Luke 22:30

1 st. Luke 22:24-30. The cause of the dispute, mentioned by Luke only, cannot have been the question of precedence, as Langen thinks. The strife would have broken out sooner. The mention of the kingdom of God, Luke 22:16; Luke 22:18, might have given rise to it; but the καί, also, of Luke, suggests another view. By this word he connects the question: Which is the greatest? with that which the disciples had just been putting to themselves, Luke 22:23: Which among us is he who shall betray Him? The question which was the worst among them led easily to the other, which was the best of all. The one was the counterpart of the other. Whatever else may be true, we see by this new example that Luke does not allow himself to mention a situation at his own hand of which he finds no indication in his documents. The δοκεῖ, appears [should be accounted], refers to the judgment of men, till the time when God will settle the question. Comp. a similar dispute, Luke 9:46 et seq. and parall. We are amazed at a disposition so opposed to humility at such a time. But Jesus is no more irritated than He is discouraged. It is enough for Him to know that He has succeeded in planting in the heart of the apostles a pure principle which will finally carry the day over all forms of sin: “ Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you,” He says to them Himself, John 15:3. He therefore calmly continues the work which He has begun. In human society, men reign by physical or intellectual force; and εὐεργέτης, benefactor, is the flattering title by which men do not blush to honour the harshest tyrants. In the new society which Jesus is instituting, he who has most is not to make his superiority felt in any other way than by the superabundance of his services toward the weakest and the most destitute. The example of Jesus in this respect is to remain as the rule. The term ὁ νεώτερος, the younger (Luke 22:26), is parallel to ὁ διακονῶν, he that doth serve, because among the Jews the humblest and hardest labour was committed to the youngest members of the society (Acts 5:6; Acts 5:10). If the saying of Luke 22:27 is not referred to the act of the feetwashing related John 13, we must apply the words: I am among you as He that serveth, to the life of Jesus in general, or perhaps to the sacrifice which He is now making of Himself (Luke 22:19-20). But in this way there is no accounting for the antithesis between: “he that sitteth at meat,” and: “he that serveth. ” These expressions leave no doubt that the fact of the feet-washing was the occasion of this saying. Luke did not know it; and he has confined himself to transmitting the discourse of Jesus as it was furnished to him by his document.

After having thus contrasted the ideal of an altogether new greatness with the so different tendency of the natural heart, Jesus proceeds to satisfy what of truth there was in the aspiration of the disciples (Luke 22:28-30). The ὑμεῖς δέ, but ye, alludes to Judas, who had not persevered, and who, by his defection, deprived himself of the magnificent privilege promised Luke 22:29-30. Perhaps the traitor had not yet gone out, and Jesus wished hereby to tell upon his heart.

The πειρασμοί, temptations, of which Jesus speaks, are summed up in His rejection by His fellow-citizens. It was no small thing, on the part of the Eleven, to have persevered in their attachment to Jesus, despite the hatred and contempt of which He was the object, and the curses heaped upon Him by those rulers whom they were accustomed to respect. There is something like a feeling of gratitude expressed in the saying of Jesus. Hence the fulness with which He displays the riches of the promised reward. Luke 22:29 refers to the approaching dispensation on the earth; Luke 22:30, to the heavenly future in which it shall issue. ᾿Εγώ, I (Luke 22:29), is in opposition to ὑμεῖς, ye: “That is what ye have done for me; this is what I do in my turn (καί) for you.” The verb διατιθέναι, to dispose, is applied to testamentary dispositions. Bleek takes the object of this verb to be the phrase which follows, that ye may eat...(Luke 22:30); but there is too close a correspondence between appoint and hath appointed unto me, to admit of those two verbs having any but the same object, βασιλείαν, the kingdom: “ I appoint unto you the kingdom, as my Father hath appointed it unto me. ” This kingdom is here the power exercised by man on man by means of divine life and divine truth. The truth and life which Jesus possessed shall come to dwell in them, and thereby they shall reign over all, as He Himself has reigned over them. Are not Peter, John, and Paul, at the present day, the rulers of the world? In substance, it is only another form of the thought expressed in John 13:20: “ Verily I say unto you, He that receiveth whomsoever I send, receiveth me; and he that receiveth me, receiveth Him that sent me. ” Is this an example of the way in which certain sayings of Jesus are transformed and spiritualized, as it were, in the memory of John, without being altered from their original sense? At least the obscure connection of this saying in John with what precedes is fully explained by Luke's context.

Ver. 30 might apply solely to the part played by the apostles in the government of the primitive Church, and in the moral judgment of Israel then exercised by them. But the expression, to eat and drink at my table, passes beyond this meaning. For we cannot apply this expression to the Holy Supper, which was no special privilege of the apostles. The phrase, in my kingdom, should therefore be taken in the same sense as in Luke 22:16; Luke 22:18. With the table where He is now presiding, Jesus contrasts the royal banquet, the emblem of complete joy in the perfected kingdom of God. He likewise contrasts, in the words following, with the judgments which He and His shall soon undergo on the part of Israel, that which Israel shall one day undergo on the part of the Twelve. According to 1 Corinthians 6:1 et seq., the Church shall judge the world, men and angels. In this judgment of the world by the representatives of Jesus Christ, the part allotted to the Twelve shall be Israel.

Judgment here includes government, as so often in the O. T. Thrones are the emblem of power, as the table is of joy.

If the traitor was yet present, must not such a promise made to his colleagues have been like the stroke of a dagger to his ambitious heart! Here, as we think, should be placed the final scene which led to his departure (John 13:21-27).

It seems to us that the Twelve are not very disadvantageously treated in this discourse of Jesus reported by Luke! A saying entirely similar is found in Matthew 19:28, in a different context. That of Luke is its own justification.