And he took the twelve to [him] and said to them, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written of the Son of man by the prophets shall be accomplished;
On the last stretch of road, the Lord takes the twelve aside and tells them what is waiting for Him in Jerusalem. What is coming is no accident: the prophets wrote it long before, and every word of it will be fulfilled.
Luke has been tracking this journey for chapters. One writer marks where it now arrives:
The final scene approaches. Jesus is about to enter Jerusalem and to present Himself in person to the Jews for the last time. Luke traces this journey step by step (Luke 9:51; 13:22, 31, 33; 17:11; 18:31; 19:28-29, 37, 41), along with the endless results that flow from that cross. To human eyes the cross was His rejection. Faith knows it as the glorifying of God for ever, and as the only possible ground of salvation for sinners.
This announcement stands at the end of a series, each one adding a piece the earlier ones left out:
The Son of man, whose day of power is coming, had first to suffer rejection and death. The Lord warns them of this again. He had spoken of it before His transfiguration (9:22). There He foretold His rejection by the Jews — by the elders, chief priests, and scribes — and what would follow from it: His death. He mentioned it again after His transfiguration (9:44). This time He told the disciples that men — that is, Gentiles — would share in the guilt of His death. He had also foretold where He would die: Jerusalem, the centre of Judaism (13:33). Now He told the disciples, in private, as Matthew tells us (20:17), that the crisis was close, for He was on His way up to Jerusalem to suffer and to die.
The Lord rests His death on what the prophets wrote. One writer notes that He treated those writings as the real work of the men whose names they carry:
He and His apostles accepted the Scriptures as written by Moses and David, on through Isaiah and Daniel to Malachi. Christians have held this for many centuries. They leave no room for this new scepticism.
The prophets' words concern "the Son of Man," and that title carries its own history in the Gospels:
The Lord took this title because the people of Israel did not accept the kingdom of God that He proclaimed. Instead they met Him with personal hatred. That hatred would reach its peak in His crucifixion, with Jews and Gentiles joined together against Him. With that in view He took the name Son of Man — a title wider than Son of David… A large share of the places in the Gospels that use this term point to His coming death.
He does not say "I am going up." The disciples travel with Him, and that says something about their own road:
The believer has eternal blessing, and spiritual blessing in the present time as well. Yet our present blessing will be mixed with suffering and rejection in this world. The Lord took the twelve aside and spoke to them (vs. 31-34). Jesus, the true Servant of God, would do nothing to avoid the suffering He foretold. He, and the disciples with Him, would go on to Jerusalem with set purpose, so that everything written about His sufferings and death would be accomplished.
The words were not hard. Something else blocked them:
It cannot be said too often: failing to understand Scripture does not come from unclear language. It comes from a will that does not like the truth being taught. That is why difficulties are felt, and why there are so many of them. When a man is made willing to receive the truth, his eye is clear and his whole body is full of light. The will is the real hindrance. The mind will be clear if the conscience and the heart are set right.
- Road — Luke follows the journey to Jerusalem step by step. What people saw as rejection, faith reads as God glorified for ever, and as the one ground of salvation.
- Script — Nothing here is improvised. The Lord points to what the prophets wrote, and in doing so stands behind those writings as true.
- Warning — This is the last of several announcements. Each one added detail: rejection by Israel's leaders, then Gentile hands, then the place, now the hour.
- Name — "Son of Man" is the title He takes up once Israel refuses Him. It is wider than Son of David, and in the Gospels it is tied again and again to His death.
- Sight — The disciples did not fail because the words were hard. Where the will resists, plain truth stays hidden. Where the heart is right, the mind clears.
for he shall be delivered up to the nations, and shall be mocked, and insulted, and spit upon.
On the last road to Jerusalem, Jesus takes His twelve disciples aside and tells them what waits for Him there. Three questions follow: why must it happen, who does it, and why did He keep walking toward it?
This is not a fear or a guess about what might happen.
But He knew everything which would happen to Him in Jerusalem, for His own Spirit had revealed these sufferings in the prophets (1 Peter 1:11). What awe and silence must have rested upon the disciples as He told them the path He was to go! In Mark we read that they were amazed, and as they followed they were afraid (Mark 10:32).
Being handed to the Gentiles — the nations outside Israel — spread the guilt wider.
Mark 10:34 says of the Gentiles that they will mock Him, flog Him, spit on Him, and kill Him. This shows that the Gentiles are guilty not only of insulting Him, but of His death; see also Luke 18:33.
Two very different attitudes met at that point, and both condemned Him.
The coming of Christ is the last and great test for man. You see it in this: Jew and Gentile unite in denying and rejecting the Lord. The one hates Him and demands His death. The other is indifferent, and gives Him up to death while finding no fault in Him.
Why would anyone treat Him this way? One writer traces it to His humiliation, the very thing Isaiah had described long before.
