Verses 1-50
Chapter 7
7:1-10 When Jesus had
completed all his words in the hearing of the people, he went into
Capernaum. The servant of a certain centurion was so ill that he was
going to die, and he was very dear to him. When he heard about Jesus he
sent some Jewish elders to him and asked him to come and save his
servant's life. They came to Jesus and strenuously urged him to come.
"He is," they said, "a man who deserves that you should do this for him,
for he loves our nation and has himself built us our synagogue." So
Jesus went with them. When he was now quite near the house the centurion
sent friends to him. "Sir," he said, "do not trouble yourself. I am not
worthy that you should come under my roof; nor do I count myself fit to
come to you; but just speak a word and my servant will be cured. For I
myself am a man under orders, and I have soldiers under me, and I say to
one, 'Go,' and he goes; and to another, 'Come,' and he comes; and I say
to my servant, 'Do this,' and he does it." When Jesus heard this he was
amazed at him. He turned to the crowd who were following him and said,
"I tell you I have not found such great faith not even in Israel." And
those who had been sent returned to the house and found the servant
completely cured.
The central character is a Roman centurion; and he was no ordinary man.
(i) The mere fact that he was a centurion meant he was no
ordinary man. A centurion was the equivalent of a regimental
sergeant-major; and the centurions were the backbone of the Roman army.
Wherever they are spoken of in the New Testament they are spoken of well
(compare Luke 23:1-56 ; Lk 47 ; Acts 10:22; Acts 22:26; Acts 23:17; Acts 23:23-24; Acts 24:23; Acts 27:43).
Polybius, the historian, describes their qualifications. They must be
not so much "seekers after danger as men who can command, steady in
action, and reliable; they ought not to be over anxious to rush into the
fight; but when hard pressed they must be ready to hold their ground
and die at their posts." The centurion must have been a man amongst men
or he would never have held the post which was his.
(ii) He had a completely unusual attitude to his slave. He loved
this slave and would go to any trouble to save him. In Roman law a
slave was defined as a living tool; he had no rights; a master could
ill-treat him and even kill him if he chose. A Roman writer on estate
management recommends the farmer to examine his implements every year
and to throw out those which are old and broken, and to do the same with
his slaves. Normally when a slave was past his work he was thrown out
to die. The attitude of this centurion to his slave was quite unusual.
(iii) He was clearly a deeply religious man. A man needs to be
more than superficially interested before he will go the length of
building a synagogue. It is true that the Romans encouraged religion
from the cynical motive that it kept people in order. They regarded it
as the opiate of the people. Augustus recommended the building of
synagogues for that very reason. As Gibbon said in a famous sentence,
"The various modes of religion which prevailed in the Roman world were
all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as
equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful." But this
centurion was no administrative cynic; he was a sincerely religious man.
(iv) He had an extremely unusual attitude to the Jews. If the
Jews despised the gentiles, the gentiles hated the Jews. Anti-semitism
is not a new thing. The Romans called the Jews a filthy race; they spoke
of Judaism as a barbarous superstition; they spoke of the Jewish hatred
of mankind; they accused the Jews of worshipping an ass's head and
annually sacrificing a gentile stranger to their God. True, many of the
gentiles, weary of the many gods and loose morals of paganism, had
accepted the Jewish doctrine of the one God and the austere Jewish
ethic. But the whole atmosphere of this story implies a close bond of
friendship between this centurion and the Jews.
(v) He was a humble man. He knew quite well that a strict Jew was forbidden by the law to enter the house of a gentile (Acts 10:28);
just as he was forbidden to allow a gentile into his house or have any
communication with him. He would not even come to Jesus himself. He
persuaded his Jewish friends to approach him. This man who was
accustomed to command had an amazing humility in the presence of true
greatness.
(vi) He was a man of faith. His faith is based on the soundest
argument. He argued from the here and now to the there and then. He
argued from his own experience to God. If his authority produced the
results it did, how much more must that of Jesus? He came with that
perfect confidence which looks up and says, "Lord, I know you can do
this." If only we had a faith like that, for us too the miracle would
happen and life become new.
