We have been enjoying further studies in Luke, to take time to contemplate the life of the Lord Jesus and to appreciate the significance of His titles in this gospel.
In Luke 1:35 we thought about Him as ‘the Son of God’, in Luke 3:23 we realise that men were permitted to suppose that He was the ‘son of Joseph’. In Luke chapter 4 the Lord Jesus explains in the synagogue in Nazareth that He has come to fulfil scripture. He refers to Himself as the Son of Man throughout the gospels and especially in Luke e.g. (Luke 6:5; 7:34; 9:56). This is an expression from the Old Testament, from one of Daniel’s night visions in Daniel 7:13, where one ‘like the Son of Man’ is brought to the Ancient of Days and is given universal and eternal dominion. This then is a title confirming His true humanity and absolute deity, the one who ‘is come to seek and to save that which was lost’ (Luke 19:10).
The Lord Jesus’s use of this title when He tells His disciples of future suffering, rejection and death would be hard for them to hear and understand (Luke 9:22). Even those in the inner circle, Peter, James and John, who were given a foretaste of His glory in Luke chapter 9 would later be filled with doubt and fear as the nation’s hostility and rejection of the Lord culminated in His arrest and trial. The Lord Jesus had told them: ‘The Son of man goeth, as it was determined’ (Luke 22:22); He found them sleeping, overwhelmed by grief whilst He communed with His Father in Gethsemane.
When after His death and resurrection, the Lord Jesus walks with and talks to two other disciples on the road to Emmaus, we hear Him say to them ‘Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?’ (Luke 24:26). He would (no doubt) have expounded to them this part of Daniel as he spoke to them from all the prophets ‘the things concerning himself’ (Luke 24:27). May we enjoy exposition and study today as we learn more about the Lord.
Paul Bannister
God raised Him from amongst the dead –
‘Herein is love!’
And set Him overall as Head –
‘Herein is love!’
Redemption’s work now fully done,
God glorified in His own Son,
We share the victory He hath won –
‘Herein is love!’
Frazer