Big Idea: Honoring God as king, and being ready for the return of the Lord, must take priority over the ordinary concerns of life.

Understanding the Text

Several themes from our last section are developed here: God’s fatherly care, the absolute priority of serving God over all other concerns, and especially the tension between material concern and true discipleship—12:22–31 is a sort of commentary on 12:15 and the parable that illustrates it. This last theme of “God and mammon” will be picked up again especially in chapter 16. It reaches an uncomfortably radical climax in the demand to sell one’s possessions here in 12:33, a demand that will be issued again in 18:22 to one particular potential disciple.

The call in 12:35–40 to be ready for the Lord’s return introduces a new section (12:…