Jesus and the Language of Judgment, Part 4
Jesus and the Language of Judgment, Part 4
Luke
(avg. read time: 5–10 mins.)
Luke, the longest of the Gospels, features much unique material on Jesus’s judgment language, even where it parallels Matthew. It must be stressed again that our interest here is in Jesus’s use of this judgment language. As such, there is much unique Lukan material related to the subject of judgment in the first three chapters that will not be reviewed here.
The first text that is unique to Luke, although it has some degree of parallel with the Beatitudes of the Sermon of the Mount, comes from 6:20–26. Here we once again see the reference to the kingdom of God and reward for those who are blessed. In contrast, unlike in the Sermon on the Mount, we see woes pronounced on those who have contrasting characteristics, indicating that they face the prospect of condemnatory judgment.
Luke also features several texts that present what we have seen elsewhere of Jesus’s teaching on forgiveness and its inherent connection with judgment. We see this in Jesus’s connection of forgiveness of sins with canceling debts and with the summary statement to the woman who anointed his feet that “your faith has saved you” (7:40–50). Jesus’s teaching to forgive the repentant brother or sister, even if that person should sin again and again against you while repenting each time, is not only inherently connected to this theme of judgment, but is also informed by how God treats humans who act similarly, for none of us could withstand the judgment if God did not forgive the repentant (17:3–4). We see this in the way Jesus comments on the tax collector who prays for God’s mercy on him and how that man is described in legal language as going home “justified/vindicated” (18:9–14). After all, God’s response to him anticipates the same in the final judgment, wherein those whose lives were defined by repentance are those God declares vindicated or “in the right.” The cruciality of these links of forgiveness and repentance with judgment are also reiterated in how Jesus summarizes his gospel after his resurrection in 24:47.
In chs. 9 and 10 we find continuations of the teachings from the first noted text above. Jesus’s statement about those who are not fit/worthy of the kingdom of God is obviously imbued with the sense of judgment (9:61–62). Likewise, the shaking off of the dust is used here in protest against places that reject the gospel, which is in turn articulated as the proclamation that the kingdom of God has come near (10:11). Both aspects of this language have appeared elsewhere in reference to judgment.
Jesus’s teaching in 12:41–48 on faithful and unfaithful servants is similar to what we have seen in Matthew previously, but there are enough differences in content and placement to warrant a separate treatment here. The faithful servant is the one who the master finds at work when he arrives and he will in turn receive exaltation, receiving authority over more of what is the master’s. The unfaithful servant is the one who ignores his obligations and mistreats others, thinking he can get away with such in the master’s absence, but when the master arrives, he is cut in half (literally, “dichotomized”) or cut off and put with the others who are unfaithful. This is reminiscent of the use of the imagery in Matt 24 and both cases clearly point to judgment. There is also more to the version in Luke in that there are different degrees of punishment, so that the one who knew and did not do is given a more severe punishment than the one who did not know and acted wrongly. This illustrates the point that the one to whom much is given, much is required, and so the judgment of misusing what has been entrusted is more severe than for the one who was entrusted with little by comparison. It is noteworthy that when Jesus declares this teaching, he does not directly answer Peter’s question about whether the previous teaching on vigilance—again, defined in terms of faithfulness—in 12:35–40 is addressed to the disciples or to everyone. It seems that with these final notes Jesus is including everyone in the scope of this teaching, but it is most specifically directed as a warning to Jesus’s disciples, his servants.
The unique teaching we find in 13:1–9 provides us with something we have seen elsewhere primarily in the passion narrative: judgment on the historical plane. The Galileans who had died recently and those who had the tower of Siloam fall on them were not themselves the recipients of judgment, lest one think they were worse sinners than those spared such disaster. However, those who heard Jesus and did not respond with repentance would perish like them. Their perishing would indeed be a result of judgment. To further accentuate the warning, Jesus tells a parable about a fig tree that has not borne fruit, but is given some extra time, with the warning that it will be cut down if it does not bear fruit after the intervention. Given the comparisons involved, and given what we will see later in Luke 19, one could suggest that this text is operating in terms of both warning of judgment that is coming soon to the people and of the ultimate judgment, but that it is the judgment in the course of history that is primary here. Like the Olivet Discourse, this warning parallels what we see throughout the Prophets, where the destruction threatened is primarily that of a city or nation and all that is thereby entailed. The fig tree imagery in particular is noteworthy for how Jesus elsewhere connects it to this generation and their failure to recognize the time of their visitation (cf. Matt 21:18–21; 24:32–34; Mark 11:12–14, 20–24; 13:28–30; Luke 21:29–32).
