gennesaret; the people were pressing in on Him to hear the word of God, His preaching (verse 1).
MacArthur says:
We have an indefinite then passing of time. We don’t exactly know what the chronology is, but it came about at some point in time after that. Jesus is still in Galilee. He’s still preaching. He’s still calling disciples. He’s still performing these healings and casting out demons. And on one occasion when surrounded by a multitude, He is near the lake of Gennesaret teaching the Word of God.
MacArthur describes the lake, which is part of the Sea of Galilee:
… in the very heart of the Galilee, as it’s called, which is the northern part of the land of Palestine all the way up to the Lebanese border, bordered on the east by Jordan, on the west by the Mediterranean, that north part of Israel, the major location there is the Sea of Galilee, or the lake of Gennesaret, as it’s called here, sometimes the Sea of Tiberias, the Old Testament name was Chinneroth. But that lake, 13 miles long and about 7 miles wide, dominates the Galilee. To the east is the sort of low ridges and then the flat lands of the wilderness that goes to the east. To the north are the great high mountains of Lebanon from which the water flows that flows in and creates the lake. To the west are the fertile marvelously, magnificent fertile fields of grain and crops and right on to the…to the sea. On that…Mediterranean Sea… On that are the major cities. Tiberias would be a major city in the time of Christ on the western shore, and the north would be the city of Capernaum. And so Jesus spent a lot of His time around the lake. And it was a good place to speak to people because you could be at the shore and the slope would be a place that would create sort of a natural amphitheater and the people could hear …
And it says in verse 1 He was standing by the lake of Gennesaret. Gennesaret may be a word that refers to garden and could well be a reference to the…to the fertile land on the northwestern shore of the Sea of Galilee which is very defining. As you get on to the Sea of Galilee you see these beautiful fields stretching all the way around from the north sweeping around to the west. And there are even some on the east. And so it perhaps is a word that reflected the garden environment that surrounded the water of that lake. It is not technically a sea. Luke is right in the technical side in calling it a lake. It is a freshwater lake fed by the snowmelt out of the Lebanese mountains, the high mountains that ultimately runs the south … Out of the south of the Sea of Galilee comes the Jordan river which runs all the way down and empties into the very famous Dead Sea.
Jesus saw two boats by the shoreline; the fishermen had got out of them and were washing their nets (verse 2).
Matthew Henry explains:
At first, Christ saw Peter and Andrew fishing at some distance (so Matthew tells us …); but he waited till they came to land, and till the fishermen, that is, the servants, were gone out of them …
Jesus needed more space between Himself and the crowd, so He got into Simon’s — Peter’s — boat and asked him to pull away from the shore a bit, at which point He sat down to preach (verse 3).
MacArthur says that Jesus deliberately chose Simon Peter’s boat to get his full commitment to discipleship:
The Lord didn’t do anything just by accident. Everything was intentional, divinely intentional, sovereignly purposeful. It was time to bring Peter to full commitment and to bring those who followed his leadership, in this case James and John, to their full commitment as well.
Let me give you a little bit of background. Jesus first met Peter back in the first chapter of John. John records the first time they met. Jesus met Peter and that was the first meeting and at that time Jesus called them to follow Him. This was sort of a first step in their following Jesus. It was later on, recorded in Mark 1:16 to 20, and Matthew 4 about verse 18 to 22, that there was a second calling. The first time they just sort of follow Jesus. Later on, as recorded in Mark 1 and Matthew 4, Jesus made a more direct call and I guess they could say, we could say they became part-time followers, only in that case it was Peter and James and John, who were the sons of a man named Zebedee. And they were all partners in the fishing business. So they had already had a couple of encounters with Jesus. Peter, that first calling, that second calling with James and John.
