Luke 11:37 - Meaning and Application

Christ says many of these things to a Pharisee and his guests in a private meal, and later he says the same kind of things publicly in the temple (Matthew 23). What he said in private matched what he said in public. He would not say in secret what he would not stand behind in front of the whole crowd. He also would not give warnings to sinners in general that he would not apply directly when he met them.

Here Christ goes to dine with a Pharisee who had politely invited him to his house (Luke 11:37). While he was speaking, the Pharisee interrupted him and asked him to come and eat, right away, because it was mealtime. We want to think the Pharisee was pleased with Jesus’ teaching, wanted to honor him, and hoped to hear more. But we also have reason to suspect a bad motive, that he wanted to stop Jesus’ teaching and find something to accuse him of later (Luke 11:53-54). We do not know the Pharisee’s heart, but Christ did. If the man meant harm, he would find that Christ was not afraid of him. If he meant well, he would find that Christ was ready to do him good. So Jesus went in and sat down to eat.

We should learn from Christ to be sociable and not harsh or withdrawn. We do need to be careful about the company we keep, but we do not need to become rigid or separate ourselves from ordinary life.

The Pharisee was offended that Jesus did not wash before dinner, as some had also been offended at Jesus’ disciples (Luke 11:38). He was amazed that such a holy man, a prophet, and one so devout and strict in life would sit down to eat without first washing his hands. This was especially striking to him because the Pharisee’s dining room surely had everything ready for washing, and all the other guests were no doubt doing it. So the Pharisee thought, why would Jesus not do the same? What harm would it have done? Was it not required by the rules of their church?

It was required by their religious rules, and that was exactly why Christ would not do it. He wanted to oppose the idea that people could make a religious law out of something God had not commanded. The ceremonial law did include many washings, but this was not one of them. So Christ would not follow it, even to please the Pharisee who had invited him, and even though he knew it would offend him.

On this occasion Christ gave the Pharisees a sharp rebuke, without even asking pardon from the Pharisee whose guest he was. We must not flatter even our best friends when they are in the wrong. He first reproved them for putting so much weight on outward religion, things people can see, while leaving out the things that matter to God and the soul (Luke 11:39-40).

Their mistake was plain. They made the outside clean, washing their hands with water, but they did not wash their hearts from evil. Their hearts were full of greed and malice, greed for other people’s goods and hatred toward good people. Such servants would never be called clean just because they wiped the outside of the cup or dish while leaving the inside dirty. The inside matters most, because its filth soon affects the food or drink. In the same way, the inward state of the mind in religious service is like the inside of the cup and dish. If that is unclean, it spoils the whole act of worship.

So it is a serious insult to God to avoid open, shameful sins while still living under the rule of spiritual evil. That is like handing a cup to a master, polished on the outside, but full of spiders inside. Many people escape the more obvious sins of sexual immorality and drunkenness, yet still live in worldliness and bitterness. Those hidden sins are dangerous and deadly, even if people try to cover them.

Christ also pointed out the foolishness of their position: “Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also?” (Luke 11:40). The God who gave them laws about outward washings also commanded them to cleanse their hearts. Or the point may be this, if we think of God as Creator. The same God who made our bodies, wonderfully made as they are, also made our souls, which are even more wondrous. Since he made both, he has the right to expect care for both. So we should not only wash the body, which he formed, and honor his work, but also wash the spirit, which he fathered, and seek cleansing from the leprosy of the heart.

Then Christ adds a rule for using our earthly goods rightly (Luke 11:41): “Give as alms the things you have.” The meaning is, let the poor have a share in what is set before you, and then all things are clean to you. This points to the law of Moses, which required a portion of the produce of their land to be given to the Levite, the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow. When they did that, what remained for their own use was clean to them, and they could ask God’s blessing on it with faith (Deuteronomy 26:12-15). We can enjoy God’s gifts with comfort when we send portions to those who have nothing prepared for them (Nehemiah 8:10). Job did not eat his food alone, but let the fatherless eat from it, and so it was clean to him (Job 31:17). That is, it was lawful and allowed for use, and then it could be used with peace of mind.

