Luke 22:25

And he said unto them, The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and they that exercise authority upon them are called benefactors.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(25) The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them.—See Notes on Matthew 20:25; Mark 10:42. The repetition of the same words that had then been spoken in answer to the petition of the sons of Zebedee, suggests the probability that they were again prominent in the strife for pre-eminence.

Are called benefactors.—This takes the place of “their great ones exercise authority upon them,” in St. Matthew and St. Mark. Antiochus VII. of Syria, and Ptolemy III. of Egypt, were examples of kings who had borne the title of Euergetes, or benefactor. There is apparently an emphasis on “are called” as contrasted with “let him become,” in the next verse. The world gave the title of “benefactor” to those who were great in power only. In Christ’s kingdom true greatness was to be attained by benefiting others in the humblest services.

MacLaren's Expositions

Luke

PARTING PROMISES AND WARNINGS

CHRIST’S IDEAL OF A MONARCH 1

Luke 22:25 - Luke 22:26.

There have been sovereigns of England whose death was a relief. There have been others who were mourned with a certain tepid and decorous regret. But there has never been one on whose bier have been heaped such fragrant wreaths of universal love and sorrow as have been laid upon hers whom we have not yet learned to call by another name than that which has been musical for all these years-the Queen. Why has her people’s love thus compassed her? Surely, chiefly because they felt and saw that Christ’s ideal of rule, as stated in these words of our text, was her ideal, which she had gone far to realise. Here is the secret of her hold upon her people. Here is the reason why, from almost all the world, tributes have come, and as has been well said, ‘They that loved not England loved her.’

Now it would be impossible for me to speak words remote from the thought that has been filling the nation’s mind in these days. I can add nothing to the many eloquent and just appreciations to which we have listened in this past week, but I can draw your attention to the underlying secret which moulded and shaped that life. And it becomes the pulpit to do so. We Christians ought to infuse a Christian element into everything. We should ‘not sorrow as others,’ nor should we admire as others. We all unite in praising her, but eulogiums which ignore the ground of the virtues which they extol are superficial and misleading. I ask you to turn to the revelation of the secret of the nation’s love and sorrow suggested by the words of my text.

Christ sets forth, in two sharply contrasted pictures, the world’s ideal of a king and His ideal. The upper room was a strange place, and the eve of Calvary was a still stranger time, for disciples to squabble about pre-eminence. The Master was absorbed in the thought of His Cross, the servants were quarrelling about their places in His Kingdom. Perhaps it was the foot-washing that brought about the unseemly strife that arose among them, each desiring to hand on the menial office to another. Jesus Christ did it Himself; and to that, perhaps, refer the touching words which Luke gives as following the text; ‘I am among you as he that serveth,’ with the towel round His loins, and the basin in His hand.

The world’s ideal of a King.

Now, the one picture which He draws for us here, the world’s ideal of a king, is the portrait familiar enough to all who know anything about that ancient order of society, of tyrants and despots, in Assyria, Babylonia. Pharaohs and all the little kings round about Judaea; the vile old Herod and his equally vile brood, were recent or living examples of what the Master said when He sketched ‘the kings of the Gentiles,’ They ‘lord it over them.’ Arrogant superiority, imperious masterfulness, irresponsible wills, caprices ungoverned, an absolute oblivion of duties, no thought of responsibilities-these were the features of that ancient type of monarch: and which, in spite of all constitutional hedges and limitations, there is abundant room for the repetition of, even in so-called Christian countries.

And then, side by side with that, comes another characteristic: ‘They that exercise authority upon them are called “benefactors.”‘ They demand titles which shall credit them with virtues that they never try to possess, and live in a region filled with the fumes from a thousand venal censers of a flattery which intoxicates and makes giddy. A king in Egypt, very near our Lord’s time, had borne the title ‘benefactor,’ the very word that is employed here; even as many a most ungracious sovereign has been called ‘Your Most Gracious Majesty.’

