Luke 3:1-18

Family Bible Study
Professor and Chair, Department of Religion and Philosophy, Samford University

Preparation for Jesus
LUKE 3:1–18

Like Samuel, John the Baptist was a transitional figure in biblical history. Samuel moved Israel from the period of the Judges to the Monarchy. John fulfilled the prophetic period by preparing for the Messianic age. His announcement of the One “more powerful” than he, who would baptize “with the Holy Spirit and fire,” gave specific historical focus to his preaching of repentance and social justice. John’s message was not just another prophetic summons to be loyal to the Abrahamic covenant. His message was to be ready to experience what the prophets had been proclaiming for 800 years — the good news of the Messiah.

John’s Type of Baptism
The Jews had been baptizing gentile converts for centuries. The act represented the new life into the Abrahamic covenant. John’s baptism was not for a membership but repentance. Jewish society had reached a period of moral and spiritual stagnation. After three centuries of foreign occupation (first the Greeks and then the Romans), Israeli society had split into two dominant groups — the “lackadaisical” who compromised their Jewish heritage with the Greek Hellenistic culture and the “rigid” who equated the spiritual with their extensive rules and laws.
Much like what Isaiah and Amos experienced in the 8th century and Jeremiah in the 6th, John saw the spiritual emptiness of the people’s faith. To convict them of their superficial beliefs and lives, he instituted the dramatic act of baptism in the River Jordan. Instead of using it as a sign of inclusion, he used it as warning.

Later John would be arrested and eventually unjustly decapitated for his warnings, joining the ranks many prophets who suffered the rejections and attacks of an unjust society rather than compromise their deep religious convictions. His type of baptism was really about integrity, an acknowledgment and vow to live faithfully to one’s religious tradition.

John’s Message
John’s unique baptism was given for two reasons: (1) a preparation for the upcoming divine judgment, and (2) a call to an ethical life. Like the great prophets before him, John sensed God was to judge Israel for its moral and religious failures. They could not claim an ethnic privilege to protect them from the separation of the righteous from the unrighteous. Righteousness is not about what one naturally possesses but what one morally does. Judgment divides people according to their contributions to what is right, and John saw this judgment coming as an “ax lying at the root of the trees,” a judgment which would not miss any motive, action and life.

First, to the crowd, who were probably the lower class people, he told them to be magnanimous to the needy even with what little they had. Second, to the tax collectors, who were economically powerful, he said they should be just in their dealings. Third, to the soldiers, who were probably intimidating Temple guards, he exhorted them to be fair and content with their wages.

Society’s justice is not a matter of citizenship (i.e., being a descendant of Abraham) but of actual deeds done to help others. God could make people from stones, John said. The real issue is not race but what people make out of their lives.

John’s Gospel
Verse 18 says John preached the “gospel” to the people. The “good news” was not the coming judgment and the call to righteousness but the coming Messiah. John knew the prophetic call to justice was not all of God’s plan for Israel. The divinely sent Messiah would be the judge. Though the Spirit was with John and bestowed the Word to him, the Messiah would work by the power of the Holy Spirit. People’s destiny in relation to Israel’s calling and to God would be determined by their relationship to the Messiah. Like the separation of the wheat from chaff in the air as the winnowing fork hurls upward the grain, so are people’s value, ethical character and divine security made manifest by their response to the Promised One.

John’s conviction made him realize that though his work was needed and important, it was a preparation for a Person and work so great in relation to his that his preaching and baptism were setting the stage for the fuller work of the God of Israel.