The lesson is clear: what we have is not truly ours unless God gets his due from it. We make proper use of earthly comforts by giving generously to the poor. Then we have a clearer right to enjoy them ourselves.

Next, Christ reproves them for making much of small things and ignoring the weightier matters of the law (Luke 11:42).

These people were very careful about laws that only dealt with outward religion. For example, they were strict about supporting the priests: they gave tithes, that is, a tenth, of mint and rue, and they paid it fully and in kind. They would not settle for a cheaper payment or a partial arrangement. By doing this, they won a name for being strict law-keepers, and they also kept favor with the priests, who could often help them. It is no surprise that priests and Pharisees worked together to support each other.

Christ did not condemn them for being careful about tithes, because “these things ought ye to have done.” But he did condemn them for thinking that this could make up for neglecting the greater duties of religion. They gave attention to the smaller matters, but they ignored what mattered most. They passed over justice and the love of God. They gave men their dues poorly, and they did not give God their hearts.

He also reproved them for pride, vanity, and a craving for honor and praise from people. They loved the highest seats in the synagogues, the places of honor in the places where the elders met to govern. If they did not already have those seats, they wanted them. If they did have them, they were proud of them. They also loved greetings in the markets, wanting public respect, compliments, and gestures of honor. The fault was not in sitting in the best seat or being greeted. The fault was in loving those things.

He also rebuked them for hypocrisy, for hiding the sin in their hearts and lives under a good appearance. He said they were like graves covered with grass, so that people could walk over them without knowing it, and so contract ceremonial pollution, the ritual uncleanness that came from touching a grave. These Pharisees were inwardly full of evil, like a grave full of decay. They were full of greed, envy, and malice. Yet they concealed all this so well behind a show of devotion that it did not show. As a result, people who lived with them and followed their teaching were polluted by their sin and corrupted by their example, while never suspecting the danger because the Pharisees looked so pious.

He then testified against the lawyers, or scribes, men whose work was to explain the law according to the tradition of the elders, just as the Pharisees tried to keep the law according to that same tradition. One of them took offense at what Jesus said against the Pharisees. He said, “Master, by saying this you insult us too, because we are scribes, and are you saying that we are hypocrites?” It is common for proud sinners to call reproof insults. Wise people, if they want their sin destroyed, will take even harsh words and turn them into useful correction. If we can hear our faults this way and change, that is a good thing. But people who cling to their sins often treat faithful and kind warnings as attacks. They get angry, as if the warning were meant as an insult, and they answer back instead of listening. The prophet made the same complaint, “The word of the Lord is a reproach to them” (Jeremiah 6:10). This lawyer took the Pharisee’s side and so became a partner in his sin.

Jesus then turned to the lawyers and pronounced judgment on them. He said, “Woe to you also, lawyers,” and again, “Woe to you lawyers.” The people admired them and thought them blessed, because they studied the law and taught the people. But Christ saw them very differently. He saw their hearts, and he saw their guilt. This was a fair answer to the man who had sided with the Pharisees and objected to Christ’s rebuke. Those who resent the correction of others and treat it as an insult often bring warnings upon themselves.

The lawyers were blamed for making religion harder for others than God had made it, while making it easier for themselves. They loaded people with heavy burdens through their traditions. These traditions took away liberties God had allowed and added rules God had never given. They did this to show their authority and keep people under control. But they themselves would not touch those burdens with one finger. That means either they would not carry the same restraints themselves, or they would not help to loosen them for others when they became crushing and hard to bear. They were ready to make life harder for the people, but not to ease those burdens when they had the power to do so.

They were also rebuked for pretending to honor the prophets their fathers had killed, while hating and persecuting the messengers sent in their own day. They built the tombs of the prophets, setting up monuments over their graves and likely adding long inscriptions praising them. They did not go on to the superstitions of worshiping relics, praying at tombs, or making their prayers more acceptable by the place. They did not add that kind of false religion to their hypocrisy. Rather, they acted as if they were the prophets’ true children, their heirs and representatives, by repairing and decorating the monuments to their memory.

