Luke 3

Luke 3:1-4

Subdivision 3. (Luke 3:1-38; Luke 4:1-13.)Manifested and Sealed with the Spirit. We have next, after eighteen years more of silence from that passover at Jerusalem, the manifestation of Christ in the midst of Israel. His forerunner, John; proclaims Him as at hand; then, after His baptism by John; He is borne witness to by the Father’s voice from heaven; is openly sealed by the Spirit of God descending in bodily form, like a dove, upon Him; lastly, He is vindicated under trial, tempted by the devil in the wilderness. In all this, Luke follows in the track of the other Synoptic Gospels; although Mark omits the details of the temptation. We shall seek to compare the three accounts as we may be enabled.

1. The first part is introductory, the voice of the Old Testament in the New, John the Baptist coming in the way of righteousness, as the Lord characterizes him, and therefore with his baptism of repentance, since the legal requirement of righteousness only brands all men as under hopeless condemnation; and repentance is but the heart-acknowledgement of this, that grace may appear in its own sovereignty. Luke is fuller in detail here than either Matthew or Mark, though he has less of austerity in the Baptist’s ways: neither his rough dress nor diet is mentioned. On the other hand the way of the Lord is more insisted on as to be prepared only by the bringing down of the mountains and the filling up of the valleys, -bringing all flesh to a common level before God, that the salvation of God may be seen by all. Thus baptism is to Jordan; the river of death, to which men’s sins bring them, and not their goodness, but to find remission. The very description of the time shows the condition of ruin in Israel -of the people under law. Even the show of a united kingdom in Israel is gone, Herod’s being quartered -the sign of weakness being stamped upon it in the tetrarchies; and a fourth part, Judea itself, under a Roman governor. The high priesthood is divided between the two Sadducees, Arenas and Caiaphas. Judah is losing its tribal rod, and Shiloh must appear, to gather the peoples. John’s is truly a solitary voice in a barren land. It is characteristic of Luke that what is addressed in Matthew to Pharisees and Sadducees is here to the people at large. They can no longer plead the privileges of children of Abraham. The axe is at the root of the trees; while on the other hand, God is able to raise such out of the very stones. To those who ask of him what they are to do, he prescribes no asceticism, but practical righteousness and love; while yet no claim upon God is allowed on this account. As the Lord says at an after-time, no such claim is possible for a creature: “when ye have done all say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which it was our duty to do.”
2. But John does not end with this. The people, full of expectation, are reasoning in their hearts whether this might be the Christ; and this brings him out to disclaim entirely any such pretension. He is not fit to loose the shoe-latchet of Him who comes after him. He would baptize, not with water merely, but with the Holy Spirit and fire. He would purge His threshing-floor, separating between the wheat and the chaff: the one preserved for the garner, the other to be burnt up with unquenchable fire (See notes on Matthew pp. 55, 56.) Luke passes on with this to John’s imprisonment at the hands of Herod, and the occasion of it; the fore-runner precedes also in his suffering and death the Prince of sufferers.
3. The Father’s voice is now heard owning His beloved Son, upon whom the Spirit descends out of the opened heaven; in bodily form like a dove. He is thus now in full reality the Christ, the Anointed; the Spirit of God finding a congenial habitation in a “Second Man,” the First-born of a new family, from whom, however, the stream of blessing flows back also through the ages, so that Adam shall once more, though not as of the old creation; be the “son of God.” (1) The meaning of the Lord’s baptism by John has been considered in Matthew. It was the pledge on His part to that other baptism unto death in which He met the need of those who as sinners took their place in death their due. In Luke alone it is noticed that He is praying; which we may thus connect with His prayer in Gethsemane, and with Hebrews 5:7. Thereon heaven opens, as in fact that death opened it, and the Spirit descends on Him in bodily form like a dove. The dove being the bird of sacrifice, Christ and the Spirit of Christ are One as seen in it, the First-born -man as presented by Christ in this new family -being wholly according to His mind. Thus the Voice from heaven owns Him: Thou art My beloved Son; in Thee I am well pleased." So had the angels declared God’s “good pleasure in men,” as that which the Babe of Bethlehem bore witness to and justified. “Whom He foreknew He also fore-ordained to be conformed to the image of His Son; that He might be the First-born among many brethren.” (2) Thus a genealogy follows here traced backward, and not, as in Matthew, forward; and not to Abraham merely, as in Matthew, but to Adam. It is a genealogy, not of the King, (and so giving the legal title, the descent from David) but of the Son of man. But what need of a genealogy in this case? If He be man; must He not be Son of man -of Adam? True; and so, as has been said, the stream runs backward. The Son of man is also the Second Man; and each link in the chain at least suggests a link of salvation. Thus the genealogy is not put in connection with His birth, but with that coming forward to be baptized of John in Jordan, which was His entrance upon His ministry of salvation; and He is then thirty years of age, the time of the commencement of Levite service. Son of man as He is generically, Christ is no less Seed of the woman; and it is doubtless Mary’s line that is given us here. Joseph is, as husband of Mary, the son of Heli. In the Gospel of the Manhood it is as naturally Mary who would be before us, as in the Gospel of the Kingship it would be Joseph; and the respective histories conform themselves to this.
4. (1) The temptation in the wilderness follows the public testimony of God to His Son. It is founded on it: -“If Thou be the Son of God”; and necessarily follows it. This is the divine order: for it would have been dishonor to both, if God had waited to see if His Son could stand all tests before approving Him. On the other hand that approval was a challenge to the accuser, the Spirit leading Christ in the wilderness forty days, while Satan was permitted to assail Him. Fasting and hungry with the famine of those days upon Him, the devil appeals to Him, if He be the Son of God, to put forth His power and make bread of the stones which are around Him. Thus He would take Himself out of the place of dependence by using a power which had not been given to man.

