Luke 9:58 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Luke 9:58

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Judging from the way the Lord Jesus Christ responded to him, we get the strong impression that he saw Christ as an earthly Messiah, one who would get rid of the Romans and would set the nation up on its feet again. The way the Lord answered him does imply that, among other things, he was seeking rather grand things for himself. The Lord’s reply is somewhat blunt, and as far as we know this put the scribe right off, and he never continued any further with his request. The majority of old commentators have always said that having been told this, the man went away and never followed anymore. He only had the gist of things; he didn't understand what he was saying; he hadn't listened properly when the Lord, not so long previously, had said that he would be betrayed and he would suffer and die, and he would be rejected. He had filtered out all these things and had not understood at all.A fox was considered a lowly scavenger and a sheer nuisance, and yet a mere fox has a home to which it returns where it finds security. Even the birds have their settled haunts, somewhere to go, somewhere to land, somewhere familiar – most birds are said to be territorial. ‘But the Son of man’, says the Lord Jesus Christ, ‘has not where to lay his head.’ He is not talking so much about his poverty, because he had his disciples; he had people who loved him and listened to him; he had somewhere to go as he travelled from place to place. But he didn't have any place he could call his own. It's not poverty he is talking about here; it's the fact that he has no place, no security, no future on earth. He is going to be rejected by the Jews and that came as a tremendous shock to this scribe. ‘Oh, but I thought this was going to be heaven on earth. I thought you worked all these miracles and all these signs, and eventually you would take charge and everybody would follow you, and things would only get better. There wouldn't be a single sick person left in the land. I thought this was heading for a palace, and a grand facelift for the capital, and every conceivable good thing, and now you are telling me that you are lower than any fox, lower than any bird.’ The ‘Son of man’ is a word for the Messiah which comes from the Book of Daniel. Gradually, as he says this, it dawns on this scribe that this man isn't come for an earthly mission. This man is going to be rejected by us, and he is come with a heavenly purpose. Other things he had heard now fell into place. ‘He has come to seek and to save sinners; he has come to help people's souls’, and this scribe thought, ‘Yes he is going to be rejected. He is going to tell me as a Jew that I am not by birth a converted person; I am not necessarily the Lord's. I could be one of these people who is going to reject him, and I see what he is saying. I have got to come to him in a much deeper way, an understanding way.’ Well he may not have thought it all through, but he might have said to himself, ‘I have to come as a lost sinner; I have to give up being a scribe; I have to give up all my confidence in everything I know, and to believe in him as the Lord and Saviour who has come to die for sinners.’ But because he was an optimist, his dream was crushed. He didn't want to hear what he was hearing, and he turns away once he understands a little more.

Application

Is there somebody like that? You have been a worshiper maybe for some time or you have been a vague believer, but you have filtered out so much. ‘Jesus Christ – yes he is the Son of God; he is the Christ of the Bible; he is that’, but you have somehow filtered out the essentials. You may even have grasped that he suffered and died for sinners, and that is good news, but you have filtered out the fact that he only suffered and died for those sinners who come to him, and give themselves to him, and depend upon him, and to long for a new life, a new nature. It is possible to go so far and never see the essentials. This man was a scribe. He was immensely intelligent. He was a practiced teacher, and he followed, he listened, and yet he missed the point: not because he wasn't intelligent enough but because he was far too optimistic about this. Have we really considered the implications of this message Christ came and suffered and died for sinners? If he did not do that, nobody would be saved, and we would be judged by God and we would be sentenced to an eternity away from him in that place of horror and dread and punishment. That is the implication. Christ came to deliver and if we will not have his deliverance we are under the judgment of God. Don't filter these things out because they are alarming. or because they are negative. Don't imagine that because you vaguely believe. it will be all right for you, and you don't have to be concerned unduly about the details.

If we stay optimists even in spiritual things, then our optimism will make us superficial in our understanding of what life is. We will have no deep realism within us, and we will imagine we can bounce through life on our own terms. ‘I vaguely know about the Christian faith and about God, but I will be all right.’ An optimist won't worry about hell, or about death and loss and spiritual rejection. An optimist needs to be shaken, and these simple words of the Lord's shook that man. He is not going to be an earthly king or prince. He is going to be an outcast. If I am going to follow Christ, I have got to be prepared for that, and I have got to believe in what he has come to do. Being an optimist is a great gift in many ways, but there is this down side, so make sure that it doesn't influence your view of faith and of your soul, and fog the issue because you won’t follow him on his terms.

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Luke 9:58 Commentary and Bible Study