7:11-17 Next, after
that, Jesus was on his way to a town called Nain; and his disciples and a
great crowd accompanied him on the journey. When he came near the gate
of the town--look you--a man who had died was being carried out to
burial. He was his mother's only son, and she was a widow. There was a
great crowd of towns-people with her. When the Lord saw her he was moved
to the depths of his heart for her and said to her, "Don't go on
weeping!" He went up and touched the bier. Those who were carrying it
stood still. "Young man," he said, "I tell you, rise!" And the dead man
sat up and began to speak. And he gave him back to his mother. And awe
gripped them all. They glorified God saying, "A great prophet has been
raised up amongst us," and, "God has graciously visited his people."
This story about him went out in all Judaea and all the surrounding
countryside.
In this passage, as in the one immediately preceding, once again Luke the doctor speaks. In Luke 7:10 the word we translated completely cured is the technical medical term for sound in wind and limb. In Luke 7:15 the word used for sitting up is the technical term for a patient sitting up in bed.
Nain was a day's journey from Capernaum and lay between Endor
and Shunem, where Elisha, as the old story runs, raised another mother's
son (2 Kings 4:18-37). To this day, ten minutes' walk from Nain on the road to Endor there is a cemetery of rock tombs in which the dead are laid.
In many ways this is the loveliest story in all the gospels.
(i) It tells of the pathos and the poignancy of human life. The
funeral procession would be headed by the band of professional mourners
with their flutes and their cymbals, uttering in a kind of frenzy their
shrill cries of grief. There is all the ageless sorrow of the world in
the austere and simple sentence, "He was his mother's only son and she
was a widow."
"Never morning wore to evening
But some heart did break."
In Shelley's Adonais, his lament for Keats, he writes,
"As long as skies are blue, and fields are green,
Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow,
Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow."
Virgil, the Roman poet, in an immortal phrase spoke about "The
tears of things"--sunt lacrimae rerum. In the nature of things we live
in a world of broken hearts.
(ii) To the pathos of human life, Luke adds the compassion of
Christ. Jesus was moved to the depths of his heart. There is no stronger
word in the Greek language for sympathy and again and again in the
gospel story it is used of Jesus (Matthew 14:14; Matthew 15:32; Matthew 20:34; Mark 1:41; Mark 8:2).
To the ancient world this must have been a staggering thing. The
noblest faith in antiquity was Stoicism. The Stoics believed that the
primary characteristic of God was apathy, incapability of feeling. This
was their argument. If someone can make another sad or sorry, glad or
joyful, it means that, at least for the moment, he can influence that
other person. If he can influence him that means that, at least for the
moment, he is greater than he. Now, no one can be greater than God;
therefore, no one can influence God; therefore, in the nature of things,
God must be incapable of feeling.
Here men were presented with the amazing conception of one who was the Son of God being moved to the depths of his being.
"In ev'ry pang that rends the heart.
The Man of sorrows has a part."
For many that is the most precious thing about the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
(iii) To the compassion of Jesus, Luke adds the power of Jesus.
He went up and touched the bier. It was not a coffin, for coffins were
not used in the east. Very often long wicker-work baskets were used for
carrying the body to the grave. It was a dramatic moment. As one great
commentator says, "Jesus claimed as his own what death had seized as his
prey."
It may well be that here we have a miracle of diagnosis; that
Jesus with those keen eyes of his saw that the lad was in a cataleptic
trance and saved him from being buried alive, as so many were in
Palestine. It does not matter; the fact remains that Jesus claimed for
life a lad who had been marked for death. Jesus is not only the Lord of
life; he is the Lord of death who himself triumphed over the grave and
who has promised that, because he lives, we shall live also (John 14:19).
7:18-29 John's
disciples told him about all these things; so John called two of his
disciples and sent them to the Lord saying, "Are you he who is to come,
or, are we to look for another?" When they arrived, the men said to him,
"John, the Baptizer, has sent us to you. Are you the One who is to
come," he asks, "or are we to look for another?" At that time he cured
many of their diseases and afflictions and of evil spirits, and to many
blind people he gave the gift of sight. "Go," he answered them, "and
tell John what you have seen and heard. The blind recover their sight;
the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed; the deaf hear; the dead are
raised up; the poor have the Good News told to them; and blessed is he
who does not find a stumbling-block in me."
