Luke 13

Today’s Passage: Luke 13

Someone in the crowd brings Jesus a piece of terrible news, and what He does with it opens the whole chapter. Pilate has killed Galilean worshipers at the altar and mingled their blood with the blood of their offerings. The people who report it clearly want a verdict, and Jesus gives them one, though not the one they came for. He asks whether those men were worse sinners than the rest, answers His own question with a flat no, and then turns the question around so that it is standing in front of every person listening. He does it twice, adding a second disaster nobody raised, eighteen crushed under a falling tower in Jerusalem, and giving the same answer. From there the chapter moves through a series of scenes that all press the same nerve. A fig tree has borne nothing for three years and the owner wants it cut down, and the vinedresser asks for one more season. A woman bent double for eighteen years is straightened on a Sabbath, and the ruler of the synagogue is angry about the day of the week. Two tiny parables promise that a kingdom which begins invisibly will fill the earth. Then the road to Jerusalem again, and a question about how many will be saved, met with a narrow door, a door that shuts, and voices outside it. Then a warning that Herod wants Him dead, brushed aside with a word about a fox and a fixed timetable. And then, after all that severity, the chapter breaks and Jesus weeps out loud over the city that is going to kill Him. Read the warnings in the light of that ending. They were spoken by a Man with tears in His voice.

As you read, hold this: The Lord who warns that unless you repent you too will perish is the same Lord who longs to gather His people as a hen gathers her chicks, and neither the severity nor the tenderness may be softened.

Luke 13:1–5 (BSB)

¹ At that time some of those present told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. ² To this He replied, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered this way? ³ No, I tell you. But unless you repent, you too will all perish. ⁴ Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam collapsed on them: Do you think that they were more sinful than all the others living in Jerusalem? ⁵ No, I tell you. But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”

Take these five verses slowly, because there are two halves to them and most of us have only ever been given one. Here is the first half. Jesus is handed the oldest question there is, the one every sufferer asks sooner or later, whether a disaster is a sentence handed down on the people it fell upon, and He answers it. No. Not “possibly.” Not “we cannot know.” No, I tell you, and then He says it a second time about a different kind of catastrophe, so that nobody can imagine He was only ruling out one case. Those Galileans were not worse than the other Galileans. Those eighteen were not more sinful than everyone else in Jerusalem. Hear how firmly the Lord Jesus closes that door, and notice that He closes it Himself, publicly, before anyone had to argue Him into it. The whole ancient world reasoned the other way, and so does the human heart when it is frightened. It was the assumption behind the question the disciples put to Him another day:

"and His disciples asked Him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened so that the works of God would be displayed in him." John 9:2–3 (BSB)

So if you are reading this out of a wrecked year, understand what your Lord has said. Your suffering is not the scoreboard. The bereaved parent, the person whose body failed young, the family standing in a burned-out house: none of them may be read as a verdict, and anyone who reads them that way is doing what Jesus flatly forbade. Now the second half, and it is just as much His word as the first. Having refused to let the crowd use a tragedy to grade other people, He will not let them walk away comfortable either. Unless you repent (μετανοέω) metanoeō, pronounced met-an-oh-EH-oh. Strong's G3340, to repent, to change the mind and turn. The Greek is a compound, meta and noeō, and if you take it apart you get something like “to think again afterward,” to change your mind. English handles it badly, because our word “repent” has drifted toward feeling sorry, and metanoeō is not first a mood. Behind the Greek stands the great Hebrew word of the prophets, shuv, to turn around, to come back the way you came. It is what a man does when he has been walking steadily in the wrong direction and stops, turns his whole self, and goes home. Feeling has a place in it, but a hundred tearful nights that never turn the feet are not what the word means, and a quiet, decisive turn made without much emotion at all is. Notice, too, that Jesus commands it of a religious crowd standing in the holy city discussing other people’s sins, not of the notorious and the far-off. And notice what it is not: it is not a payment, not a penance, not something you offer God to buy the pardon. It is simply the turning of a beggar toward the only One who has bread. Scripture says plainly that it is the kindness of God that leads a man to repentance, which means the very command in front of you is a mercy, and the time you have to obey it is a mercy too. , you too will all perish. He shifts the whole conversation from them to you, and from the manner of death to the fact of it. The real news in a falling tower is not that those eighteen were singled out. It is that towers fall, that every one of us is under a sentence we have earned, and that the interval before it lands is not a guarantee of anything except an opportunity. That is the honest and terrible mercy of these verses. He removes the false comfort of thinking ourselves safer than the victims, and in its place He puts the true comfort of an open door, still open, today.

