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(Parallels: Mat_9:9-17; Mar_2:13-22)
Follow Me.—Nothing hinders us from believing that Matthew had already belonged, for a shorter or longer time, to the most attentive hearers of the Saviour. But now he is called to accompany Him continually as an apostle, and to leave all for His sake; comp. Luk_5:11. The feast which, however, he yet prepares before going, assumes thereby the character of a farewell meal, but serves also at the same time as a testimony of the prompt and thankful temper with which the former publican entered upon his new vocation.
Luk_5:29. A great feast in his own house.—Matthew says in general, ἀíáêåéìÝíïõ áὐôïῦ ἐí ôῇ ïἰêßᾳ , without speaking expressly of the size of the company or of the honor bestowed on his dwelling. Even in that which he passes over, there reveals itself the humility of the newly-called apostle.
Luk_5:30. Their scribes and Pharisees.—Luke does not by any means say that these men were among the company at table, for they would then undoubtedly, according to their own opinion, have defiled themselves. We must, on the other hand, conceive the matter thus: that, where Jesus abode, access was forbidden to no one, and that this feast so far bore in some measure a public character. The desire of His enemies to observe the Saviour was doubtless stronger than their disinclination to enter the house of a publican, with whom, moreover, in daily life, they necessarily came from time to time in contact. Matthew, on the other hand, was so little disposed to forbid them that, on the contrary, he now with so much the greater joy admitted those as witnesses of the honor unexpectedly fallen to his lot, who once so deeply despised his station.
Murmured against His disciples.—It is noticeable that they had not ventured to address their fault-finding directly to the Saviour Himself. The defeat suffered by them shortly before at the healing of the paralytic had probably deterred them from coming too frequently in contact with Himself. Perhaps also they addressed the disciples in order to frighten back others from attaching themselves, like Matthew, to such a Lord, who makes no scruple of bringing them into such bad company.
Why do ye eat and drink?—According to Matthew and Mark, the question is asked more with their eye upon the Master, with whom the disciples meanwhile were also eating and drinking. See Bengel.: ἐóèßåôå , plurale, sed Jesum prœcipue petebant, 5:83. The Saviour answers not merely to shame them and to maintain His own cause, but also especially in order to come to the help of His perplexed disciples, who are not yet in a condition suitably to defend themselves and Him.
Luk_5:31. They that are whole.—The sententious form of this utterance might half incline us to suppose that we have here before us a proverb from daily life. Certainly it afterwards became such. The sentence has an entirely ironical character, and the here designated “whole” are no others than the ninety-nine righteous who need no conversion, Luk_15:1.—There is also a holy mockery. See Pro_1:26; Psa_2:4.—It is noticeable how the Saviour here speaks not only of a Physician, but of the Physician, and, therefore, very emphatically, though indirectly, proclaims Himself the Physician of souls. According to Mat_9:13, He on this occasion cites also the prophetical proverb, Hos_6:6.
Luk_5:32. To call … to repentance.—The words åἰò ìåôÜíïéáí are, according to the best reading, only found in Luke. The absolute êáëÝóáé in Matthew and Mark has, however, no other sense. Repentance is for the just-named sick, the restoration of the health of the soul.
Luk_5:33. And they said unto Him, The disciples of John.—According to the more exact account of Matthew and Mark, the disciples of John themselves come, in union with the Pharisees, to the Saviour with this objection. Perhaps the Pharisees had incited the disciples of John in this matter to make common cause with them. The antithesis: Jesus at the Feast and John in Prison could not fail yet more to put them out of humor. They avow their surprise without reserve, and the answer received by them perchance embittered them not a little, and may very well have contributed to their giving their master a report through which his singular question and message to the Messiah was hastened, Luk_7:19. If we find them here united with the Pharisees, we must not forget that these latter on this occasion had not yet appeared as blood-thirsty enemies of the Saviour, but only as crafty liers in wait, perhaps under the guise of interest in the cause of the Saviour. In ascetic rigorism they had with the disciples of John several points of contact. Moreover, momentary coming together is not of itself any actual league of two hostile powers, as we see with the Pharisees and Sadducees towards the end of the public life of Jesus. The Pharisees must have been the more eager to join with the disciples of John, as it must have filled them with great joy if they could bring into public discussion a difference of principles between Jesus and the John who was so highly honored among the people, and, therefore, indirectly oppose the Saviour. Who knows whether this very feast in Levi’s house may not have taken place on one of their weekly fast-days? Luk_18:12.
