Luke 6:24-26

“ But woe unto you that are rich! for ye have received your consolation. 25. Woe unto you that are full! for ye shall hunger. Woe unto you that laugh now! for ye shall mourn and weep. 26. Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you! for so did their fathers to the false prophets. ”

Jesus here contemplates in spirit those adversaries who were sharpening against Him only just before (Luke 6:11) the sword of persecution: the rich and powerful at Jerusalem, whose emissaries surrounded Him in Galilee. Perhaps at this very moment He perceives some of their spies in the outer ranks of the congregation. Certainly it is not the rich, as such, that He curses, any more than He pronounced the poor as such blessed. A Nicodemus or a Joseph of Arimathea will be welcomed with open arms as readily as the poorest man in Israel. Jesus is dealing here with historical fact, not with moral philosophy. He takes the fact as it presented itself to Him at that time. Were not the rich and powerful, as a class, already in open opposition to His mission? They were thus excluding themselves from the kingdom of God. The fall of Jerusalem fulfilled only too literally the maledictions to which Jesus gave utterance on that solemn day.

The πλήν, except, only, which we can only render by but (Luke 6:24), makes the persons here designated an exception as regards the preceding beatitudes.

The term rich refers to social position, full to mode of living; the expression, you that laugh, describes a personal disposition. All these outward conditions are considered as associated with an avaricious spirit, with injustice, proud self-satisfaction, and a profane levity, which did indeed attach to them at that time. It was to the Pharisees and Sadducees more particularly that these threatenings were addressed.

The word νῦν, now, which several MSS. read in the first proposition, is a faulty imitation of the second, where it is found in all the documents. It is in place in the latter; for the notion of laughing contains something more transient than that of being full.

The expression ἀπέχετε, which we have rendered by ye have received, signifies: you have taken and carried away everything; all therefore is exhausted. Comp. Luke 16:25.

The terms hunger, weeping, were literally realized in the great national catastrophe which followed soon after this malediction; but they also contain an allusion to the privations and sufferings which await, after death, those who have found their happiness in this world.

In Luke 6:26 it is more particularly the Pharisees and scribes, who were so generally honoured in Israel, that Jesus points out as continuing the work of the false prophets. These four woes would be incompatible with the spiritual sense of the terms poor, hungry, etc., in the beatitudes.

The second part of the discourse: Luke 6:27-45. The New Law.

Here we have the body of the discourse. Jesus proclaims the supreme law of the new society. The difference from Matthew comes out in a yet more striking manner in this part than in the preceding. In the first Gospel, the principal idea is the opposition between legal righteousness and the new righteousness which Jesus came to establish. He Himself announces the text of the discourse in this saying (Luke 6:20): “ Except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven. ” The law, in the greater number of its statutes, seemed at first sight only to require outward observance. But it was evident to every true heart, that by these commandments the God of holiness desired to lead His worshippers, not to hypocritical formalism, but to spiritual obedience. The tenth commandment made this very clear, as far as respected the decalogue. Israelitish teaching should have laboured to explain the law in this truly moral sense, and to have carried the people up from the letter to the spirit, as the prophets had endeavoured to do. Instead of that, Pharisaism had taken pleasure in multiplying indefinitely legal observances, and in regulating them with the minutest exactness, urging the letter of the precept to such a degree as sometimes even to make it contradict its spirit. It had stifled morality under legalism. Comp. Matthew 15:1-20; Matthew 15:23. In dealing with this crying abuse, Jesus breaks into the heart of the letter with a bold hand, in order to set free its spirit, and displaying this in all its beauty, casts aside at once the letter, which was only its imperfect envelope, and that Pharisaical righteousness, which rested on nothing else than an indefinite amplification of the letter. Thus Jesus finds the secret of the abolition of the law in its very fulfilment. Paul understood and developed this better than anybody. What in fact, is the legislator's intention in imposing the letter? Not the letter, but the spirit. The letter, like the thick calyx under the protection of which the flower, with its delicate organs, is formed, was only a means of preserving and developing its inward meaning of goodness, until the time came when it could bloom freely. This time had come. Jesus on the mountain proclaims it. And this is why this day is the counterpart of the day of Sinai. He opposes the letter of the divine commandment, understood as letter, to the spirit contained in it, and developes this contrast, Matthew 5, in a series of antitheses so striking, that it is impossible to doubt either their authenticity, or that they formed the real substance, the centre of the Sermon on the Mount. Holtzmann will never succeed in persuading any one to the contrary; his entire critical hypothesis as to the relations of the Syn. will crumble away sooner than this conviction. The connection of the discourse in Matthew is this: 1. Jesus discloses wherein the Pharisaical righteousness fails, its want of inward truth (Luke 6:13-48). 2. He judges, by this law, the three positive manifestations of this boasted righteousness: almsgiving, prayer, and fasting (Luke 6:1-18). 3. He attacks two of the most characteristic sins of Pharisaism: covetousness and censoriousness (Luke 6:19-34; Luke 7:1-5). 4. Lastly there come various particular precepts on prayer, conversion, false religious teaching, etc. (Luke 7:6-20). But between these precepts it is no longer possible to establish a perfectly natural connection. Such is the body of the Sermon in Matthew: at the commencement, an unbroken chain of thought; then a connection which becomes slighter and slighter, until it ceases altogether, and the discourse becomes a simple collection of detached sayings. But the fundamental idea is still the opposition between the formalism of the ancient righteousness and the spirituality of the new.

