Verses 1-38
Chapter 3
3:1-6 In the fifteenth
year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor
of Judaea, and when Herod was tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip
tetrarch of Ituraea and the district of Trachonitis, and Lysanias
tetrarch of Abilene, in the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the
word of God came to John, the son of Zacharias, when he was in the
desert. So he came into the territory around Jordan, preaching a baptism
of repentance whereby sins might be forgiven--as it stands written in
the book of the words of Isaiah, the prophet, "The voice of one crying
in the wilderness, 'Get ready the road of the Lord, make his paths
straight; every ravine shall be filled up; every mountain and hill will
be made low; the twisted places will be made into straight roads and the
rough places into smooth; and all flesh shall see God's instrument of
salvation.'"
To Luke the emergence of John the Baptist was one of the hinges
on which history turned. So much so is that the case that he dates it
in no fewer than six different ways.
(i) Tiberius was the successor of Augustus and therefore the
second of the Roman emperors. As early as A.D. 11 or 12 Augustus had
made him his colleague in the imperial power but he did not become sole
emperor until A.D. 14. The fifteenth year of his reign would therefore
be A.D. 28-29. Luke begins by setting the emergence of John against a
world background, the background of the Roman Empire.
(ii) The next three dates Luke gives are connected with the political organization of Palestine. The title tetrarch (see Greek #5075 and Greek #5076)
literally means governor of a fourth part. In such provinces as
Thessaly and Galatia, which were divided into four sections or areas,
the governor of each part was known as a tetrarch; but later the word
widened its meaning and came to mean the governor of any part. Herod the
Great died in 4 B.C. after the reign of about forty years. He divided
his kingdom between three of his sons and in the first instance the
Romans approved the decision.
(a) To Herod Antipas were left Galilee and Peraea. He reigned
from 4 B.C. to A.D. 39 and therefore Jesus' life was lived in Herod's
reign and very largely in Herod's dominions in Galilee.
(b) To Herod Philip were left Ituraea and Trachonitis. He
reigned from 4 B.C. to A.D. 33. Caesarea Philippi was called after him
and was actually built by him.
(c) To Archelaus were left Judaea, Samaria and Edom. He was a
thoroughly bad king. The Jews in the end actually petitioned Rome for
his removal; and Rome, impatient of the continual troubles in Judaea,
installed a procurator or governor. That is how the Romans came directly
to rule Judaea. At this time Pilate, who was in power from A.D. 25
until A.D. 37, was the Roman governor. So in this one sentence Luke
gives us a panoramic view of the division of the kingdom which had once
belonged to Herod the Great.
(iii) Of Lysanias we know practically nothing.
(iv) Having dealt with the world situation and the Palestinian
political situation, Luke turns to the religious situation and dates
John's emergence as being in the priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas. There
never at any time were two high-priests at the one tine. What then does
Luke mean by giving these two names? The high-priest was at one and the
same time the civil and the religious head of the community. In the old
days the office of high-priest had been hereditary and for life. But
with the coining of the Romans the office was the object of all kinds of
intrigue. The result was that between 37 B.C. and A.D. 26 there were no
fewer than twenty-eight different high-priests. Now Annas was actually
high-priest from A.D. 7 until A.D. 14. He was therefore at this time out
of office; but he was succeeded by no fewer than four of his sons and
Caiaphas was his son-in-law. Therefore, although Caiaphas was the
reigning high-priest, Annas was the power behind the throne. That is in
fact why Jesus was brought first to aim after his arrest (John 18:13)
although at that time he was not in office. Luke associates his name
with Caiaphas because, although Caiaphas was the actual high-priest,
Annas was still the most influential priestly figure in the land.
Luke 3:4-6 are a quotation from Isaiah 40:3-5.
When a king proposed to tour a part of his dominions in the east, he
sent a courier before him to tell the people to prepare the roads. So
John is regarded as the courier of the king. But the preparation on
which he insisted was a preparation of heart and of life. "The king is
coming," he said. "Mend, not your roads, but your lives." There is laid
on everyone of us the duty to make life fit for the King to see.
3:7-18 To the crowds
who came out to be baptized by him, John used to say, "You spawn of
vipers, who put it into your heads to flee from the coming wrath?
Produce fruits to match repentance. Do not begin to say among
yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.' I tell you that God is able
to raise up children to Abraham from these stones. Even now the axe is
laid at the root of the trees. Every tree that does not bear good fruit
is cut down and thrown into the fire." The crowds asked him, "What are
we to do?" He answered them, "Let him who has two robes give one to one
who has none and let him who has food do likewise." The tax-collectors
came to be baptized and said to him, "Teacher, what are we to do?" He
said to them, "Exact no more beyond what your instructions lay down."
The soldiers, too, asked him, "What are we to do?" He said to them,
"Treat no man with violence and do not play the false informer and be
content with your pay."
When the people were
in a state of expectancy and when they were all wondering in their
hearts about John, as to whether he could be the Anointed One, John
answered them all, "I baptize you with water, but the One who is
stronger than I is coming, the latchet of whose sandals I am not worthy
to unloose. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His
winnowing fan is in his hand to cleanse his threshing floor and he will
gather the corn into his store but he will burn the chaff with
unquenchable fire."
Here we have the message of John to the people. Nowhere does
the difference between John and Jesus stand out so clearly because,
whatever the message of John was, it was not a gospel. It was not good
news; it was news of terror.
John had lived in the desert. The face of the desert was covered
with stubble and brushwood, as dry as tinder. Sometimes a spark set the
face of the desert alight and out from their crannies came the vipers,
scurrying in terror from the menacing flames. It was to them John
likened the people who came to be baptized.
The Jews had not the slightest doubt that in God's economy there
was a favoured nation clause. They held that God would judge other
nations with one standard but the Jews with another. They, in fact, held
that a man was safe from judgment simply in virtue of the fact that he
was a Jew. A son of Abraham was exempt from judgment. John told them
that racial privilege meant nothing; that life, not lineage, was God's
standard of judgment.
There are three outstanding things about John's message.
(i) It began by demanding that men should share with one
another. It was a social gospel which laid it down that God will never
absolve the man who is content to have too much while others have too
little.
(ii) It ordered a man, not to leave his job, but to work out his
own salvation by doing that job as it should be done. Let the
tax-collector be a good tax-collector; let the soldier be a good
soldier. It was a man's duty to serve God where God had set him.
A negro spiritual says:
There's a king and captain high,
And he's coming by and by,
And he'll find me hoeing cotton when he comes,
You can hear his legions charging in the regions of the sky,
And he'll find me hoeing cotton when he comes.
There's a man they thrust aside,
Who was tortured till he died,
And he'll find me hoeing cotton when he comes.
He was hated and rejected,
He was scorned and crucified,
And he'll find me hoeing cotton when he comes.
When he comes! when he comes!
He'll be crowned by saints and angels when he comes,
They'll be shouting out Hosanna! to the man that men denied,
And I'll kneel among my cotton when he comes.
It was John's conviction that nowhere can a man serve God better than in his day's work.
(iii) John was quite sure that he himself was only the
forerunner. The King was still to come and with him would come judgment.
The winnowing fan was a great flat wooden shovel; with it the grain was
tossed into the air; the heavy grain fell to the ground and the chaff
was blown away. And just as the chaff was separated from the grain so
the King would separate the good and bad.
So John painted a picture of judgment, but it was a judgment
which a man could meet with confidence if he had discharged his duty to
his neighbour and if he had faithfully done his day's work.
John was one of the world's supremely effective preachers. Once
Chalmers was congratulated on a sermon. "Yes," he said, "but what did it
do?" It is clear that John preached for action and produced it. He did
not deal in theological subtleties but in life.
3:19-20 So then,
urging the people with many other pleas, John preached the gospel to
them. But, when Herod the tetrarch was rebuked by him concerning the
matter of Herodias, his brother's wife, and concerning all the other
wicked things he had done, he added this also to them all--he shut up
John in prison.
John was so plain and blunt a preacher of righteousness that he
was bound to run into trouble. In the end Herod arrested him. Josephus
says that the reason for the arrest was that Herod "feared lest the
great influence John had over the people might put it in his power and
inclination to raise a rebellion; for they seemed ready to do anything
he should advise." That is no doubt true but the New Testament writers
give a much more personal and immediate cause. Herod Antipas had married
Herodias and John rebuked him for it.
The relationships involved in this marriage are extremely
complicated. Herod the Great was a much-married man. Herod Antipas, who
married Herodias and who arrested John, was the son of Herod the Great
by a woman called Malthake. Herodias herself was the daughter of
Aristobulus, who was the son of Herod the Great by Mariamne, commonly
called the Hasmonean. As we have seen, Herod had divided up his realm
between Archelaus, Herod Antipas and Herod Philip. He had another son,
also called Herod, who was his son by another Mariamne, the daughter of a
high priest. This Herod had no share in his father's realms and lived
as a private citizen in Rome; he married Herodias. He was in fact her
half-uncle, because her father (Aristobulus) and he were both sons of
Herod by different wives. Herod Antipas, on a visit to Rome, seduced her
from his half-brother and married her. She was at one and the same time
his sister-in-law, because she was married to his half-brother, and his
niece because she was the daughter of Aristobulus, another
half-brother.
The whole proceeding was utterly revolting to Jewish opinion and
quite contrary to Jewish law, and indeed improper by any standard. It
was a dangerous thing to rebuke an eastern tyrant, but John did so. The
result was that he was arrested and imprisoned in the dungeon castle of
Machaerus on the shores of the Dead Sea. There could be no greater
cruelty than to take this child of the desert and shut him up in a
dungeon cell. Ultimately he was beheaded to gratify the resentment of
Herodias (Matthew 14:5-12; Mark 6:17-29).
It is always dangerous to speak the truth; and yet although the
man who allies himself with the truth may end in jail or on the
scaffold, in the final count he is the victor. Once the Earl of Morton,
who was regent of Scotland, threatened Andrew Melville, the reformer.
"There will never," he slid menacingly. "be quietness in this country
till half a dozen of you be hanged or banished." Melville answered him,
"Tush! sir. Threaten not your courtiers in that fashion. It is the same
to me whether I rot in the air or in the ground ... God be glorified, it
will not lie in your power to hang nor exile his truth." Plato once
said that the wise man will always choose to suffer wrong rather than to
do wrong. We need only ask ourselves whether in the last analysis and
at the final assize we would prefer to be Herod Antipas or John the
Baptist.
3:21-22 When all the
people had been baptized and when Jesus too had been baptized, as he was
praying, the heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit in bodily form like a
dove came down upon him and there was a voice from heaven. "You are my
beloved son; in you I am well pleased."
The thinkers of the church have always sought an answer to the
problem, "Why did Jesus go to John to be baptized?" The baptism of John
was a baptism of repentance and it is our conviction that Jesus was
without sin. Why then did he offer himself for this baptism? In the
early church it was sometimes suggested, with a homely touch, that he
did it to please Mary, his mother, and in answer to her entreaties; but
we need a better reason than that.
In the life of every man there are certain definite stages,
certain hinges on which his whole life turns. It was so with Jesus and
every now and again we must stop and try to see his life as a whole. The
first great hinge was the visit to the Temple when he was twelve, when
he discovered his unique relationship to God. By the time of the
emergence of John, Jesus was about thirty (Luke 3:23).
That is to say at least eighteen years had passed. All through these
years he must have been realizing more and more his own uniqueness. But
still he remained the village carpenter of Nazareth. He must have known
that a day must come when he must say good-bye to Nazareth and go out
upon his larger task. He must have waited for some sign.
When John emerged the people flocked out to hear him and to be
baptized. Throughout the whole country there was an unprecedented
movement towards God. And Jesus knew that his hour had struck. It was
not that he was conscious of sin and of the need of repentance. It was
that he knew that he too must identify himself with this movement
towards God. For Jesus the emergence of John was God's call to action;
and his first step was to identify himself with the people in their
search for God.
But in Jesus' baptism something happened. Before he could take
this tremendous step he had to be sure that he was right; and in the
moment of baptism God spoke to him. Make no mistake, what happened in
the baptism was an experience personal to Jesus. The voice of God came
to him and told him that he had taken the right decision. But more--far
more--that very same voice mapped out all his course for him.
God said to him, "You are my beloved Son; with you I am well
pleased." That saying is composed of two texts. You are my beloved
Son--that is from Psalms 2:7 and was always accepted as a description of the Messianic King. In whom I am well pleased--that is part of Isaiah 42:1 and is from a description of the servant of the Lord whose portrait culminates in the sufferings of Isaiah 53:1-12
. Therefore in his baptism Jesus realized, first, that he was the
Messiah, God's Anointed King; and, second, that this involved not power
and glory, but suffering and a cross. The cross did not come on Jesus
unawares; from the first moment of realization he saw it ahead. The
baptism shows us Jesus asking for God's approval and receiving the
destiny of the cross.
3:23-38 When Jesus
began his ministry he was about thirty years of age. He was the son (as
it was supposed) of Joseph, the son of Heli, the son of Matthat, the son
of Levi, the son of Melchi, the son of Jannai, the son of Joseph, the
son of Mattathias, the son of Amos, the son of Nahum, the son of Esli,
the son of Naggai, the son of Maath, the son of Mattathias, the son of
Semein, the son of Josech, the son of Joda, the son of Joanan, the son
of Rhesa, the son of Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, the son of Neri,
the son of Melchi, the son of Addi, the son of Cosam, the son of
Elmadam, the son of Er, the son of Jesus, the son of Eliezer, the son of
Jorim, the son of Matthat, the son of Levi, the son of Symeon, the son
of Judas, the son of Joseph, the son of Jonam, the son of Eliakim, the
son of Melea, the son of Menna, the son of Mattatha, the son of Nathan,
the son of David, the son of Jesse, the son of Obed, the son of Boaz,
the son of Salmon, the son of Nashon, the son of Amminadab, the son of
Ami, the son of Hezron, the son of Perez, the son of Judah, the son of
Jacob, the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham, the son of Terah, the son
of Nahor, the son of Serug, the son of Reu, the son of Pelag, the son of
Eber, the son of Shelah, the son of Cainan, the son of Arphaxad, the
son of Shem, the son of Noah, the son of Lamech, the son of Methuselah,
the son of Enoch, the son of Jared, the son of Mahalaleel, the son of
Cainan, the son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of
God.
This passage begins with the most suggestive statement. It tens
us that when Jesus began his ministry he was no less than about thirty
years of age. Why did he spend thirty years in Nazareth when he had come
to be the saviour of the world? It is commonly said that Joseph died
fairly young and that Jesus had to take upon himself the support of Mary
and of his younger brothers and sisters, and that not until they were
old enough to take the business on their own shoulders, did he feel free
to leave Nazareth and go into the wider world. Whether that be so or
not, three things are true.
(i) It was essential that Jesus should carry out with the utmost
fidelity the more limited tasks of family duty before he could take up
the universal task of saving the world. It was by his conscientiousness
in the performance of the narrow duties of home that Jesus fitted
himself for the great task he had to do. When he told the parable of the
talents, the word to the faithful servants was, "Well done, good and
faithful servant; you have been faithful over a little, I will set you
over much" (Matthew 25:21; Matthew 25:23).
Beyond a doubt he was putting his own experience into words when he
said that. When Sir James Barries mother died, he said, "I can look back
and I cannot see the smallest thing undone." It was because Jesus
faithfully performed the smallest duties that the greatest task in all
the world was given him.
(ii) It gave him the opportunity to live out his own teaching.
Had he always been a homeless, wandering teacher with no human ties or
obligations, men might have said to him, "What right have you to talk
about human duties and human relationships, you, who never fulfilled
them?" But Jesus was able to say, not, "Do as I say," but, "Do as I have
done." Tolstoi was the man who always talked about living the way of
love; but his wife wrote poignantly of him, "There is so little genuine
warmth about him; his kindness does not come from the heart, but merely
from his principles. His biographies will tell of how he helped the
labourers to carry buckets of water, but no one will ever know that he
never gave his wife a rest and never--in all these thirty-two
years--gave his child a drink of water or spent five minutes by his
bedside to give me a chance to rest a little from all my labours." No
one could ever speak like that of Jesus. He lived at home what he
preached abroad.
(iii) If Jesus was to help men he had to know how men lived. And
because he spent these thirty years in Nazareth, he knew the problems
of making a living, the haunting insecurity of the life of the working
man, the ill-natured customer, the man who would not pay his debts. It
is the glory of the incarnation that we face no problem of life and
living which Jesus did not also face.
Here we have Luke's genealogy of Jesus. The Jews were interested
in genealogies. Genealogies, especially of the priests, who had to
prove unbroken descent from Aaron, were kept amongst the public records.
In the time of Ezra and Nehemiah we read of priests who lost their
office because they could not produce their genealogy (Ezra 2:61-63; Nehemiah 7:63-65).
But the problem of this genealogy is its relationship with that in Matthew 1:1-17.
The facts are these--only Luke gives the section from Adam to Abraham;
the section from Abraham to David is the same in both; but the section
from David to Joseph is almost completely different. Ever since men
studied the New Testament they have tried to explain the differences.
(i) It is said that both genealogies are symbolic and that
Matthew gives the royal descent of Jesus and Luke the priestly descent.
(ii) One of the earliest suggestions was that Matthew in fact gives the genealogy of Joseph and Luke of Mary.
(iii) The most ingenious explanation is as follows. In Matthew 1:16 Joseph's father is Jacob; in Luke 3:23 it is Heli. According to the Jewish law of levirate marriage (Deuteronomy 25:5
f) if a man died childless his brother must, if free to do so, marry
the widow and ensure the continuance of the line. When that happened a
son of such a marriage could be called the son either of the first or of
the second husband. It is suggested that Joseph's mother married twice.
Joseph was in actual fact the son of Heli, the second husband, but he
was in the eyes of the law the son of Jacob, the first husband who had
died. It is then suggested that while Heli and Jacob had the same mother
they had different fathers and that Jacob's father was descended from
David through Solomon and Heli's father was descended from David through
Nathan. This ingenious theory would mean that both genealogies are
correct. In fact, all we can say is that we do not know.
Two things, however, are to be noted about the genealogy of Jesus which Luke gives.
(i) It stresses the real humanity of Jesus. It stresses the fact
that he was a man amongst men. He was no phantom or demigod. To save
men he became in the most real sense a man.
(ii) Matthew stops at Abraham; Luke goes right back to Adam. To
Matthew, Jesus was the possession of the Jews; to Luke, he was the
possession of all mankind, because his line is traced back not to the
founder of the Jewish nation but to the founder of the human race. Luke
removes the national and racial boundaries even from the ancestry of
Jesus.
-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)