Luke 9:18

The whole passage turns on one question, and Luke sets it in a moment of prayer: “as he was alone praying, his disciples were with him.” Jesus has just fed the five thousand (Luke 9:10–17), and the crowds around him are larger than ever. He withdraws from them to pray. The word for “alone”, katamónas, means separately or by himself, and yet the disciples are with him. So Jesus is apart from the crowds and praying on his own, with the Twelve close at hand, perhaps resting or waiting at a little distance. The verb proseúchomai means to pray to God, to make supplication and to worship.

Luke shows Jesus praying again and again before the turning points of his ministry. He was praying when heaven opened at his baptism (Luke 3:21), and he continued all night in prayer before he chose the twelve (Luke 6:12). Here prayer comes before the question that draws out Peter’s confession, and before the first plain words about the cross. The Son lived in constant communion with his Father, and what he revealed to his disciples came out of it. They noticed, and on another day, when he had finished praying, one of them asked, “Lord, teach us to pray” (Luke 11:1). Luke leaves the place unnamed, and Matthew and Mark set this conversation near Caesarea Philippi (Matthew 16:13–20, Mark 8:27–30).

Jesus asks in two steps, first what the crowds say and then what the disciples say. The word for “the people” is óchlos, the crowd or multitude, the many who had heard him teach and eaten the loaves. By hearing the crowd’s answers first, the disciples set the popular opinions beside the answer he wants from those who have lived with him.

Jesus charged them to keep it to themselves because they, and the crowds, had first to learn what kind of Christ he was, and he begins teaching them in his very next words. The verse is forceful. “Straitly charged” is epitimáō, to express strong disapproval or to command with the implication of a threat, a word that can also mean to rebuke. “Commanded” is parangéllō, to pass on a message and so to order. “No man” is mēdeís, no one at all. With two verbs of command together, the order is unmistakable.

The crowds would have heard the word “Christ” as a call to revolt. After the loaves, some were already about to take him by force and make him a king, and he withdrew from them (John 6:15). His kingdom, as he told Pilate, “is not of this world” (John 18:36). Open talk of a Messiah could also have brought the Roman authorities or the leaders of the people against him before the appointed time. So the silence served God’s timing. Jesus would suffer as the servant who bore our griefs and was wounded for our transgressions (Isaiah 53:4–6), and his Messiahship could be rightly understood and preached only in the light of the cross and the empty tomb. This silence after a confession is often called the Messianic secret, and it comes in the other accounts too (Mark 8:29–30, Matthew 16:20).

The disciples kept the charge but grasped little of the reason. When Jesus spoke of his betrayal a second time, “they understood not this saying, and it was hid from them”, and soon they were arguing about which of them should be greatest (Luke 9:44–46). Their understanding came after the resurrection, when the risen Lord asked, “Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?” and opened the Scriptures to them (Luke 24:25–27). His way to glory ran through humiliation, as Paul says, to the name which is above every name (Philippians 2:5–11). Then the silence ended. The risen Christ sent his disciples to teach all nations (Matthew 28:18–20) and to be his witnesses “unto the uttermost part of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

“Saying” joins this verse to the charge of silence. Right after Peter calls him the Christ, Jesus tells them for the first time in plain words what the Christ must go through. There are four things: he must suffer many things, be rejected of the elders and chief priests and scribes, be slain, and be raised the third day.

“Must” is deî, “it is necessary, one must”. Here it speaks of what has to take place because God has planned it. Peter later preached that Jesus was “delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God” (Acts 2:23). “Suffer” is páschō, to undergo something, usually something painful. The “many things” would come in the betrayal, the trials, the scourging and the cross.

The ones who reject him are named. The elders were respected leaders of the people, the chief priests led the priesthood, and the scribes were the experts in the law. These were the very men charged with teaching God’s law and guiding Israel, and they turned away the Messiah they were waiting for. Isaiah had foretold it: “He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3–5). “Slain” is a plain word for killing, and it points to the cross. Mark records the same prophecy (Mark 8:31).

The last clause is the promise. “Be raised” is egeírō, to wake or rouse, used of rising from sleep, from sickness and from death. In this passive form it is used of Christ being raised by God. Death would be followed on the third day by resurrection, and this is the gospel Paul received and handed on, “that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3–4). Paul reasoned from the Scriptures “that Christ must needs have suffered, and risen again from the dead” (Acts 17:3).

So Peter’s confession and this prophecy belong together. The Christ of God is “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), and in his death “God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Salvation comes through his death and rising, and through him alone: “Neither is there salvation in any other” (Acts 4:12).

Jesus now turns from what he must do to what his followers must do, and he speaks “to them all”. The crowd is included along with the Twelve, so the call reaches everyone who wants to belong to him. Matthew and Mark record the same call (Matthew 16:24, Mark 8:34), and Luke gives more on its cost later, where Jesus says, “whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:25–33).

“If any man will come after me” speaks of wanting to follow Jesus as one’s master, learning from him and taking up his way of life. The call that follows has three parts.

“Let him deny himself.” The verb aparnéomai means to deny utterly or to disown. A man who denies himself disowns self as the one in charge of his life, and his desires, will and plans come under the rule of Christ. Paul describes the same surrender when he urges believers to present their bodies “a living sacrifice” (Romans 12:1–2), and when he writes, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me” (Galatians 2:20).

