Luke 13:33 Commentary and Bible Study

What he has said is not to be taken literally, for there were more than three days left before he would be crucified in Jerusalem. He will continue to carry out his work with total confidence in the will of God, in the fulfilment of prophecy, for he knows that it is written that the Christ must suffer these things, and to enter into his glory. He means, ‘I am on my last approach to Jerusalem.’ He is determined to go there. He has set his face to go to Jerusalem, and he knows that he must suffer and die to bear away the punishment of sin for the human race, for those of the human race who will be pardoned and forgiven. That is his intention, and for that he has come. This is what has brought him as God, the second person of the Trinity, from heaven to earth, expressly to carry out this plan of salvation, to suffer and to die for sinners. And all of this will be carried out in Jerusalem, according to Scripture. What a terrible indictment of the religious establishment in Jerusalem, that Christ says that in the city which God had chosen as the location of his temple, and the where the people came to hold all the national feasts; that it must be there and only there that God’s true prophets were put to death as they were martyred by ungodly men for their faithful ministry. Those who were supposed to be instructors of the people, and guides to the blind, were in fact the murders of the prophets. How corrupt the entire religious system had become! Yet this was the will of God, and Christ submitted to it, and deliberately went up to Jerusalem, knowing what would take place.