Luke 23:29 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Luke 23:29

Comments

The point of this saying is that in normal circumstances, no one would ever say it was a blessing to be barren and for a woman to have no child at the breast to give suck to. These things are universally seen as causes of celebration. But the days which Christ speaks of are so terrible, that they will turn what is normally seen as a blessing into a curse. How will they do so? By presenting such a danger to mothers and young children that no one would want to live through them with a young child to look after. He has just said to the women of Jerusalem, ‘Weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children.’ Such terrible things will happen even to very young children, that the equation is transformed, and all would see that it is better not to have a child in such awful times. Blessed will it be thought not to have children at all, in spite ot the loss of normal family life. When are the days he is speaking of? They surely refer to the impending judgment that is about to fall on the city. The Lord Jesus prophesies here more about the terrible judgment that is about to fall on the city, a judgement which has long been held off by God, but which is about to fall with full force on the city for the long centuries during which it has resisted the call of God to repentance, and has refused to act on the warnings given through the prophets sent to it. Christ has just wept on seeing Jerusalem, knowing all that will take place in the city, and now the women of the city are weeping for him. That is all the wrong way round: he is at no point set forth In Scripture as an object of pity, and it is a great mistake for those who gather around the Lord’s Table to treat his death in this way, or to effectively turn that ordinance into a funeral service. His death on Calvary is result of the infinite pity of God to a lost human race which is heading for eternal punishment. In offering up his life as a sacrifice, he is the suffering Saviour who redeems his people forever in a wonderful triumph over the powers of darkness. The words are not in any doubt. Christ urges them to weep on the basis of his prophecy, for what he warns of is certain to happen. It is common for people to weep about the past, about their regrets at what has taken place, about what they have done that cannot be undone. But it is not so common to weep about the future. Weeping is such a strong response that there is little room for doubt in it. We cannot weep when it only might happen that what we weep at takes place. Here he tells them to weep as those who already see the fearful events he describes, as if they were before their eyes. Only certainty can allow them to do this, and only faith in his word can give them that certainty. Christ of course had not the slightest doubt about what he was saying, and they must believe it as firmly as he does.

Application

He calls for them to evaluate themselves and their lives in a completely new way. It is a kindly way to speak in order to bring them to repentance. They have shown kindness to him by the sympathy they have expressed, and his answer takes that into consideration, but it does not lack the firmness needed to tell them they have misread what is happening. In that misreading they have failed to recognise their sin, and the judgment that deservedly hovers over the nation. There are wrong responses even to the truths of the gospel which need to be corrected. God’s works can be misinterpreted, and we do so to our harm. The cross can be misunderstood in ways that remove from Christianity what is at the heart of the gospel. There can be an opposition to the true doctrine of the atonement, which calls it cosmic child abuse. This comes from not understanding so many other things that we need to grasp about ourselves and our waywardness, and about the character of God and his rightful response to human rebellion. It was a complication which Christ corrected perfectly, when the women of Jerusalem seemed to pity him like this.

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Luke 23:29 Commentary and Bible Study

The meaning of Luke 23:29 explained