Luke 12:22-24

Disengagement as resulting from confidence in the omnipotence and fatherly goodness of God. “ And He said unto His disciples, Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat; neither for the body, what ye shall put on. 23. The life is more than meat, and the body is more than raiment. 24. Consider the ravens: for they neither sow nor reap; which neither have storehouse nor barn; and God feedeth them: how much more are ye better than the fowls? ” The words unto His disciples, Luke 12:22, are the key of this discourse; it is only to believers that Jesus can speak as He proceeds to do. Not only should the believer not aim at possessing superabundance, he should not even disquiet himself about the necessaries of life. Of the family of God (Luke 12:34), the disciples of Jesus may reckon on the tender care of this heavenly Master in whose service they are working, and that in respect of food as well as clothing.

Therefore: because this false confidence in riches is folly. Luke 12:22 formally states the precept; Luke 12:23 gives its logical proof; Luke 12:24 illustrates it by an example taken from nature. The logical proof rests on an argument a fortiori: He who gave the more (the life, the body), will yet more certainly give the less (the nourishment of the life, the clothing of the body). In the example borrowed from nature, it is important to mark how all the figures employed sowing, reaping, storehouse, barn are connected with the parable of the foolish rich man. All those labours, all those provisions, in the midst of which the rich man died, the ravens know nothing of them; and yet they live! The will of God is thus a surer guarantee of existence than the possession of superabundance. In the Sermon on the Mount, where Matthew has those sayings, they occur apart from any connection with the parable of the foolish rich man, of whom there is no mention whatever. Again, a flower torn from its stalk (see on Luke 11:5-10). It is certainly not Luke who has cleverly imagined the striking connection between this example and the preceding parable. It must therefore have existed in his sources. But if those sources were the same as those of Matthew, the latter must then have had such gross unskilfulness as to break a connection like this!

In the last words, the adverb μᾶλλον, joined to διαφέρειν, which by itself signifies to be better, is a pleonasm having the meaning: to surpass in the highest degree.

In contrast with divine power Jesus sets human powerlessness, as proved by the sudden death of the rich man, which completes the proof of the folly of earthly cares.