Bible Commentaries
Luke 6

Verses 1-11

Luk 6:1-11

Commentary On Luke 6:1-11

Galen Doughty

Luke 6:1-2 - Luke reports another confrontation with the Pharisees and their legalism on the Sabbath. He and his disciples are going through a grain field picking off the heads of grain and eating them. The Pharisees see this as work and therefore a violation of their Sabbath rules. They accuse Jesus and his disciples of disobeying God and breaking the fifth commandment to remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.

Luke 6:3-6 - Jesus gives an answer to their accusation. First he reminds them of when King David ate the consecrated bread and fed his men by it. He technically broke the Law because only the priests were to eat that bread. Jesus is linking himself to David here and implying that he is the Messiah, the Son of David and has a right to feed his disciples. He is a higher authority than the Law of Moses.

He then directly claims to be God again. The Son of Man, meaning himself, is Lord of the Sabbath. God made the Sabbath and gave the Sabbath command. Jesus is claiming to be God just as he did with the issue of forgiveness. Jesus was incapable of violating the will of God because he was God. The disciples picking grain on the Sabbath was not a violation of the Sabbath commandment it was God’s gracious provision for his disciples on the day dedicated to worship God and dedicated to being a blessing to them. The Pharisees missed the point. Plus Jesus is claiming a much greater authority than the traditions of the Pharisees which is what they are quoting to him to justify their condemnation. He is claiming the authority of David and then the authority of God himself, Lord of the Sabbath!

Luke 6:6-11 - Luke describes yet another Sabbath confrontation with the Pharisees over the laws of the Sabbath and the traditions of the Pharisees. Jesus is teaching in a synagogue in Galilee and there is a man with a shriveled hand worshipping with him. The Pharisees are looking for a reason to accuse him and trap him. Jesus knows what they are thinking. Luke could mean that he could read their thoughts by the power of the Spirit, a gift of knowledge, or Jesus was shrewd enough to understand their plots and plans. It may be a little of both.

Jesus seizes the initiative and asks the man with the shriveled hand to stand before everyone. He then asks the Pharisees if it is lawful to heal on the Sabbath, to do good and save life or destroy it. He then tells the man to stretch out his hand and he is healed instantly. The Pharisees react in rage because he has embarrassed them and trapped them in their own folly. They have lost face before the people and their response is to begin discussing not how they can trap Jesus and accuse him but how they can hurt him!

Jesus told the Pharisees what the Sabbath is all about, to do good and save life! They saw his compassion in healing the man, his good, as evil because it broke their traditions which they had developed to obey the Sabbath commands in order to be righteous before God. It was all about them but their rules pushed them away from God. They did not draw them closer. God was right before them. The inventor of the Sabbath was talking to them and all they want to do is destroy him! Legalism does not work as a way to rightly relate to God. All it does is drive us away from God and birth a terrible pride in our hearts.

Verses 12-19

Luk 6:12-19

Commentary On Luke 6:12-19

Galen Doughty

Luke 6:12-16 - Luke says it is during this time in Galilee that Jesus goes up onto a mountain all night in prayer to seek God. When he comes down in the morning he calls all his disciples to him and chooses twelve that he names apostles, sent ones. This is a shift in Jesus’ ministry strategy.

Before this he had many people he was teaching and who were following him. They would continue to do that but now Jesus is going to concentrate on the twelve. He will pour himself into them, in order to multiply his ministry and prepare his followers for when he is gone, for the time after his resurrection and ascension. He needed the time with his Father to be sure of who those twelve would be, even Judas. It is possible that part of the wrestling with his Father in prayer was the necessity of choosing Judas.

