CRITICAL NOTES
Luke 17:20. Demanded of the Pharisees.—We can scarcely think that they had any good end in view in asking this question; it is probable they expected to get some answer which might be used against Jesus. Their idea of “the kingdom of God” was that it would be an outward manifestation of God’s sovereignty in the world, in which a splendid position of supremacy would be assigned to the Jewish nation. With observation.—I.e., in such a manner as to be observed with the outward eye.
Luke 17:21. Within you.—Or “In the midst of you” (R.V. margin). The latter rendering is certainly to be preferred. The kingdom of God was certainly not in the hearts of the Pharisees, though it, as a visible society, was among them in the community of believers in Christ. All through the remainder of the chapter it is a visible coming of Jesus that is referred to. The rendering “within you” would yield a perfectly valid sense, but one not at all in harmony with the eschatological character of this discourse.
Luke 17:22. One of the days.—I.e., even a single day. Perhaps one of the days which He had passed with them on earth; but more probably, as regret for the past was superseded by hope for the future, one of the days which would follow His return.
Luke 17:23. See here.—False reports of His return. His return would be sudden, and not of a local character. Cf. Matthew 24:23-27.
Luke 17:24. For as the lightning.—“The lightning, lighting both ends of heaven at once, seen of all beneath it, can only find its full similitude in His personal coming, whom every eye shall see (Revelation 1:7)” (Alford).
Luke 17:25. But first.—The Son of man must be taken away before He can return (Luke 17:26-30). The security and carelessness of the world before the Flood, and of the inhabitants of Sodom before its destruction by fire, are referred to as illustrating the condition in which the world will be before the second coming of Christ.
Luke 17:31. Upon the house-top.—A place of cool and quiet resort. Not come down.—I.e., not re-enter his house, but escape away by the flight of steps outside. Not return back.—As in the case of Lot’s wife, who turned back in heart to Sodom.
Luke 17:33. Shall seek.—Perhaps rather, “Shall have sought”—i.e., in his preceding life, shall lose his life then. Preserve it.—Rather, “Make it alive,” or bring it forth to life. The figure is that of parturition—an emblem of the birth of soul and body to life and glory everlasting.
Luke 17:34. In that night.—Time of peace and security: the Son of man cometh “as a thief In the night.” The one shall be taken.—I.e., by the angels (cf. Matthew 24:31): he who is left is rejected, for his unworthiness.
Luke 17:35. Two women.—Grinding at a mill, as is still common in the East.
Luke 17:36. Two men.—This verse is omitted in all the best MSS. and versions; omitted in R.V.; it is evidently derived from the parallel passage in St. Matthew.
Luke 17:37. Where, Lord?—This is a question put by the disciples. Where, i.e., should this manifestation take place? They have not taken in what Christ has said about His manifestation instantaneously to the whole world, and about the folly of listening to the cry “See here! see there!” (Luke 17:23). The answer is a re-affirmation of the universality of the Lord’s appearance and of God’s judgment. Eagles.—Rather, “vultures,” as eagles do not prey on carrion. “As the vultures are found wherever there is a carcase to prey upon, so the judgment of Christ will come wherever there are sinners to be judged—i.e., over the whole world” (Speaker’s Commentary).
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Luke 17:20-37
The Coming of the Kingdom.—The whole of Jewish society were at this time in anxious expectation of the establishment on earth of the Messianic kingdom; and, as we learn from Acts 1:6, the apostles themselves, even after the resurrection of Jesus, partook to a very large extent of the conceptions concerning that kingdom which were current at that time. On one occasion (John 6:15) the multitude were about to attempt to force Jesus to establish a kingdom of a kind they wished to see—an attempt which He defeated by withdrawing from their midst. Here He is asked to state definitely His opinion concerning the manifestation of Messianic power. In His reply we note that He first addresses Himself to the Pharisees who put the question, and then to His disciples; and that to the one class He speaks of the spirituality of the kingdom of God, and to the other of its outward manifestation.
I. The spirituality of the kingdom (Luke 17:20-21).—The question put to Christ revealed the carnal and erroneous conception of the Divine kingdom which filled the minds of the Pharisees. They thought of the coming of that kingdom as a sudden and outward change in human society, in which the nation to which they belonged would attain to the highest degree of earthly prosperity, and enjoy supremacy over all the other peoples of the earth. They knew that at the time when they put the question to Jesus the condition of matters after which they longed was still in the future, but they anticipated the coming of a time when they would be able to say, “Here it is! The kingdom of God is among us.” The reply of Jesus was that the kingdom had come, though they failed to recognise it. It was present in the person of Him as its Founder, and of those who had accepted Him as the Christ, and was a spiritual condition rather than an altered state of outward circumstances. They wished to see the kingdom, but they needed to have the spiritual sense by which to recognise it; as He said to Nicodemus, “Except a man be born again He cannot see the kingdom of God.”
