Luke 9:51

§ 95. THE SAMARITANS WILL NOT RECEIVE JESUS JAMES AND JOHN REPROVED, Luke 9:51-56 .

51. Time… that he should be received up The being received up signifies his being received or ASSUMPTION into heaven at his ascension. The phrase by implication takes in all his sufferings, death, and resurrection. The clause, time was come that he should be received up, is very erroneously translated. Owen well renders it, When the days were being fulfilled. That is, during the period or stage of our Lord’s earthly ministry, which was closed by his death. This was at the beginning of the last six months of his life. At this time he left Galilee for the last time. Matthew 19:1. His mission hereafter was in Peraea and Judea. And during this period Jerusalem was the centre towards which, how often soever he diverged, he must ever gravitate until his final hour there. His adjacent ministries should be temporary, for duty, like destiny, should be perpetually pointing toward the scene of his final suffering. Hence the different passages in Luke, with the corresponding ones in the other evangelists, which allude to Jerusalemite journeys, designate not one, but several. Set his face With a firmness unshaken by foreseen suffering.

To Jerusalem For some time, as we learn from John, (John 7:1-14,) Jesus had been driven by the rage of his enemies into Galilee, where he now had finished his mission, as the Feast of Tabernacles was at hand. To that feast his half-skeptical brothers advised him to go and display his miraculous powers before the world. He declines their advice, feeling bound to a different course. While they go to the feast by the caravan route, he prepares to pass to Judea secretly, and by a route and for special purposes of his own.