Luk 22:29 | KingComments | STEP | After the gentle exhortation to serve and not to want to be the greatest, the Lord has an enormous encouragement for His disputing disciples. This can only be said by someone who is truly the youngest. Such a person considers the other person high. We can only really serve if we hold our fellow believers in high esteem. The Lord gives an impressive testimony of those who have shown and will show so much weakness and failure. He tells them that they have always stood by Him in His trials. If we really know how the disciples are and how we as disciples are, such a statement can only be incomparable love. He passes over the fact that they soon will all leave Him and that one of them will deny Him. He has called them into His service and He has helped them in their service and He has kept them all the time. And yet He explains the fact that they have always stood by Him in His trials as their perseverance! He also has a huge reward for them. He has for them a kingdom, which means a task to rule and an area to rule over, just as His Father has given that to Him. Here the Lord Jesus places His disciples at the same level before the Father as He. The pleasure that the Father has in giving them the kingdom ( ) is the pleasure of the Son. The Father and the Son agree in this and the disciples are the object of it. However, the first thing is not reigning, but fellowship with Christ, which is expressed in eating and drinking at His table. What a great privilege that He calls us to do that. He has fulfilled the whole work, He deserves everything and in His great grace He lets us share in it, because we were allowed to believe in Him. How great He is! From the fellowship with Him, His disciples may sit on thrones to judge the twelve tribes of Israel. The table is the symbol of personal family intimacy; the throne is the symbol of the public display of majesty. There is a throne for everyone who has not sought a throne for himself here on earth, but has followed the Lord in His rejection. The disciples are given a task of reigning over Israel. Judging does not mean executing the verdict, because that has already happened when the time of reign for the disciples comes. The time of reign is preceded by the judgments we find in the book of Revelation. Judging here means governing with insight for the better, as a blessing.

‏ Luke 22:29

Encouragements

After the gentle exhortation to serve and not to want to be the greatest, the Lord has an enormous encouragement for His disputing disciples. This can only be said by someone who is truly the youngest. Such a person considers the other person high. We can only really serve if we hold our fellow believers in high esteem. The Lord gives an impressive testimony of those who have shown and will show so much weakness and failure. He tells them that they have always stood by Him in His trials. If we really know how the disciples are and how we as disciples are, such a statement can only be incomparable love.

He passes over the fact that they soon will all leave Him and that one of them will deny Him. He has called them into His service and He has helped them in their service and He has kept them all the time. And yet He explains the fact that they have always stood by Him in His trials as their perseverance!

He also has a huge reward for them. He has for them a kingdom, which means a task to rule and an area to rule over, just as His Father has given that to Him. Here the Lord Jesus places His disciples at the same level before the Father as He. The pleasure that the Father has in giving them the kingdom (Lk 12:32) is the pleasure of the Son. The Father and the Son agree in this and the disciples are the object of it. However, the first thing is not reigning, but fellowship with Christ, which is expressed in eating and drinking at His table.

What a great privilege that He calls us to do that. He has fulfilled the whole work, He deserves everything and in His great grace He lets us share in it, because we were allowed to believe in Him. How great He is!

From the fellowship with Him, His disciples may sit on thrones to judge the twelve tribes of Israel. The table is the symbol of personal family intimacy; the throne is the symbol of the public display of majesty.

There is a throne for everyone who has not sought a throne for himself here on earth, but has followed the Lord in His rejection. The disciples are given a task of reigning over Israel. Judging does not mean executing the verdict, because that has already happened when the time of reign for the disciples comes. The time of reign is preceded by the judgments we find in the book of Revelation. Judging here means governing with insight for the better, as a blessing.