Luke 22:53

Luke 22:53 . ἀλλʼ αὕτη ἐστὶν , etc.: the leading words in this elliptical sentence are τοῦ σκότους , which qualify both ὥρα and ἐξουσία . Two things are said: your hour is an hour of darkness, and your power is a power of darkness. There is an allusion to the time they had chosen for the apprehension, night, not day, but the physical darkness is for Jesus only an emblem of moral darkness. He says in effect: why should I complain of being captured as a robber in the dark by men whose whole nature and ways are dark and false?

Luke 22:53 . Ὑμῶν , your hour) An hour not given to you before, [although long ago looked and waited for by you.—V. g.]— ἡ ἐξουσία τοῦ σκότους , the power of darkness ) John 9:4 [“The night cometh, when no man can work”], Luke 14:30 [“The prince of this world”]: of darkness , that is to say, of Satan .[250] The abstract put for the concrete. An allusion to the time in which he spake, viz. the night. [250] Ephesians 6:12 , “The rulers of the darkness of this world.”—E. and T.

(53) This is your hour, and the power of darkness. —The words are peculiar to St. Luke in this connection, but they present a point of coincidence, (1) as regards the phrase, with St. Paul ( Colossians 1:13 ); and (2) as regards the thought, with St. John ( John 14:30 ). In identifying the power that worked through human instruments against Him with darkness, our Lord virtually claims to be Himself the Light ( John 8:12 ).

Luke GETHSEMANE THE CROSS THE VICTORY AND DEFEAT OF DARKNESSLuke 22:53 . The darkness was the right time for so dark a deed. The surface meaning of these pathetic and far-reaching words of our Lord’s in the garden to His captors is to point the correspondence between the season and the act. As He has just said, ‘He had been daily with them in the Temple,’ but in the blaze of the noontide they laid no hands upon Him. They found a congenial hour in the midnight. But the words go a great deal deeper than allusive symbolism of that sort. Looking at them as giving us a little glimpse into the thoughts and feelings of Christ, we can scarcely help tracing in them the very clear consciousness that He was the Light, and that all antagonism to Him was the work of darkness in an eminent and especial sense. But whilst this unobscured consciousness, which no mere man could venture so unqualifiedly to assert, is manifest in the words, there is also in them, to my ear, a tone of majestic resignation, as if He said, ‘There! do your worst!’ and bowed His head, as a man might do, standing breast high in the sea, that the wave might roll over Him. And there is in them, too, a shrinking as of horror from the surging upon Him of the black tide to which He bows His head.

But whilst thus pathetic and significant in their indication of the feelings of our Lord, they have a wider and a deeper meaning still, I think, if we ponder them; inasmuch as they open before us some aspects of His sufferings and eminently of His Cross, which it becomes us all to lay to heart. And it is to these that I desire to turn your attention for a few moments. I. I see in them, then, first, this great thought, that the Cross of Jesus Christ is the centre and the meeting-point for the energies of three worlds. ‘This is your hour.’ Now our Lord habitually speaks of His sufferings, and of other points in His life, as being ‘My hour,’ by which, of course, He means the time appointed to Him by God for the doing of an appointed work. And that idea is distinctly to be attached to the use of the word here. But, on the other hand, there is emphasis laid on ‘ your ,’ and that hour is thereby designated as a time in which they could do as they would. It was their opportunity, or, as we say in our colloquialism, now was their time when, unhindered, they might carry into effect their purposes. So there is given us the thought of His passion and death as being the most eminent and awful instance of men being left unchecked to work out whatsoever was in their evil hearts, and to carry into effect their blackest purposes.