Luke lists the twelve. His list is slightly different than Matthew’s and Mark’s. Simon, Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, Simon the Zealot, James the son of Alphaeus, and Judas Iscariot are all the same. Luke lists Judas son of James while Matthew lists Thaddaeus. Mark also lists Thaddaeus. They are probably the same people and Thaddaeus was a nickname or other name to distinguish him from James son of Zebedee. When Luke repeats the list in Acts 1 he uses the same names, except for Judas who is now dead. John lists Nathaniel which is probably another name for one of the disciples, perhaps James son of Alphaeus or Bartholomew. It is curious that the four gospels do not completely agree on the names of the twelve, but given the use of nicknames by Jesus and given the fact that the main disciples like Peter, James and John are consistent throughout all four gospels, minor differences in the traditions that each gospel writer used are understandable. In the end, nothing major is changed because the lists are not in complete agreement. Jesus chose twelve after guidance from his Heavenly Father and into these twelve he now poured his time and energy.

It also needs to be noted that no one on earth would have chosen these twelve to lead a movement to change history; no one that is accept Jesus, the Son of God. They were mostly fisherman. One of the twelve is a Roman collaborator and tax collector, Matthew. Another is a member of a Jewish revolutionary sect dedicated to the overthrow of the Roman yoke, Simon the Zealot. Judas will become the traitor and the gospels hint that Jesus knew this all along but chose him because the Scriptures needed to be fulfilled. Some of these twelve like Peter, James and John will be significant leaders in the new church after the resurrection. Others like Bartholomew you never really hear about doing much of anything. Yet Jesus chose them all. He chooses ordinary people to accomplish God’s extraordinary mission. He still does the same thing today!

Luke 6:17-19 - Jesus comes down off the mountain with the twelve and Luke says a large crowd of his disciples had gathered along with people from all over Judea, from Jerusalem and even from the coastal areas of Tyre and Sidon. They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases.

Those who were demonized Jesus healed too. Luke says everyone who was sick was healed because power was coming from Jesus and healing them all. He almost makes it sound like Jesus wasn’t conscious of healing people but the power was simply radiating from him and people who were near him were healed. I don’t think that’s what he is trying to say but that’s what it sounds like.

Was this a mixed crowd of Jews and Gentiles or is Luke reporting that Jews from north and south had come to see and hear Jesus? I think the former is more likely. However, Galilee was a mixed population of Jews and Gentiles, unlike the territory around Jerusalem which was far more dominated by Jews who would not have mixed with Gentiles. Jesus’ healing ministry attracted everyone, but this crowd is most likely Jewish in nature.

Jesus comes down to a level place. Luke is introducing the setting for the Sermon on the Plain. This is very similar to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7 but much shorter and slightly different in places. That leads me to believe that these are two separate incidents. Many liberal scholars declare that this is Luke’s version of the same teaching and he simply puts it in a different setting. They link it to the Q source and some even say Luke’s is the more primitive version because it talks about the rich and poor and Matthew spiritualized it. I think it is far more likely that Jesus said similar things in different settings and Luke and Matthew record incidents when he did that. How many times did Jesus teach the disciples about his passion and resurrection? Why is it so hard to imagine he did the same thing with the crowds who came to see him only with different subject matter? Plus, liberal scholars often think as if the oral tradition of Jesus’ sayings and deeds was monolithic and there were only a few sources. Luke, who lived during this time, reports that many had written about Jesus and what he said and did. Sometimes it seems as if a theory becomes popular and scholars subscribe to it but then ignore evidence of Scripture which contradicts it. Liberal scholarship is so quick to dismiss Scriptural accuracy and authority and ignore the cultural strengths of first century Jewish Christians. They assume that like nineteenth and twentieth century Germans people would not be able to accurately pass on what Jesus said and did and it would quickly become corrupted or changed to serve a community. They forget Bailey’s maxim that says people will preserve accurately information and stories that define who that community is!

Verses 20-49

Luk 6:20-49

Commentary On Luke 6:20-49

Galen Doughty

Luke 6:20-23 - Jesus teaches the Sermon on the Plain to the disciples, just as he did the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7. Jesus opens the sermon with blessings on the poor. In Matthew it is the poor in spirit. Here in Luke it is simply the poor, probably the economic poor. These were the class of people who dominated the crowds who came to hear Jesus. These are the people he had grown up among and knew. He is one of them! Jesus was not rich or middle class he was poor.

