Luke 9:18-20

1 st. Luke 9:18-20. The Christ.

According to Mark, the following conversation took place during the journey (ἐν τῇ ὁδῲ); Mark thus gives precision to the vaguer indication of Matthew. The name of Caesarea Philippi is wanting in Luke's narrative. Will criticism succeed in finding a dogmatic motive for this omission? In a writer like Luke, who loves to be precise about places (Luke 9:10) and times (Luke 9:28), this omission can only be accounted for by ignorance; therefore he possessed neither Mark nor Matthew, nor the documents from which these last derived this name. The description of the moral situation belongs, however, to Luke: Jesus had just been alone praying. “Arbitrary and ill-chosen scenery,” says Holtzmann (p. 224). One would like to know the grounds of this judgment on the part of the German critic. Would not Jesus, at the moment of disclosing to His disciples for the first time the alarming prospect of His approaching death, foreseeing the impression which this communication would make upon them, having regard also to the manner in which He must speak to them under such circumstances, be likely to prepare Himself for this important step by prayer? Besides, it is probable that the disciples took part in His prayer. The imperfect συνῆσαν, they were gathered together with Him, appears to indicate as much. And the term καταμόνας (ὁδούς understood), in solitude, in no way excludes the presence of the disciples, but simply that of the people. This appears from the antithesis, Luke 9:23: “And He said to them all,” and especially from Mark, Luke 9:34: “Having called the multitude. ”

The expression, they were gathered together, indicates something of importance. Jesus first of all elicits from His disciples the different opinions which they had gathered from the lips of the people during their mission. The object of this first question is evidently to prepare the way for the next (Luke 9:20).

On the opinions here enumerated, see Luke 9:8 and John 1:21. They amount to this: Men generally regard thee as one of the forerunners of the Messiah. The question addressed to the disciples is designed, first of all, to make them distinctly conscious of the wide difference between the popular opinion and the conviction at which they have themselves arrived; next, to serve as a starting-point for the fresh communication which Jesus is about to make respecting the manner in which the work of the Christ is to be accomplished.

The confession of Peter is differently expressed in the three narratives: the Christ, the Son of the living God (Matthew); the Christ (Mark); the Christ of God (Luke). The form in Luke holds a middle place between the other two. The genit., of God, signifies, as in the expression Lamb of God: He who belongs to God, and whom God sends.

It has been inferred from this question, that up to this time Jesus had not assumed His position as the Messiah amongst His disciples, and that His determination to accept this character dates from this point; that this resolution was taken partly in concession to the popular idea, which required that His work of restoration should assume this form, and partly to meet the expectation of the disciples, which found emphatic expression through the lips of Peter, the most impatient of their number. But, 1. The question in Luke 9:20 has not the character of a concession; on the contrary, Jesus thereby takes the initiative in the confession which it calls forth. 2. If this view be maintained, all those previous sayings and incidents in which Jesus gives Himself out to be the Christ, must be set aside as unauthentic; and there are such not only in John (Luke 1:39-41; Luke 1:49-51; Luke 3:14; Luke 4:26), but in the Syn. (the election of the Twelve as heads of a new Israel; the parallel which Jesus institutes, Matthew 5, between Himself and the lawgiver of Sinai: “You have heard that it hath been said..., but I...;” the title of bridegroom which He gives Himself, Luke 5:35, and parallels). The resolution of Jesus to assume the character of the Messiah, and to accomplish under this national form His universal task as Saviour of the world, was certainly matured within His soul from the first day of His public activity. The scenes of the baptism and temptation forbid any other supposition; hence the entire absence of anything like feeling His way in the progress of His ministry. The import of His question is therefore something very different. The time had come for Him to pass, if we may so express it, to a new chapter in His teaching. He had hitherto, especially since He began to teach in parables, directed the attention of His disciples to the near approach of the kingdom of God. It was now necessary to turn it towards Himself as Head of this kingdom, and especially towards the future, wholly unlooked for by them, which awaited Him in this character. They knew that He was the Christ; they had yet to learn how He was to be it. But before commencing on this new ground, He is anxious that they should express, in a distinct declaration, the result of His instructions and of their own previous experiences. As an experienced teacher, before beginning the new lesson He makes them recapitulate the old. With the different forms and vacillations of opinion, as well as the open denials of the rulers before them, He wants to hear from their own lips the expression of their own warm and decided conviction. This established result of His previous labour will serve as a foundation for the new labour which the gravity of His situation urges Him to undertake. The murder of John the Baptist made Him sensible that His own end was not far off; the time, therefore, was come to substitute for the brilliant form of the Christ, which as yet filled the minds of His disciples, the mournful image of the Man of sorrows. Thus the facts which, as we have seen (p. 403), led Jesus to seek retirement in the desert of Bethsaïda-Julias, that He might be alone with His disciples, furnished the motives for the present conversation.

We read in John, after the multiplication of the loaves (chap. 6), of a similar confession to this, also made by Peter in the name of the Twelve. Is it to be supposed, that at the same epoch two such similar declarations should have taken place? Would Jesus have called for one so soon after having heard the other? Is it not striking that, owing to the omission in Luke, the account of this confession, in his narrative as in John's, follows immediately upon that of the multiplication of the loaves? Certainly the situation described in the fourth Gospel is very different. In consequence of a falling away which had just been going on amongst His Galilean disciples, Jesus puts the question to His apostles of their leaving Him. But the questions which Jesus addresses to them in the Syn. might easily have found a place in the conversation of which John gives us a mere outline. At the first glance, it is true, John's narrative does not lead us to suppose such a long interval between the multiplication of the loaves and this conversation as is required for the journey from Capernaum to Caesarea Philippi. But the desertion of the Galilean disciples, which had begun immediately, was not completed in a day. It might have extended over some time (John 6:66: ἐκ τούτου, from that time). Altogether, the resemblance between these two scenes appears to us to outweigh their dissimilarity.

Keim admirably says: “We do not know which we must think the greatest; whether the spirit of the disciples, who shatter the Messianic mould, set aside the judgment of the priests, rise above all the intervening degrees of popular appreciation, and proclaim as lofty and divine that which is abased and down-trodden, because to their minds' eye it is and remains great and divine, or this personality of Jesus, which draws from these feeble disciples, notwithstanding the pressure of the most overwhelming experiences, so pure and lofty an expression of the effect produced upon them by His whole life and ministry.” Gess: “The sages of Capernaum remained unmoved, the enthusiasm of the people was cooled, on every side Jesus was threatened with the fate of the Baptist..., it was then that the faith of His disciples shone out as genuine, and came forth from the furnace of trial as an energetic conviction of truth.”