"I gave my back to those who strike, and my cheeks to those who pull out the beard; I hid not my face from disgrace and spitting" (Isaiah 50:6). How solemn the thought, and what a picture of God in the presence of man! His humiliation should have made Him precious beyond measure, since it was the incomparable proof of His love. Instead it gave man, under Satan's leading, the chance he wanted to insult Him to the limit. And He did not insult back.
And the result of the insults was the opposite of what the insulters intended.
They struck Him, pulled the hair from His cheeks, and spat in His face. The insults of men only brought out the perfection of Jesus. He met it all in the spirit of perfect submission. No rebellious word escaped His lips, no angry look clouded the face that man spat upon.
Knowing all this, He did not turn aside. Jerusalem was where it had to happen.
The Lord set His face firmly towards His suffering, for it was "for this cause" that He came to this hour. It was suffering, but He set out to suffer. When His time came He set His face towards it. Not of His own will, and not toward suffering, but toward the place where He was to suffer. He was to complete it at Jerusalem.
One writer makes that cost the proof of how lost we were.
If anything proves that we are lost, it is this: we could be saved at no less a cost than all possible shame and suffering endured by Him who was God manifest in the flesh. And if we know in the secret of our hearts why Christ was delivered up to the Gentiles to be mocked, scourged, and spit upon, then we know it to be a transaction of which our sin was the sad, solemn occasion. This is not head-knowledge gathered from books. It is a matter between God and our souls. It was for this that the blessed One was delivered up to die a cursed death — the One who knew no sin, who was holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners.
- Foretold — He named the mockery, the insult, and the spitting in advance. His own Spirit had already announced those sufferings through the prophets.
- Delivered — Jewish hatred and Gentile indifference joined to condemn Him. The nations share in His death, not only in His shame.
- Despised — His humiliation should have made Him precious beyond measure. Instead men used it as their opening to insult Him to the limit.
- Unmoved — every blow only drew out His perfection; no rebellious word, no angry look on the face men spat upon.
- Willing — He set His face toward the place of suffering, and our sin was the reason it had to cost Him that much.
And when they have scourged [him] they will kill him; and on the third day he will rise again.
On the road to Jerusalem Jesus takes His twelve disciples aside and tells them plainly what waits for Him there: a flogging, a killing, and a rising on the third day. Three questions follow: who does this to Him, why does He walk into it, and why did His closest friends understand none of it?
Just before this, the Lord said that everything the prophets wrote about the Son of Man would be fulfilled. One writer shows how far that reaches, and who God used to bring it about.
The work of Christ also fulfilled every prophecy about it: "everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished" (Luke 18:31). What was true of all the prophecies about Him, He later says of one prophecy in particular: "I tell you that this Scripture must be fulfilled in me: 'And He was counted with the lawless'" (Luke 22:37). Acts 13:29 reaches widest of all. It speaks not only of the prophets but of "all things written concerning Him" being fulfilled. Remarkably, God in His sovereignty used wicked enemies to fulfil His counsel and the Scriptures. They remain fully responsible for what they did.
The "they" who flog and kill in this verse are not the Jewish leaders. Verse 32 has already handed Him over to the Gentiles, and this verse tells us how far their part goes.
Mark 10:34 says of the Gentiles that they will mock Him, flog Him, spit on Him and kill Him. This shows the Gentiles are guilty not only of insulting Him, but of His death; see also Luke 18:33.
He names the flogging and the killing in advance, then keeps walking to the city where both will happen.
Jesus, the true Servant of God, would do nothing to avoid the suffering He foretold. He, and the disciples with Him, would go to Jerusalem with full determination, so that everything written about His sufferings and death would be accomplished. The Son of Man was taking His directions from His God and Father, in fullest obedience. The leaders of His own nation Israel would hand Him over to the Gentiles. The Gentiles would mock Him, treat Him with violence and contempt, then flog Him and crucify Him.
His words do not end at the grave. One writer notes who remembered that last clause, and who forgot it.
The Lord's words were clear and explicit. No less clear was His addition, "and on the third day He will rise." It was not the first time He told them this. Compare chapter 9:21-22. Yet nothing of His sufferings, death and resurrection registered in their minds. When He died, not one of the disciples remembered His promise that He would rise on the third day, though unbelievers remembered it (Matthew 27:62-63). Their own natural preconceptions blinded them.
Verse 34 says they understood none of it. The problem was not that Jesus spoke in riddles, and that carries a lesson for anyone who finds the Bible hard.
It is an important lesson, and not the first time we find it in Luke, or in the other Gospels. It cannot be repeated too often: we fail to understand Scripture not because the language is obscure, but because the will does not like the truth being taught. This is the reason why difficulties are felt and abound. When a man is made willing to receive the truth, his eye is clear and his whole body is full of light. The will is the real hindrance. The mind will be clear, if the conscience and the heart are set right.
