Luke17chapter 17

Luke 17:1-2

It is impossible but that offences will come, Jesus warns, naming stumbling blocks as an unavoidable feature of a fallen world rather than excusing the one who supplies them. Woe unto him, through whom they come falls with full weight, and the millstone hung about the neck names a drowning reserved for those who cause the fall of these little ones, the heaviest penalty in the Lord's own speech. Ryle and Henry both read little ones broadly, covering the young in years and the young in faith alike, so the warning guards every believer easily led astray.

Luke 17:3-4

If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him, and if he repent, forgive him: the Lord ties correction and pardon into a single duty, neither excusing the fault by silence nor withholding mercy once it is owned. Seven times in a day, turning again each time to say, I repent, sets forgiveness beyond any ledger a wounded heart might want to keep. Clarke and Gill both note the parallel demand that repentance is named as the hinge, since the passage nowhere asks forgiveness to precede an acknowledged wrong.

Luke 17:5-6

Increase our faith: Increase our faith is the apostles' own plea, drawn out by the searching demand just given, and Jesus answers not with a method for gaining more but with a picture of what even a little accomplishes. If ye had faith as a grain of mustard seed measures genuineness rather than volume, for the smallest living seed still carries the whole plant inside it. Maclaren and Jamieson, Fausset and Brown both read the sycamine tree's deep and stubborn root as the chosen picture of an obstacle only faith reaching toward God, not faith admired for its own size, can move.

Luke 17:7-10

Which of you, having a servant plowing or feeding cattle, will say unto him, Go and sit down to meat, Jesus asks, describing the plainest expectation of the ancient household, that labor in the field is followed by service at table. The servant is thanked for none of it, and the disciples are told to say the same of themselves, We are unprofitable servants, having done only that which was our duty. Henry and Ryle read the parable beside the increase-our-faith request just heard, since even great faith and long obedience earn no claim on God, who owes his creatures nothing they were not already bound to give him.

Luke 17:11-14

As he went to Jerusalem is restated here, one of the markers since 9:51 that keeps the reader tracking the road, and the route through the midst of Samaria and Galilee places this healing on mixed, contested ground rather than safely inside Judea. Ten men that stood afar off, lepers under the law's own required distance, lift up their voices together asking for mercy, and Jesus answers not with a touch as at 5:12 but with a command, Go shew yourselves unto the priests, sending them toward the very inspection Leviticus prescribes for a cleansing not yet visible. Clarke and Jamieson, Fausset and Brown note the healing lands somewhere on that walk of obedience, faith proven by the going before the proof arrived.

Luke 17:15-16

One of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, breaking off the walk to the priests that the other nine continue, and glorified God with a loud voice before falling at Jesus' feet in thanks. Luke's closing note, and he was a Samaritan, does the chapter's real work, for the one who returns is the one furthest outside the covenant by birth. Henry and Ryle both weigh the double gift the text implies, physical cleansing granted to all ten but a further word, addressed only to this one, still to come.

Luke 17:17-19

Were there not ten cleansed, but where are the nine, Jesus asks, and the question is not idle counting but grief, since the other nine had every reason the Samaritan had and did not return. There are not found that returned to give glory to God, save this stranger, the word stranger marking the outsider who alone answered rightly. Thy faith hath made thee whole closes the scene with a gift beyond the healing every leper received, and Gill and Maclaren both read the whole here as reaching further than skin, since all ten were cleansed but this one alone is told he is saved.

Luke 17:20-21

Demanded by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God should come, Jesus refuses their timetable and their method both, the kingdom of God cometh not with observation, denying that it arrives as a spectacle to be tracked like a sign in the sky. The kingdom of God is within you, or among you, carries a genuine translation question the commentators do not settle in one direction, some reading an inward reign in the heart and others a kingdom already standing in their midst in the person of the king himself. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown and Clarke both name both readings honestly, since Jesus is speaking to hostile Pharisees, which makes a kingdom present among them in his own person fit the audience without strain.

Luke 17:22-25

The days will come when ye shall desire to see one of the days of the Son of man turns the address from the Pharisees to the disciples, warning of a coming season when his visible presence will be missed and longed for. As the lightning shineth unto the other part under heaven pictures the Son of man's day as sudden and total, visible everywhere at once rather than announced quietly in one place first. Ryle and Henry both hold that first must he suffer many things, and be rejected of this generation stands before the sequence, tying the coming glory to the cross that comes first and refusing any reading that skips the suffering to reach the day.

Luke 17:26-30

As it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man draws the first of two Genesis pictures, ordinary life running its full course, eating, drinking, marrying, until the flood came and destroyed them all. Likewise as it was in the days of Lot repeats the pattern with Sodom, buying, selling, planting, building right up to the day that Lot went out, when it rained fire and brimstone from heaven. Maclaren and Jamieson, Fausset and Brown both draw out the shared point of both pictures, that judgment falls on a world absorbed in its normal business rather than on one caught in open wickedness, which is exactly why the day when the Son of man is revealed will surprise so many.

Luke 17:31-33

He which shall be upon the housetop, and his stuff in the house, let him not come down to take it away pictures a departure too urgent for salvage, the flat eastern roof reachable by an outside stair without passing through the rooms below. Remember Lot's wife compresses Genesis 19 into two words, her backward look and the pillar of salt standing as the warning against any last attachment to what is being judged. Clarke and Gill both connect it directly to the saying that follows, whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it, since Lot's wife is precisely the one who tried to keep what she already had and lost everything in the keeping.

Luke 17:34-37

Two men in one bed, two women grinding together, two men in the field: the three pairs picture a judgment that divides people out of situations otherwise identical, sharing a bed, a task, a field, with no visible difference marking which one is taken. The disciples ask the plain question the picture raises, Where, Lord, and Jesus answers with a proverb rather than a location, wheresoever the body is, thither will the eagles be gathered together. Henry and Ryle both read the proverb as refusing a map in exchange for a certainty, that the judgment will find its object as surely as carrion draws the birds of the air, wherever and whenever it falls.