Luke 13:6–9 (BSB)

⁶ Then Jesus told this parable: “A man had a fig tree that was planted in his vineyard. He went to look for fruit on it but did not find any. ⁷ So he said to the keeper of the vineyard, ‘Look, for the past three years I have come to search for fruit on this fig tree and haven’t found any. Therefore cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?’ ⁸ ‘Sir,’ the man replied, ‘leave it alone again this year, until I dig around it and fertilize it. ⁹ If it bears fruit next year, fine. But if not, you can cut it down.’”

Having said “unless you repent” twice, Jesus tells a story about time. And what a story to tell right there. The tree is not diseased, not stunted, not in poor soil; it is planted in a vineyard, in prepared ground, given every advantage, and it has produced nothing. Three years the owner has come out to look, which is not the impatience of a hard man but the persistence of a hopeful one. Then the sentence, and it is blunt: cut it down, why should it use up the soil. That is the whole case against fruitlessness in one line. A barren life is not neutral. It occupies ground. And then the vinedresser speaks, and the loveliest words in the parable are his: leave it alone again this year. He does not argue that the owner is wrong or that the tree deserves better. He asks for time, and he offers to spend himself in it. I will dig around it. I will fertilize it. He is asking for the hardest, dirtiest labor in the vineyard on behalf of a tree with nothing to show. Many readers have wanted to assign the two speakers, the Father and the Son, and you can see why, though the parable itself does not name them and it is wiser to let it say what it says. What it says is this: mercy has bought you a season, and mercy is not the same thing as safety. Notice how carefully the vinedresser holds both. He does not say the tree will surely be spared, and he does not say the axe was wrong. If it bears fruit next year, fine. But if not, you can cut it down. The reprieve is real, and it is not forever, and that is exactly the shape of every day God gives to a soul that has not yet turned. If you have been given another year, do not read it as indifference in heaven. Read it as a Gardener on His knees in the dirt around your roots.

Luke 13:10–17 (BSB)

¹⁰ One Sabbath Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues, ¹¹ and a woman there had been disabled by a spirit for eighteen years. She was hunched over and could not stand up straight. ¹² When Jesus saw her, He called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your disability.” ¹³ Then He placed His hands on her, and immediately she straightened up and began to glorify God. ¹⁴ But the synagogue leader was indignant that Jesus had healed on the Sabbath. “There are six days for work,” he told the crowd. “So come and be healed on those days and not on the Sabbath.” ¹⁵ “You hypocrites!” the Lord replied. “Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or donkey from the stall and lead it to water? ¹⁶ Then should not this daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be released from her bondage on the Sabbath day?” ¹⁷ When Jesus said this, all His adversaries were humiliated. And the whole crowd rejoiced at all the glorious things He was doing.

Stay with this woman a while, because Luke means you to. Eighteen years. Count them out. Eighteen years of a body folded forward and a spine that would not answer, eighteen years of the ceiling of that synagogue never once seen, of children’s faces met only if they knelt, of the world reduced to sandals and packed earth and the hem of other people’s clothes. She has not asked Him for anything. She has not pushed through the crowd or cried out from the roadside. She has come to the synagogue on the Sabbath as she presumably came every Sabbath, expecting nothing, and Luke writes the four words that carry the whole scene: When Jesus saw her. He saw her. In a room where she had long since become part of the furniture, the Lord’s eye found her, and He called her over, and He said it before He did it: Woman, you are set free from your disability. Then He put His hands on a woman nobody touched, and immediately she straightened up, and the first use she made of a spine that worked was to glorify God. There is not a wasted motion in it.

