Biblical commentary on the New Testament - The Christian ...

Luke IX. 60-62. 605
through that repentance and faith which the following of Christ
presupposes) but even legal righteousness, nay, regard to the noblest
duties of earthly relationship, may keep men back from following
Jesus. Burying one's flither and taking leave of one's household
must be held, when viewed in an earthly light, to denote even noble
and tender duties. (The verb u-ord^aaOai, ver. 61, is in the sense
of to take leave. The relatives are to be considered as at a distance,
so that he means to stipulate for a journey home.) We have here,
therefore, a commentaiy of fact on Matth. x. 37. In obeying the
command of Christ all other duties are absorbed ; not that they are
thus depreciated in importance or neglected, but that every act of
man assumes its just relation to the ultimate ends alike of the indi-
vidual, and the entire body. From this point of view the Saviour
can ask the son to abandon to others even the last duties to a
deceased father ; the favourable moment for giving to his whole
course of life a nobler direction must be seized at once. This man
having already become a Leliever, must now decide on consecrating
his life to the preaching of God's word {didyyeXXe t^v (iamXeiav rov
Qeov). The expression, let the dead bury their own dead (d(f>eg rovg
vEKpovg ddxpat, rovg iavrojv vsKpovg), has licre assuredly no reference
to the Jewish opinion that he who touched the dead became pollu-
ted. Jesus merely wished to bring immedia/fccly to a decision the
man whom he had called to follow him, and induce him to give up
for his sake eveiything in itself lawful, nay, even that which was
considered necessary. Just as little ought the "dead" to be referred
to the grave-diggers, a view which enfeebles the whole sense of the
passage. The Saviour rather regards the call given as a call to
eternal life, and demands that the person called should uncondition-
ally resolve in favour of it, and that he should leave everything of
an external nature (even such acts of piety towards a deceased
father after the flesh) to those who were as yet wholly occupied
with externals, instead of which occupations he should yield obedi-
ence to the call of his heavenly Father. Thus the word venpogj
dead, must in one of these instances be understood as used
figuratively of those who have not yet been awakened from the
death of natural life (Rom. vii. 8, seq). The dead who are to be
buried, are of course those naturally deceased ; but the language
" bury their oiun dead" unquestionably intimates that the deceased
were in a condition in no respect essentially difierent from that of
the living who were to bury them.
Ver. 61, 62.—To the last, who hke the others presents himself
as a follower, the Saviour replies with the statement of a general
principle which rebukes his declaration, and conveys the idea that
an unconditional determination was necessary for having part in the
kingdom of God. The %«pa im(3dXXet.v in' dporpov^ putting the hand