When John's messengers
had gone away, Jesus began to say to the crowds concerning John, "What
did you go out into the desert to see? A reed shaken by the wind? But
what did you go out to see? A man dressed in soft clothes? Look
you--those who wear expensive clothes and live in luxury are in royal
palaces. But what did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I say to you,
and something more than a prophet. This is he of whom it stands
written--'Look you, I send my messenger before you to prepare your way
before you.' I tell you there is no one greater amongst those born of
women than John. But he who is least in the kingdom of God is greater
than he." When the people and the tax-collectors heard this they called
God righteous for they had been baptized with John's baptism.
John sent emissaries to Jesus to ask if he really was the Messiah or if they must look for someone else.
(i) This incident has worried many because they have been
surprised at the apparent doubt in the mind of John. Various
explanations have been advanced.
(a) It is suggested that John took this step, not for his own
sake, but for the sake of his disciples. He was sure enough; but they
had their qualms and he desired that they should be confronted with
proof unanswerable.
(b) It is suggested that John wished to hurry Jesus on because he thought it was time Jesus moved towards decisive action.
(c) The simplest explanation is the best. Think what was
happening to John. John, the child of the desert and of the wide-open
spaces, was confined in a dungeon cell in the castle of Machaerus. Once,
one of the Macdonalds, a highland chieftain, was confined in a little
cell in Carlisle Castle. In his cell was one little window. To this day
you may see in the sandstone the marks of the feet and hands of the
highlander as he lifted himself up and clung to the window ledge day by
day to gaze with infinite longing upon the border hills and valleys he
would never walk again. Shut in his cell, choked by the narrow walls,
John asked his question because his cruel captivity had put tremors in
his heart.
(ii) Note the proof that Jesus offered. He pointed at the facts.
The sick and the suffering and the humble poor were experiencing the
power and hearing the word of the Good News. Here is a point which is
seldom realized--this is not the answer John expected. If Jesus was
God's anointed one, John would have expected him to say, "My armies are
massing. Caesarea, the headquarters of the Roman government, is about to
fall. The sinners are being obliterated. And judgment has begun." He
would have expected Jesus to say, "The wrath of God is on the march."
but Jesus said, "The mercy of God is here." Let us remember that where
pain is soothed and sorrow turned to joy, where suffering and death are
vanquished, there is the kingdom of God. Jesus' answer was, "Go back and
tell John that the love of God is here."
(iii) After John's emissaries had gone, Jesus paid his own
tribute to him. People had crowded out into the desert to see and hear
John and they had not gone to see a reed shaken by the wind. That may
mean one of two things.
(a) Nothing was commoner by Jordan's banks than a reed shaken by
the wind. It was in fact a proverbial phrase for the commonest of
sights. It may then mean that the crowds went out to see no ordinary
sight.
(b) It may stand for fickleness. It was no vacillating, swaying
character men went out to see like a swaying reed, but a man immovable
as a mighty tree.
They had not gone out to see some soft effeminate soul, like the silk-clad courtiers of the royal palace.
What then had they gone to see?
(a) First, Jesus pays John a great tribute. All men expected
that before God's anointed king arrived upon the earth, Elijah would
return to prepare the way and act as his herald (Malachi 4:5). John was the herald of the Highest.
(b) Second, Jesus states quite clearly the limitations of John.
The least in the kingdom of heaven was greater than he. Why? Some have
said that it was because John had wavered, if but for a moment, in his
faith. It was not that. It was because John marked a dividing line in
history. Since John's proclamation had been made, Jesus had come;
eternity had invaded time; heaven had invaded earth; God had arrived in
Jesus; life could never be the same again. We date all time as before
Christ and after Christ--B.C. and A.D. Jesus is the dividing line.
Therefore, all who come after him and who receive him are of necessity
granted a greater blessing than all who went before. The entry of Jesus
into the world divided all time into two; and it divided all life in
two. If any man be in Christ he is a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17).