And into that moment walks the ugliest sentence in the chapter. The synagogue leader is indignant, and mark how cowardly his anger is: he cannot bring himself to rebuke Jesus, so he lectures the crowd about scheduling. There are six days for work. Come and be healed on those days. Eighteen years of a woman’s ruin had never moved him to say a word, and eight minutes of her joy moves him to protest the calendar. That is what a rule can do to a man when he loves it more than he loves people. The Lord’s answer takes his own practice and turns it over in his hand. Every one of you, He says, will untie (λύω) lyō, pronounced LOO-oh. Strong's G3089, to loose, untie, set free. Lyō is a small, everyday word: to loose, to untie, to release what has been fastened. You use it of a knot, of a sandal strap, of the rope on an animal’s halter, and the Gospels use it for the untying of a colt and for a prisoner set loose. What is easy to miss in English is that Jesus uses one and the same verb twice in two sentences. You untie your ox on the Sabbath. Should not this daughter of Abraham be loosed from her bond on the Sabbath? He has caught the synagogue leader in his own vocabulary, and the argument is finished before it starts, because if the word is lawful for a thirsty animal it cannot be unlawful for a bound woman. But there is more here than a debating point. Look at what the day is for. The Sabbath was given as the memorial of a people brought out of slavery, and the Lord of the Sabbath is doing on it precisely what the day was made to celebrate: loosing what has been tied. Untying is His work. He is very good at knots. Whatever has held a soul bent over for years, He has both the authority and the gentleness to undo it, and He does not need to wait for a more convenient day. an ox or a donkey on the Sabbath and walk it out to water, because you cannot bear to leave an animal thirsty for a day. Then look at who is standing in front of you. Not livestock. A daughter of Abraham. He gives her back her dignity in the same breath that He gave her back her posture, and He does it in public, in the room where she had been invisible, naming her as an heir of the covenant and a member of the household of faith. He names her enemy too, honestly: Satan has kept her bound for eighteen long years. It was never a small thing, and it was never her fault. And when He has finished, His adversaries have nothing left to say, and the whole crowd is rejoicing at the glorious things He was doing. Let that be the last picture in your mind from this scene, an old bondage broken and a room full of ordinary people glad about it. Notice, in passing, that the number eighteen has now appeared twice in this chapter. Eighteen died under a tower and nobody could say why. Eighteen years bent this woman, and He straightened her on a Sabbath morning. Both stand in the same chapter, and we are not given the reason for the first, only the character of the One who did the second.

Luke 13:18–21 (BSB)

¹⁸ Then Jesus asked, “What is the kingdom of God like? To what can I compare it? ¹⁹ It is like a mustard seed that a man tossed into his garden. It grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air nested in its branches.” ²⁰ Again He asked, “To what can I compare the kingdom of God? ²¹ It is like leaven that a woman took and mixed into three measures of flour, until all of it was leavened.”

Notice where these two pictures are placed. Jesus has just healed one bent woman in one village synagogue while the man in charge complained about the day, and anyone watching might have concluded that the kingdom of God was a very small and quarrelsome business. So He says: yes, it looks like that now. It looks like a seed you could lose in the crease of your palm, tossed into a garden plot. And it will be a tree with birds nesting in its branches, which is the picture the prophets used for a great empire under whose shadow the nations shelter. The kingdom does not arrive by conquest, and it does not announce itself with an army. It is planted, small, and it grows past everything around it. Then the second picture, from the other side of the house. A woman takes leaven and works it into fifty pounds of flour, and then there is nothing more to see, because the whole point is that it disappears into the dough and cannot be got out again, and by morning every last handful has been changed. Now, elsewhere in Scripture leaven is a picture of corruption spreading, and some careful readers hear a warning here too. But a parable borrows one property from a thing, not its whole reputation, and the property Jesus names is stated plainly in the verse: until all of it was leavened. Hidden, silent, total. Put the two together and you have both directions of the same reign. The mustard seed grows up where everyone can see it. The leaven works down where no one can. And both of them start with something so small that a bystander would not have bothered to report it, which ought to comfort every believer who has ever felt that their obedience was too minor to matter.

Luke 13:22–27 (BSB)

²² Then Jesus traveled throughout the towns and villages, teaching as He made His way toward Jerusalem. ²³ “Lord,” someone asked Him, “will only a few people be saved?” Jesus answered, ²⁴ “Make every effort to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able. ²⁵ After the master of the house gets up and shuts the door, you will stand outside knocking and saying, ‘Lord, open the door for us.’ But he will reply, ‘I do not know where you are from.’ ²⁶ Then you will say, ‘We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.’ ²⁷ And he will answer, ‘I tell you, I do not know where you are from. Depart from me, all you evildoers.’

