If the main topic of chapters 1 and 2 was the arrival of the Son of God in our world, it is easy to see that the next main topic is going to be his official introduction to the world of men and the beginning of his public ministry. The question arises, however, whether Luke intends us to read all the following chapters in one unbroken stream, or whether here, too, as in Stage 1, he has grouped his narratives so that we might the better see their significance. Let us begin, therefore, by mapping out the successive movements of thought which we now encounter.
Chapter 3 opens by dating the beginning of John's ministry, then identifies his role and gives examples of his preaching until at Luke 3:20 Herod puts an end to it by imprisoning him. John is not heard of again until Luke 7:18 ff. So let us call Luke 3:1–20 Movement 1.
Next Luke records not the beginning of Christ's public ministry—that does not come until Luke 4:14—but three other matters linked together by a very pronounced, common theme. First the baptism (Luke 3:21–22) at which the voice from heaven proclaims: 'You are my beloved Son'. Then the genealogy (Luke 3:23–38) which demonstrates Jesus to be '. . . son of Adam, son of God'. Then the temptation (Luke 4:1–13) in which the devil twice questions 'if you are the Son of God'. And when the temptations are over Luke brings the section to a clear-cut end by the formal remark: 'And when the devil had completed every temptation, he departed from him until the next suitable occasion' (Luke 4:13). Let us label Luke 3:21–4:13, then, Movement 2. [p 66]
At this point Luke calls our attention to geography. All the events of Movements 1 and 2 have taken place in the south of the country: at Luke 3:2–3 John came out of the wilderness to the Jordan; at Luke 4:1 Jesus returned from his baptism in the Jordan to the wilderness, and then at Luke 4:9 to Jerusalem. But now to begin his public ministry Jesus goes north to Galilee and Luke begins his account of that ministry with a lengthy general statement: 'And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee and reports of him spread throughout the country. And he was teaching in their synagogues and being praised by everybody' (Luke 4:14–15). After that general description Luke gives a particular instance: his teaching in the synagogue at Nazareth (see Luke 4:16–30). It comes to a very decided end: the people are enraged and try to destroy him; but 'he passed right through them and went on his way' (Luke 4:30). Let us call this incident Movement 3.
Another geographical note separates Movement 3 from what follows: 'and he came down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee' (Luke 4:31). Here the reception is very different: far from attempting to get rid of him, they try to persuade him to remain with them; but he insists on leaving in order to preach elsewhere (see Luke 4:42–43). We may call the Capernaum incident (Luke 4:31–43) Movement 4.
Now notice what Luke does at this point. Instead of passing on to the next incident he calls a temporary halt by inserting (Luke 4:44) a general summary remark: 'And he was preaching in the synagogues of Judaea'.23 This summary virtually repeats the summary at Luke 4:15, and the effect is that these two summaries, standing one at the beginning of Movement 3 and the other at the end of Movement 4, bracket the two movements together. The two movements, after all, are giving two specific instances of the general activity described by the summaries: Christ's teaching and preaching in the synagogues. Moreover, when we look beyond the summary at Luke 4:44 into chapter 5 we find that synagogues are no longer mentioned: we shall not find Christ in another synagogue until Luke 6:6. [p 67] Let us therefore take the hint, pause at Luke 4:44, and look at the four movements we have so far encountered. Much of the material in these movements is shared by Luke with the other evangelists. He includes it doubtless because he wants to say for his own reasons what they say for theirs. But there are certain features which are peculiar to Luke, and these may help us more quickly to perceive the direction of his own thought. Let us look at some of them.
Apart from a few phrases and ideas the Nazareth incident at Luke 4:16–30 (Movement 3) is peculiar to Luke. Its first main message is obvious and explicit: Christ identifies himself and his ministry by reading a passage from Isaiah 61 and claiming to be its fulfilment. This at once recalls Luke 3:2–6 (Movement 1) where the Baptist was introduced and his ministry identified by a similarly lengthy quotation from Isaiah (see Isa 40:3–5). The parallel is hardly accidental; it is certainly not insignificant.
