And he said to them, When I sent you without purse and scrip and sandals, did ye lack anything? Andthey said, Nothing.
On the night before the cross, Jesus asks His disciples about their first mission — the one He sent them on with nothing in their hands. Their one-word answer settles the question of His care, and it sets up the change He is about to announce.
The three items cover what a traveller would pack: money, a bag for food, and spare footwear. Sent out with none of it, they looked dependent on the kindness of strangers. That appearance was not the whole story.
These ambassadors, these messengers, were to depend on strangers to supply their bodily needs — outwardly, at least. We say outwardly for a reason. They did receive the generosity of their hosts in each village where they preached and were welcomed. But it was the Lord who had sent them who would incline those hearts to be favourable to them. And so it was, as they later acknowledged.
Jesus does not tell them He provided. He asks, and lets them say it. The mission itself taught them what He could do.
These directions prepared the apostles to learn the basic but vital lesson of spiritual service from experience. That lesson is dependence on God for the things the Gentiles are always chasing after. During their mission they would find that their Master had control of providence as well as of winds and waves and demons. And we know from history, by their own confession, that the Lord did care for them without fail.
"Nothing lacking" did not mean plenty. The record of their travels shows real hardship alongside real supply.
You find the nature and manner of His care all through His life on earth. He said, "While I was with them, I kept them in Your name." It was not riches He gave them. They were so poor they had to rub ears of corn in their hands for food. Yet when He asked, "When I sent you out with no moneybag or knapsack or sandals, did you lack anything?" they said, "Nothing."
With their testimony given, He at once reverses the order. He tells them to take the purse and bag He had forbidden.
Then the Lord tells them now to provide themselves with purse, bag and sword. The very things they were not to take before, they were to take from that time. The Lord cancels what He had commanded earlier, as far as the special circumstances were concerned. His goodness and love to them, and their walking in wisdom and harmlessness, would remain; but the particular character of this mission ended at the death of Christ.
Something had changed between that first mission and this night.
Before the Lord's death the world did not hate the apostles. After it, the world that had always hated Him hated them too. They then went out as messengers and servants of the crucified One, in a cause that to outward eyes had already been defeated. Hence the change in the Lord's directions about carrying what they needed for the journey.
The change touched more than their luggage.
His earthly, temporal guardianship, which kept them for this world, would be lost. How He kept the disciples then, and how He keeps the saints now, is quite different. Then He kept them for earth — now for heaven. He kept them according to the place and system in which He exercised His power.
The packing list changed; the Sender did not.
They were to go out with no provision made. This made them completely dependent on the Lord who had sent them. Trust in the Lord, who sends out the labourer, is another principle that belongs to this age as well. All disappointment and discouragement for the servant of Christ comes in when he looks not to the Lord but to man. The Lord never disappoints. The Lord who calls His servants and sends them out always keeps them when they walk in simple dependence on Him.
That trust has a sharp edge. It frees a servant from needing the world's backing.
Nothing has so corrupted Christianity as the acceptance of worldly help to advance its aims. … Is He less tender in His care over His servants now that He is glorified at the right hand of God? A noble army of devoted servants in every part of the world will gladly testify that they too have lacked nothing. They had no guaranteed support from man, and they refused help from the world.
- Sent empty. Jesus sent them out with no money, no bag and no spare sandals. They had to depend on the One who sent them, not on what they carried.
- Kept fully. They were poor enough to rub ears of corn for food. Yet He ordered events and inclined hearts, so nothing they needed ever failed.
- Tested by experience. He asks instead of telling them. Their own answer, "Nothing," proves that their Master controlled providence as surely as wind and waves.
- Changed method. With His death near, the arrangement that suited His visible presence closes. Commentators call it the loss of an earthly guardianship that kept them for earth. What replaces it keeps them for heaven.
- Unchanged Sender. The instructions altered; His care did not. Servants who still trust Him, and refuse the world's backing, give the same answer: nothing lacking.
