Luke 6:20-49

Jesus Proclaims The New Law of the Kingly Rule of God (6:20-49).

Like Matthew 5-7 this ‘sermon' or ‘address' is carefully put together and patterned, but, in spite of similarities, we would be mistaken if we thought that it was simply made up of extracts from the same address (even though that is the view of many). The emphasis in both addresses is very different. Jesus preached over a number of years and we can be quite sure that we have been given the substance of most of His teaching in the addresses recorded, for it is very unlikely that huge amounts of what He said would have been forgotten or thought of as not worth recording. Thus in view of the material that we have we must assume that He taught the same thing to the crowds many times, varying His approach and possibly using different patterns, but regularly with similar material, until it had burned its way into their hearts. Unlike us they loved repetition. Moreover it was necessary in order that it might be remembered. We have one example in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew. We have another different one here (the difference lies in the emphasis and the make up).

These people did not have Gospels or a New Testament and as He wanted to ensure that they remembered His words, it is clear that He regularly put them in memorable forms, and constantly repeated much of His material word for word, although in different contexts, patterning it in order to aid the memory. We would therefore expect to find that there were a number of addresses which were similar but not the same, and should recognise that they represented the basic teaching of His Law.

It is apparent from the different and failing attempts to connect this with a Q document, once we take into account the similarities and differences between Matthew and Luke, that the situation is far more complicated than many suggest. It is equally possible that those similarities and differences arose from the fact that Jesus preached similar things word for word for memory purposes in many different addresses, while at others He varied His approach, and that some of these were written down in Greek (some of which would also be available to Matthew) and were consulted by Luke (as he mentions in Luke 1:1) in order to assist in clarifying finer points of Aramaic when he himself was translating Jesus' address contained here from Aramaic into Greek. This would explain both similarities and differences between Matthew and Luke, and also the introduction of Lucan terminology, without the necessity of assuming that Luke, or anyone else, actually changed Jesus' words.

The usual theory suggests that Luke simply dropped large amounts of what he found, or had no access to it. Now while that is explicable for some of what Matthew contained, which was especially applicable to Jews, it does not explain other parts which would have been very relevant to Luke's readers, and which on the usual theories would have been available to him (on this theory, for example, he completely and deliberately changes the emphasis of the beatitudes). Luke was concerned to give us more of Jesus' teaching, not less, and it is difficult to believe that the early church were so lacking in interest in Jesus' teaching that they only kept a record of one sermon, and would have mildly put up with it being changed.

Besides a glance at the ‘sermon' below reveals that it is compact and unified. The pattern reveals the genius of Jesus, not that of Luke. And Luke wisely chose not to play around with it but to present it as it was.

The idea that Jesus' words were played around with in the way that some scholars suggest is obviously (to put it politely) untrue. Had they been so they would not have retained their uniqueness. A message which is a conglomeration of different people's ideas would not have become the kind of message that has impressed men of all ages. We only have to look at later Christian writings to appreciate that. Give the early church twenty years to play around with Jesus' words and they would have been totally unrecognisable as being anything out of the ordinary. Yet we are asked to believe that the early church produced any number of sayings of Jesus which revealed the same genius as that of the Master. Such a suggestion can only be seen as fantastic. For anyone who considers His words as given below will recognise that they are far from being ordinary. They reveal the mind of genius. Furthermore we also have to take into account that we have here every indication of a complete, if abbreviated, address.

His words here begin with four blessings and four comparative woes, and end with a story of who would be blessed (those who built on rock) and who would receive woe (those who built on earth). In between are varied patterns of four, and six divided into two sections, the first of which is to do with loving and giving, and the second is to do with contrasting those who are genuine those who are fakes.

Luke has further divided the message into three subsections by the use of dividers, the second of which is part of the message. These are as follows:

1). ‘And He lifted up His eyes on His disciples and said' (Luke 6:20). This is then followed by a prophetic declaration of blessings and woes.

2). ‘But I say to you who hear' (Luke 6:27). This is then followed by a dissertation on loving the unlovely, and revealing that love in practical and genuine ways.

3). ‘And He spoke also a proverb to them' (Luke 6:39). This is then followed by a passage distinguishing between what is genuine and what is not, and ends with the contrast between the one who builds with a sound foundation, and the one who builds on shaky foundations, both of whom will be tested, both by the events of life and finally by God's judgment.

The whole can be analysed as follows: