Luke 1:67–79

Bible Studies for Life
Chair and Armstrong Professor of Religion, Department of Religion, Samford University

Go, Tell It on the Mountain
Luke 1:67–79
The legendary Protestant reformer Martin Luther once commented that Scripture was the “manger in which Christ was laid.” It is in the Scriptures that we discover and discern a deeper appreciation of the wonder of what it meant for God to become incarnate during this season of Advent. In this Scripture, we once again discern something of the wonder of the coming of Christ through the faith of someone who was involved in the events of that first Christmas season — Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist.

God Saves Us From Our Sin (67–71)
Salvation is a complex idea and a word often used outside of the Christian context. In the first century, there were many expressions of religious and secular “saviors,” often with the idea of political emancipation in view. In our cultural context, each of the world religions has some concept of what it means to experience salvation, differing enormously both with respect to how that salvation is achieved and what is experienced.

In the message of Luke’s Gospel, which has an emphasis on the theme of salvation, it is in the Incarnation, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ that salvation is to be discovered. Furthermore the term “salvation” has a threefold chronology, in that it is experienced as something that affects the past, present and future. We are saved from the penalty of sin, we are being saved from the power of sin in our lives and one day, we finally will be saved from the presence of sin within our lives. No wonder Zechariah rejoiced that God “had raised up a mighty Savior” for His people.

God Saves Us to Bring Assurance of Salvation (72–77)
The foundation and the assurance that this salvation would accomplish all God had promised was based, in Zechariah’s mind, on the truth that God would “remember His holy covenant,” the promises He made to Abraham. The theme of the promises of God reminds us that the relationship we have entered into with Him is a covenant and not a contract. A contract would suggest that we have to fulfill various conditions before God is able to love us. The nature of God’s saving grace is such that the only thing we contribute to salvation is the sin from which we are saved. God has taken the initiative in determining to save His people, in sending a Savior to deliver us, and from start to finish, it is all because of His mercy and grace. This fills the hearts of all of God’s people, including Zechariah, with the assurance that not one of His promises will fail to be fulfilled.

God Saves Us for Peace (78–79)
In verse 78, Luke used two beautiful illustrations to convey the wonder of God’s saving grace. He spoke of the “tender mercy” of God. The phrase in Greek refers to the part of a being that controls the emotions and is not found elsewhere in the New Testament. It speaks of the tenderness of God’s feelings of compassion toward sinners. He is moved to love us from the depth of His being as a God of love. Our experience of this grace is like dawn, which breaks through the darkness of the night to bring light to our lives.

The outcome of experiencing the grace of God in mercy and forgiveness is that we are led “into the way of peace.” Faith is very fragile. Yet to believe in Christ is to turn away from the world of experience and put one’s trust in the invisible and intangible world of the promises of God’s Word. Anxiety is probably one of the commonest of everyday experiences, sometimes characterized by a passing wave of worry, which passes like a white cloud on a summer’s day, but often associated with panic attacks, palpitations of the heart and a strong desire to escape and run away from the terrors of trouble.

To discover the grace of God, to trust in God, will lead to experiencing the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding and “will guard [our] hearts and [our] minds in Christ Jesus.” The closeness of God to our lives, the assurance that He knows all about our needs, means that a sense of peace within our hearts can be an actual reality as He guards our minds and hearts like a peace keeping force to ensure that we are not obsessed with worry.