He said therefore to them, But now he that has a purse let him take [it], in like manner also a scrip, and he that has none let him sell his garment and buy a sword;
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
for I say unto you, that this that is written must yet be accomplished in me, And he was reckoned with [the] lawless for also the things concerning me have an end.
Hours before He is taken, the Lord tells His disciples that everything is about to change — for them and for Himself. He points to one line of Scripture that must be fulfilled in Him, and He says His own public work has now reached its end.
Something changes at this moment, and it is not the Lord's power. He would still heal the ear of Malchus, the man wounded when they came to arrest Him.
His path changed from the active exercise of power in love to the patient suffering of the will of God. He had not lost the power, as the healing of Malchus showed. He had come to the point where the other things written about Him had to be accomplished. HIS HOUR HAD COME.
Most English Bibles say "transgressors." The Greek word behind it reaches wider than that.
The word is anomos. In 1 Corinthians 9:21 it is translated "without law." It describes people who ignore all law and do their own will, as in Acts 2:23; 2 Thessalonians 2:8; 1 Timothy 1:9; 2 Peter 2:8. The King James Version wrongly translates it "transgressor" in Mark 15:28 and Luke 22:37.
The Lord does not present this as likely. He says a sentence already written must be accomplished in Him. One writer places that inside the wider pattern of prophecy about His work.
Remarkably, God, in His sovereignty, used wicked enemies (who remain fully responsible for what they did) to fulfil His counsel and the Scriptures.
Men later put Him exactly where the prophecy said He would be. They meant it as contempt. God used it to keep His word and to save a dying man.
To humiliate the Lord Jesus, they crucified Him between two robbers, and in this way numbered Him with the transgressors. Mark says nothing more about it. But Luke 23:39-43 shows us that God's sovereign power and grace was over this. He used it to bring one of these men to genuine repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus. He also used it to show the solemn fact that Christ crucified is the great Divider between the lost and the saved.
One writer sets this against the company He once kept:
He was numbered with the transgressors — He who had had Moses and Elijah on either side of Him!
Commentators are careful here. How men treated Him is one thing. His bearing of sin is another. Both meet at the cross.
Jesus was about to be given up into the hands of wicked men. The protection thrown around Him, and around them, was now to be taken away. This is clearly not a question of atonement. It is a question of suffering and rejection that others can share, as the apostle plainly teaches in Philippians 3:10. Men despised and rejected Jesus, and in the end God gave Him up to it. Besides that, He "who knew no sin" was about to be "made sin" for us.
Another writer puts the two side by side and weighs them.
He was to be numbered with transgressors; but far more than that, He was really to bear Divine judgment for sinners.
The closing clause of the verse — in the ESV, "what is written about me has its fulfillment" — is His own summary of a ministry that men refused. One writer traces how they refused it.
Messiah is cut off, and has nothing. Men disown His authority, though demons acknowledge it. They dispute His rights and take His life. At first they said, "We have no king but Caesar"; and later on, "Not this Man, but Barabbas." They accept a murderer, and crucify the Son of God. Having come in flesh and blood, and set before men who were responsible to receive Him, He has to say, "The things concerning Me have an end."
- Written. Christ points to a sentence already in Scripture and says it must be fulfilled in Him. God used wicked enemies to bring it about, and they stayed fully responsible for what they did.
- Reckoned. The word behind "transgressors" means lawless. It describes people who ignore all law and do their own will. That is a wider charge than breaking one code.
- Refused. The protection around Him and His disciples fell away. His path turned from the active use of power in love to patient suffering of God's will. His hour had come.
- Deeper. Being counted among the lawless describes how men treated Him, and His followers can share that. Far more than that, He was to bear divine judgment for sinners.
- Finished. Men crucified Him between two robbers to shame Him. There He became the divider between the lost and the saved. The things concerning Him, presented to man, had reached their end.