Commentary on Luke 3:1-22

Unlike the traditions about Jesus’ infancy and childhood in Luke 1−2, Luke’s synoptic counterparts contain substantial parallels to the accounts of John the Baptist’s preaching and Jesus’ baptism in Luke 3:1−22 (Mark 1:2−11; Matthew 3:1−17).

The lengthy clauses that introduce John in 3:1−2 by supplying historical and geopolitical information lead to a succinct main clause: “The word of God came to John.” Luke here adopts the biblical format for introducing prophets (for example, Jeremiah 1:1−4; Ezekiel 1:1−3; Zechariah 1:1). As God has done before, so God now sends another prophet to the people, this time the last of the Israelite prophets before the Messiah. 

Israelite prophets of years past often clashed with the political power brokers of their day. The mention of Pilate, Herod (Antipas, a son of the Herod mentioned in 1:5), and the high priests here, at the start of the ministries of John and Jesus, presages their ministries’ conflict with the powers of the world. They will appear later in Luke-Acts as antagonists to either John, Jesus, or their disciples (Luke 3:18−20; 9:7−9; 13:31; 22:54; 23:6−26; Acts 4:5−22).

Luke drops all mention of the Baptist’s attire and diet from his source, the Gospel of Mark (1:6), allowing the focus to be on John’s location and activity rather than his appearance (3:3). 

John preaches in the same desert/wilderness in which the Israelites wandered and camped before crossing the Jordan to enter the promised land, a place where they were tested in preparation for the fulfillment of God’s promises. John preaches a baptism that entails repentance⎯followed by changes in behavior and righteous actions (“fruits worthy of repentance,” 3:8)⎯and the forgiveness of sins. All three components—repentance, righteous actions, and forgiveness—become keystones of Jesus’ teaching in Luke as well.

Luke quotes from Isaiah 40:3−5, a passage Mark (1:3) and Matthew (3:3) likewise quote, to introduce John. Only Luke, however, quotes beyond Isaiah 40:3 in his presentation—a strategic decision that enables him to emphasize the comprehensive scope of the salvation that comes with Jesus. As Isaiah had said (40:5), “all flesh” shall see it (Luke 3:6).

Like prophets from Israel’s past, John employs vivid and troubling imagery (in this case, of being cut down and thrown into fire) to deliver a message that warns of divine judgment as a means to inspire repentance (3:7−9). The crowds ask what they should do (3:10) because he has just warned them about this judgment with a stress on its imminence and scope. Anyone who does not bear good fruit is at risk, and being “children of Abraham” alone is not enough (3:8−9). 

John’s words are not radically different from the call to repent and to practice justice as a requirement of the covenant obligations found in prophets like Isaiah and Amos. But in the context of Luke-Acts, the statement that God can make children of Abraham appear from unlikely sources (“stones”) anticipates the incorporation of Gentiles into the God of Israel’s salvific plan.

John addresses the crowd, tax collectors, and soldiers, instructing them to practice justice in their distribution of goods so no one is left lacking, and not to abuse their positions by exploiting others (3:10−14). Left unsaid is how certain systems result in wealth for some and scarcity for others, and put people in positions to take more than they need. Luke’s portrayal of John’s preaching takes for granted that people do participate in exploitative and oppressive structures⎯practically an inevitability if these were Roman colonialist structures. John allows them to sustain themselves within those structures so long as they do not cross the line into unjust extraction of goods from others.

While individual moral responsibility is valuable and essential, is it enough? Or can preachers lead their congregants to see in John’s message a first step toward more fully extricating ourselves from and working to change oppressive political and economic systems? Sermons have an opportunity to extend John’s message from individual moral culpability to reflection on the systemic factors that promote and reward inequity and exploitation. Even if John’s preaching is relatively restrained in this regard, he is nonetheless unafraid to rebuke evil that comes from places of power and suffers the consequences as a result, as the account of his imprisonment in 3:19−20 shows.

John redirects the people’s curiosity about whether he might be the Messiah to the coming of one greater than he, who baptizes not with water but “with the Holy Spirit and fire,” an anticipatory reference to the Spirit coming in tongues of fire at Pentecost in Acts 2:3. John prepares the way for eschatological judgment, and Jesus executes it, gathering the wheat but burning the chaff “with unquenchable fire” (3:15−17).

Scary as the judgment and attendant fire imagery sound, Luke describes John’s preaching as “good news” (3:18). Certainly, for Luke the coming of Jesus is good news for the world. But preachers may also prompt their congregants to consider whether John’s prophetic challenge to distribute goods equally and treat one another fairly would, if followed, be good news for the world as well.

Whereas Matthew and Mark both narrate John’s baptism of Jesus, Luke 3:21−22 focuses entirely on God and Jesus. Luke underlines Jesus’ close relationship to God through the description of him in prayer (not noted in the other baptism scenes). Only Luke’s account describes the Spirit as the “Holy Spirit” and as descending upon Jesus in “bodily” form (see also Acts 2:3). What Luke describes is a tactile anointing (see also Jesus’ reading of Isaiah 61:1 in Luke 4:18).

A divine passive construction implies that God opens the heavens to make way for the Spirit to descend. God’s voice is the one that speaks. God’s first spoken words in Luke-Acts announce Jesus to be “my Son” (3:22) and thus affirm Jesus’ admission that God is his Father, when Jesus himself first speaks in the Gospel (2:49). Having been anointed and affirmed as God’s beloved Son, Jesus may now go about accomplishing his Father’s interests.