NOTES for Luk 12:57

Other notes

For Luk 12:57

⁵⁷Yea, and why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right?

The Savior's words, addressed to people who, at first glance, are believers, make us think about what we notice and what we do not. Or, more precisely, what we want to notice and what we do not want to notice. Both today and in every age there have been many people, even believers, who more or less sincerely assured both others and themselves that, when it comes to spiritual life, they are doing everything possible, but not everything, they say, is within their power; and if that is so, what more can be asked of them? You cannot do more than you are able. Meanwhile, Jesus, addressing the people listening to Him, people who demand from Him certain signs proving His messiahship, advises them to pay attention to themselves.

The principle is simple: if you truly knew yourselves, Jesus tells them, then you would recognize Me as well, and you would not need any signs. And in the condition in which the people listening to the Savior were found, no signs would have helped them. The issue here is not necessarily that the people listening to Jesus were deliberately deceiving Him or themselves. The issue may also have been that His hearers were not, in the spiritual sense, themselves.

They were not their true selves - just as we very often are not our true selves. We do not live the true life that God gives us, and therefore there is nowhere for the life of the Kingdom to enter us. Indeed, our natural life is a stream that comes from God and is bound up with His breath, with that breath of life which defines our existence as people created in the image of God. And if we do not allow the stream of our life to flow freely, if we drive it into frameworks we have created - the frameworks of theories, concepts, religions created by us - then there is nowhere for the breath of the Kingdom to enter.

To live the life of the Kingdom, one must first become oneself. Then very many things become obvious which, as long as our life does not flow freely, cannot be proved to us by any miracles. This is what Jesus says to those who demand from Him proofs of His messiahship: become yourselves, and you will see everything yourselves. No better proof can be devised: every proof is by definition external, while here the issue is what comes from within, what a person becomes convinced of himself. Then he no longer needs any miracles: everything is clear to him without them.

For Luk 12:35-59

³⁵Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning;

³⁶And ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their lord, when he will return from the wedding; that when he cometh and knocketh, they may open unto him immediately.

³⁷Blessed are those servants, whom the lord when he cometh shall find watching: verily I say unto you, that he shall gird himself, and make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them.

³⁸And if he shall come in the second watch, or come in the third watch, and find them so, blessed are those servants.

³⁹And this know, that if the goodman of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched, and not have suffered his house to be broken through.

⁴⁰Be ye therefore ready also: for the Son of man cometh at an hour when ye think not.

⁴¹Then Peter said unto him, Lord, speakest thou this parable unto us, or even to all?

⁴²And the Lord said, Who then is that faithful and wise steward, whom his lord shall make ruler over his household, to give them their portion of meat in due season?

⁴³Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing.

⁴⁴Of a truth I say unto you, that he will make him ruler over all that he hath.

⁴⁵But and if that servant say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming; and shall begin to beat the menservants and maidens, and to eat and drink, and to be drunken;

⁴⁶The lord of that servant will come in a day when he looketh not for him, and at an hour when he is not aware, and will cut him in sunder, and will appoint him his portion with the unbelievers.

⁴⁷And that servant, which knew his lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes.

⁴⁸But he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more.

⁴⁹I am come to send fire on the earth; and what will I if it be already kindled?

⁵⁰But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!

⁵¹Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division:

⁵²For from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three.

⁵³The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother in law against her daughter in law, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.

⁵⁴And he said also to the people, When ye see a cloud rise out of the west, straightway ye say, There cometh a shower; and so it is.

⁵⁵And when ye see the south wind blow, ye say, There will be heat; and it cometh to pass.

⁵⁶Ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky and of the earth; but how is it that ye do not discern this time?

⁵⁷Yea, and why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right?

⁵⁸When thou goest with thine adversary to the magistrate, as thou art in the way, give diligence that thou mayest be delivered from him; lest he hale thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and the officer cast thee into prison.

⁵⁹I tell thee, thou shalt not depart thence, till thou hast paid the very last mite.

Today's reading touches on another theme, one very important for understanding what life in the Kingdom is. But the meaning of what Jesus says becomes clear only in the context of the situation of that transitional era which began with the coming of the Savior and in which we live. It could be called the era of the advancing Kingdom, and it will be completed by Jesus' return. But since we do not know the exact timing of this return, readiness is required always, every day and every hour.

In fact, this is the meaning of the parables Jesus tells (vv. 36-48). When the Gospel speaks about the nearness of the Kingdom, what is meant is not the date of Christ's second coming, but the fact that the Kingdom has already entered the world, that its presence for us today is no longer future but present; and if we notice nothing of the sort, it is only because we do not want to notice. Of course, sometimes for those to whom God entrusts ministries connected with the Kingdom, the apparent remoteness of the time when the process will be completed has a relaxing effect, like the effect produced on the unrestrained servant in the parable by the thought that the master was far away (v. 45).

It is not surprising that those who knew everything and, despite everything, allowed themselves to relax are called to a more serious account than those who knew less (vv. 47-48). What is interesting is something else. In the world there are those who know more and those who know less, but, as one can see, there are none who know nothing. It is no accident that Jesus compares the signs of the advancing Kingdom to the signs by which people in those days recognized a coming change in the weather: they were just as obvious and just as understandable to everyone, so that it was simply impossible not to notice them at all and understand nothing (vv. 54-57).

That is why the coming of the Kingdom divides people, and the division, as one can see, does not run along any national, class, or religious border, but across all borders, separating those who accept the Kingdom from those who reject it, people sometimes living not only in one country and one city, but even in one house (vv. 51-53). And this happens not because God needs divisions, but because the Kingdom is an absolute reality; it is impossible to enter it partly or halfway, and even entering it "almost completely" will not work: one enters the Kingdom either to the end and without looking back, or one does not enter at all. That is why in the Church, according to the word of the Apostle Paul, there can be "neither Greek nor Jew": if the Church remains the Kingdom and does not turn into a religious organization, one among many, then only one division remains relevant for it: between those who accept the Kingdom and those who reject it. All other divisions are conditional and relative; this one is absolute, as absolute as the division between eternal life and eternal death can be.