Movement 1 also has its own peculiarity. Like Matthew, Luke has the Baptist calling on the people to give practical evidence that their repentance is genuine, and not to parry the thrust of his preaching by a false defence: 'Do not begin to say within yourselves, "We have Abraham as our father"' (Luke 3:7–8; Matt 3:7–10). Unlike Matthew, however, Luke chooses to emphasize the need for this practical evidence: he alone records that three lots of people came to ask John what works they had to do to prove their claim to have repented (see Luke 3:10–14). But at this point we look again at the Nazareth incident. There, at Luke 4:23, things go into reverse, so to speak, for the people demand that Christ produce more works to justify his claim: 'Doubtless you will quote this proverb at me: "Physician heal yourself; whatever we have heard you have done in Capernaum, do here also in your own native city."' Of course, Christ regards this demand for further evidence as nothing but the people's false defence of their unwillingness to believe, and he spends the rest of his time in the synagogue proving it to be so. But our interest at the moment lies in simply observing that leading ideas in Movement 3 balance and complement ideas in Movement 1. What the point is of their doing so we must consider later; but the fact that they do so we [p 68] presumably owe to Luke's deliberate selection and arrangement of his material.
Or take yet another of Luke's peculiar features. At Luke 3:23–38 he records Christ's genealogy. Now Matthew also has a genealogy of Christ, but he puts it at the beginning of the birth narratives (Matt 1:1–17), not between the baptism and the temptation as Luke does; and Matthew's genealogy works forwards from Abraham to Christ, not backwards from Christ to 'Adam, son of God' (Luke 3:38). Luke's deeper reasons behind this arrangement will be considered later on; but its superficial effect we have already noticed [p . 65]: it gives to Luke's Movement 2 (Luke 3:21–4:13) as compared with Matthew's comparable passage, a further instance of the term 'Son of God' and an additional sense in which it is used (additional, that is, to the sense in which it is used at the baptism and in the temptations). But with this compare one of Luke's peculiarities at Luke 4:41 (Movement 4). Matthew (Matt 8:16), talking of what happened in Capernaum at even when the sun was set, says simply: '. . . and he cast out the spirits with a word. . .'. Mark (Mark 1:34) says more: 'and he cast out many demons and he did not allow the demons to speak, because they knew him'. Luke (Luke 4:41) says more still: 'And demons also came out from many, crying out and saying, "You are the Son of God." And he rebuked them and did not allow them to speak, because they knew that he was the Christ.' The term 'Son of God' will not be found again in Luke until Luke 8:28 and only rarely thereafter. Our exposition will have to ask why he lays so much emphasis on it in both Movements 2 and 4.
For the moment the similarities we have noticed between Movements 1 and 3 and then again between Movements 2 and 4 strongly suggest that these four movements were meant to stand together as a closely-knit group. We shall refer to them as Stage 2 of the Gospel. We shall, of course, wish to penetrate beneath their superficial similarities to discern, if we can, what Luke was intending to show us by this selection and arrangement of material. To help us do that let us construct a table of contents which will present at a glance the major features of the four movements (see Table 4). [p 69]
Table 4 Stage 2 of the Coming 3:1–4:44
| 1. John in the desert and at the Jordan (3:1–20) | 3. Christ at Nazareth (4:16–30) |
| 1 John’s identity and function (3:4–6): The fulfilment of Isaiah 40:3–5. | 1 Christ’s identity and mission (4:17–19): The fulfiller of Isaiah 61:1–2. |
| 2 The demand for evidence from the people: ‘bring forth fruits worthy of repentance and do not begin to say . . . “We have Abraham for our father . . .”’ (3:8). | 2 The demand for evidence from Christ: ‘Doubtless you will say to me . . . “Physician heal yourself: whatever we have heard done at Capernaum do here also in your native city”’ (4:23). |
| 3 The people’s reaction: . . . the people were full of expectation and were all wondering . . . whether John might not possibly be the Messiah . . . (3:15). | 3 The people’s reaction: All admitted that they were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips, and they said, ‘Is not this Joseph’s son.’ (4:22). |
| 4 Herod imprisons John (3:20–21) | 4 The people try to destroy Jesus (4:28–30). |
| 2. Christ at the Jordan and in the desert (3:21–4:13) | 4. Christ at Capernaum (4:31–43) |
| 1 Christ’s identity: ‘My beloved Son’ (3:22); son of Adam, son of God (3:38); ‘If you are the Son of God’ . . . (4:3, 9). | 1 Christ’s identity: ‘the Holy One of God’ (4:34); ‘the Son of God’ (4:41); ‘the Christ’ (4:41). |
| 2 The demand for evidence from Christ: ‘If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread . . . throw yourself down from here’ (4:3, 9). | 2 The refusal of evidence from demons: Jesus rebuked him saying, ‘be quiet’ . . . And rebuking them he did not allow them to speak, because they knew that he was the Christ (4:35, 41). |