The position tempts to such a type. And although the world has outgrown it, yet, as I have said, there is ample room for the recurrence to the old and obsolete form, unless a mightier hindrance than human nature knows, come in to prevent it. An ancient prophet lamented over the shepherds of Israel ‘that do feed themselves,’ and indignantly asked, ‘should not the shepherds feed the sheep?’ He meant precisely the same contrast which is drawn out at length in these two pictures that we have before us now.

The Christian conception.

‘Ye shall not be so.’ The Christian conception is in sharp contrast to, and the Christian realisation of the conception, should be the absolute opposite of that type to which I have already referred. ‘He that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger’; that suggests modesty and meekness of demeanour in bearing the loftiest office. ‘And he that is chief as he that doth serve’; that expresses an activity, not self-regarding and self-centred, but ever used for others. The simple words of Jesus Christ are the noblest expression of, and, as I believe, have been the mightiest impulse in producing, the modern recognition which, thank God! is becoming more and more pronounced every day amongst us, that power means duty, that elevation means the obligation to stoop, that true authority expresses itself in service. We see that conviction growing in all classes in England. Those who are lifted high are learning to-day, as they never learned before, the responsibilities and obligations of their position. And those who are low are beginning to apply the principle as they never did before, and to test the worthiness of the lofty, highly-endowed, wealthy, and noble, by their discharge of the obligations of their position. And although it anticipates what I have to say subsequently, I cannot but ask here, who shall say how the Queen’s example of authority becoming service has steadied the Empire, and made a peaceful transition from the old type of authority to the new, a possibility? Although not directly stated in my text, there is implied in it another thought, namely, that whilst power obliges to service, service brings power. He that uses his influence, his authority, his capacities, his possessions, not for himself, but for his brothers, will find that by the service he has garnered in a harvest of authority, and power of command which nothing else can ever give.

Christ’s ideal of a monarch.

And now I may turn, without passing beyond the bounds of the pulpit on such an occasion as the present, to look at the great illustration of the Christian ideal which the royal life now closed has given. I venture to say that, without exaggeration, and without irreverence, our Queen might have taken for her own the declaration of our Lord Himself on this occasion, ‘I am among you as one that serveth.’ She served her people by the diligent discharge of the duties that were laid upon her. During a strenuous reign of sixty-three years, she left no arrears, nothing neglected, nothing postponed, nothing undone. In sorrow as in joy, when life was young, and the love of husband and family joys were new, as when husband and children were taken away, and she was an old woman, lonelier because of her throne, she laboured as ‘ever in the great Taskmaster’s eye.’ That was serving her nation by the will of God. She served her people by that swift, sincere sympathy which claimed a share alike in great national and in small private sorrows. Was there some shipwreck or some storm, that widowed humble fisherfolk in their villages? The Queen’s sympathy was the first to reach them. Were the blinds drawn down in some colliery village because of an explosion? The Queen’s message was there to bring a gleam of light into darkened homes. Did some great name in literature or science pass away? Who but she was first to recognise the loss, to speak gracious words of appreciation? Did some poor shepherd die, in the strath where she made her Highland home? The widowed Queen was beside the widowed peasant, to share and to solace. Knowing sorrow herself only too well, she had learned to run to the help of the wretched. Dowered doubly with a woman’s gift of sympathy, she had not let the altitude of a throne freeze its flow.

She served her people yet more by letting them feel that she took them into her confidence, spreading before them in the days of her widowhood the cherished records that her happy pen had written in the vanished days of her wifehood, opening her heart to us in mute petition that we might give our hearts to her. She served her people by the simplicity of her tastes and habits in these days of senseless luxury, and fierce, sensuous excitement of living. She served her people by the purity of her life, and so far as she could by putting a barrier around her Court, across which nothing that was foul could pass. ‘He that worketh iniquity shall not tarry in my house,’ said an ancient king on taking his throne. And our Queen, to the utmost of her power, said the same; and frowned down-stern for once in a righteous cause-impurity in high places. Una had her lion, and this protest of a woman’s delicacy against the vices of modern society is not the least of the services for which we have to thank her.

Let me remind you that all this patient self-surrender had its root in Christian faith. She had taken her Lord for her example because her faith had knit her to Him as her Saviour.