The question is a good one and it is asked in the wrong direction. Lord, will only a few people be saved? It is a question about statistics, about other people, about the size of the final number, and it can be discussed for an hour without anyone in the room being disturbed. Jesus will not play. He answers a question the man did not ask, and He answers it in the singular and the imperative: make every effort (ἀγωνίζομαι) agōnizomai, pronounced ah-go-NID-zo-my. Strong's G75, to contend, strive, struggle, exert oneself to the utmost. Agōnizomai comes from agōn, the word for a contest in the arena, and it is the ancestor of our word “agony.” It is the runner’s word, the wrestler’s word, the word for a man giving everything he has in a struggle that matters. Paul used it of his own ministry and of the fight of faith, and he used the noun for the race set before us. So Jesus is not saying “consider entering,” or “hope you drift in.” He is saying: strive. Let this be the thing you put your whole strength against. But be very careful what the striving is for, because the sentence does not say strive to earn the door or to build one of your own. It says strive to enter through it, and there is only one door, and it is a Person. All the effort in the world will not widen it, and the moment you are through it, the striving that got you there earns you nothing, because the Man who is the door bought your entry at His own cost. What the word does forbid is drifting. There is a way of being interested in Christ for forty years without ever once coming to Him, and this word is the Lord’s hand on the shoulder of anyone doing it. Do not put it off. Come in. to enter through the narrow door. Stop counting and start entering. The door is narrow, which does not mean it is hard to find or grudgingly small, but that it admits one at a time and admits no baggage. You cannot go through it in a crowd, on your family’s credentials, or carrying your record. And then the warning, and it must be read exactly as He gave it, without softening and without any pleasure in it whatever. There comes an hour when the master of the house gets up and shuts the door, and after that hour the knocking does not open it. Listen to who is knocking. These are not people who never heard. Their whole defense is proximity: We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets. They had the meals, the sermons, the neighborhood, the religious address. And the answer that comes back twice is not “you did not do enough.” It is I do not know where you are from. The issue is not acquaintance with the teaching. It is being known by the Master. The Lord said the same thing on a hillside in Galilee, and the wording there is even more piercing:

"Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you workers of lawlessness!’" Matthew 7:22–23 (BSB)

Now hear this rightly, because it can be badly misused. Nothing here suggests that a soul truly joined to Christ might be turned away at the last; the whole burden of the passage is the opposite, that religious nearness is not the same as belonging to Him, and that a man may spend his life in the streets where Jesus taught and never once come through the door. So do not take this passage and use it to torment yourself about whether God will keep His word, for He will. Take it and go to Christ. If there is any question in you at all about whether you are His, the door is standing open at this moment, and the striving He commands is simply the urgency of a person who will not put off until tomorrow the one thing that cannot wait.

Luke 13:28–30 (BSB)

²⁸ There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth when you see Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves are thrown out. ²⁹ People will come from east and west and north and south, and will recline at the table in the kingdom of God. ³⁰ And indeed, some who are last will be first, and some who are first will be last.”

This is the hardest thing in the chapter, and it comes from the lips of the Lord Jesus Himself, which is where nearly all our clearest words about final judgment come from. He speaks of weeping and of gnashing of teeth, of seeing the patriarchs and the prophets inside the kingdom and being outside it. We are not given a lecture on it and we should not supply one; He states it plainly and moves on, and the right way to receive it is with a bowed head and no relish at all. Anyone who can talk about the lost with a bright voice has not understood the Man who is talking here, and you will see in six verses’ time exactly how He feels about it. Say what He says, no more and no less, and let it make you tender rather than smug.

And then, without a pause, the door swings wide. People will come from east and west and north and south, and will recline at the table in the kingdom of God. From all four directions, from every quarter of the earth, from nations that had no covenant and no temple and no claim. And they will not stand at the back; they will recline, which is the posture of a guest at a feast who has been given a place and has no intention of leaving. This is Luke’s great theme sounding again, the outsider brought in, and in this Gospel a table is never a small image. Then the closing line, which cuts both ways at once: some who are last will be first, and some who are first will be last. That is a warning to everyone confident of their seating and an open invitation to everyone who assumed there was no seat for them. If you have been told your whole life that you are at the back of the line, read verse twenty-nine again. He is talking about you.

Luke 13:31–33 (BSB)

³¹ At that very hour, some Pharisees came to Jesus and told Him, “Leave this place and get away, because Herod wants to kill You.” ³² But Jesus replied, “Go tell that fox, ‘Look, I will keep driving out demons and healing people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach My goal.’ ³³ Nevertheless, I must keep going today and tomorrow and the next day, for it is not admissible for a prophet to perish outside of Jerusalem.

