Luke 13 Study Notes

13:22-23 Luke structures his Gospel in a way that emphasizes that Jesus was making his way to Jerusalem in order to die on the cross. The question are only a few people going to be saved? may reflect two important realities about Jesus’s ministry: (1) Many of his teachings insisted that true discipleship comes with many difficult challenges, and (2) though large crowds came to hear Jesus in every town and village, there were relatively few who authentically followed him as disciples.

13:24-27 Jesus’s story here answered the question in v. 23 about why so few people were being saved. It is because they were not entering by the narrow door (faith in Jesus) while the Lord gave them opportunity (in this case, while Jesus was present, preaching the gospel). Unbelievers may appeal that they knew Jesus in his social life (we ate and drank) and public ministry (you taught in our streets), but they don’t know the Lord personally as Savior (I don’t know you or where you’re from). Because they had not been justified (declared righteous) through faith in Christ (Rm 5:1), they were ultimately evildoers.

13:28-29 An irony of eternal life in the kingdom of God is that many Jews, though they were the original people of God’s covenant, will be excluded due to their unbelief, while many believing Gentiles will share the banquet in full fellowship because they have accepted God’s offer of reconciliation in Jesus. There will be much anguish (weeping and gnashing of teeth) among excluded Jews.

13:30 The kingdom of God reverses many of the world’s values. In the present context, the inversion apparently refers to the fact that believing Gentiles, though they were historically not part of God’s covenant people Israel, became the first to receive the Messiah en masse. By contrast, the Jews were chronologically first in God’s plan, but they became spiritually last since the bulk of their numbers rejected Christ. Jews will receive Jesus widely near the end of the age (Rm 11:25-27).

13:31-34 Jesus seemed to take the warning of these Pharisees at face value, though it is doubtful that they really wished to protect Jesus from Herod Antipas (see note at 3:1). Most likely they simply wanted him to leave their region. Though v. 32 makes it seem that Jesus stayed put for three days more, the subsequent mention of travel to Jerusalem in order to die there makes it likely that this verse was a veiled reference to his coming resurrection. The mention of Jerusalem and his coming death as a prophet allowed Jesus to review the city’s history of killing the prophets whom God sent to her. Jerusalem had repeatedly rejected God’s compassionate outreach (pictured as a mother hen gathering her chicks). The city would soon do the same thing again by rejecting Jesus, God’s Son.

13:35 Your house is abandoned reveals that God’s blessing and protection would be removed, leading ultimately to judgment in the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in AD 70. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord quoted Ps 118:26 and was later cited in regard to Jesus’s “triumphal entry” (see note at Lk 19:37-38). However, here it looks beyond that to the second coming of Christ (see Zch 12:10; Rv 1:7).