In Luke also, the subject of the discourse is the perfect law of the new order of things; but this law is exhibited, not under its abstract and polemical relation of spirituality, but under its concrete and positive form of charity. The plan of this part of the discourse, in Luke, is as follows: 1 st. Jesus describes the practical manifestations of the new principle (Luke 6:27-30); then, 2 d. He gives concise expression to it (Luke 6:31); 3 d. He indicates the distinctive characteristics of charity, by contrasting this virtue with certain natural analogous sentiments (Luke 6:32-35 a); 4 th. He sets forth its model and source (Luke 6:35 b and 36); 5 th. Lastly, He exhibits this gratuitous, disinterested love as the principle of all sound judgment and salutary religious teaching, contrasting in this respect the new ministry, which He is establishing in the earth in the presence of His disciples, with the old, which, as embodied in the Pharisees, is vanishing away (Luke 6:37-45).

At the first glance, there seems little or nothing in common between this body of the discourse, and that which, as we have just seen, Matthew gives us. We can even understand, to a certain extent, the odd notion of Schleiermacher, that these two versions emanated from two hearers, of whom one was more favourably situated for hearing than the other! The difference, however, between these two versions may be accounted for by connecting the fully-developed subject in Luke with the subject of the last two of the six antitheses, by which Jesus describes (Matthew 5) the contrast between legal righteousness and true righteousness. Jesus attacks, Luke 6:38-48, the Pharisaical commentary on these two precepts of the law: an eye for an eye...; and, thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. This commentary, by applying the lex talionis, which had only been given as a rule for the judges of Israel, to private life, and by deducing from the word neighbour this consequence: therefore thou mayest hate him who is not thy neighbour, that is to say, the foreigner, or thine enemy, had entirely falsified the meaning of the law on these two points. In opposition to these caricatures, Jesus sets forth, in Matthew, the inexhaustible and perfect grace of charity, as exhibited to man in the example of his heavenly Benefactor; then He proceeds to identify this charity in man with the divine perfection itself: “Be ye perfect [through charity], as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” Now it is just at this point that Luke begins to appropriate the central part of the discourse. These last two antitheses, which terminate in Matthew in the lofty thought (Luke 6:48) of man being elevated by love to the perfection of God, furnish Luke with the leading idea of the discourse as he presents it, namely, charity as the law of the new life. Its theme is in this way modified in form, but it is not altered in substance. For if, as St. Paul says, Romans 13:10, “ charity is the fulfilling of the law;” if perfect spirituality, complete likeness to God, consists in charity; the fundamental agreement between these two forms of the Sermon on the Mount is evident. Only Luke has deemed it advisable to omit all that specially referred to the ancient law and the comments of the Pharisees, and to preserve only that which has a universal human bearing, the opposition between charity and the natural selfishness of the human heart.

The two accounts being thus related, it follows, that as regards the original structure of the discourse, in so far as this was determined by opposition to Pharisaism, Matthew has preserved it more completely than Luke. But though this is so, Matthew's discourse still contains many details not originally belonging to it, which Luke has very properly assigned to entirely different places in other parts of his narrative. We find here once more the two writers following their respective bent: Matthew, having a didactic aim, exhibits in a general manner the teaching of Jesus on the righteousness of the kingdom, by including in this outline many sayings spoken on other occasions, but bearing on the same subject; Luke, writing as a historian, confines himself more strictly to the actual words which Jesus uttered at this time. Thus each of them has his own kind of superiority over the other.

1 st. The manifestations of charity: Luke 6:27-30. To describe the manifestations of this new principle, which is henceforth to sway the world, was the most popular and effectual way of introducing it into the consciences of his hearers. Jesus describes, first of all, charity in its active form (Luke 6:27-28) then in its passive form of endurance (Luke 6:29-30).