| 3 A question of authority: The devil said . . . ‘To you will I give all this authority . . . if you will worship before me, yours it will be, all of it . . .’ (4:6–7). | 3 A question of authority: . . . and they spoke . . . saying, ‘What is this word? For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits and they come out’ (4:36). |
The movements
- John in the desert and at the Jordan (Luke 3:1–20)
- Christ at the Jordan and in the desert (Luke 3:21–4:13)
- Christ at Nazareth (Luke 4:16–30)
- Christ at Capernaum (Luke 4:31–43)
1. John in the desert and at the Jordan (Luke 3:1–20)
Stage 1 recorded the arrival in our world of the Son of God as a human baby and his growth as a child. Though prepared for and announced by an angelic visitor and celebrated by the choirs of heaven, on earth the birth passed by almost completely unnoticed. It was a deliberately private affair. As to the baby's identity, few people beyond the families of Mary and Elizabeth knew who the child was, or knew more than that he was somehow special. The shepherds in the fields of Bethlehem and their restricted circle of friends and acquaintances knew something. Simeon and Anna knew more. The learned doctors in the temple had their curiosity aroused and provocatively answered. Beyond that the matter was almost completely private, as any healthy normal childhood needs to be.
All this changes with Stage 2. The privacy is gone for ever. The time has come for the Son of God to be openly and publicly introduced to the world. Two major questions will therefore now be answered: exactly who is Jesus Christ, and exactly what has he come to do? The people of his own day would have needed to have these things explained and demonstrated very carefully, for their expectations of who or what the Messiah would be when he came, and what he would do, were often uncertain, frequently confused and conflicting. And things are not much better today: Christendom itself is marked by uncertainty and confusion on these questions. Luke therefore will not leave us to deduce, as best we may, from a mass of individual incidents and sayings, who Jesus was and what he came to do. He will record what was said at the official introductions by the divinely appointed forerunner, by God the Father, by Christ himself, and even by the demonic world. Moreover, the very formality of the structure in which Luke presents these introductions will carry [p 71] its own message. Here is no haphazard collection of items, whose unstructured lack of proportion gives more prominence to some features than they deserve and less to others. Luke has aimed to give us a complete and rounded picture, the essential elements of which are presented in careful balance, due proportion and proper emphasis.
Movement 1 (Luke 3:1–20) describes the ministry of the forerunner. Notice the impressive list of names with which it begins: the Emperor Tiberius Caesar; the military governor of Judaea, Pontius Pilate; the tetrarchs Herod, Philip and Lysanias; and the chief priests Annas and Caiaphas. This list serves to date the beginning of John's ministry; but it does more: it helps us to perceive John's stature. If these men possessed the highest authority in the land, John came with a higher authority. They were the establishment of organized society; John came out of the desert. But in that desert the word of God had come to John son of Zechariah (note the formal patronymic) and it had constituted him a prophet of the order of men like Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, who under direct inspiration of God had counselled, and sometimes rebuked and denounced, emperors, kings and priests as well as the nations at large.
He came, says Luke, preaching baptism as an expression of repentance which should in turn lead to forgiveness (Luke 3:3). In one sense, of course, a call to repentance was the stock-in-trade of any prophet or preacher; but John's call to repentance was different from all others: how different, Luke now shows us by citing a prophecy from Isaiah (Luke 40:3–5). The heart of that prophecy was a metaphor drawn from the ancient custom that when an emperor or some other eminent personage was about to visit a city, the citizens could be required to prepare a well-constructed approach road along which he could advance with due pomp and dignity on his way into the city. Using that metaphor Isaiah predicted that one day Israel would be called upon to prepare an approach road for such a visitor. What visitor? Isaiah left his hearers in no doubt: 'Prepare . . . the way of Yahweh . . . a highway for our God . . . say to the cities of Judah, Behold, your God! Behold, Adonay Yahweh will come as a mighty one . . . his reward is with him and his recompense before him' (Isa 40:3, 9–10). [p 72]
So said Isaiah, and Luke now uses Isaiah's words in order to describe John's ministry and to identify the person whom John announced. It is of the utmost importance therefore to notice that Luke is not simply borrowing a felicitous phrase or two from Isaiah to describe John's ministry on the grounds that John's ministry bore a certain resemblance here and there to what Isaiah was talking about. Luke is stating that John's ministry was the fulfilment of Isaiah's prophecy. John's was the voice that according to Isaiah was destined to call upon the people to prepare the approach road; and it follows that the visitor whom John announced was the visitor announced by Isaiah: Yahweh himself.