Now Jesus is getting to know Peter because Peter is following Him. That’s why in chapter 4 after the synagogue service, when it was dinner time, Jesus went to Simon’s house. He knows him now and Simon has become at least a far…a part-time follower, a little bit of fishing and a little bit of following Jesus. It hasn’t been too difficult to follow Jesus and fish because Jesus has stayed in Galilee and so Peter could connect at certain points between his necessary employment as a fisherman. And so Jesus knows Peter but it is time to take Peter to another level. By the way, Jesus did this throughout His whole life, even after the resurrection, trying to get Peter to the level He wanted him at. He was very reluctant and a difficult guy to deal with. But he was also the recognized leader of the apostles. It was important to have Peter where he needed to be because he was the one who had seemingly the greatest influence on the rest. And so Peter is seemingly the key person for the Lord. You have four lists of apostles in the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke and Acts, and in all four, Peter’s name is first. He is clearly recognized as the spokesman and the leader. And so Jesus is going to work on Peter a little bit and James and John, as we see, will follow along. But Peter is the target, so He wants to get in Peter’s boat, and that’s exactly what He does. He’s here called Simon. He will be called Simon by Luke until we get to chapter 6, verse 14 when he is fully identified as Peter. By this time the Lord had already changed his name but it didn’t get changed in the text of Luke until the 6th chapter, although He does refer to him here in verse 8 as Simon Peter, which sort of helps us make that transition.
When Jesus finished speaking, He asked Simon to go out into the deep water and cast his nets for a catch (verse 4).
Simon replied that they had fished all night long — when the catch would have been optimum — and caught nothing but agreed to do what Jesus asked (verse 5).
Henry has a practical application of the request from Jesus and Simon’s obedience. God wills things in His own time, therefore, patience is a virtue:
… [3.] Even those who are most diligent in their business often meet with disappointments; they who toiled all night yet caught nothing; for the race is not always to the swift. God will have us to be diligent, purely in duty to his command and dependence upon his goodness, rather than with an assurance of worldly success. We must do our duty, and then leave the event to God. [4.] When we are tired with our worldly business, and crossed in our worldly affairs, we are welcome to come to Christ, and spread our case before him, who will take cognizance of it.
Having obeyed Jesus, His men caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break (verse 6).
They signalled to their partners in the other boat that they needed help; the fish filled both boats to the extent that they began to sink (verse 7).
At that point, it became clear that Jesus holds command over everything. Peter, James, John — and the crowd — were witnesses to that miraculous catch.
Henry says:
Now by this vast draught of fishes, (1.) Christ intended to show his dominion in the seas as well as on the dry land, over its wealth as over its waves. Thus he would show that he was that Son of man under whose feet all things were put, and particularly the fish of the sea and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the sea,Psalms 8:8. (2.) He intended hereby to confirm the doctrine he had just now preached out of Peter’s ship. We may suppose that the people on shore, who heard the sermon, having a notion that the preacher was a prophet sent of God, carefully attended his motions afterward, and staid halting about there, to see what he would do next; and this miracle immediately following would be a confirmation to their faith, of his being at least a teacher come from God.
MacArthur tells us:
The point is that in omniscience God knows everything there is to know, everything that exists He knows. He doesn’t learn it. He doesn’t conclude it by adding. He doesn’t know sparrows hop because He watches them. Everything that exists He knows, whether it’s material or immaterial. So believe me, Jesus as God will know where the fish are. And this is omniscience. And this is what flows out of this. God’s understanding is unsearchable. Isaiah 40:28 says, “Known to God from eternity are all His works.” Paul said in Acts 15 and Hebrews 4:13, “There’s no creature hidden from His sight.” God knows where every fish in every lake and every ocean is at all times because God omnisciently knows everything that exists in the material and immaterial world and the condition and state of everything, not only now but in the past and the future. He knows everything. Nothing in the universe is beyond His full comprehension.
That also includes the world’s languages, the law of physics and everything else we consider to be knowledge.
Peter realised that Jesus is divine and told Him to go away because he was a sinful man (verse 8). He became acutely aware of his sins and failings. This happened with others in the Bible who saw God. It was terrifying. The contrast between fallen man and the living God is too great for the former to bear. It strikes a profound fear into a person’s heart and mind. This is why it is important to repent now instead of waiting until it is too late. The day will come when every one of us — believer or not — will see Him face to face.
