Why did Jesus set His face to go to Jerusalem (Luke 9:51)?

73 Dear friends, I now direct your attention to the love of Christ for all who have a part with Him. He shewed this love in coming into the world to save them. While in this world, how great was the love He manifested for His disciples! No afflictions, toils, or sufferings that He endured, ever prevented the exercise of this love; neither did their errors, weaknesses, or defects. One denying, all forsaking Him, did not abate it; it overcame, it continued through all. His hour was now come that He should depart out of this world: death - that death which He had undertaken to endure, that they might live for ever with Him in glory - was before Him, and He viewed it with a full comprehension of its sufferings. Did this present any obstacle to the exercise of His love? No: His was a love stronger than death; and therefore we read in Luke 9:51 "And it came to pass, when the time was come that he should be received up [as we read in another place, 'knowing all things that should come upon him'], he stedfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem." He knew that He had there to contend with the powers of darkness, followed by His sufferings, death, and the grave; yet, with a full prospect of all, He stedfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem. Why? Love urged Him onwards - love for His disciples, for all who have a part with Him. It was His Father's appointment; and therefore He said, "The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?" It was His own free engagement, expressed in verse 6 of Psalm 40: "Mine ears hast thou opened": better translated, and as you read it in the margin of some Bibles, "Thou hast digged ears for me." God the Father digged ears for Christ. What does this signify? That the Father appointed and prepared Christ to hear and obey His will in saving His people in the type of His service for ever.

Verse 51. "It cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem." I am going to get a portion in heaven, and you are to have the same portion, but it must be through rejection here. "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily," etc. "When the time was come that he should be received up, he set his face stedfastly to go to Jerusalem." In Isaiah, "I set my face as a flint." He was accomplishing His Father's will here, as in all His course. Redemption must be accomplished through the cross. He "learned obedience by the things which he suffered." It was the same obedience as at the beginning, when He was coming amongst them with "Blessed are the poor," etc. - more painful, and of course, He felt the difference; but still He goes in the same blessed spirit and earnestness. Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, etc. He had found it His meat to do the will of Him that sent Him. There was joy to Him in this; but in the cup of wrath which He was going to drink there was no joy. He had met with scorn here, smiting there, rejection all through, but nothing like this cup, and therefore He cried, "If it be possible, let this cup pass from me," etc. Christ proved His perfectness, for He felt what it was to be "made sin," etc. His holy nature shrank from it, yet there was the same quiet, steady, patient obedience, for "He stedfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem," as all through. He knows His Father's will and He does it. He sets His face there, where His Father's will is to be done, not looking to this side or to that, but there - Jerusalem.

Shocking words! Our Lord knew that the only way of blessing for poor sinful men was through His atoning death on the cross, so we read, “He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51). Blessed Saviour, in the exquisite sensibilities of His spotless humanity, He shrank from the fiery ordeal that lay before Him, but in the perfection of that manhood He cried, “Not My will, but Thine, be done” (Luke 12:42).

We might dwell for ever on the life, teaching, and miracles of the Lord Jesus, as a Jew in the midst of His Jewish disciples. But the time drew near when the passover must be killed. He set His face for the last time to go up to Jerusalem. He must needs suffer and rise again, or Christianity could never begin, or the kingdom be hereafter set up.

The drawing near of a day dissolves surrounding engagements of mind, and makes the heart beat towards it; this, I mean, is human nature. The Lord set His face firmly towards His suffering, for "for this cause" came He to this hour. It was suffering, but He set about to suffer. When His time came He set His face towards it not of His own will, not to suffer but to the place where He was to suffer - for He was to accomplish it at Jerusalem.

Let us recall a few familiar scriptures which illustrate this truth. "When the time was come that He should be received up, He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem" (Luke 9:51). He was to be received up to glory; He was going to His Father; but how was He going? He seemed to be nearest heaven on the Mount of Transfiguration, so far as outward glory was concerned, yet upon that very Mount we know the conversation was not the glory to which He had drawn so near, but "the decease which He should accomplish at Jerusalem" (Luke 9:31). He would go back to the glory by way of the cross. We may explain the familiar passage in John 14 in the light of that truth, "I go to prepare a place for you." Had He gone at that very instant, we may reverently say He would not have prepared the place for us. Oh, how much was involved in those two brief words, "I go." They meant Gethsemane and Calvary — the judgment of God first, and then the glory. Thus the place was prepared. He who was cut off from the presence of God for our sins has won the title to enter eternal glory and claim it for every sinner who trusts in Him.

What great purpose was it that set His face as a flint in that way of sorrow? It was the Father's will, and what was that will? It was that we might live; that He might gather His saints together as His assembly now, and have us as His "many sons" in glory hereafter, all conformed to the image of His dear Son, that He might be the Firstborn amongst many brethren. And nothing less than the cross could make this possible; His incarnation amid the lowly surrounding of Bethlehem's manger was not enough: His life of service and sorrow amid the need and misery of men was not enough: His prayers, His works, His tears were not enough. His agony and sweat of blood in the shades of Gethsemane were not enough; all these had their part in the unfolding of the heart of God, and in the making known of His own deep perfections; but if guilty men were to be pardoned, if dead sinners were to live, if He was to build His assembly, if heaven was to be filled with "a multitude of sons", Jesus must die. For "Verily, verily, I say to you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abides alone, but if it die, it brings forth much fruit".

"He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem," well knowing what awaited Him there. He went to the cross, and there endured the wrath of God, the judgement of sin, all the terrible consequences of our condition, in order to glorify God with respect to our sins, and that He might have the ineffable and eternal joy of surrounding Himself with the "many brethren" to whom He could, on resurrection ground, declare the Father's name. "I will declare Thy name to My brethren." He looked forward to this from amid the awful shadows of Calvary, where He was enduring for us what no created intelligence can ever fathom. If ever He was to call us "brethren," He must all alone meet death and judgement on our behalf.

He was running the race of faith. To a bystander he might have appeared very unfeeling; nay, he must have appeared deranged. What a lesson not to judge by the understanding! The cross is to the mere looker-on "foolishness." We have also in Isaac a view of the majesty of that Love which set its face steadfastly to go to Jerusalem, that rebuked Peter with "Thou art an offence unto me," because he would dissuade him from it; neither moved by contradictions, ingratitude, or feeling, we see perfect acquiescence in the will of his Father. It was the vengeance of God which sore afflicted his righteous soul, he endured the malignity of man with pitying love. In this figure, therefore, let us see Jesus bearing his cross, and going forth to Golgotha.

He did not turn away back when man and Satan raised the violent storm of hatred, persecution and opposition against Him; but as was foretold seven centuries before by Isaiah, He set His face “like a flint” (50:7), and as Luke says, when the time was come, “He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem.” His soul was troubled, but He would go through all “that the Scriptures might be fulfilled.” His whole course was according to the inspired writings, according to the will of God. He said, “The prince of this world comes, and has nothing in Me. But that the world may know that I love the Father; and as the Father gave me commandment, even so I do.” In love and devotedness, our gracious Lord and Saviour went the whole way for God’s glory, as it was written of Him.