Lectio: Luke 12:8-12

Lectio Divina
Saturday, October 19, 2019
Ordinary Time
1) Opening prayer
Lord,
our help and guide,
make your love the foundation of our lives.
May our love for you express itself
in our eagerness to do good for others.
You live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
2) Gospel Reading - Luke 12: 8-12
Jesus said to his disciples: 'I tell you, if anyone openly declares himself for me in the
presence of human beings, the Son of man will declare himself for him in the presence of
God's angels. But anyone who disowns me in the presence of human beings will be
disowned in the presence of God's angels.
'Everyone who says a word against the Son of man will be forgiven, but no one who
blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will be forgiven. 'When they take you before
synagogues and magistrates and authorities, do not worry about how to defend yourselves
or what to say, because when the time comes, the Holy Spirit will teach you what you
should say.'
3) Reflection
• Context. While Jesus is on the way toward Jerusalem, we read in Luke, chapter 11, that
precedes our passage, presenting Him as having the intention to reveal the abyss of the
merciful acting of God and at the same time the profound misery hidden in the heart of
man. Particularly in revealing this to those who have the task of being witnesses of the
Word and of the work of the Holy Spirit in the world. Jesus presents such realities with a
series of reflections which provoke effects in the reader, such as to feel attracted by the
force of his Word to the point of feeling judged interiorly and detached from all desires of
greatness which shake and agitate man (9, 46). The reader identifies himself with various
attitudes that the teaching of Jesus arouses. Above all, he recognizes himself as follower
of Christ in the disciple and sent to precede him in the role of messenger of the kingdom,
in the one who hesitates somewhat in following him, and in the Pharisee or doctor of the
Law, a slave of their interpretations and life style. In summary, the course of the reader in
chapter 11 is characterized by this encounter with the teaching of Jesus who reveals to
him the intimacy of God, the mercy of God’s heart, and the truth of his being a man. In
chapter 12, Jesus opposes the perverted judgment of man to the goodness of God who
always gives with superabundance. Man’s life enters into play here. It is necessary to be
attentive to the perversion of the human judgment and to the hypocrisy that distorts
values in order to privilege only one’s own interests and advantages more than being
interested in life, that life which is accepted gratuitously. The Word of God gives the
reader an appeal on how to face the question regarding life: man will be judged on his
behavior at the time of threats. It is necessary to be concerned with the men who can “kill
the body” but rather to have at heart the fear of God who judges and corrects. But Jesus
does not promise the disciples that they will be free from threats and persecutions, but He
assures them that they will have God’s help at the moments of difficulty.
• To know how to recognize Jesus. The courageous commitment to recognize the
friendship of Jesus publicly implies as a consequence a personal communion with Him at
the moment of his return to judge the world. At the same time, the betrayal in “who will
deny me”, the one who is afraid to confess and recognize Jesus publicly, condemns
himself. The reader is invited to reflect on the crucial importance of Jesus in the history
of salvation. It is necessary to decide to be either with Jesus or against Him and of his
Word of Grace. This decision, to recognize or to reject Jesus, depends is critical to our
salvation. Luke makes it evident that the communion that Jesus gives at the present time
to his disciples will be confirmed and will become perfect at the moment of his coming in
glory (“he will come in his glory and of the Father and of the angels”: 9: 26). The call to
the Christian community is very evident. Even if it has been exposed to the hostility of
the world, it is indispensable not to cease to give a courageous witness of Jesus, of
communion with him, to value and not to be ashamed to show one is a Christian.
• Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Here Luke understands blasphemy as offensive
speaking or speaking against. This verb was applied to Jesus when in 5, 21 He had
forgiven sins. The question presented in this passage may give rise in the reader to some
difficulty: is blasphemy against the Son of man less grave or serious than the one against
the Holy Spirit? The language of Jesus may seem rather strong for the reader of the
Gospel of Luke. Through the Gospel he has seen Jesus as showing the behavior of God
who goes to look for sinners, who is demanding but who knows how to wait for the
moment of return to Him, when the sinner attains maturity. In Mark and Matthew
blasphemy against the Spirit is the lack of recognizing the power of God in the exorcisms
of Jesus. But in Luke it may mean the deliberate and known rejection of the prophetic
Spirit that is working in the actions and teaching of Jesus, that is to say, a rejection of the
encounter with the merciful acting of salvation with the Father. The lack of recognition of
the divine origin of the mission of Jesus, the direct offenses to the person of Jesus, may
be forgiven, but anyone who denies the acting of the Holy Spirit in the mission of Jesus
will not be forgiven. It is not a question of an opposition between the person of Jesus and
the Holy Spirit, or of some contrasting symbol of two diverse periods of history, that of
Jesus and that of the community after the Passover, but rather, the evangelist wants to
definitively show that to reject the Holy Spirit in the mission of Jesus is equal to
blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.
4) Personal questions
• Are you aware that to be a Christian requires the need to face difficulties, deceit,
dangers, and even to risk one’s own life to give witness of one’s own friendship with
Jesus?
• Do you become embarrassed of being a Christian? Are you more concerned about the
judgments of men, their approval, are these more important for you or that of losing your
friendship with Christ?
5) Concluding Prayer
Yahweh our Lord,
how majestic is your name throughout the world!
Whoever keeps singing of your majesty higher than the heavens,
even through the mouths of children, or of babes in arms. (Ps 8: 1-2)
Text Sermons : J.C. Ryle : Expository Thoughts On Luke - Luke 12:8-12

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We are taught, firstly, in these verses, that we must confess Christ upon earth, if we expect Him to
own us as His saved people at the last day. We must not be ashamed to let all men see that we
believe in Christ, and serve Christ, and love Christ, and care more for the praise of Christ than for the
praise of man.