MacArthur gives us more examples of this terror when confronting holiness:
That’s why Abraham in Genesis 18:27 says, “I am speaking to the Lord? Who am but dust and ashes.” This can’t be happening. Dust and ashes were a symbol of penitence. That’s what Job said. He said, Job 42, “I now see You with my eye and I repent in dust and ashes.” Then there’s Isaiah who sees the Lord and says, “Curse me, damn me, woe is me, I’m disintegrating, I’m a man with a dirty mouth,” and all he can see about himself is his wretchedness. And then there’s Manoah. I love the story of Manoah in the 13th chapter of Judges. Manoah has an encounter with the angel of the Lord, a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ, the second member of the Trinity comes and appears to Manoah, and he goes home and he says to his wife, “I’ve seen the Lord, we’ll die. We will die.” And then there’s Ezekiel who has a vision of God in Ezekiel chapter 1 and falls over in a coma. And then there’s John in Revelation 1 who has a vision of the glorified Christ and it says he fell over like a dead person he was so traumatized.
One of the most interesting statements of all in regard to this is found in the 20th chapter of Exodus. God is giving the law and in verse 19 they said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen, but let not God speak to us lest we die.” Moses, please we don’t mind talking to you, don’t bring God down here. We’re dead. You see, that’s the sense of sin, the overwhelming sense of sin. That’s the publican in Luke 18 beating his chest. He won’t even look up. He won’t lift his eyes. He’s afraid somehow that God might see who he is and he’s crying, “God, be merciful to me a sinner.” It’s the disciples in Matthew 17 on the Mount of Transfiguration who see the glory of Christ and fall over in a…in a coma, literally frightened into unconsciousness. This is what God seeks in Isaiah 66:1 and 5, a person with a broken and a contrite heart. This is someone who sees their sin and you can’t really see your sin until you see God. And that’s why the emphasis of ministry always has to be to exalt God, to lift up God, to manifest His glory, His holiness because it’s when we see Him for who He is that we see us for who we are.
So here was Peter, broken, penitent, overwhelmed by his sin, frightened, terrified. He’s in the presence of holiness. This is an affirmation on Peter’s part that he is meeting the divine One. “Depart from me for I am sinful, oh Lord.” And he’s affirming in saying that the Lord is sinless. “You don’t deserve to be in my presence, I don’t deserve to be in Your presence. We don’t have anything in common. Holiness is separation and, Lord, it’s unfitting for You to be near me,” that’s what he’s saying.
And why did he feel this way? Well verse 9 says, “Because of the amazement that had seized him and all his companions because of the catch of fish which they had taken.” There was just no human explanation. This is God. And it was the same with, verse 10 says, with James and John. They had exactly the same reaction, the sons of Zebedee. They were partners, koinōnoi, partners in the business with Simon. And they were all literally shaken to the core.
Now in the terror of this moment Peter wants to send the Lord away, but the Lord wants to pull Peter closer. What from Peter’s viewpoint is so frightening that he wants to run is so encouraging to the Lord that He wants to embrace Peter. At the very point at which the sinner feels the most alienation is the point at which the Savior is seeking reconciliation. And here was Peter and his two buddies, James and John, wanting to run when Jesus wanted to embrace them, wanting alienation when Jesus sought reconciliation. This is the glorious moment of their repentance.
And that brings us to the final attribute of God that is demonstrated here, divine mercy. Peter was overwhelmed with his sin. We certainly can assume that James and John were and perhaps others. They were broken and contrite, just what the Lord was seeking. You remember it was Isaiah who thought he was so unworthy that he was going to be destroyed, and it turned out that the Lord called him into ministry. It was Job who thought that he was…he was the worst of sinners and needed to repent in dust and ashes that God blessed beyond imagination. It was John, who because of his sinful life, in the presence of the vision of the glorified Christ in Revelation 1 fell over out of sheer terror in a dead faint. And the Lord awakened him, told him to get up and take his pen and serve Him by writing the Revelation.
Just at the point where you think you’re on the brink of damnation because of your sin, you’re at the brink of reconciliation because of mercy. And I love this in verse 10. Jesus said to Simon, “Do not fear,” or perhaps better, “Stop being terrified,” phobeō from which we get phobia. Stop being terrified. You don’t need to be terrified. And that’s the kind of fear he was feeling. It was terror of being in the presence of holy God and being on the brink of divine judgment. Stop being terrified.