“And take up his cross.” Aírō means to lift or take up, and staurós is a stake or cross, the Roman instrument of execution. In that world the cross was kept for criminals and rebels, and a condemned man carried the beam to the place where he would die, in public shame. Jesus’ hearers knew exactly what he meant. He had just said that he himself must be slain, and now he tells them that those who follow him walk the same road, ready to bear shame, loss and even death for his sake.

People ask whether this is a literal or a figurative command. Jesus is speaking chiefly in a figure, of a readiness to face rejection, hardship and loss for him. For many believers through the ages, and in many places today, the figure has become literal in persecution and martyrdom.

Verse 24 gives the reason for the call: “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it.” The word for life is psychḗ, which means breath and then the life that breathes, the soul, the self. “Save” is sṓzō, to save, deliver or keep safe, the word the New Testament uses for salvation. “Lose” is apóllymi, to destroy fully, to perish or to lose.

The same words carry two senses in the one verse. The man who sets out to save his life is holding on to it for himself, guarding his comfort, safety, standing and plans above everything, and in the end he loses the life that matters. The man who gives up his life for Christ’s sake, in daily surrender or in death, keeps it for ever. “For my sake” is the heart of the verse, because the promise of life belongs to loss suffered for Christ.

Matthew and Mark record the saying here as well (Matthew 16:25, Mark 8:35), and Jesus spoke it on another occasion too (Matthew 10:39). John records it in another form: “He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal” (John 12:25).

People ask whether losing one’s life always means martyrdom. It includes martyrdom, and for most believers it means the daily giving up of self-will, plans and comfort to God, the living sacrifice Paul speaks of.

Here again Jesus went first. He “made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men” (Philippians 2:7). “He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities” (Isaiah 53:5). He gave up his life, and through it God gives everlasting life to whoever believes in him (John 3:16). On the cross he triumphed over principalities and powers (Colossians 2:15), and his resurrection proved this saying true in his own person.

Verse 25 presses the point with a question that answers itself. “Advantaged” is ōpheléō, to be useful, to benefit or profit. Jesus speaks in the language of profit and loss, and he puts the greatest gain imaginable on one side of the scale, “the whole world”. Kósmos means an orderly arrangement and so the world, with its people and all it holds. It can also mean adornment, and Peter uses it for outward “adorning” (1 Peter 3:3). Gaining the whole world would be every ambition of wealth, power and fame fulfilled.

On the other side of the scale is the man himself. “Lose himself” uses apóllymi again, and here it means the ruin of the man’s own self. “Be cast away” is zēmióō, to suffer loss or receive damage. Paul uses the same verb of himself: “for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ” (Philippians 3:8). Paul suffered the loss of everything and gained Christ. The man in Jesus’ question gains everything and suffers the loss of himself.

Matthew and Mark record the same question, and Mark adds, “Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Matthew 16:26, Mark 8:36–37). A man’s own soul outweighs the whole world. Jesus taught the same when he said, “lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven” (Matthew 6:19–21).

Verse 26 adds a warning: “For whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words, of him shall the Son of man be ashamed.” The verb epaischýnomai means to be ashamed of something, to feel disgrace at being linked with it. In that world it was shameful and often dangerous to own a man who had been crucified, and people were tempted to keep their distance to protect their standing or their safety. “My words” uses lógos, something said, here the whole of Jesus’ teaching and message. So a person can be ashamed of Christ by hiding that he belongs to him, and also by letting go of what Christ taught when it becomes unwelcome.

The answer matches the deed. The one who is ashamed of Christ now will find Christ ashamed of him then. Jesus said the same in other words: “Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven. But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven” (Matthew 10:32–33). Paul writes, “if we deny him, he also will deny us” (2 Timothy 2:12), and Mark records this saying with the words “in this adulterous and sinful generation” (Mark 8:38).

The Son of man appears again, now coming in glory, as in the vision of Daniel 7. “Glory”, dóxa, means honour, splendour and majesty made plain to see. Jesus names three glories at his coming: his own, his Father’s, and that of the holy angels. His own glory is the glory he had with the Father “before the world was” (John 17:5). On that day the shame of being linked with him will be small indeed beside the glory in which he comes.

He bore shame first. He “endured the cross, despising the shame” (Hebrews 12:2), and God “hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Because he was willing to be counted with sinners, his people can confess him openly, and those who share his reproach now are heirs with him of the glory he will share at his coming.

The passage ends with a promise. “But I tell you of a truth” marks a solemn statement. “Taste of death” is a common biblical way of saying “die”: geúomai means to taste and so to experience, and thánatos is death. Some of the people standing there would see the kingdom of God before they died. Basileía, kingdom, comes from basileús, “king”, and means royalty and rule, and so the realm a king rules. The kingdom of God is his reign.

This passage gives us the answer to the most important question anyone is ever asked. The crowds honoured Jesus as a prophet, and Peter, taught by the Father, confessed him as the Christ of God. In the same moment Jesus showed what that means. The Christ goes to the cross and rises on the third day, and his people walk after him. God’s plan for his Anointed ran through suffering to glory, and it was settled before it began, for the Son of man “must” suffer and be raised.

Everything Jesus asks of his followers here he did first. He gave up his own will in Gethsemane, carried his cross, laid down his life and was raised, bore the shame, and will come in glory. So the call to follow is a call to go where he has already gone, and the promise that comes with it is his own resurrection life. The one who loses his life for him saves it, and some who stood beside him saw his kingdom with their own eyes. Whoever confesses him, and goes on confessing him day by day, has his word that he will own them before his Father and the holy angels.