Êáὶ äåÞóåéò ðïéïῦíôáé .—Luke alone mentions this element of their question, which circumstance, however, does not warrant us to count it unhistorical. (De Wette.) Fasting and praying are often united as signs of a strict religious life. See Mat_17:21. John had instructed his disciples in the latter also, Luk_11:1. The fact that Jesus in His answer does not return to this point, may have occasioned Matthew and Mark to pass it over in silence.
Luk_5:34. Can ye make?—An evident allusion to the last testimony of John the Baptist (Joh_3:29), given with a look at his murmuring disciples. He is the Bridegroom, the chief person of the Messianic feast: the time of His walk upon earth is, so long as it endures, a festival for His faithful disciples; yet this time hastens soon to an end.
Luk_5:35. But days will come.—The Lord intimates a time as coming in which a much greater sorrow impends over His disciples than even that which had now smitten the sorrowing disciples of John. He was not only to be separated from them in body, not only to go away, but to be taken away. Not ἀðåëèῇ , said He, but ἀðáñèῇ , from ἀðáßñåóèáé , a word which, in the New Testament, is found only here, and is not unfittingly rendered by “tear away.” The Saviour certainly would not have used it, bad He foreseen nothing but a peaceful dying. Moreover, that He as yet speaks only figuratively and cursorily of His approaching decease, ought not to occasion us surprise, Joh_16:12.
Luk_5:36. No man putteth.—The special fitness of a parable taken from wine and clothing just here, while He sat at the feast, strikes the eye of itself. Comp., as to the sense, Lange, Matthew, p. 171. Both express the incompatibility of a life in the spirit of the Old and of the New Testament at once. The interpretation, however (Neander), that the Saviour here would teach the great truth that the old sinful nature cannot by outward service of God be really amended, but only through the new birth, is, indeed, very pregnant, but is in conflict with the connection and purpose of this discourse, especially, moreover in conflict with the words with which the Saviour, according to Luke, concludes His address. No, both parables illustrate the incompatibility of the Old and the New, of the life under the law and that under grace, with the distinction, however, that in the former the new (the cloth) is represented as something added with the intent of mending the old; while, on the other hand, in the second the new (the wine) is more the principal thing, and comes into prominence in its peculiar force and working.
Luk_5:39. No man also having drunk old wine—This last sentence belongs to the communications peculiar to Luke, and there is, therefore, no ground for the assumption that the Saviour uttered it on an entirely different occasion (Kuinoel). It is evidently the intention of the Lord to intimate here that the scandal taken by the Pharisees and the disciples of John is intelligible, nay, that in a certain sense it may even be excusable. Accustomed to their old ideas, as to old wine, they can feel as little at home in His principles as any one, who has drunk his old wine with appetite, can at once long for the new. Was it a wonder that they judged so awry concerning His disciples? At the same time there is implied an indirect justification of the Baptist in this respect, that the latter had not dissuaded his disciples from strictness in fasting and praying. If he had done this, standing as he did in other things entirely upon the legal position, he would only have set a piece of new cloth upon an old garment. He had done (the Saviour intimates) quite as well in leaving everything on the old footing as Jesus would have done ill if He had restrained the free spirit of His teaching and of His disciples within the narrow forms of Judaism.
The old is good.—So does it read literally: ÷ñçóôüò , while a few Codd. (B., L.) have the comparative, ÷ñçóôüôåñïò . It is, of course, understood that in the reading accepted by us also, it cannot be used absolutely, but of a relative and subjective goodness of the old wine as respects the taste of the drinker. The old remains good only so long as one is not accustomed to the new, which in and of itself is better.
2. Scarcely does the gospel of grace begin to come in its most lovely form into manifestation, when the scandal taken by those who remain standing in a legal position comes also to view in its full strength. The kingdom of God no sooner comes to the spiritually poor, than the rich, who are left empty, are inflamed with intense anger. The Saviour suffers this displeasure to manifest itself, since the revelation of it prepares the surest way for its annihilation.