Even so, they had a deep hatred for the men of their own time who came in the spirit and power of those same prophets. They had not yet done all they intended, but they would soon do it. The Wisdom of God, that is, Christ himself, said and now foretold that they would kill and persecute the prophets and apostles sent to them.

The Wisdom of God would test them this way and expose their ugly hypocrisy by sending them prophets to confront their sins and warn them of God’s judgments. Those prophets would prove that they were truly messengers from heaven by signs, wonders, and gifts from the Holy Spirit. Or, in other words, God would send them prophets who carried the authority of apostles, yet they would show the same authority as the old prophets did. Even so, the people would not only resist and oppose them, but also kill and persecute them.

Christ knew this beforehand, yet he still acted as the Wisdom of God in sending them. He knew how to bring glory to himself in the end, through the rewards set aside for both the persecutors and the persecuted in the life to come.

God will also rightly give a different meaning to their building the tombs of the prophets than the one they want people to think. It will be taken as proof that they approved of their fathers’ deeds (Luke 11:45). Since their present actions showed that they truly did not value the prophets, building their graves would mean they intended to keep dead the very prophets whom their fathers had put to death. Josiah, who truly honored a prophet, thought it was enough not to disturb the grave of the man of God at Bethel: “Let no one move his bones” (2 Kings 23:17, 18).

If these lawyers go further and build the prophets’ tombs, that is an overdone show of respect that makes people suspect a bad purpose. It looks like a cover for hostility against prophecy itself, like a traitor’s kiss. The proverb fits them well: “Whoever blesses his friend with a loud voice early in the morning, it will be counted a curse to him” (Proverbs 27:14).

They must also expect to be charged as those who completed the full measure of persecution (Luke 11:50, 51). They kept the same evil practice going from one generation to the next, and so they became responsible for the whole debt, from the blood of Abel, when the world began, to the blood of Zechariah, and onward to the end of the Jewish nation. It would all be required of that generation, the last generation of the Jews, because their sin in persecuting Christ’s apostles would go beyond the sins of their fathers. In this way they would bring final wrath on themselves (1 Thessalonians 2:15, 16). Their destruction by the Romans was so awful that it could rightly be seen as the completing of God’s judgment on that persecuting nation.

They are also rebuked for opposing the gospel of Christ and doing all they could to block its spread and success (Luke 11:52). They had not faithfully explained to the people those Old Testament Scriptures that pointed to the Messiah. If the lawyers had led the people into the right understanding of those texts, the people would have gladly accepted Christ and his teaching. Instead, they twisted those passages and put a cloud over the people’s minds with their false explanations. This is called taking away the key of knowledge. Instead of using that key to help the people, they hid it from them. In Matthew, this is called shutting up the kingdom of heaven against people (Matthew 23:13). Those who take away the key of knowledge shut the kingdom of heaven.

They themselves did not accept the gospel of Christ, even though their knowledge of the Old Testament should have shown them that the time had come and that the kingdom of God was near. They saw the prophecies fulfilled in the kingdom that our Lord Jesus was about to establish, yet they would not enter it themselves. Worse still, they did all they could to keep others from entering. They threatened to put believers out of the synagogue and used fear to turn them back. It is bad to be unwilling to receive revelation, but it is far worse to fight against it.

At the end of the chapter, we are told how the scribes and Pharisees plotted maliciously to trap Jesus (Luke 11:53, 54). They could not bear his sharp rebukes, even though they had to admit they were true. Yet what he had said against them would not hold up as a legal charge, and they could not build a criminal case from it. So they tried to stir him into speaking angrily, as if his strong rebukes might make him lose control and lower his guard. They pressed him hard, asked loaded questions, and waited for something they could use to make him seem hateful to the people, dangerous to the government, or both.

They were looking for a way to accuse him, like David’s enemies who twisted his words every day (Psalm 56:5). Evil people dig up trouble. Faithful people who rebuke sin should expect many enemies. They need to be careful with their words because others are watching for any misstep. The prophet speaks of people who make a man guilty for a word and trap the one who rebukes them at the city gate (Isaiah 29:21). To bear trials like this with patience and face them wisely, let us think of him who endured such hostility from sinners against himself.