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.
And they said, Lord, behold here are two swords. And he said to them, It is enough.
The disciples had just heard their Master speak of purses, bags and swords. They answered by holding up two swords. His reply ends the talk instead of approving their idea. So what did the sword mean, and why were two of them "enough"?
The simplest test of the disciples' reading is to count.
That very answer shows He did not mean it literally. Two swords would be a very poor supply for eleven disciples. That is quite clear. If it had been eleven swords, one could understand. But the Lord said that two swords are enough, and that shows at once how mistaken it was to take His words in the bare literal sense. Those who did take them literally made very bad use of them a little while later, and Peter is the very man.
If the words are not a count of weapons, they are a full stop. Commentators read them as the Lord breaking off a subject the disciples could not yet grasp.
The disciples, however, missed the force of the Lord's words. They thought only of their weapons of the flesh. They were quick to show two swords, and that showed a zeal of the flesh, ready to fight. His own faith was firm and settled. He met all hatred with His Word, and used no weapons of the flesh. He simply said, "It is enough," certainly not enough swords, but enough discussion. He would say no more since they did not understand. They had to learn by sad experience.
The Lord had provided for them up to now. His arrest and death would take that shelter away, and the sword marks the change.
The way the disciples were kept then, and the saints now, is quite different. Then they were kept for earth; now for heaven. Here He provided for them by His own right and power, though He did not do so for Himself. But now they would be left to the difficulties and trials of a world where Satan governed and the Lord was absent. Satan would stir up opposition and turn hearts against them. They would learn in the world, as regards men, as we say, to shift for themselves. They were left facing Satan, with the Lord absent in heaven, to share the suffering caused by the power that He Himself came under.
If the sword pictures a change of circumstances, a danger follows. Does the disciple now defend himself by force? Kelly answers by pointing back to the ground the apostles were first sent out on.
The Lord had used the sword, purse and bag as pictures of the ordinary means the disciples would now be thrown on. He certainly did not mean that they should give up, for themselves, the ground of grace in the presence of evil, even under the worst insult and injury. He had insisted on that ground when He first called and commissioned them as apostles. He says no more. The true sense waits for the day when the Holy Spirit would be given, and would lead them into all the truth.
Within hours Peter drew one of those two swords, and the Lord corrected him in the garden.
Was not the Lord's meaning plain when He said, "It is enough"? If our warfare were with flesh and blood, would two swords be enough? No, the weapons of our warfare are not carnal. He did not mean a real sword to resist the world. He meant a hint that the world would draw its sword against them. It was a warning from the Lord that they would have to meet the world's fiercest hatred. Peter failed to see it, and in the garden used the sword he had boasted of against the high priest's servant. The Lord then spoke more plainly, "Put your sword back into its place," and at once healed the servant's ear.
The soldier's vocabulary reappears in Paul's letters, applied to a different battlefield.
The fact is, they did not understand then the spiritual significance of His words. But Paul understood them later. He described the Christian life in the language of the battlefield, not in the language of the drawing room or the easy couch. Mark well how he speaks of "the good fight," and of "sharing in suffering as a good soldier." He speaks too of "wrestling not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness."
- Count — Two swords for eleven men settle the question. Real blades would have been a poor supply, so He was not arming them.
- Close — "It is enough" ends the conversation, not the count of weapons. He would say no more where they could not follow.
- Change — The purse, bag and sword picture a new situation. With their Master gone, they must live on ordinary means in a hostile world.
- Caution — The change never cancels the ground of grace. The disciple still meets insult and injury without weapons of the flesh.
- Clarity — Peter drew the sword, and the Lord corrected him. The true sense waited for the Spirit, and Paul later fought the fight it truly meant.