3. He who exhibits Himself here as the Physician of the sick, makes Himself known also as the heavenly Bridegroom. Here, too, is a point in which the Christology of the fourth Gospel concurs with that of the Synoptics. Comp. Joh_3:29 with Mat_9:15; Mat_22:2. Through this figurative speech beams a cheerfulness with which the deep melancholy of the words immediately following contrasts the more strikingly. The thought of death accompanies the Saviour even to the social meal; and in the as yet weak manifestations of the hatred of His enemies, He sees a presage of all that is afterwards to come to pass. The mysterious intimations of the fourth Gospe. (Joh_2:19; Joh_4:37-38) being excepted, we find here the first, as yet covert intimations of the bloody death which is, before they expect, to sever Him from His disciples. It is noticeable how even in this prophecy of His death a regular climax from a less to a more definite, from a figurative to a literal, statement takes place. Yet we shall soon find occasion to come back more particularly to this.
4. The Saviour gives here an important instruction in reference to fasting. When the Romish Church derives from it the doctrine that He ordained fasts as an abiding usage after His death, this comes from the fact that she overlooks the full force of the promise, Mat_28:20; for is not the Bridegroom taken away in body simply for this purpose, that He may come again in the spirit and remain forever? Without doubt, there is also a Christian fasting (Act_13:2; 1Co_7:5), and the Protestant polemics against Rome, which almost represent the matter as if the Saviour had forbidden fasting and as if this abstinence was in no case to be commended, are not free from gross one-sidedness. There is a liberty for fasting as well as a liberty from fasting, and here also, the apostolic rule, Rom_14:5, holds good. On the other hand, however, we do not venture from the Lord’s words to conclude definitely that the Christian, in days of spiritual darkness and spiritual conflict, when he feels the presence of the Saviour little or not at all (Olshausen, Neander), is called to fast. Jesus does not say that in the days when they are not with the bridegroom they are to fast, but “in the days when the bridegroom is not with them.” Those days, however, since His glorification, have never returned. How literally, moreover, this prophecy was fulfilled with the first disciples of the Saviour, appears in Joh_16:20.
5. The whole parable of the wine and the bottles throws a clear light upon the distinction between the Old and the New Covenant. It shows how clearly the Saviour was conscious of infusing into mankind a wholly new life, with which the old forms of worship of God were not capable of being lastingly united. So powerful was the new spirit, that it must needs destroy and remove entirely the obsolete form; so peculiar, that every mixture with heterogeneous elements could only injure at once the new and the old. Therefore He could with such assurance commit to time that concerning which He knew that it would certainly come to pass. He could composedly leave those who with good intentions held fast to the old to entertain awhile the opinion that their wine was better than any other. Afterwards they would of themselves come to juster views.
6. The concluding words of the parable in Luke are at the same time the expression of one of the ground-thoughts which the Saviour in the training of His first disciples kept continually in view. He did not take from them the old wine at once, before they were in a condition to relish the new. He began with giving milk, and not at once the strong meat, comp. 1Co_3:2. Thus does He stand before us, on the one hand, as infinitely more than Moses and ready to break the yoke of the law, on the other hand, as meeker than Moses and concerned not to quench the smoking wick. A wholesome doctrine does this whole passage contain, on the one hand, for those who would weaken the quickening power of the gospel by the imposition of legal fetters, and, on the other hand, for those who wish to lead the weak brother at once to the highest position of faith and freedom, without allowing the leaven time for gradual development. On the whole, we may perhaps say that Romans 14 contains the best practical commentary on this word of the Lord. Never were the suaviter in modo and the fortiter in re more harmoniously united than here. Comp. the development of this doctrine in Lange’s Leben Jesu, p. 679.
Starke:—God has in the calling of men His own time and way.—Nova Bibl. Tub.:—The order of conversion: 1. Jesus beholds the sinner in grace, 2. He calls him by His word, 3. faith follows without delay, 4. and love shows itself active and busy.—The church of God here on earth is a lazaretto and hospital.—Bibl. Wirt.:—The old bottles and rags of papistical ordinances fit themselves in no way to the doctrine of the Holy Gospel, therefore no Christian’s heart should cleave to the same.—Quesnel:—We must not teach the souls of the unconverted everything good that we know, but feed them with the truth according as their necessities and the capacity of their spiritual appetite demands.—In religion also, every age needs its own food, 1Jn_2:13-14.
Luther to Staupitz (on Luk_5:34-35):—“I let it content me, that I find in my Lord Jesus Christ a sweet Redeemer and a faithful High-priest; Him will I extol and praise so long as I live. But if any one will not sing to Him and thank Him with me, what matters that to me? If it likes him, let him howl by himself alone.”