Jesus’s teaching on humility and hospitality regarding banquets in Luke 14:7–14 is punctuated at two points by indications of judgment. In the first case, regarding how one should act when one is the guest, he punctuates his teaching with the statement that all who exalt themselves will be humbled and all who humble themselves will be exalted (cf. Matt 23:12). This accompanies the judgment language also in 18:14, and the future tense appears to be not a mere gnomic one (illustrating a universal truth), but a promise/warning of what will happen in the final judgment. This is further confirmed by the parallel function of what we see in the second case, regarding how one should act when one is the host. Those who invite those who cannot repay and reciprocate will themselves be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous. I have noted multiple times how resurrection and final judgment were frequently tied together, and Jesus fits that tendency here as well.
The three parables in ch. 15 expound on how Jesus has come to call sinners to repentance, as we have seen previously. As such, we have also seen how these terms and this mission have ties to expectations of judgment. Each parable also hints at the eschatological consequences of such repentance, as the first two refer to the rejoicing of the angels in heaven (who have been portrayed multiple times as gathering the elect/righteous) and the last one describes the son who repents as having come to life after being dead (thus undergoing a metaphorical resurrection that anticipates the eschatological one). Jesus will also reiterate this mission of his in terms of his coming to “seek and save the lost” in 19:10.
There is no judgment scene in the unique parable of 16:19–31, but we do see the outcomes of judgment. For reasons I have outlined elsewhere, it is difficult to make sense of this text as a literal portrayal of afterlife, but it does make sense as a story driven by critique in response to the Pharisees, per 16:14–18. And while we have seen several implications of—and even several direct references to—eschatological judgment of all at a given (unknown) time, we have not seen anything else in all of Jesus’s teaching to indicate a judgment prior to this that comes immediately after death. It also fits the motif of eschatological reversal that one can find elsewhere in Luke (1:48, 52–53; 6:20–26; 13:30; 14:8–11; 18:14), rather than as a declaration that the only dynamic at work in the final judgment is reversal (which would not fit with Jesus’s teaching in Luke or in the other Gospels). The story serves a rhetorical purpose driven by the audience it is a response to, rather than as a literal depiction of afterlife. The outcomes of judgment are thus presented in that light without any attempt made to reconcile the timing or situation of judgment (since that is not the point of this teaching) with other teachings.
Jesus’s teaching in 17:22–37 has many parallels to what we have already seen in Matt 24. This includes the contrast of those “taken” with those “left,” which works on the same dynamics here as in Matthew. Indeed, the story of Lot is also invoked as an analogy, which only further supports the portrayal of suddenness as well as the distinction between being “taken” in retribution or “left” to be preserved in salvation. The teaching in v. 33 also features what Jesus has said elsewhere in his teaching on discipleship that followed his first prediction of his death and resurrection, which ties the vindication of receiving life to following in his crucifixion (or the denial of the same in refusing the path of the cross).
More unique to Luke is the statement of judgment against Jerusalem in 19:41–44. Immediately before the temple episode, Jesus laments over Jerusalem and how it has failed to recognize “the things that make for peace.” What Jesus foretells about what will happen to Jerusalem is precisely judgment executed on the historical plane in its destruction at the hands of enemies. Even the language of one stone not being left upon another is reminiscent of what Jesus will say again of Jerusalem in 21:6 and what instigates the Olivet Discourse in all of the Synoptic Gospels. This is all a consequence of the fact that they did not recognize the time of God’s visitation. The term used here (ἐπισκοπή), is related to judgment, at least in this context, in that it has the sense of investigating, inspecting, or looking upon. When God investigated them and their response to the coming of the Messiah, their response was emblematic of how they failed the investigation (even as the fig tree in the parable of ch. 13). Thus, the time for cutting down in judgment is coming.
The Olivet Discourse in ch. 21 is likewise related to this particular judgment. More so than the parallels in Matthew and Mark, vv. 20–24 make clear reference to the destruction of Jerusalem, particularly with reference to it being “trampled on by the gentiles,” until that time is fulfilled (cf. Isa 5:5; 63:18; Dan 8:13). The teaching also concludes with exhortations to vigilance that we have seen in the other renditions of the Olivet Discourse, which is in turn connected to the judgment imagery, in this case by reference to escaping all these things and being able to “stand” before the Son of Man. This judgment in the course of history is also referenced by Jesus on his way to Golgotha in 23:27–31 as a final warning to the women of Jerusalem of the worse things that are coming on this city.