II. The outward manifestation of the kingdom (Luke 17:22-37).—To the Pharisees, who were blinded by religious prejudice, Jesus spoke of the spirituality of the kingdom, but to His own disciples, who were qualified by their faith in Him to receive further instruction in the truth, He spoke of the outward manifestation of His kingdom as associated with His return to earth. First of all—
1. He told of the time and manner of His return (Luke 17:22-25). He did not, indeed, give any indication of the precise time of His return, but He implied that it would not be soon. The patience of His disciples would be tried; they would long for His re-appearing, and think regretfully of the days when He dwelt on earth, and their eager expectation would predispose them to listen to false announcements of His return. Yet they would be left in no doubt of the fact when He actually did return. All dwelling on the earth would behold His glory and the brightness of His coming. Yet before He entered upon that glory, which all then would see, He must suffer shameful rejection.
2. The state of the world at the time of His return (Luke 17:26-30). It would be like the time before the great catastrophes of the Flood and the destruction of the Cities of the Plain. Men would be plunged in a carnal security. All the ordinary occupations of secular life would be in regular process; but religious faith and religious feeling would have disappeared from the hearts of the great majority of men. The return of the Saviour would overwhelm the secure, and involve them in ruin.
3. How safety is to be secured at the moment of His return (Luke 17:31-33). Those who have their hearts set upon Him, and not upon earthly things, will be prepared to join Him when He appears. Those who are suddenly surprised, as they either rest or labour, at the time of His appearing will need to leave everything behind them and to separate themselves in thought and desire from all their earthly possessions. The great lesson, therefore, is suggested to all of us that if we are to find safety at that supreme crisis, we must live in a spirit of detachment from things of earth—“be in the world and yet not of it.”
4. Human society sifted when Christ returns (Luke 17:34-37). In the present condition of the world no outward marks distinguish the true from the spurious disciples of Christ—those who will be ready to ascend to meet Him in the air when He returns (1 Thessalonians 4:17) from those who will then be found unprepared. But His appearing will bring to light the true characters and dispositions of men. A separation will be made between the good and evil, and all ties will be dissolved but that between the Saviour and His true-hearted followers. Yet the Divine judgment upon the worldly and ungodly will not be altogether postponed until the return of Christ. Wheresoever society becomes thoroughly careless and corrupt, judgment overtakes it, as swiftly and as surely as the vultures fall upon a carcase.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Luke 17:20-37
Luke 17:20-21. “When the kingdom of God shall come.”—The worldly feelings and selfish ignorance of the Pharisees were displayed in the question they put to Jesus; they were fully confident of their place in the kingdom of God, and were merely anxious to be informed when that kingdom would appear. Jesus, in His reply
(1), annihilates their expectations of its glorious manifestation;
(2) withdraws the kingdom from the visible world as it exists in space; and
(3) transfers it to the inner spiritual world.
We may Learn from This Statement—
I. A lesson of charity.
II. We may find in it ground of encouragement.
III. It administers a necessary caution.
Luke 17:20. “Not with observation.”—In another place, indeed, we are told that both comings of the kingdom, the first and the last, are with observation, and may be known by the signs of the times; but it is here meant that it was not with such signs as the Pharisees intended, of which the bodily eye and ear could be witness, but with such indications as faith alone could perceive.—Williams.
Luke 17:21. “The kingdom of God is within you.”—The words do not simply mean that the kingdom of God is an internal spiritual matter, for Christ goes on to speak of it as an external phenomenon. Humanity must be prepared for the new external and Divine state of things by a spiritual work wrought in the depths of the heart; and it is this internal advent which Jesus thinks good to put first in relief before such interlocutors.—Godet.
I. The dark hour that precedes the manifestation of the kingdom in its external form.
II. The dangers of deception and of self-delusion to which His disciples would be exposed.
III. The revelation of Divine things in their glory by the Son of Man.—Now He is despised and rejected of men, but the day is coming in which all will see and recognise His heavenly majesty.
Luke 17:22. “One of the days of the Son of Man.”—Either one of the past days of communion with Christ upon earth or one of the days of His future triumphant reign. Regret is only another form of desire. When the apostles or their successors shall have passed a long time upon the earth in the absence of their Lord, and have reached the end of their preaching and apologetic demonstrations, and around them scepticism, materialism, pantheism, and deism, gain ground more and more, there will spring up in their souls an ardent longing after that Lord who remains silent and concealed; they will desire some Divine manifestation, “a day” like the days of old, as a prelude of final deliverance, to sustain their hearts and to strengthen the faltering Church. Yet it shall not be given them; to the end it will be necessary to walk by faith and not by sight.—Godet.
