The Life of Jesus in Four Accounts 8 min read Lesson 8 of 12

Luke’s long journey south, the three predictions the disciples could not hear, a rich man who went away, a tax collector who came down, and the ransom

The Road to Jerusalem

After Caesarea Philippi the Gospels change direction. Luke says it in a sentence: he set his face to go to Jerusalem, and then spends ten chapters on the road. Three times on the way Jesus says plainly what will happen there, and three times the disciples change the subject. Two men meet him on the road, one who had everything and one who had taken it, and the road ends with a sentence about what the journey is for.

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Lesson 8 of 12 · South

From the confession onward the life has a direction, and the direction is Jerusalem. Luke marks the turn with one sentence and then gives the road ten chapters, most of them found nowhere else, the Samaritan, the prodigal, Martha and Mary, Zacchaeus. Mark gives the road three predictions: three times Jesus tells the Twelve, in growing detail, that the Son of Man will be handed over, killed and raised, and three times they respond with something else, a rebuke, an argument about who is greatest, a request for the best seats. The verb in all three is handed over, the word the Gospels will use for Judas, for the priests and for Pilate, and, in Paul, for God. On the road a rich man asks what to do and cannot do it; a rich collector of taxes climbs a tree and can. The road ends, in Mark, with the one sentence in the first three Gospels where Jesus says what his death is for: a ransom for many.

He set his face

Luke gives the turn a single verse, and the phrase in it is Isaiah’s.

It came to pass, when the days were near that he should be taken up, he intently set his face to go to Jerusalem — Luke 9:51 · WEB

Read the comment on He Set His Face

When the days were near that he should be taken up, he intently set his face to go to Jerusalem. The servant in Isaiah 50 sets his face like a flint toward the ones who will strike him; Luke borrows the phrase, and "taken up" looks past the cross to the ascension that only Luke will narrate. From here to chapter 19 Jesus is on the road, and Luke fills the road with material the other Gospels lack, so that most of what people remember as the teaching of Jesus was taught, in Luke’s telling, on the way to die.

Three times

“He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.” Mark 8:31 · WEB
The Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again: the first prediction, at Caesarea Philippi, answered by Peter’s rebuke.
“for he was teaching his disciples, and said to them, “The Son of Man is being handed over to the hands of men, and they will kill him; and when he is killed, on the third day he will rise again.”” Mark 9:31 · WEB
The Son of Man is being handed over to the hands of men, and they will kill him; and when he is killed, on the third day he will rise again: the second, in Galilee, answered by an argument among the Twelve about who was greatest.
““Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem. The Son of Man will be delivered to the chief priests and the scribes. They will condemn him to death, and will deliver him to the Gentiles. They will mock him, spit on him, scourge him, and kill him. On the third day he will rise again.”” Mark 10:33–34 · WEB
Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem. The Son of Man will be delivered to the chief priests and the scribes; they will condemn him to death, and deliver him to the Gentiles; they will mock him, spit on him, scourge him, and kill him: the third, on the road, answered by James and John asking to sit at his right and left.
““Now my soul is troubled. What shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this time’? But I came to this time for this cause.” John 12:27 · WEB
Now my soul is troubled. What shall I say? Father, save me from this time? But I came to this time for this cause: John’s equivalent, spoken in Jerusalem, with no Gethsemane to follow — this is his Gethsemane.

Mark arranges the three so that each is answered by a failure, and each failure is answered by a teaching on service: the first shall be last, whoever would be great must be a servant. The disciples’ deafness is not stupidity. They had confessed him Christ, and Christ did not mean this.

παραδίδωμι paradídōmi G3860

from παρά and δίδωμι; to surrender, i.e yield up, intrust, transmit:--betray, bring forth, cast, commit, deliver (up), give (over, up), hazard, put in prison, recommend.

To hand over, deliver up, give into another’s hands; to betray, to commit, to entrust. It is the Gospels’ word for the whole chain of the passion: Judas hands Jesus to the priests, the priests to Pilate, Pilate to the soldiers. It is also the word the second prediction uses with no agent named, the Son of Man is being handed over, and Paul supplies one: God did not spare his own Son but handed him over for us all (Romans 8:32). The same verb, used of a betrayer and of the Father, is the New Testament’s way of saying that the cross was done to him and given by him at once.

Two rich men

Luke’s road has a pair of scenes that answer each other, and Mark tells the first with a detail the others omit.

As he was going out into the way, one ran to him, knelt before him, and asked him, “Good Teacher, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?” Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except one—God. You know the commandments: ‘Do not murder,’ ‘Do not commit adultery,’ ‘Do not steal,’ ‘Do not give false testimony,’ ‘Do not defraud,’ ‘Honor your father and mother.’” He said to him, “Teacher, I have observed all these things from my youth.” Jesus looking at him loved him, and said to him, “One thing you lack. Go, sell whatever you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me, taking up the cross.” But his face fell at that saying, and he went away sorrowful, for he was one who had great possessions. — Mark 10:17–22 · WEB

Read the comment on What God Has Joined, and the Children

Good Teacher, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life? You know the commandments. Teacher, I have observed all these from my youth. Jesus looking at him loved him, and said, one thing you lack: go, sell whatever you have and give to the poor, and come, follow me. But his face fell, and he went away sorrowful, for he was one who had great possessions. Only Mark says Jesus loved him. The man is not a hypocrite; he has kept the law and he wants more, and he is asked for the one thing he cannot part with. Nine chapters later in Luke, at Jericho, a chief tax collector too short to see over the crowd climbs a sycamore, is called down by name, and gives half of everything away unasked: today salvation has come to this house, because he also is a son of Abraham (Luke 19:9-10). The man who kept the commandments went away. The man who had broken them came down the tree. Luke set the two on the same road so that a reader would ask why.

The ransom

At the end of the third prediction, after James and John have asked for thrones, comes the sentence.

For the Son of Man also came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” — Mark 10:45 · WEB

Read the comment on A Ransom for Many, and Bartimaeus

For the Son of Man also came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. It is the only place in Matthew, Mark and Luke where Jesus says what his death will accomplish, and the word is a price paid to free a slave or a captive. "For many" is Isaiah 53’s phrase for the servant who bears the sin of many. The sentence is short, and Christian theology has built centuries on it, and the reader should know that the theories of the atonement, to whom the ransom was paid and what exactly it bought, are later; the Gospel gives the image and the word and moves on to Jericho.

What the road asks

It asks the reader to walk it knowing where it goes. The disciples walked it not knowing, or refusing to know, and argued about greatness while being told about a cross. Luke fills the road with the best-loved stories in the Gospels, and every one of them is told by a man who has set his face toward the place where he will be killed. To read the parables of Luke 10 to 19 as the sayings of a teacher on a walking tour is to miss what Luke did with them. They are said on the way to Jerusalem, by someone who knew.