As Bilney, the martyr said, "When I read that Christ Jesus came
into the world to save sinners, it was as if day suddenly broke on a
dark night."
7:30-35 But the
Pharisees and the scribes frustrated God's purpose for themselves
because they were not baptized by him. "To whom," asked Jesus, "will I
compare the men of this generation? And to whom are they like? They are
like children seated in the market place who call to one another, 'We
have piped to you, and you did not dance. We have sung you a dirge and
you did not weep.' John the Baptizer came neither eating bread nor
drinking wine, and you say,' He has a demon.' The Son of Man came eating
and drinking and you say, 'Look! a gluttonous man and a wine-drinker,
the friend of tax-collectors and sinners.' But wisdom is justified by
her children."
This passage has two great warnings in it.
(i) It tells of the perils of free-will. The scribes and the
Pharisees had succeeded in frustrating God's purpose for themselves. The
tremendous truth of Christianity is that the coercion of God is not of
force but of love. It is precisely there that we can glimpse the sorrow
of God. It is always love's greatest tragedy to look upon some loved one
who has taken the wrong way and to see what might have been, what could
have been and what was meant to have been. That is life's greatest
heartbreak.
Sir William Watson has a poem called Lux Perdita, the "Lost Light."
"These were the weak, slight hands
That might have taken this strong soul, and bent
Its stubborn substance to thy soft intent,
And bound it unresisting with such bands
As not the arm of envious heaven had rent.
These were the calming eyes
That round my pinnace could have stilled the sea,
And drawn thy voyager home, and bid him be
Pure with their pureness, with their wisdom wise,
Merged in their light, and greatly lost in thee.
But thou--thou passedst on,
With whiteness clothed of dedicated days,
Cold, like a star; and me in alien ways
Thou leftest, following life's chance lure, where shone
The wandering gleam that beckons and betrays."
It is true that,
"Of all sad words of tongue and pen
The saddest are those, 'It might have been.'"
God's tragedy, too, is the might have been of life. As G. K.
Chesterton said, "God had written not so much a poem, but rather a play;
a play he had planned as perfect, but which had necessarily been left
to human actors and stage managers, who had since made a great mess of
it." God save us from making shipwreck of life and bringing heartbreak
to himself by using our freewill to frustrate his purposes.
(ii) It tells of the perversity of men. John had come, living
with a hermit's austerity, and the scribes and Pharisees had said that
he was a mad eccentric and that some demon had taken his wits away.
Jesus had come, living the life of men and entering into all their
activities, and they had taunted him with loving earth's pleasures far
too much. We all know the days when a child will grin at anything and
the moods when nothing will please us. The human heart can be lost in a
perversity in which any appeal God may make will be met with wilful and
childish discontent.
(iii) But there are the few who answer; and God's wisdom is in
the end justified by those who are his children. Men may misuse their
freewill to frustrate God's purposes; men in their perversity may be
blind and deaf to all his appeal. Had God used the force of coercion and
laid on man the iron bonds of a will that could not be denied, there
would have been a world of automata and a world without trouble. But God
chose the dangerous way of love, and love in the end will triumph.
7:36-50 One of the
Pharisees invited Jesus to eat with him. He went into the Pharisee's
house and reclined at table; and--look you--there was a woman in the
town, a bad woman. She knew that he was at table in the Pharisee's
house, so she took an alabaster phial of perfume and stood behind him,
beside his feet, weeping. She began to wash his feet with tears, and she
wiped them with the hairs of her head; and she kept kissing his feet
and anointing them with the perfume. When the Pharisee, who had invited
him, saw this, he said to himself, "If this fellow was a prophet, he
would have known who and what kind of a person this woman is who keeps
touching him, for she is a bad woman." Jesus answered him, "Simon, I
have something to say to you." He said, "Master, say it." Jesus said,
"There were two men who were in debt to a certain lender. The one owed
him 20 pounds, the other 2 pounds. Since they were unable to pay he
cancelled the debt to both. Who then will love him the more?" Simon
answered, "I presume, he to whom the greater favour was shown." He said
to him, "Your judgment is correct." He turned to the woman and said to
Simon, "Do you see this woman? I came into your house--you gave me no
water for my feet. She has washed my feet with her tears, and wiped them
with the hairs of her head. You did not give me any kiss. But she, from
the time I came in, has not ceased to kiss my feet. You did not anoint
my head with oil. She has anointed my feet with perfume. Wherefore, I
tell you, her sins--her many sins--are forgiven for she loved much. He
to whom little is forgiven loves little." He said to her, "Your sins are
forgiven." Those who were at table with him began to say to themselves,
"Who is this who forgives even sins?" He said to the woman, "Your faith
has saved you. Go in peace."
