Luk 22:53-54 | KingComments | STEP | As the Lord prepares His disciples for what is to come, a crowd comes. Someone is preceding the crowd to show the way. It is Judas. He is separate from the crowd. His crime is also much greater than that of the crowd. It is emphasized that he is “one of the twelve”. That’s what makes the whole betrayal so terrible. He knows where the Lord can be captured because he is familiar with His customs. After all, according to His custom, He is here ( ). Judas approaches the Lord Jesus to kiss Him. His hypocrisy and betrayal reach their climax here. His horrible kiss of betrayal is proverbial for falsity hidden in an expression of love. It has touched the Lord deeply that Judas betrays Him, the Son of Man, with a kiss. He could have prevented it, but allows it. The Son of Man undergoes every conceivable humiliation. The first humiliation was to be kissed by one of His twelve disciples, a kiss intended to put Him in the hands of His enemies. This expression of love is abhorrently abused to identify Him, Who is love, as a criminal. The Lord is surrounded by His disciples. In their love for Him they want to defend Him. They ask Him whether they will strike with the sword. They misunderstood His words about this. He did not gather them around Him to defend Him, but that they can learn from Him. Even before He has answered, one of them is so impulsive to strike with the sword. The only result is that he cuts off the right ear of the slave of the high priest. The doctor Luke has an eye for which ear it is. An application is that in our zeal to defend the Word of God, we should not cut off ears. In a spiritual sense, it means that we should not make people reluctant to listen to God’s Word by applying the Word to them in a harsh way. While everything around Him is in confusion and excitement, the Lord radiates rest. The fellowship with His Father in the garden of Gethsemane was followed by rest in His appearance to His environment full of enmity. In grace, He undoes the damage caused by Peter in his recklessness. He touches the slave’s ear and heals it. A healing process is not necessary. The use of violence was to be left to the crowd with swords and clubs. Christ continues to show mercy, even if He is surrounded by a crowd that’s trying to kill Him. After His beneficence to one of His enemies, He addresses the leaders of the crowd who have come to Him. They did not come with a need for a sick, but He has given healing. Nor have they come to hear Him, but He has a word for them. They have to listen to it first. He wants to show them their folly and injustice. Perhaps there is also someone in the crowd who is addressed in his conscience. Why did they go out as if He were a robber? Is He such a danger to society? No, He is not, but He is a danger to their position and in that sense to them He is a robber. They feel He is robbing them of their position among the people. Therefore He must be killed. The Lord makes it clear that not they, but He governs the events. They didn’t lay a hand on Him before, while He was with them daily in the temple. That was not because they didn’t want it, but because they couldn’t do it. That they can now stretch out their hands to Him is because they have received the power from God to do so. It is now their hour. They may do what they want because God’s time has come for the fulfillment of His plans. At the same time it is clear that they are completely in the power of darkness. How else could they come to capture Him as a robber, He, Who did only good to them?

‏ Luke 22:53-54

The Lord Is Captured

As the Lord prepares His disciples for what is to come, a crowd comes. Someone is preceding the crowd to show the way. It is Judas. He is separate from the crowd. His crime is also much greater than that of the crowd. It is emphasized that he is “one of the twelve”. That’s what makes the whole betrayal so terrible. He knows where the Lord can be captured because he is familiar with His customs. After all, according to His custom, He is here (Lk 22:39).

Judas approaches the Lord Jesus to kiss Him. His hypocrisy and betrayal reach their climax here. His horrible kiss of betrayal is proverbial for falsity hidden in an expression of love. It has touched the Lord deeply that Judas betrays Him, the Son of Man, with a kiss. He could have prevented it, but allows it. The Son of Man undergoes every conceivable humiliation. The first humiliation was to be kissed by one of His twelve disciples, a kiss intended to put Him in the hands of His enemies. This expression of love is abhorrently abused to identify Him, Who is love, as a criminal.

The Lord is surrounded by His disciples. In their love for Him they want to defend Him. They ask Him whether they will strike with the sword. They misunderstood His words about this. He did not gather them around Him to defend Him, but that they can learn from Him. Even before He has answered, one of them is so impulsive to strike with the sword. The only result is that he cuts off the right ear of the slave of the high priest. The doctor Luke has an eye for which ear it is.

An application is that in our zeal to defend the Word of God, we should not cut off ears. In a spiritual sense, it means that we should not make people reluctant to listen to God’s Word by applying the Word to them in a harsh way.

While everything around Him is in confusion and excitement, the Lord radiates rest. The fellowship with His Father in the garden of Gethsemane was followed by rest in His appearance to His environment full of enmity. In grace, He undoes the damage caused by Peter in his recklessness. He touches the slave’s ear and heals it. A healing process is not necessary. The use of violence was to be left to the crowd with swords and clubs. Christ continues to show mercy, even if He is surrounded by a crowd that’s trying to kill Him.