Heubner:—Matthew won is himself in turn to win others. So should we!—Syncretism (as they were of old wont to call the mixture of entirely heterogeneous doctrines and institutes distinct in their spirit, after the law which existed in Crete of forgetting all domestic strife when war broke out) endures not long.—Lisco:—The foolishness of making half-work with Christianity.—Zimmermann:—How with the Christian the old must be wholly overcome by the new: 1. The old unbelief and error by the new faith; 2. the old death by the new life; 3. the old habit by the new hunger and thirst.—Arndt:—All that is old must become new, and then all that is within must be expressed without.—How Jesus out of a publican makes an apostle: 1. The history (Luk_5:27), 2. the justification of this calling (Luk_5:28-32).—The Saviour’s instructions concerning fasting.—F. W. Krummacher:—Wherefore came Christ?
Hamann:—Christianity does not aim at patching up all our understanding, will, and all our other powers and necessities even to the potsherds of our treasure, and the main matter does not rest upon any religious theories and hypotheses, else the promise to make all new (2Co_5:17; Rev_21:5), were not then a baptism of Spirit and fire with new tongues.
Footnotes:
Luk_5:30.—Rec. om. áὐôῶí .
Luk_5:30.—The last words, êáὶ ἁìáñôùëῶí , are omitted by Tischendorf on the authority of D., but, as it still appears to us, without preponderating reasons.
Luk_5:33.—The interrogative form of the Rec.: Äéáôß , ê . ô . ë ., seems borrowed from the parellel passage in Mark. According to the most correct reading in Luke we have not a direct question, but an affirmative objection [Cod. Sin. inserts Äéáôß .—C. C. S.].
Luk_5:35.—Rec.: êáὶ ὅôáí ἀðáñèῇ . The êáὶ is found in A., B., D., R., omitted by C., F., L., M., Sin. Retained by Tischendorf, Meyer, Alford, and Tregelles. Put in brackets by Lachmann. The difficulty of giving an exact sense to it, favors its originality. Meyer says: “It might be taken as explicative. But it is more congruous with the sorrowful tone of the discourse to take ἐëåýóïíôáé , &c., by itself as an interrupted thought, and êáὶ as and: But there will come (not be always absent) … (namely, when that will be found, which you now miss), and when the bridegroom shall be taken away, &c.”—C. C. S.]
Luk_5:36.—“The latter part of this verse is peculiar, and is to be thus understood: ‘if he does, he will both rend the new garment’ (by taking out of it the ἐðßâëçìá ), ‘and the piece from the new garment will not agree with the old.’ The common interpretation (which makes ôὸ êáéíὸí the nom. to ó÷ßæåé , and understands ôὸ ðáëáéïí as its accus.) is inconsistent with the construction, in which ôὸ êáéíüí is to be coupled with ἱìÜôéïí , not with ἐðßâëçìá . In Matthew and Mark the mischief done is differently expressed. Our text is very significant, and represents to us the spoiling of both systems by an attempt to engraft the new upon the old: the new loses its completeness, the old, its consistency.” Alford.—C. C. S.]
Luk_5:38.—The clause in the Rec., êáὶ ἀìöüôåðïé óõíôçñïῦíôáé , is omitted by Tischendorf, principally on the authority of B., L.; apparently these words are borrowed from Mat_9:17, and, therefore, justly declared by Griesbach to be at least doubtful. [Omitted by Sin., which, however, differs from B. in having âÜëëïõóéí instead of âëçôÝïí .—C. C. S.]
Luk_5:39.—Whether the word åὐèÝùò actually stood in the original Greek text may well be doubted, but even regarded as interpretamentum, it is certainly entirely in the spirit of the Saviour’s words.
Luk_5:39.—Rec.: ÷ñçóôüôåñïò with A., C., R., ÷ñçóôüò , B., L., Sin. “The sentence seems to have been tampered with by some who wished to make it more obvious, and to bring out the comparison more strongly: åὐèÝùò being inserted, better to correspond with the fact, and the matter in question, and the comparative substituted for the positive; but the sentence loses much of its point and vigor by the change: the old wine is not better than the new (which has not been tasted), but merely ‘good,’ i.e., good enough, therefore no new is desired.” Alford.—C. C. S.]