Some Pharisees come with a warning, and Luke does not tell us their motive, so we will not invent one. It is worth remembering that not every Pharisee in this Gospel is an enemy; some invite Him to dinner, one comes to Him by night in another Gospel, and one of them will turn the world upside down for Him later. Whatever lay behind it, the message is that Herod Antipas wants Him dead, and Herod had already proved with John the Baptist that he was capable of it. And look at the Lord’s composure. He does not run and He does not bluster. Go tell that fox. It is not a compliment. A fox is a small predator, cunning and destructive but not a lion, and the tetrarch of Galilee who thought he could set the schedule is told, through his own informants, that the schedule is already fixed and it is not his. I will keep driving out demons and healing people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach My goal. The work continues; the days are numbered by heaven, not by Herod; and the third day is a phrase Luke’s reader cannot hear innocently. Then that grim, quiet line: it is not admissible for a prophet to perish outside of Jerusalem. He says it with a terrible irony, because He is not describing a law of God but the settled habit of a city, and He is walking toward it on purpose. Nobody is taking His life from Him. He is carrying it there.

Luke 13:34–35 (BSB)

³⁴ O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those sent to her, how often I have longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were unwilling! ³⁵ Look, your house is left to you desolate. And I tell you that you will not see Me again until you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.’”

And here, after every hard word in the chapter, the Lord Jesus breaks. He says the name twice, the way people say a name over a grave, and the doubling is the sound of grief. Everything in Him that has been speaking of narrow doors and shut doors and towers and axes now comes out as lament. Notice that He does not soften the charge: this is the city that kills the prophets and stones those sent to her, and He says so. Grief does not require pretending. But the accusation is not where the sentence goes. It goes to how often I have longed. How often. Sit with that word. Who could possibly say “how often” over the whole history of that city except the One who had been sending prophet after prophet to her for centuries and being refused? He is not speaking as a visiting rabbi with a bad week. He is speaking as the God of Israel, in flesh, on the road, grieving over a people He has been reaching for since Abraham.

And then the image, and it is astonishing that this is the one He chose. Not an eagle. Not a fortress. A hen. The most ordinary creature in any village yard, with no weapon at all, whose entire defense is to spread herself over her chicks and take on her own body whatever is coming. It is the least majestic picture in Scripture and it is one of the truest, because that is precisely what He is walking to Jerusalem to do. The imagery is old, and the Psalms had taught Israel to say it long before:

"He will cover you with His feathers; under His wings you will find refuge; His faithfulness is a shield and rampart." Psalm 91:4 (BSB)

Then the wound: but you were unwilling. All that longing, all that gathering, and they would not come. He does not say they were unable. He says they were unwilling, and the grief in this verse is the particular grief of love that has been refused. So the house is left desolate, and He says that plainly too, because sin has consequences and He never pretended otherwise. But look at the very last word He gives the city, and notice that it is not the word “desolate.” It is until. You will not see Me again until you say, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.” That is the pilgrim’s welcome out of Psalm 118, the greeting the crowds sang to arriving worshipers, and something very like it will be shouted over Him a few chapters from here as He comes down the Mount of Olives. Faithful readers have differed for a long time over how and when that “until” is finally answered, and it is no test of anyone’s fellowship to hold it loosely. What is not in doubt is the shape of the word. He is grieving, and He is still holding a door open, and the longing to gather (ἐπισυνάγω) episynagō, pronounced ep-ee-soo-NAG-oh. Strong's G1996, to gather together, to bring in from scattering. Episynagō is built up out of small pieces, epi and syn and agō, and it means to gather together to one place, to bring the scattered in. It is the verb behind the noun that describes believers assembling, the gathering the writer of Hebrews tells us not to neglect, and Jesus uses it elsewhere of the great and final gathering of His own from the four winds. So this is not a sentimental word. It is the word for the day when all the scattered people of God are brought home to one place and not one of them is missing. And look what He does with it here. He takes that enormous word and puts it in a farmyard, with a hen and a clutch of chicks and a wing spread over them. That is what the gathering of the redeemed looks like from underneath: not a summons from a great height but a covering that gets between you and the danger. Everything in this chapter that reads as severity is standing next to this verb. He warns because He is gathering. And the answer to “will only a few people be saved” is finally not a number at all but a Person with His arms open, longing over a city that would not come. Praise God that He is still gathering, and that the wings are still spread, and that the invitation to come under them has not yet been withdrawn. has not been withdrawn. The last thing this severe chapter does is refuse to end in a closed sentence.