But the true life of man is not that which is sustained by bread but by the word of God. Obedience, dependence, communion; are its characteristics and its strength. Against one walking in such a path all the suggestions of the enemy are unavailing. 2 The second and third temptations are in reverse order in Matthew and Luke. The historical order seems to be that which is found in Matthew, the second being marked by “then” as following the first; while the third is marked as the closing one by the Lord’s “Get thee hence, Satan,” which lays bare and dismisses the tempter. Indeed the proposal here in its very nature seems to close the whole matter. Yet there must, of course, be a reason for the change in order here, and that whether we are able or not to discover it; the limit of our knowledge is not that of the word of God which He has given us. The first answer of the Lord to Satan has shown us man in the true life of dependent obedience for which he was created. Than such a life there could be nothing freer, nothing happier, nothing nobler. Living such a life, the world was his, and all was subjected to him as the image of his Maker. Aspiring to independency he lost it all, and became, by the lusts through which he governed him, Satan’s poor drudge and bondsman. This is the empire of which the devil boasts now to the Lord; spreading it before Him in a moment, as if to dazzle Him with it. But all this authority and the glory of earth’s kingdoms he whose it now was would give Him, if He would do homage for it. The dragon has in this way, in the book of Revelation; the heads and horns of the last world-empire: he is the spirit of it, the “prince of this world” (Revelation 12:3). Later, he is giving authority to the beast, -“the dragon gave him his power and his throne and great authority” (Revelation 13:2). His terms have been always similar, and the children of the fallen first man have been constantly repeating their father’s forfeiture of his birthright freedom. But the Second Man is now come, the Seed of the woman, who is to bruise the serpent’s head; and the conflict is already begun in victory. The prince of this world finds nothing in Him who is here not to do His own will, but the will of Him that sent Him. To such an one he can present no motive that has force. The strong man is bound. (3) The temptation by the word of God itself comes last therefore: it is all that remains. He cannot be seduced from it; can it be so presented as that He should be seduced by it? We have already looked at this in Matthew, and seen how it necessarily involved the perversion of the Word, and this by the impatience for the fulfilment of it which would take it out of God’s hand instead of leaving Him to fulfil it in His own way. This impatience is only distrust, and to act upon it is to tempt the Lord our God. We are seeking an easier path than His, as if His wisdom had failed, or His power were insufficient for the difficulties of the way. Whereas to “wait on the Lord” is to “spring up with wings as eagles;” it is to “run and not be weary,” and to “walk and not faint” (Isaiah 40:31). The devil has now ended all the temptation; and departs, but only “for a season.” He will return as “prince of this world” (John 14:30), with the men of this world behind him, to show the sad reality of that dominion over them which he has vaunted, and to gain an apparent victory which will be in the end his complete overthrow.