The Kingdom of God belongs to them. If they hunger now they will be satisfied. If they weep now they will laugh. They are blessed when people hate them, exclude them and reject them as evil because of the Son of Man, because they follow Jesus. Remember this sermon is spoken to the many disciples who had gathered along with the crowds. Jesus understands the cost of following him as Messiah. He knows he does not fit into the party line of what the Messiah will be like, partly because he came to also fulfill the role of the Servant of God at the same time. Most of the Jews were not looking for the Servant nor did they connect him to the Messiah.

Jesus goes on to say rejoice and leap for joy in "that day", because your reward is great in heaven. That is how people treated the prophets. In the Kingdom’s economy a lowly disciple of Jesus has the same standing with God as one of the prophets! No wonder he says rejoice.

There is an already-not yet theme to Jesus’ teaching here. The poor can have the Kingdom now and someday their hunger and weeping will be satisfied. For the wealthy all they have is now; the future only brings judgment. Part of what Jesus is contradicting with his teaching here is the Pharisees’ view that the rich had all the advantages in entering the Kingdom because they could give more and so earn more favor with God. Jesus says the opposite is true. The poor have all the advantages because they are totally dependent upon God already. Plus it is not about earning one’s place in the Kingdom. You can’t! It is about having God as Lord and not money. The rich are conflicted, and easily corrupted by their wealth and all the pleasures that it can buy in this world. The poor do not suffer from that temptation. Jesus saw money as one of the greatest spiritual dangers to his disciples. They were protected by their Jewish monotheism from the Greek and Roman pagan gods around them but not from the lure of money. That is part of the reason he speaks so strongly against the wealthy here.

Luke 6:24-26 - Jesus reverses the blessings on the poor who inherit the Kingdom to woes on the rich who have their reward now. They have already received their comfort in this life. They have been fed and laughed and people speak well of them because of their money, status and power. Woe to them because that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets! Jesus tells the rich you are enjoying yourselves now and think you are amassing great favor from God and God has blessed you and you must be one of his favorites because of your blessing. You are wrong! Yes, your blessings come from God but they do not mean that you are eternally any better off because of them. You focus now on your wealth and think God will grant you entrance to his Kingdom because of it. You are wrong! The poor have all the advantages because they do not have anyone or anything competing for their heart’s allegiance. God is Lord.

This whole line of Jesus’ reasoning shoots huge holes in the health and wealth gospel today! It blows apart the Protestant work ethic of the scholastic Calvinists of the 1600 and 1700’s. Jesus is very clearly saying wealth is a hindrance not a help in entering God’s Kingdom and receiving his blessings. It does not mean the rich are excluded from the Kingdom. Jesus does not teach that. He is teaching that they are hindered because of their wealth. It gets in the way!

Luke 6:27-31 - This is similar to Matthew 5-7. It would have been easy for Jesus to cross over into a Marxist class warfare mode after telling them that the poor are blessed and the rich are cursed, so hate the rich and workers of the world unite! Down with the elite and the rich! Instead Jesus says love your enemies and do good to those who hate you. Don’t retaliate. Don’t hate, bless. If people mistreat you, you do not have the right to mistreat them. You need to love them, agape them like God loves you. If someone tries to exploit you give back to him even more. He summarizes this section with the golden rule: treat others like you would want them to treat you. Who wants to be hated, persecuted, judged, reviled or taken advantage of? Don’t do that to anyone else, even those who are your enemies. Why? He answers that in the next paragraph.

Luke 6:32-36 - If you as a disciple only love people who love you, you haven’t done anything different or lived any differently than the "sinners." They do that. Disciples are called to a higher standard, God’s standard. If you only do good to those who do good to you then you are still only acting like the "sinners" act. Sinners here is probably a reference to those the Pharisees would consider sinners; people they would say could not repent and enter the Kingdom of God. Some of Jesus’ disciples fit this description, namely Matthew, and certainly some of the women who followed him probably fit it as well.