Days Desired and Not Seen.—There was no fault in the disciples’ regretful desire for the “days of the Son of Man.” It would be bitter for them to feel that they could not return. But they could see Him no more in this life. He was gone from the earth. Can we apply the text, without blame, to any limited experience in our own lives.
I. To our Lord’s days.—How full of opportunities of spiritual improvement! In continental travel, who has not felt the want of a Sunday? But this was only a voluntary and brief suspension of privilege. Professional life in distant lands means to many the loss of public worship and of all outward aids to keeping the day holy. How often will one long, in these experiences, for the bygone experiences of English Sundays. Use them, then, diligently now. Do not spend them in trifling and idleness. The days will come when you will be sorry for all this. Lose not, then, for want of a little early diligence, advantages which, in their highest form, you can never afterwards get back.
II. In their worst sense the words of the text were never fulfilled to any of their first hearers but one.—Judas found them true; the rest found them fulfilled in a higher form. If they are ever to be fulfilled in us, it will be in their worst sense. We are all living in the “days of the Son of Man.” All of us have an offered Saviour. Live as if there were none. Trifle away these days of grace. Will we not live bitterly to regret such folly? Still, indeed, may such see “one of the days of the Son of Man,” and pass through an agony of penitence into peace. But let the neglect be continued into or beyond middle age, and the desire for one of these days not be awakened. How soon will the text be fulfilled in such a case? Sooner or later there will come a time—many times, if one be not sufficient—when everything in this world will be felt to be a blank, and nothing satisfying but that which is heavenly and eternal. “Too late!” will be the bitter, disappointing thought. “I must reap as I have sowed.” In the old age, the death-bed of the sinner, neglectful, unrepentant, in the judgment and eternity of the impenitent in the world beyond, see awfully fulfilled the solemn prediction of the text. Oh! anticipate and prevent such a dread experience. “Now” is “one of the days of the Son of Man.” Escape betimes from the misery of all miseries, the desire to see one of these days, and not to see it. Truth seen too late, opportunities lost, but well remembered! Who can fitly speak of the soul-agonies of a final rejection?—Vaughan.
Luke 17:23. “Go not after them.”—It is taken for granted that there will be a visible manifestation of the kingdom of Christ, and the disciples are warned against false announcements of its appearance. At first this idea seems contrary to the statement in Luke 17:21. Yet in that verse it is the spiritual kingdom, the advent of which cannot be observed or proclaimed; here it is a question of the visible kingdom.
Luke 17:24. “As the lightning.”—The coming of the Lord will be universal and instantaneous. He will be His own witness, and His appearing will be manifest to all.
Luke 17:25. “First must He suffer.”—The rupture already begun between Israel and its Messiah will be consummated, and the rejection of the Messiah by His people will have as its consequence the removal of His person, and the invisibility of His rule for a whole epoch of history—an epoch which, according to Luke 13:35, will only conclude with the conversion of Israel. And Jesus announces that this epoch, during which the world will see Him no longer, will end in an utterly materialistic state of matters, which will be terminated only by His coming (Luke 17:26-30).—Godet.
Luke 17:26-30. Historical Parallels.—The final manifestation of things Divine will bring salvation and blessing to the pious, and will overwhelm in destruction those who are in a state of carnal security. As it was with the unbelievers in the antediluvian world and with the guilty inhabitants of Sodom, so will it be with the ungodly “in the day when the Son of Man is revealed.”
1. The dawning of that day will be sudden and unexpected.
2. It will be hailed by some with joy, while to others it will be a day of destruction and terror.
Luke 17:26-29. “The days of Noah … of Lot.”—One thing is remarkable throughout the whole of this representation—that the contemporaries of Noah and Lot are not, by any means, described as wicked and vicious, but merely as absorbed in things of this world. That the vicious will go into perdition is easily understood; but the man who, without any glaring evil deeds, wastes his life upon external things, fancies himself secure, in this very negativeness, from the judgment of God—he little thinks that his whole being is sinful because it is worldly and alienated from God (James 4:4). The discourse of the Lord is directed against this carnal security, and not against vice, which is condemned by the Law.—Olshausen.
Luke 17:26. “As it was in the days of Noah.”—I.e., during the hundred and twenty years while the work was being prepared. While believers long with increasing fervour for the return of the Lord, the carnal security of the world about them becomes deeper and deeper.
Luke 17:27. “They did eat,” etc.—Rather, “they were eating; they were drinking.” This was their life.
Luke 17:28. “They bought, they sold,” etc.—The enumeration of the various occupations of the inhabitants of Sodom implies a more complex and advanced state of civilisation than was known by the antediluvians.