Therefore she, as no other English sovereign, conquered the heart of the nation, and was best loved by the best men and women. Never was there a more striking confirmation of the truth that whoever in any region reigns to serve will serve to reign.

And now, before I close, let me remind you that the principles which I have been trying to express grip us in our several spheres, quite as tightly as they do those who may be more largely endowed, or more loftily placed than ourselves. There is no ideal for a Christian monarch which is not the ideal also for a Christian peasant. That which is the duty of the highest is no less the duty of the lowest. For us all it remains true that what we have we are bound to use, not for ourselves, but as recognising both our stewardship to God and the solidarity of humanity; to use for Him, that is to say, for men. This is the secret of all high, noble, blessed life for evermore.

And, brethren, whilst I for one heartily rejoice in the growing consciousness of responsibility which is being diffused through all ranks of society today, and, bless God, for one impulse to that recognition which, as I believe, came from the life now peacefully closed, I shall be no doubt charged by some of you with old-fashioned narrowness if I reiterate my own earnest conviction that we can rely on nothing to bring about a thoroughgoing, a widely-diffused, and a permanent altruism-to use the modern word-except the force that comes from the motive which Jesus Christ Himself adduced, in this very conversation, when He said, ‘I am among you as he that serveth.’ There is our example, aye! and more than our example, lodged in Him, and available for us, by our simple faith in Him. In love that seeks to copy, lies the only power that will cast out self, that ‘anarch old,’ from his usurped seat in our hearts, and will throne Jesus Christ there. It needs a mighty lever to heave a planet from its orbit, and to set it circling round another sun; and there is nothing that will deliver any man, in any rank of life, from the dominion of self, except submission to the dominion of Him who, because He died to serve, deserves, and has won, the supreme right of authority and dominion over human life.

To use anything for self is to miss its highest goodness, and to mar ourselves. To use anything for Christ and our brethren is to find its sweetest sweetness, and to bless ourselves to the very uttermost. Self-absorption is self-destruction; self-surrender is self-acquisition.

If we can truly say, ‘I am among you as he that serveth,’ if all our possessions suggest to us obligations and all our powers impose on us duties: then be we prince or peasant, rich or poor, entrusted with many talents or with but one, we shall make the best of life here, and pass to higher authority, which is nobler service hereafter. Be the servant of all, and all are yours; serve Christ, and possess yourselves-these are the lessons from that royal life of service. May we learn them! May the King walk in his mother’s steps and hearken to ‘the oracle which his mother taught him!

1  Preached on the occasion of the death of Queen Victoria.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

22:21-38 How unbecoming is the worldly ambition of being the greatest, to the character of a follower of Jesus, who took upon him the form of a servant, and humbled himself to the death of the cross! In the way to eternal happiness, we must expect to be assaulted and sifted by Satan. If he cannot destroy, he will try to disgrace or distress us. Nothing more certainly forebodes a fall, in a professed follower of Christ, than self-confidence, with disregard to warnings, and contempt of danger. Unless we watch and pray always, we may be drawn in the course of the day into those sins which we were in the morning most resolved against. If believers were left to themselves, they would fall; but they are kept by the power of God, and the prayer of Christ. Our Lord gave notice of a very great change of circumstances now approaching. The disciples must not expect that their friends would be kind to them as they had been. Therefore, he that has a purse, let him take it, for he may need it. They must now expect that their enemies would be more fierce than they had been, and they would need weapons. At the time the apostles understood Christ to mean real weapons, but he spake only of the weapons of the spiritual warfare. The sword of the Spirit is the sword with which the disciples of Christ must furnish themselves.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

The kings of the Gentiles - The kings of the "nations," or of the earth. They do this, and it is to be expected of them, and it is right. Our Lord does not mean to say that it was wrong that there should be such authority, but that "his" kingdom was to be of a different character, and they were not to expect it there.

Over them - That is, over the "nations."