Luke, of course, cites Isaiah's prophecy in a Greek translation. For Isaiah's 'Prepare . . . the way of Yahweh', he puts, 'Prepare the way of the Lord [Gk. kyriou]'; but he means exactly the same as Isaiah: the Greek word kyrios is the standard translation of Yahweh in the Greek Old Testament. For Isaiah's 'make straight . . . a highway for our God', Luke puts 'make straight his paths'; but that does not mean that Luke is scaling down Isaiah's prophecy to make it apply to some lesser figure: grammar shows that the pronoun 'his' refers to 'the Lord'—'Yahweh' of the previous line; and consideration of poetic parallelism will deliver the same verdict. For Luke, then, the visitor announced by John is none other than the visitor predicted by Isaiah: it is the Lord God, Yahweh himself, coming to his people, incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ. One could scarcely overestimate the importance of John's ministry in preparing the way for the coming of such a visitor.
But Luke is not finished with Isaiah's metaphor yet. The ancient Hebrew ran: 'and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together' (Isa 40:5). The Septuagint Version had used an interpretative rendering: 'and the glory of the Lord shall be seen and all flesh shall see the salvation of God'; and from this Luke is content to cite the second of the two clauses. For him doubtless salvation was the form in which the glory of God was especially revealed through the coming of Jesus; and we can see the flow of his thought: 'John came preaching the baptism of repentance unto [p 73] the forgiveness of sins, as it is written . . . "All flesh shall see the salvation of God"' (Luke 3:3, 5). It will be a marked theme of Luke's Gospel that our Lord possessed the glorious, divine prerogative of granting absolute forgiveness of sins and used it to confer salvation on people (see Luke 5:20–24; 7:48–50). But Isaiah had said that to see the glory of the Lord, the people would have to construct a road for him to approach them; and John, and Luke his historian, lay down the same condition: if the people would see the salvation of God in the form of forgiveness of sins, they too must build God his approach road: its name would be repentance. Seeing and enjoying God's glory, salvation and forgiveness would not follow automatically upon the physical arrival and presence of God incarnate; only those would see and enjoy these divine gifts, into whose hearts repentance had made a way of access.
Luke therefore now spends no less than eight verses (see Luke 3:7–14) describing the difficulty and the thoroughness with which John attempted to prevail upon the people to build the road. He pointed out that the Old Testament had spoken not only of the coming Messiah, but also of the coming wrath (Luke 3:7; see e.g. Mal 4:1). Forgiveness was an urgent necessity. But as now, so then, people would readily stop short of thoroughgoing repentance. They behaved, he said, like vipers in front of a bush fire: trying to escape the flames but without any intention of having their evil natures changed. They behaved as though to escape the coming wrath all they needed to do was to submit to the mere outward rite of baptism without giving any practical evidence of genuine repentance. John protested that he had not taught them any such escape route, whoever else might have done (Luke 3:7). Or, rather than repent they would try to hide behind the fact that they were physically descended from Abraham, and John had to warn them that physical descent from Abraham was no substitute for repentance, no defence against the coming wrath (see Luke 3:8). As a tree is not assessed by its botanical label but by whether its fruit is good or bad, so would they be one day soon. If their lives were found to have produced bad fruit, they would be cut down and consigned [p 74] to the fire (see Luke 3:9), no matter whose children they were—unless they repented, and produced practical evidence to show that their repentance was genuine.
Perturbed by this preaching various kinds of people came asking John what repentance would mean in their case (see Luke 3:10–14). Private citizens were told that for them a work of repentance would be their willingness to share life's necessities of food and clothing with those in need; tax-collectors, that for them it would be their ceasing to demand more than the appointed amount of tax; and soldiers, that for them it would be refraining from extorting money or goods by force or by falsely accusing people; they must be content with their army wages and provisions.