He goes on to say the same thing about lending money. How should disciples act? Love your enemies and do good to those who persecute you. Give without expecting anything back. Jesus repeats himself from vv.27 -31, as if to drive home the lesson. Treat people this way, love this way, give this way and your reward will be great in heaven. You will be sons of God because he is the same way. Be loving and merciful like God is. Be gracious and forgiving like your Heavenly Father. Jesus sets the standard of conduct for disciples as God. Be like him; treat people like God does. We are not to compare ourselves as Jesus’ disciples to other people, sinners, the world or even ourselves. We are to compare ourselves to God. Am I more like him now than I was? That is the disciple’s standard of conduct and it is all about character, being gracious, merciful, giving and forgiving like God. The Pharisees wanted to codify that and make it into a set of rules. Jesus blows that apart and makes the basis of our conduct our relationship with our Heavenly Father and with him. Without that we cannot act like God because we will not know him and who he is and we will not have his power to help us.

Luke 6:37-38 - Jesus continues and speaks to our human penchant to judge others in order to figure out who is on the inside and who is on the outside. We judge in order to justify our own behaviors. Jesus says don’t. Don’t judge. Don’t condemn, instead forgive and you will be forgiven. Treat others with the grace with which God has treated you. This goes to the heart of the Pharisees’ system and anyone who tries to practice religion and legalism as the way to God’s Kingdom. Legalism will always push us to judge others and condemn them because we will constantly be comparing ourselves to them in order to justify ourselves. We need to leave all such comparisons to God. Instead be forgiving and generous. If we are we will find great blessing from God, spilling over. This is not health and wealth kind of blessing, but spiritual blessings as well as material from God. When we let God be God and we are simply his loving creatures who want to be like him, our lives will be blessed beyond measure! If we try and usurp God’s place and be judges ourselves we will find ourselves being judged by God.

Luke 6:39-42 - Jesus then gives several short parables, basically simple sayings that illustrate the futility of judging others and trying to take God’s place.

How can a blind man lead another blind man? Won’t they both fall into a pit? A student is not above his teacher but will be like his teacher. That is a direct slam at the rabbis of the Pharisees but it is also illustrative of who a disciple of Jesus should be like: Jesus! The Pharisees loved to quote other rabbis. Jesus simply says; follow me; do as I do; act as I act.

He then tells another version of the plank and speck parable as in Matthew 7. Legalists always will be blind to their own shortcomings, concerned about the speck in someone else’s eye when they have a plank sticking out of their own! Jesus uses hyperbole to humorous effect here. The picture is absurd and Jesus presses his point home. Take care of the plank in your own eye first. Judge yourself and your own conduct before God first before you ever start judging others. If you do, the speck in your brother or sister’s eye will not seem like a big issue anymore! If you don’t you will be a hypocrite. Plus you will finally be able to help your brother with the speck in their eye. But now rather than point it out with pride and judgment you will do it with grace, forgiveness and humility.

Luke 6:43-45 - Jesus outlines the way his Kingdom will work in people’s lives. This language points back to the New Covenant language of Jeremiah 31. God is after a change in people’s hearts not just outward deeds. Real change cannot happen from the outside in because our hearts will always sabotage our deeds and show what is truly in them. This is another indictment on the Pharisees’ legalism. It cannot work because laws and rules cannot change me. Only God can change my heart. Paul would later take this concept and relate it to the Holy Spirit’s work in us. Jesus would expand on it with the disciples on the night of the Lord’s Supper with his abide in me teaching. In order to live as Kingdom disciples we need a change of heart, a heart transplant! I can’t do that myself, only God can do that. Jesus is pointing us to our utter need before God for his help. Barth called it total help for total need. This parable points people to their need for repentance and God’s help in changing and transforming their hearts. If I look at my deeds and the fruit of my life what do I see? If it is not good, I can try and obey more rules but it won’t change what is on the inside of me. Only God can change that!

Jesus is also pointing out that real disciples bear fruit. They exhibit true life change, heart change. There is no way one could read this parable and still believe that everything would be ok if I accept Jesus as my personal savior and then live however I want to live. I need lifechange!

Jesus wants me to bear fruit! Without that I am no true disciples of his. The next parable he tells drives this point home!