The duty of confessing Christ is incumbent on all Christians in every age of the Church. Let us never
forget that. It is not for martyrs only, but for all believers, in every rank of life. It is not for great
occasions only, but for our daily walk through an evil world. The rich man among the rich, the laborer
among laborers, the young among the young, the servant among servants--each and all must be
prepared, if they are true Christians, to confess their Master. It needs no blowing a trumpet. It
requires no noisy boasting. It needs nothing more than using the daily opportunity. But one thing is
certain--if a man loves Jesus, he ought not to be ashamed to let people know it.

The difficulty of confessing Christ is undoubtedly very great. It never was easy at any period. It never
will be easy as long as the world stands. It is sure to entail on us laughter, ridicule, contempt,
mockery, enmity, and persecution. The wicked dislike to see any one better than themselves. The
world which hated Christ will always hate true Christians. But whether we like it or not, whether it be
hard or easy, our course is perfectly clear. In one way or another Christ must be confessed.

The grand motive to stir us up to bold confession is forcibly brought before us in the words which we
are now considering. Our Lord declares, that if we do not confess Him before men, He will "not
confess us before the angels of God" at the last day. He will refuse to acknowledge us as His people.
He will disown us as cowards, faithless, and deserters. He will not plead for us. He will not be our
Advocate. He will not deliver us from the wrath to come. He will leave us to reap the consequences of
our cowardice, and to stand before the bar of God helpless, defenseless, and unforgiven.

What a dreadful prospect is this! How much turns on this one hinge of "confessing Christ before
men!" Surely we ought not to hesitate for a moment. To doubt between two such alternatives is the
height of folly. For us to deny Christ or be ashamed of His Gospel, may get us a little of man's good
opinion for a few years, though it will bring us no real peace. But for Christ to deny us at the last day
will be ruin in hell to all eternity! Let us cast away our cowardly fears. Come what will, let us confess
Christ.

We are taught, secondly, in these verses, that there is such a thing as an unpardonable sin. Our Lord
Jesus Christ declares that "unto him that blasphemes against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven."

These dreadful words must doubtless be interpreted with scriptural qualification. We must never so
expound one part of Scripture as to make it contradict another. Nothing is impossible with God. The
blood of Christ can cleanse away all sin. The very chief of sinners have been pardoned in many
instances. These things must never be forgotten. Yet notwithstanding all this, there remains behind a
great truth which must not be evaded. There is such a thing as a sin "which shall not be forgiven."

The sin to which our Lord refers in this passage appears to be the sin of deliberately rejecting God's
truth with the heart, while the truth is clearly known with the head. It is a combination of light in the
understanding and determined wickedness in the will. It is the very sin into which many of the Scribes
and Pharisees appear to have fallen, when they rejected the ministry of the Spirit after the day of
Pentecost, and refused to believe the preaching of the apostles. It is a sin into which, it may be
feared, many constant hearers of the Gospel nowadays fall, by determined clinging to the world. And
worst of all, it is a sin which is commonly accompanied by utter deadness, hardness, and insensibility
of heart. The man whose sins will not be forgiven, is precisely the man who will never seek to have
them forgiven. This is exactly the root of his dreadful disease. He might be pardoned, but he will not
seek to be pardoned. He is Gospel-hardened and "twice dead." His conscience is "seared with a hot
iron." (1 Tim. 4:2.)

Let us pray that we may be delivered from a cold, speculative, unsanctified head-knowledge of
Christianity. It is a rock on which thousands make shipwreck to all eternity. No heart becomes so hard
as that on which the light shines, but finds no admission. The same fire which melts the wax hardens
the clay. Whatever light we have let us use it. Whatever knowledge we possess, let us live fully up to
it. To be an ignorant heathen, and bow down to idols and stones, is bad enough. But to be called a
Christian, and know the theory of the Gospel, and yet cleave to sin and the world with the heart, is to
be a candidate for the worst and lowest place in hell. It is to be as like as possible to the devil.

We are taught, lastly, in this passage, that Christians need not be over anxious as to what they shall
say, when suddenly required to speak for Christ's cause.

The promise which our Lord gives on this subject has a primary reference, no doubt, to public trials
like those of Paul before Felix and Festus. It is a promise which hundreds in similar circumstances
have found fulfilled to their singular comfort. The lives of many of the Reformers, and others of God's
witnesses, are full of striking proofs that the Holy Spirit can teach Christians what to say in time of
need.