Luke 17:29. “It rained fire.”—The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is not attributed in Scripture to the agency of water (i.e., to the waters of the sea of Sodom) drowning them, but of fire (Genesis 19:23-28). But the soil itself was also convulsed, and the waters of the Jordan, which before flowed through that region, were pent up in the Lacus Asphaltites or Dead Sea,—a striking emblem of the Lake of Fire.—Wordsworth.
Luke 17:30. “Even thus shall it be.”—What is here said of the end of the world is fulfilled and multiplied in little images in the life of each; in every case these are, by Divine appointment, preceding judgments which warn of the suddenness and surprise with which eternity overtakes each man. And for the same reason that from each the day of his death is hidden, in order that he may be always living in expectation of it, so it is also with the end of the world, that by every generation it may be expected. “Behold” (says Chrysostom), “we know the signs of old age, but we not the day of death; so we know not the end of the world, though we know the signs of its approaching.”—Williams.
I. The preparation needed for the day of the Son of Man—
1. Freedom from all dependence on earthly things (Luke 17:31-32).
2. Self-denial (Luke 17:33).
II. Human society sifted (Luke 17:34-36). By those who are prepared for the coming of Christ being caught up to meet Him (cf. 1 Thessalonians 4:17).
Luke 17:31-36. Entanglement in Earthly Affairs.—Jesus describes the disposition of soul which, in that supreme crisis, will be the condition of safety. The Lord passes with His heavenly train. The change in human society is effected in the twinkling of an eye. He takes to Himself all those inhabitants of the earth who, by their detachment from earthly possessions, are prepared in spirit to follow Him, and who mount up towards Him with free and joyous flight. The others, who are entangled in earthly affairs and possessions, remain behind. Their fate is like that of Lot’s wife, who perished with the goods from which she could not tear herself away.—Godet.
Luke 17:31. “On the house-top … in the field.”—The contemplative and the active life—that of those occupied in meditation and prayer, and that of those busy in the ordinary work of the world; let neither hesitate to follow the Lord when He appears, and to abandon all possessions, if they would avoid the fate of the wife of Lot.
Luke 17:32. “Remember Lot’s wife.”—
1. Her hopeful beginning in abandoning Sodom.
2. Her failure in the decisive hour of trial.
3. Her punishment.
The case of Lot’s wife warns us “to forget the things that are behind” (Philippians 3:13); her looking back implied regret at leaving the place where she had dwelt so long in comfort, and doubt as to whether there were good reasons for leaving the city.
Luke 17:33. “Whosoever shall seek,” etc.—St. Luke adds this that the desire of an earthly life may not prevent believers from passing rapidly through the midst of death to the salvation laid up for them in heaven. And Christ employs a strong expression to denote the frailty of the present life, when He says that souls are “preserved” (literally, “begotten into life”), when they are “lost.” His meaning is the same as if He had declared that men do not live in the world, because the beginning of that life which is real, and which is worthy of the name, is, to leave the world.—Calvin.
Luke 17:34. “Two men in one bed.”—Not our circumstances, but our hearts, will determine our future condition. Those prepared will be taken, whether they are asleep or at work, when the Lord comes. The reference may possibly be to husband and wife, as the word “men” is not in the original, and the translation “persons” would do equally well.
Luke 17:35. “Two women,” etc.—Those most closely related by earthly ties will, in the twinkling of an eye, be separated for ever.
Luke 17:37. “Wheresoever the body is.”—All history is a comment on these words. Wherever there is a Church or a people abandoned by the Spirit of Life, and so a carcase, tainting the atmosphere of God’s moral world, around it assemble the ministers and messengers of Divine justice—the eagles (or vultures, more strictly; because the true eagle does not feed on aught but what itself has slain)—the scavengers of God’s moral world, scenting out, by a mysterious instinct, the prey from afar, and charged to remove presently the offence out of the way.—Trench.
The Carrion and the Vultures:—“Where?” Tepid and idle curiosity is expressed. The Lord’s solemn warnings did not stir the disciples deeply. Our Lord refers to a universal future judgment. But the words are not exhausted in reference to that event. The same principles have often been embodied in lesser “comings of the Lord,” as will be displayed in world wide splendour and awfulness at the last.
I. These words are to us a revelation of a law which operates with unerring certainty through all the course of the world’s history.—E.g., the destruction of the Canaanites, the fall of Jerusalem, the French Revolution, the American War concerning slavery.
II. This law will have a far more tremendous accomplishment in the future.—Christ is Judge as well as Saviour. By Him the whole world is to be judged in righteousness.
III. This law need never touch us, nor need we know anything about it but by the hearing of the ear.—It is told us that we may escape it. “Repent” and you shall not become food for the vultures of Divine judgment. Take Christ as your Saviour, and in that dread hour you will be safe.—Maclaren.