Luke 6:46-49 - Jesus finishes his Sermon on the Plain about how disciples need to live with a final parable that is similar to the parable he gave at the end of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 7.

True disciples not only have Jesus as Lord they do what he says. They obey him! In fact if they do not then they are not his disciples. Jesus uses the Hebrew sense of hear and obey in this parable. If you hear him you will obey him. If you don’t obey him then you haven’t heard him! To have him as Lord and king means I do what he says and allow him to change me.

Questions by E.M. Zerr For Luke Chapter Six

1. Through what did Jesus go?

2. State the day of the week.

3. What did the disciples do here?

4. Who complained?

5. On what ground was their complaint?

6. Why not accuse them of theft?

7. To whose example did Jesus refer?

8. Why was that man justified?

9. Into what building did Jesus enter and teach?

10. What unfortunate man was there?

11. Who were spying on Jesus ?

12. State their motive.

13. On what pretext could they accuse him?

14. What was done for the man?

15. State the question he asked first.

16. This filled them with what?

17. On what subject did they confer ?

18. What did Jesus do in the mountain?

19. After this service whom did he call ?

20. What title did he give them?

21. Which pairs were brothers?

22. Tell what was said of Judas Iscariot.

23. Where had Matthew been found?

24. Coming down where did he pause next?

25. Who gathered here?

26. For what had they come?

27. Were they disappointed?

28. Why did the multitude wish to touch Jesus ?

29. Tell why he blessed his poor disciples.

30. Why bless the hungry?

31. And the weepers?

32. Why is it a blessing to be hated?

33. Tell why they should rejoice?

34. To what worthies were they referred ?

35. Why is woe on the rich ?

36. Who are threatened with hunger?

37. Tell who are destined to weep.

38. Why is it dangerous to be popular ?

39. State who should be objects of our love.

40. How treat those who curse us?

41. What about striking back ?

42. And about giving?

43. Explain this in light of Matt. 7:6.

44. State the so-called golden rule.

45. What love should make us better than sinners ?

46. What indicates unselfishness in good deeds?

47. How should lending be done?

48. From where should we expect reward for our good ? What example are we to imitate ?

49. How may we avoid unfavorable judgment?

50. When will good measure be given by men to us ?

51. On what basis?

52. Why cannot the blind lead the blind?

53. With what will a perfect disciple be satisfied?

54. What should be considered before the mote ?

55. Tell what one should not wish to draw out.

56. How is such a character named by Christ?

57. Tell what he is commanded to do.

58. With what does the fruit of a tree agree?

59. By what is a tree known ?

60. From what treasure does a good man bear?

61. Does this principle apply to an evil man ?

62. Those saying “Lord” should do what?

63. What is necessary besides hearing?

64. This is like what base?

65. How was this base found?

66. How was the building tested?

67. State the result.

68. Who was the other builder

Luke Chapter Six

By Ralph L. Starling

On the 2^nd Sabbath they were in a cornfield

Picking and eating with no thought to conceal.

“Why are you being unlawful on the Sabbath day?”

Jesus answered, “What did David do on this day?”

On another Sabbath they wondered if He would heal.

If so, they would be able to make an appeal.

So, when He healed the man with a withered hand,

They were so mad, “How can we stop this man?”

When it was day Jesus went to the Mount to pray.

All night he told God what He had to say.

The next day from His disciples he chose twelve.

Their names are given, they would work well.

Down from the mountain and what did the see?

Multitudes bringing their sick with disease.

If only they could touch Him that would be all.

As they had hoped He healed them all.

He then preached about who would be “blessed.”

Describing their conduct and how to do best.

Also, about others who would suffer some “woes.”

Because of their conduct would receive some hard blows.

With this Jesus gives them some may-be sound advice.

Like loving your enemies who are full of spite.

“Turn the other cheek and be benevolent to those

Who woul not be so readily disposed.”

He concludes with parables for illustrations

To explain facts about human relations.

That by these examples how to have a full life

And be pleasing to God and have less strife.