The flogging and the killing were the cost of something. One writer asks what that cost reveals about us.
Suppose that, through divine teaching and in simple faith, we understand the reason for what the Lord Jesus predicted here. Suppose that in the secret of our hearts we know — not as head-knowledge gathered from books, but as a matter between God and our souls — why Christ was handed over to the Gentiles to be mocked, flogged and spat on. Then we know it to be an event for which our sin was the sad, solemn occasion. It was for this that the blessed One, who knew no sin, who was holy, harmless, undefiled and separate from sinners, was handed over to die a cursed death.
- Written — the flogging, the killing and the rising were no accident. They completed what the prophets had written, and God used guilty men who stayed fully responsible for what they did.
- Delivered — Gentile hands flogged Him and killed Him, so the guilt of His death is not one nation's alone.
- Determined — He named the suffering in advance and did nothing to avoid it. He walked to Jerusalem in obedience to His Father.
- Raised — He said "the third day" plainly, and more than once. His enemies recalled it when His own disciples had forgotten.
- Hidden — they missed it because the will resists truth it does not like, not because the words were unclear. A heart set right makes the mind clear.
And they understood nothing of these things. And this word was hidden from them, and they did not know what was said.
Jesus had just told the twelve, in plain words, that He would be handed over, mocked, killed, and raised on the third day. Luke says three times over that they did not take it in, and the words themselves were not hard — so the failure lay somewhere else.
One commentator puts the trouble in the reader, not in the sentence.
This cannot be said too often. Failure to understand Scripture does not come from unclear language. It comes because the will does not like the truth being taught. That is why we feel difficulties, and why there are so many of them. When God makes a man willing to receive the truth, his eye is clear and his whole body is full of light. The will is the real hindrance. Put the conscience and the heart right, and the mind will be clear.
The same writer explains the word, and says the problem did not stop with the twelve:
"They understood none of these things" can also be rendered "they did not perceive." Things are much the same in the Christian world now as they were in the churches of Asia, where Paul declared the whole counsel of God.
The disciples were not slow-witted. They already expected something else, and it crowded out what He said.
All this would sound very strange to a Jewish mind. But one fact explained it all. The Son of Man was not going to take the kingdom at this time. He was going up to Jerusalem to die. The prophets had indicated that this was the way in which He would enter into His glory, though the disciples failed to understand it. And even though He instructed them again, they failed to take it in. Such is the power that preconceived notions can gain over the mind.
Commentators differ on how much blame the twelve deserve. One writer holds both sides together. Some things had to wait, yet their dullness was still their own.
As we look at this dullness in the disciples, it is worth remembering one thing. There were many matters the apostles could not understand until the Lord was glorified and God gave them the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. But their incapacity in some respects did not excuse their slackness in others. And the Lord held them responsible to make good use of a rare privilege. They saw His ministry with their own eyes and heard it with their own ears. They were apostles; should they not show some understanding of their Master's ways?
The Lord calls His followers to take up the cross, and He did not ask it from a distance.
If the Lord was to make those who followed Him take up the cross, He could not but bear it Himself. He went before His sheep in this path of self-denial and devotedness, to prepare the way. He went alone. It was a path which His people had not yet trodden, nor indeed could they, until He had done so.
Luke's order carries a message of its own.
The healing of the blind beggar comes right after these passages. Men were blind (1) to themselves, (2) to the Saviour, and (3) to the Scriptures and the Lord's own teaching. Yet One was present who would open the eyes of all who sought His power. Bartimaeus begged for mercy like the sinner in the temple. People brought him to Jesus as they brought the infants. He followed the Lord like the apostles. Unlike the Pharisee, he knew his poverty and his blindness. Unlike the young ruler, he saw that Jesus of Nazareth was the promised Son of David.
Understanding why He was handed over is not a matter of study but of self-knowledge.
Suppose God teaches us, and in simple faith we understand why the Lord Jesus went to what He predicted here. Suppose that, in the secret of our hearts, we know why the Christ was delivered up to the Gentiles to be mocked and scourged and spat on. This is not head-knowledge gathered from books. It is a matter between God and our souls. Then we know that our sin was the sad, solemn occasion of it. Can you tell why the Christ of God had to suffer like this? You cannot, unless God brings you to the conviction that you are lost.
- Blind, not deaf. They heard every word. Difficulty with Scripture starts in the will, not in the wording.
- Blind by preference. They expected a kingdom without a cross, and a mind already full had no room for it.
- Blind for a season. Some of it had to wait for the risen Christ and the Spirit at Pentecost. That explains them, but it does not excuse them.
- Blind while He walked alone. No one understood the road, so He went ahead of His sheep on a path no one could walk until He had.
- Blind eyes opened. A beggar who admitted his blindness received sight. The cross stays hidden until a person admits he is lost.