After His beneficence to one of His enemies, He addresses the leaders of the crowd who have come to Him. They did not come with a need for a sick, but He has given healing. Nor have they come to hear Him, but He has a word for them. They have to listen to it first. He wants to show them their folly and injustice. Perhaps there is also someone in the crowd who is addressed in his conscience. Why did they go out as if He were a robber? Is He such a danger to society? No, He is not, but He is a danger to their position and in that sense to them He is a robber. They feel He is robbing them of their position among the people. Therefore He must be killed.

The Lord makes it clear that not they, but He governs the events. They didn’t lay a hand on Him before, while He was with them daily in the temple. That was not because they didn’t want it, but because they couldn’t do it. That they can now stretch out their hands to Him is because they have received the power from God to do so. It is now their hour. They may do what they want because God’s time has come for the fulfillment of His plans. At the same time it is clear that they are completely in the power of darkness. How else could they come to capture Him as a robber, He, Who did only good to them?

The Denial by Peter

Then they arrest the Lord and lead Him out of the garden. Their destination is the house of the high priest. There lives the man who must maintain the connection between God and His people. This man is the great instrument of satan to radically establish the separation between God and His people.

At a distance Peter follows the crowd with his Lord in their midst. He makes use of the darkness to follow unobtrusively. He loves the Lord and therefore he follows. He is afraid of the people and therefore he follows at a distance. If we tremble for people, it is because we have not been with God.

The enemies of the Lord who captured Him have delivered their Arrestee, but they must remain available. It has become cold. That is why they kindle a fire. The cold outside also indicates the temperature of their cold hearts. Peter takes his place in their midst and identifies himself with the mockers (Psa 1:1). After following the Lord at a distance, a participation in warming himself to the fire of the Lord’s enemies can’t fail. Whoever distances himself from the Lord automatically moves in the direction of the world. Peter is not an enemy of the Lord, but at this moment he is an enemy of His cross (Phil 3:18).

The fire not only gives warmth, but also light. It is not a sharp light and Peter thinks he is relatively safe. Then he is recognized by a servant-girl who looks intently at him. She discovers in him someone who was also “with Him” and says that out loud to the others. Peter is shocked by the discovery. A servant-girl frightens the apostle. Instead of confessing the Lord, he reacts to the woman with an outright denial to know the Lord. Later in his letter he will write about always being ready to give an account (1Pet 3:15). He does so after he has learned the humbling lesson he is learning here.

Peter is not ready for this giving an account because he did not pray in view of the temptation in which he finds himself now. This first wrong step leads to following steps that are worse and lead further away from God. Shortly after that another person sees him and makes a remark, this time to Peter personally, that he is one “of them too”. The woman said that he was with the Lord, this one says that he belongs to the disciples of the Lord. After his denial belonging to the Lord, he now firmly denies to belong to the disciples of the Lord.

After denying the Lord the second time, an hour passes. For an hour, Peter had already been among the Lord’s enemies, with a denial twice. His conscience cannot be quiet. Yet he remains where he is, and he warms himself with the Lord’s enemies to the fire they have made.

Then comes the third confrontation. He is recognized again. This time he betrays his origins through his dialect. Peter will not only have warmed up, but also talked with the enemies of his Lord. He can only have participated in their vain conversations. He is unable to testify of his Lord, by his false position and his double denial. On this third discovery, Peter once again denies that he knows the Lord Jesus. This time he pretends not to understand the other. He says as much as: ‘What are you actually talking about? You’re telling me something I’ve never heard of.’

After this far-reaching denial, even while he is still speaking, the rooster crows, as the Lord has said. Just as He controls the heart of men to give Him what He needs, so He controls the animal He needs. At this unusual time he lets the rooster crow to remind His failing disciple of His word.

A crowing rooster is the symbol of awakening. The Lord makes the rooster crow to awaken Peter’s conscience. But there is not only an awakened conscience. There is also the Lord. Without Him, an awakened conscience ends in despair and suicide, as with Judas. To true disciples He shows His face. He never fails. Just as He did not previously fail in His faithfulness to warn, so He does not hide His face from Peter after he has denied Him.

Amid all the mockery and abuse, He turns around and looks at Peter. Suffering does not occupy Him so much that He forgets Peter. When He looks at Peter, Peter remembers the word the Lord said about his denial. The memory of this leads Peter to repentance. He goes out and weeps bitterly. The tears are tears of true repentance about who he himself is and what he has come to. Also now God still leads people to repentance and conversion through His Word. God’s Word is a mirror that shows man who he is in his sinfulness.