NOTES for Luk 3:1-38
Today’s reading brings us back once more to the figure of John the Baptist. Here again we encounter the different perspectives of the evangelists Matthew and Luke, this time concerning John’s ministry. Unlike Matthew, Luke mentions not only the general content of the prophet’s preaching (vv. 3–9), but also the advice John gave to people of different occupations and social classes (vv. 10–14). His advice varied from case to case, but it also had something in common: in one way or another, it was all connected with the observance of the commandments given by God.
By recalling Isaiah’s words about the need to “prepare the way of the Lord” (v. 4), John evidently means above all the importance of following the Torah. It might seem that there was nothing fundamentally new in such a call, for all the Old Testament prophets had spoken of this. Yet there was also something unusual in John’s activity.
It is no accident that the evangelist’s account mentions tax collectors and soldiers (vv. 12, 14). In the Jewish society of Gospel times, both groups were outcasts. Tax collectors were regarded as collaborators who worked with the occupiers and robbed their own people. As for the soldiers, these were probably Roman troops who were either pagans, which is unlikely, or proselytes, former pagans who had converted to Judaism. The social position of such proselytes was rather ambiguous: they were not regarded as full members of the Jewish community—only their children became so—while their fellow tribesmen saw them as outsiders and often as traitors.
John, however, evidently accepts everyone regardless of social or religious status. He clearly did not think that the coming messianic Kingdom would be given only to orthodox Jews. The path was open even to those whom God’s people considered lost, and lost for ever: the tax collectors. They had committed their sin consciously and voluntarily, and it was believed that one could not be cleansed from the consequences of such a sin, even if the sinner later sincerely repented of what they had done. God could accept the repentance, but the defilement left by the sin rested for ever on the sinner and their descendants.
Yet John did not reject even the tax collectors, requiring only that after the cleansing washing, the “baptism,” they no longer violate the norms of the Torah (v. 13). Evidently, he did not consider cooperation with the Roman authorities as terrible a sin as most of his contemporaries did. But, of course, that was not the only point. John understood better than anyone that the Messiah whom he awaited and whose coming he proclaimed would bring into the world the Kingdom, where everyone would be given the opportunity to begin life with a clean slate. His own task was to prepare God’s people for this new life, a life in which even the most terrible sinner could share after repenting, if only they could accept the Kingdom’s chief gift: the gift of God’s love.