This story is so vivid that it makes one believe that Luke may well have been an artist.
(i) The scene is the courtyard of the house of Simon the
Pharisee. The houses of well-to-do people were built round an open
courtyard in the form of a hollow square. Often in the courtyard there
would be a garden and a fountain; and there in the warm weather meals
were eaten. It was the custom that when a Rabbi was at a meal in such a
house, all kinds of people came in--they were quite free to do so--to
listen to the pearls of wisdom which fell from his lips. That explains
the presence of the woman.
When a guest entered such a house three things were always done.
The host placed his hand on the guest's shoulder and gave him the kiss
of peace. That was a mark of respect which was never omitted in the case
of a distinguished Rabbi. The roads were only dust tracks, and shoes
were merely soles held in place by straps across the foot. So always
cool water was poured over the guest's feet to cleanse and comfort them.
Either a pinch of sweet-smelling incense was burned or a drop of attar
of roses was placed on the guest's head. These things good manners
demanded, and in this case not one of them was done.
In the east the guests did not sit, but reclined, at table. They
lay on low couches, resting on the left elbow, leaving the right arm
free, with the feet stretched out behind; and during the meal the
sandals were taken off. That explains how the woman was standing beside
Jesus' feet.
(ii) Simon was a Pharisee, one of the separated ones. Why should
such a man invite Jesus to his house at all? There are three possible
reasons.
(a) It is just possible that he was an admirer and a sympathizer, for not all the Pharisees were Jesus' enemies (compare Luke 13:31). But the whole atmosphere of discourtesy makes that unlikely.
(b) It could be that Simon had invited Jesus with the deliberate
intention of enticing him into some word or action which might have
been made the basis of a charge against him. Simon may have been an
agent provocateur. Again it is not likely, because in Luke 7:40 Simon gives Jesus the title, Rabbi.
(c) Most likely, Simon was a collector of celebrities; and with a
half-patronising contempt he had invited this startling young Galilaean
to have a meal with him. That would best explain the strange
combination of a certain respect with the omission of the usual
courtesies. Simon was a man who tried to patronize Jesus.
(iii) The woman was a bad woman, and a notoriously bad woman, a
prostitute. No doubt she had listened to Jesus speak from the edge of
the crowd and had glimpsed in him the hand which could lift her from the
mire of her ways. Round her neck she wore, like all Jewish women, a
little phial of concentrated perfume; they were called alabasters; and
they were very costly. She wished to pour it on his feet, for it was all
she had to offer. But as she saw him the tears came and fell upon his
feet. For a Jewish woman to appear with hair unbound was an act of the
gravest immodesty. On her wedding day a girl bound up her hair and never
would she appear with it unbound again. The fact that this woman loosed
her long hair in public showed how she had forgotten everyone except
Jesus.
The story demonstrates a contrast between two attitudes of mind and heart.
(i) Simon was conscious of no need and therefore felt no love,
and so received no forgiveness. Simon's impression of himself was that
he was a good man in the sight of men and of God.
(ii) The woman was conscious of nothing else than a clamant
need, and therefore was overwhelmed with love for him who could supply
it, and so received forgiveness.
The one thing which shuts a man off from God is
self-sufficiency. And the strange thing is that the better a man is the
more he feels his sin. Paul could speak of sinners "of whom I am
foremost" (1 Timothy 1:15).
Francis of Assisi could say, "There is nowhere a more wretched and a
more miserable sinner than I." It is true to say that the greatest of
sins is to be conscious of no sin; but a sense of need will open the
door to the forgiveness of God, because God is love, and love's greatest
glory is to be needed.
-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)