When Jesus sends His disciples to proclaim the Kingdom that has drawn near, He tells them: “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves.” A natural question arises: why does everyone around them turn out to be a wolf? And if that is so, why and for what purpose does Jesus...
When Jesus sends His disciples to proclaim the Kingdom that has drawn near, He tells them: “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves.” A natural question arises: why does everyone around them turn out to be a wolf? And if that is so, why and for what purpose does Jesus send the disciples out to preach?
The answer, however, lies in the very nature of their proclamation—in what those who are sent intend to proclaim and what they are to bear witness to. The disciples are to bear witness to the Kingdom: a Kingdom that, in the Saviour's own words, is “not of this world,” and which the world rejects for that very reason. This is not even because the Kingdom is alien in nature to the world, but because it is hostile to it. The world lies in evil. If it were simply different from the Kingdom, there might be no hostility: the Kingdom's action upon the world would transfigure it, change its nature, and the world would become the Kingdom by opening itself to God's direct action. But there are forces in the world that oppose the Kingdom, and the world has submitted to them and fallen wholly under their power—which is why it is called fallen. It is therefore hostile to the Kingdom, not by nature, but because of the present state of that nature. Consequently, everyone who lives by the laws of this world becomes hostile to everyone who lives by the Kingdom and bears witness to it.
This opposition is as organic as that between wolves and sheep. Wolves do not attack sheep out of malice, but out of hunger. Indeed, the same is true of predators in general and their prey: it is nothing personal, only the necessity of survival. Unlike the well-known character in Krylov's fable, neither wolves nor other predators look for excuses. “It is your fault that I want to eat”—that is a human view of the situation; animals know nothing of such concepts, and their instincts tell them nothing about moral categories.
People who live by the laws of the fallen world often react in much the same way to witnesses of the Kingdom and to those who live its life. They want to get rid of such people, to make them disappear from the world and from their own lives simply because they are different—because they bring into the world and into those people's own lives something that will destroy the existing order of things, outside which the fallen human being cannot imagine life. Unlike wolves and other predators, of course, people usually find some way to justify this desire. Yet at its core is the same instinct of self-preservation, the desire to survive and not perish that drives a wolf to attack a flock of sheep. Until a person wishes to change, until they wish to escape the power of the evil in which the fallen world lies, they will react to witnesses of the Kingdom as a predator reacts to prey—not from any personal motive, but simply according to the law of this world.
13
13:46 Then Paul and Barnabas speaking boldly, said - Those who hinder others must be publicly reproved. It was necessary - Though ye are not worthy: he shows that he had not preachedto them, from any confidence of their believing, but seeing ye judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life - They indeed judged none but themselves worthy of it. Yet their rejecting of the Gospel was the same as saying, "We are unworthy of eternal life." Behold! - A thing now present! An astonishing revolution! We turn to the Gentiles - Not that they left off preaching to the Jews in other places. But they now determined to lose no more time at Antioch on their ungrateful countrymen, but to employ themselves wholly in doing what they could for the conversion of the Gentiles there.
13:47 For so hath the Lord commanded us - By sending us forth, and giving us an opportunity of fulfilling what he had foretold.I have set thee - The Father speaks to Christ. Isa 49:6.
13:48 As many as were ordained to eternal life - St. Luke does not say fore - ordained. He is not speaking of what was done from eternity, but of what was then done, through the preaching of the Gospel. He is describing that ordination, and that only, which was at the very time of hearing it. During this sermon those believed, says the apostle, to whom God then gave power to believe. It is as if he had said, "They believed, whose hearts the Lord opened;" as he expresses it in a clearly parallel place, speaking of the same kind of ordination, Act 16:14, etc It is observable, the original word is notonce used in Scripture to express eternal predestination of any kind. The sum is, all those and those only, who were now ordained, now believed. Not that God rejected the rest: it was his will that they also should have been saved: but they thrust salvation from them. Nor were they who then believed constrained to believe. But grace was then first copiously offered them. And they did not thrust it away, so that a great multitude even of Gentiles were converted. In a word, the expression properly implies, a present operation of Divine grace working faith in the hearers.