Luk 9:22-27 | KingComments | STEP | After Peter’s wonderful testimony that He is the Christ of God, the Lord gives them the warning and the order not to say this to others. This order must have surprised them because so far their testimony about Him has been precisely that He is the Christ. The Lord makes it clear to them that the moment has come when not His earthly glory as Messiah lies before Him, but His death and His resurrection as the Son of Man. His title “Son of Man” has a larger scope than “Messiah”. Messiah He is to His people Israel, while He, as the Son of Man, is connected with all men and all creation. His suffering and death have consequences not only for His earthly people, but for all creation. It is mainly the religious leaders of His people who will kill Him. They cherish a deadly hatred against Him. For now, the crowds are not yet against Him. They just seek Him, they are attracted by Him. Only when the Lord is captured they get under the influence of the leaders and turn massively against Him. So influenceable is the popular opinion if there is no personal faith in Christ.

‏ Luke 9:22-27

First Announcement of the Suffering

After Peter’s wonderful testimony that He is the Christ of God, the Lord gives them the warning and the order not to say this to others. This order must have surprised them because so far their testimony about Him has been precisely that He is the Christ. The Lord makes it clear to them that the moment has come when not His earthly glory as Messiah lies before Him, but His death and His resurrection as the Son of Man.

His title “Son of Man” has a larger scope than “Messiah”. Messiah He is to His people Israel, while He, as the Son of Man, is connected with all men and all creation. His suffering and death have consequences not only for His earthly people, but for all creation.

It is mainly the religious leaders of His people who will kill Him. They cherish a deadly hatred against Him. For now, the crowds are not yet against Him. They just seek Him, they are attracted by Him. Only when the Lord is captured they get under the influence of the leaders and turn massively against Him. So influenceable is the popular opinion if there is no personal faith in Christ.

Take Up the Cross and Follow

Directly following what He said about His suffering, rejection and death, He tells His disciples that this will also be part of all who want to follow Him. This suffering then only concerns the suffering done to them by people. In His atoning suffering on the cross no one can follow Him or share in it. He did that work all alone. He was the only One Who could do it. But following Him on His way of defamation through this world is open to anyone who wants it. However, there are conditions attached to it in order to actually be able to do it.

The first condition is that someone must deny himself, that is to say that he puts his own will in the hands of the Lord Jesus and no longer pursues the things he himself wants. That is an inner matter. The second condition is to take up his cross, that is to say that he is prepared to undergo the reproach that the world has for him. That is an outer matter. Someone who went through the city with a cross on his back to the place of execution was a target of mockery for the people. Such a person had nothing more to expect from life, his sentence was fixed and he was on his way to the place where his life would end. That is what the Lord asks of a disciple when He puts this before him.

He doesn’t ask us to occasionally do something great for Him, some heroic act that people admire and about which a book can be written or a movie can be made. He wants us to identify “daily” with Him in His rejection. It has to be made true every day. This requires perseverance and not an occasional act of faith.

No matter how foolish it sounds, the way of life is the way of self-denial and the taking up of the cross. If we don’t go that way because we want to enjoy life here and now, if we want to save our lives, then the result will be that we lose it. But if we lose our lives for His sake, that is to say, if we give control of it to Him, we will save it. It comes down to faith in Him and His promises and that while He is on His way to the cross. It means choosing His side and following Him on that way.

The Lord also appeals to the sober mind. Imagine that you win the whole world, but you lose yourself, you’re going down, you will perish by it, or you will forfeit yourself, that means you suffer spiritual damage (1Cor 3:15), you suffer detriment, what is the profit of it? You can enjoy it briefly and only to a limited extent. When your stomach is full, you just have to stop eating, even though there are tons of the most delicious food around you. If you have access to the whole world, you can go anywhere you want and do anything you want, but it stops once. And then? Then comes eternity, where only what you have done for the Lord Jesus in your life counts.

Whoever wants to follow the Lord Jesus must be like Him. Whoever wants to follow Him, but does not want to be like Him, does not want to be identified with Him, but is ashamed of Him and His words, will be treated by Him in the same way when He comes back in glory.

The Lord makes us clear in a warning way what we lose if we confess Him outwardly, but deny Him as soon as it costs us anything. We lose His recognition. To be ashamed of Him means to be afraid to stand up for Him, so there is no testimony of Him. If He comes in His majesty, He will openly acknowledge all who have shared in His rejection, but He will then openly be ashamed of all who have been ashamed of Him in His rejection. The shame of the Lord means that He will not be able to recognize such a person as one who belongs to Him.

He comes in His glory, that is His own glory as the Son of Man. Then there is no more humiliation, but glorious majesty. He also comes in the glory of His Father. The glory of the Father is then not only heard in the voice at His baptism, or on the mountain of transfiguration as we see in the following verses, but will then be impressively visible to all. When He comes in His glory, also the holy angels are with Him. They will not announce Him as born on earth with as a sign a child wrapped in cloths, but on His command they will collect everything that is offensive from His kingdom and burn it with fire.

The Lord Jesus in His Glory

When the Lord Jesus has spoken in this way about His coming in glory, He promises some of those who stand with Him that they will see that glory before they die. That is, they will not only see the kingdom after they have died and in due course be raised to enter the kingdom, but during their life they will see the kingdom of God in its glorious and final form.

This announcement is fulfilled after only about eight days. Luke speaks of “some eight days” because the number eight represents the beginning of a new period. The number seven represent a complete period. The seventh day, the Sabbath, is fulfilled in the glory of the realm of peace. The new of the eighth day is the establishment of the kingdom of God, of which Christ is the radiant center and of which the glory flows into eternity (2Pet 1:11 ; 2Pet 3:18).

The Lord takes Peter, John and James with Him because later they will be pillars in the church (Gal 2:9) and He wants to strengthen their faith to that end. By doing so, they will also be able to strengthen the faith of others. The Lord’s goal to go up the mountain is to pray. This is again a striking and characteristic remark for Luke representing Him as the dependent Man.

While He is praying, His face gets a different look and also His clothing changes. His face was that of an ordinary person, a face that did not stand out among other faces. Now it changes. Luke only notes that it becomes different, that it undergoes a metamorphosis. His face gets the glory that fits the glory of heaven. It is a glory that we also receive when we look at Him in His glory, because thereby we are transformed into the same image from glory to glory (2Cor 3:18).

Luke also mentions that His clothing becomes white and gleaming. His clothing indicates His appearance, His behavior. His behavior among people is always of unstained, radiant beauty, but only those who have an eye for it see that. You can’t see that in His appearance. Now it also becomes externally perceptible. This is part of His appearance in glory.