Quotable

When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.  Luke 9:51

"When Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem, he set his face to die. . .If we were to look at Jesus' death merely as a result of a betrayer's deceit and the Sanhedrin's envy and Pilate's spinelessness and the soldiers' nails and spear, it might seem very involuntary.  And the benefit of salvation that comes to us who believe from this death might be viewed as God's way of making a virtue out of a necessity.  But once you read Luke 9:51 all such thoughts vanish.  Jesus was not accidentally entangled in a web of injustice.  The saving benefits of his death for sinners were not an afterthought.  God planned it all out of infinite love to sinners like us and appointed a time. Jesus, who was the very embodiment of his Father's love for sinners, saw that the time had come and set his face to fulfill his mission:  to die in Jerusalem for our sake.  Here's a question put to every believer by this text...does discipleship mean following him on the Calvary road which leads to suffering and death?  The answer of the whole New Testament is this:  the surprise about Jesus the Messiah is that he came to live a life of sacrificial, dying service before he comes a second time to reign in glory.  And the surprise about discipleship is that it demands a life of sacrificial, dying service before we can reign with Christ in glory.  Jesus' journey to Jerusalem is our journey, and if he set his face to go there and die, we must set our face to die with him." ~ John Piper, "He Set His Face to Go to Jerusalem," 1982.