Are called benefactors - The word "benefactor" is applied to one who bestows "favor" on another. It was applied to kings by way of "compliment or flattery." Some of them might have been truly benefactors of their people, but this was by no means true of "all." Yet it was applied to all, and especially to the Roman emperors. It is found applied to them often in the writings of Josephus and Philo.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

25. benefactors—a title which the vanity of princes eagerly coveted.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Ver. 25-27. See Poole on "Matthew 20:25", and following verses to Matthew 20:28. The sum is, our Saviour hereby teacheth all his disciples (his ministers especially) to avoid affectation of rule and dominion, as that which became heathens rather than Christians, and the kings of the Gentiles rather than the ministers of the Lord Jesus Christ. This text giveth no countenance to the levelling of all orders of men. Magistracy is an ordinance of God, and ought to be upheld. Order also in the church is to be observed, for God is the God of order; but no minister of Christ ought to affect great titles, nor to exercise a dominion or lordship. Our work is to feed the flock of God, taking the oversight of them, not by constraint, but willingly; not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind; neither as being lords over God’s heritage, but being ensamples to the flock, 1 Peter 5:2,3. Not for that we have dominion, over your faith, but are helpers of your joy, 2 Corinthians 1:24. That the ministers of Christ may not have titles given them, speaking honour and reverence due to them, I do not know. But the reason is obvious why they should not affect them to be fond of them; for pride is a vain and vicious affection, and more culpable in them than others. Their works are but a ministration to the church, in putting the laws of Christ relating to it in execution, and it is their greatest honour to be humble. Nor doth this at all degrade a minister of Christ, for even Christ himself, while he was upon the earth, was not as one that sat at meat, but as one that served.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

And he said unto them,.... The disciples; that is, Jesus said to them, as the Syriac and Persic versions express:

the kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; by which our Lord would dissuade his disciples from seeking to introduce a superiority over one another, since this was the practice of the Heathens, of the men of the world, of ignorant Gentiles; whereas Christ's kingdom was a spiritual kingdom, and not of this world, and therefore, not to be managed in such a way.

And they that exercise authority upon them are called benefactors; either by themselves, or by their court flatterers, to cover their ambition, tyranny, and cruelty. Two of the King's of Egypt were called by the name Euergetes (p); the word that is here used, and translated "benefactors"; and it was commonly given to other kings, princes, and men in power: so Cyrus was called by the Armenians; Antigonus by the Greeks; and Phylacus among the Persians: the same name was given to Mithridates king of Pontus, to Titus Aelius Hadrianus, to Menander, to Marcus Aurelius Severus, and to Cato Uticensis, and others (q).

(p) Alex. ab. Alexandro Genial. Dier. l. 1. c. 2.((q) Vid. Cuper. Inscript. & Marmora. p. 283, 284.

Geneva Study Bible

And he said unto them, The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and they that exercise authority upon them are called {k} benefactors.

(k) Have great titles, for so it was the custom to honour princes with some great titles.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Expositor's Greek Testament

Luke 22:25-26 : borrowed from the incident of the two sons of Zebedee (Matthew 20:25-26, Mark 10:42-43), which Lk. omits and somewhat alters in expression.

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

25. exercise lordship] Peter learnt this lesson well. 1 Peter 5:3.

are called benefactors] Euergetai—a name often inscribed on coins. How worthless and hollow the title was the disciples knew from the instances of Ptolemy Euergetes and other Syrian tyrants. Onias had been more deserving of the name, 2Ma 4:2.

Bengel's Gnomen

Luke 22:25. Εὐεργέται) Aristotle, Eth. i. 8, ch. 13, βασιλεῖ πρὸς τοὺς βασιλευομένους φιλία ἐν ὑπεροχῇ εὐεργεσίας. Comp. note on Chrysost., περὶ ιἑρως, p. 452. So in 2Ma 4:2, Onias is said to be ὁ εὐεργέτης τῆς πόλεως—καλουνται) The Middle Voice (call themselves, or would have themselves called). They claim this title to themselves.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 25. - Are called benefactors (εὐεργέται). Those who were listening knew well how utterly false these high-sounding human titles often were. Αὐεργέτης (Euergetes), Benefactor, was the well-known title appropriated by Ptolemy Euergetes and other hated royal tyrants well known to the Jewish people. Luke 22:25