Luke 12:49-53

After having thus followed the natural course of the conversation, Jesus returns to the thought from which it had started, the vanity of earthly goods. He shows how this truth directly applies to the present situation (Luke 12:49-53).

Vers. 49 and 50. The Character of the immediate Future. “ I am come to send fire on the earth; and what will I if it be already kindled? Luke 12:50. But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished! ” “Is it a time,” said Elisha to the unfaithful Gehazi, “to receive lands and cattle when the hand of God is upon Israel,” that is to say, when Shalmaneser is at the gates of Samaria? Is it a time for the believer to give himself up to the peaceable enjoyment of earthly goods when the great struggle is beginning? The Church is about to be born; Israel is about to perish, and the Holy Land to be given over to the Gentiles. Such is the connection, too moving to be expressed by a logical particle, which is implied by the remarkable asyndeton between Luke 12:48-49. Πῦρ βάλλειν, strictly, to throw a firebrand. Jesus feels that His presence is for the earth the brand which is to set everything on fire. “Every fruitful thing,” says M. Renan, “is rich in wars.” Jesus understood the fruitfulness of His work. The expression I am come, which Jesus frequently uses in the Syn., finds its only natural explanation in His lips in the consciousness which He had of His pre-existence. The fire in question here is not the fire of the Holy Spirit, as some of the Fathers thought. The sequel proves that it is the spiritual excitement produced in opposite directions by the coming of Jesus, whence will result the διαμερισμός, the division, described from Luke 12:51 onwards. Two humanities will henceforth be in conflict within the bosom of every nation, under every roof: this thought profoundly moves the heart of the Prince of peace. Hence the broken style of the following words. The εἰ may be taken in the sense of that, which it often has, and τί in the sense of how: “ How I wish that this fire were already burning!” (Olshausen, De Wette, Bleek.) But this meaning of the two words εἰ and τί, and especially of the second, is not very natural. Accordingly Grotius, Meyer, etc., have been led to admit two propositions, the one forming a question, the other the answer: “And what will I? Oh that it only were already kindled!” The sense is radically the same. But the second proposition would come too abruptly as an answer to the preceding. Ewald recurs to the idea of a single sentence, only he seeks to give to θέλω a meaning which better justifies the use of εἰ : “And of what have I to complain if it be already kindled?” This sense does not differ much from that which appears to us the most natural: “What have I more to seek, since it is already kindled?” This saying expresses a mournful satisfaction with the fact that this inevitable rending of humanity is already beginning, as proved by the event recorded Luke 12:1-12. Jesus submits to bring in war where He wished to establish peace. But it must be; it is His mission: “ I am come to...”

Meantime this fire, which is already kindled, is far yet from bursting into a flame; in order to that there is a condition to be fulfilled, the thought of which weighs heavily on the heart of Jesus: there needs the fact which, by manifesting the deadly antagonism between the world and God, shall produce the division of which Jesus speaks between man and man; there needs the cross. Without the cross, the conflagration lighted on the earth by the presence of Jesus would very soon be extinguished, and the world would speedily fall back to its undisturbed level; hence Luke 12:50. The δέ is adversative: “But though the fire is already kindled, it needs, in order that it may blaze forth, that...” The baptism in question here is the same as that of which Jesus speaks, Matthew 20:22 (at least if the expressions analogous to these are authentic in that passage). Jesus certainly makes an allusion to His baptism at the hands of His forerunner, which included a consecration to death. The figure is as follows: Jesus sees Himself about to be plunged into a bath of flame, from which He shall come forth the torch which shall set the whole world on fire.

The Lord expresses with perfect candour the impression of terror which is produced in Him by the necessity of going through this furnace of suffering. Συνέχεσθαι, to be closely pressed (straitened), sometimes by the power of love (2 Corinthians 5:14); elsewhere, by that of conflicting desires (Php 1:23); here, doubtless, by mournful impatience to have done with a painful task. He is under pressure to enter into this suffering, because He is in haste to get out of it. “A prelude of Gethsemane,” says Gess in an admirable passage on this discourse. Here, indeed, we have the first crisis of that agony of which we catch a second indication, John 12:27: “ Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say? ” and which is breathed forth in all its intensity in Gethsemane. Luke alone has preserved to us the memorial of this first revelation of the inmost feelings of Jesus.

After this saying, which is a sort of parenthesis drawn forth by the impression produced on Him by the thought in the preceding verse, He resumes at Luke 12:51 the development of His declaration, Luke 12:49.

Vers. 51-53. The Picture of the Future just declared. “ Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, nay; but division. 52. For from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three. 53. The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. ” Δοκεῖτε, suppose ye, is no doubt aimed at the illusion with which the disciples flattered themselves, yet hoping for the establishment of the Messianic kingdom without struggles or sufferings (Luke 19:11). Jesus does not deny that peace should be the final result of His work; but certainly He denies that it will be its immediate effect.

The simplest solution of the phrase ἀλλ᾿ ἤ is to take it as an abbreviation of οὐχὶ ἄλλο ἤ : “Nothing else than...”

Vers. 52 and 53 describe the fire lighted by Jesus. By the preaching of the disciples, the conflagration spreads; with their arrival, it invades every family one after another. But “the fifth commandment itself must give way to a look directed to Him....Undoubtedly it is God who has formed the natural bonds between men; but Jesus introduces a new principle, holier than the bond of nature, to unite men to one another” (Gess, p. 22).

Even Holtzmann observes that the five persons indicated, Luke 12:52, are expressly enumerated, Luke 12:53: father, son, mother, daughter, daughter-in-law. Matthew (Matthew 10:35) has not preserved this delicate touch; are we to think that Luke invented this nice precision, or that Matthew, finding it in the common document, has obliterated it? Two suppositions equally improbable. ᾿Επί indicates hostility, and with more energy in the last two members, where this prep. is construed with the acc.; probably because between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law religious hostility is strengthened by previous natural animosity.