Luke 18:31 - Meaning and Application

Here Christ gives his disciples advance notice of his suffering and death, and also of the glorious outcome. He knew exactly what was coming, and he thought it wise to warn them ahead of time so they would not be shocked and terrified. Two things here are not found so fully in the other Gospel writers.

First, Christ speaks of his sufferings as the fulfilling of Scripture. That was how he steadied himself, and how he would steady them too. “All things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man,” especially the hardships he would endure, “will be accomplished.” The Spirit of Christ in the Old Testament prophets had already testified to “the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow” (1 Peter 1:11). This shows that Scripture is truly God’s word, because what it foretold came to pass exactly. It also shows that Jesus Christ was sent by God, because those promises were fulfilled in him. He was the one who was to come, since everything spoken about the Messiah was verified in him. He would submit to anything to fulfill Scripture, so that not one small part of it would fail. That removes the shame of the cross and gives it honor. It was written this way, and so it was fitting that Christ should suffer.

Second, the disgrace done to Christ in his suffering is especially emphasized. The other Gospel writers said he would be mocked, but here it is added that he would be spitefully treated, loaded with contempt and insult. He would be given every kind of reproach. In a spiritual sense, this was part of how he satisfied God’s justice for the harm our sin had done to God’s honor. One clear example of that shame was that he would be spit on, which had been foretold before (Isaiah 50:6). But even when he spoke of his suffering and death, Christ also foretold his resurrection, which took away both the terror and the disgrace of his sufferings: “On the third day he will rise again.”

The disciples were deeply confused by this. What Jesus said was completely against their ideas of the Messiah and his kingdom. It shattered their hopes for what they expected from their Master, and it upset all their plans. So they did not understand any of this (Luke 18:34). Their prejudice was so strong that they would not take it in literally, and they could not make sense of it in any other way. So, in the end, they understood nothing at all. It was a mystery and a riddle to them, and they thought it could not fit with the glory and honor of the Messiah or with the setting up of his kingdom.

This message was hidden from them, and they could not accept it. They had read the Old Testament many times, but they could not see there anything that pointed to this Messiah being dishonored and put to death. They were so focused on the prophecies about his glory that they ignored the ones about his sufferings. The scribes and teachers of the law should have helped them notice those passages too and included them in their teaching and instruction, just as much as the others. But those prophecies did not fit their scheme, so they set them aside.

This is often why people make mistakes: they read their Bibles only halfway, and they are just as selective with the prophets as they are with the law. They want only the pleasant parts (Isaiah 30:10). In the same way, when we read prophecies that are still to be fulfilled, we can become too eager to expect only the glorious future of the church in the last days. We overlook its wilderness-like and sorrowful condition, and we like to imagine that part is already over. Then, when trouble and persecution come, we do not understand what is happening, even though we have been told plainly that “through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.”