Now let me just say as a footnote. There is a healthy fear of God. There is a positive fear of God. We could go a lot of places in the Bible to demonstrate it, but let me simplify it, if I can. There is a statement in the 4th verse of Deuteronomy 13 that defines this proper fear. Just listen to this. Deuteronomy 13:4 says, “You shall follow the Lord your God and fear Him and you shall keep His commandments, listen to His voice, serve Him, listen to this, and cling to Him.” There is the fear that seeks to run and there is the fear that seeks to cling …
There is the terror of the sinner who fears the judgment of God. There is the healthy reverence and wonder and awe and love and adoration of the child who wants to cling to a father who is the Father of mercies, as Paul calls God in 1 Corinthians. And so we want the fear that clings, the fear that says I can’t make it on my own. The fear that says You are my Redeemer, my Savior, my Lord, my Master. You are the object of my love, my affection, my worship, my praise, my adoration, my devotion. I want to keep Your commandments. I want to listen to Your voice. I want to serve You. I want to follow You. That’s the… That’s the fear that clings. And for the sinner there is that fear that terrifies and wants to run. That’s why I say there are people who come even here and when God is displayed and God is manifest and the glory of God is shown in the face of Jesus Christ, it’s a very intimidating thing. Those who love their sin want to run. Those who are, in a sense, unmasked by it but want to continue the game of hiding, flee. But for us who desire mercy, we cling, don’t we? The same God can create terror in the unrepentant sinner and calm in the penitent sinner.
Peter and all who were with him were amazed — one of Luke’s favourite words, also used in last week’s reading (Luke 4:22) — at the miraculous catch of fish at midday, when fish were least likely to be near the surface because of the sun’s heat (verse 9).
MacArthur says:
Everybody sees Peter and all his companions because of the catch of fish which they had taken. The term here for amazement is just that. I mean, it’s a term that simply means shock. They were absolutely shocked by what they saw. It’s a term that’s used a couple of times back in chapter 4. They were amazed at His teaching. They never heard anybody teach the way He taught. And in verse 36 they were amazed at His confrontation of the demon. And now they’re amazed at His power expressed over nature, just amazing expression of His power.
Luke reinforces the amazement by mentioning that of James and John, the sons of Zebedee, who were Simon’s fishing partners; then Jesus told Simon not to be afraid, because he would be catching people (verse 10), meaning making converts by preaching the Good News, something that happened early on in the Book of Acts after the first Pentecost. Once filled with the Holy Spirit, Peter made thousands of converts in Jerusalem and the surrounding area.
Henry says:
When by Peter’s preaching three thousand souls were, in one day, added to the church, then the type of this great draught of fishes was abundantly answered.
When they brought their boats to shore, the three men left everything to follow Jesus (verse 11).
I wanted to find out what happened to the fish, but neither of our commentators has any supposition. Perhaps the people were able to take one or two home.
MacArthur concludes:
This…this may have been the…who knows how much money this was worth, what this could have done in catapulting their career to another level. What more boats they could have bought. What perhaps more equipment they could have bought, men they could have hired to increase the business. But here they are at the very pinnacle, here they are having made the catch of all catches in the history of fishing and it says they brought their boats to land, got out of the boats, left everything, followed Him.
That was history. That was history. All the activities of their life to that point, past. Initially they had followed Him part-time and this was the full-time. This was the life they would live all the way to their death. From this moment on they were permanently engaged in catching people in God’s salvation net, the highest calling in life, the great commission. The word followed is used in Luke as a technical term for discipleship. You see it about five times in chapter 9, a couple of times in chapter 18. They became disciples.
Henry had an interesting insight as to why Jesus wanted to display His omnipotence with the large haul of fish. One of the reasons was to repay Peter for lending him his boat as a preaching platform:
He intended hereby to repay Peter for the loan of his boat; for Christ’s gospel now, as his ark formerly in the house of Obed-edom, will be sure to make amends, rich amends, for its kind entertainment. None shall shut a door or kindle a fire in God’s house for nought,Malachi 1:10. Christ’s recompences for services done to his name are abundant, they are superabundant.
Next week we begin the Sundays before Lent, starting with Septuagesima, meaning 70 days before Easter.
Churchmouse Campanologist 