So far, then, Luke has first identified the visitor for whom the road had to be made, and then shown us what making the road involved. Now in his next three verses (see Luke 3:15–17) he reverts to the theme of the immeasurable greatness of the coming visitor. John's prophetic authority and unique ministry naturally created a tremendous sense of expectancy among the people, so much so that some began to wonder if John were himself the Christ. John denied it, of course, but took the occasion to prepare the people for the fact that when the Christ came he would be infinitely greater than John, as would be shown by his immeasurably superior ministry. He would be more powerful than John, but not simply in the sense that he would have more of the same power as John had: there would be a whole category of difference between John's power and the Christ's. John baptized in water; the Christ would baptize in the Holy Spirit and in fire (see Luke 3:16). The Christ would thereby do two things which neither John nor any other mere man, however exalted, had either the power or the authority to do: he would impart spiritual life to those who repented and believed, and he would execute the wrath of God upon the unbelieving and unrepentant. We do not know how much John would have understood of what would eventually prove to be involved in the baptism in the Holy Spirit; but he certainly knew enough to know that the Holy Spirit is no impersonal power, but the very life of God. John could put repentant people in [p 75] water; in a sense, anybody could. Only one who was God could put people in the Holy Spirit, or the Holy Spirit in people.
John could also—and he often did—rebuke unrepentant sinners and warn them of the wrath to come (see Luke 3:7). But it was not given to John, and he knew it, to exercise the final judgment, to make the ultimate discrimination between men, to convey the wheat to the heavenly garners, and to execute the wrath of God upon the chaff (see Luke 3:17). But an office which it would have been both lunacy and blasphemy for John to claim for himself or for any other mere man, that office he asserted the coming visitor would have.
From what Luke says, the way John's ministry ended was highly significant, perhaps symbolic. He had announced the coming visitor and called on people to prepare to receive him. Herod not only refused to repent: he decided to silence John. So he shut him up in prison. That was tantamount to closing the door on the visitor even before he arrived. One day, so Luke will eventually tell us (see Luke 23:8–9), Herod got the chance, so he thought, to satisfy his curiosity and ask the visitor many questions. But the visitor stayed silent.
2. Christ at the Jordan and in the desert (Luke 3:21–4:13)
And now the visitor arrives. John had announced him as none other than Yahweh, the bestower of forgiveness, the baptizer in the Holy Spirit, the final judge of men, the executor of the coming wrath. All that was true, of course, but it was not the whole story. To complete the account of who he is we shall need to listen to Movement 2. At the baptism it will tell us that he is, in a sense unique to him, the Son of God. Through the genealogy it will tell us that he is, in a sense common to all men, son of Adam, son of God. And then in the temptations it will show him demonstrating himself to be the true Son of God by his undeviating loyalty to the essential principles of sonship.
Luke spends only two verses (see Luke 3:21–22) on the baptism: deliberately he eliminates or reduces to a minimum everything except those features on which he wishes us to concentrate. They, of course, are unspeakably sublime. The baptizer is not mentioned: Luke has chosen to follow John's public ministry right to its end, before he [p 76] then reverts to Christ's baptism. He does not intend to deny or hide the fact that it was John who did the baptizing: but the person who did the baptizing and even the process of the baptism itself lie outside the centre of his interest. The circumstantial detail is brief. All the people were being baptized, Jesus had been baptized and was praying. Up to that point he could have been simply one more person among the thousands of others. And then the sublime happening took place that declared and demonstrated Jesus to be utterly unique: 'the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended in bodily form as a dove upon him, and a voice came out of heaven, "You are my beloved Son, in you I have found delight."' Three facts are thus told us, and for a while three persons only, in their solitary divine splendour, are allowed to fill our vision.
Two things are said to come out of the opened heaven, the Holy Spirit and the voice. Both are directed to Christ. The Holy Spirit comes down upon him in bodily form as a dove. Why a dove? Perhaps it was meant to recall Noah's dove which 'found no rest for the sole of her foot' on the flood waters, and to emphasize by contrast that the Son of God, having come through Jordan's baptismal waters, was a fit resting place for the Spirit of God. Perhaps there is no need to summon up echoes from the past. At the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost (see Acts 2) the tongues of fire are self-evidently emblematic of the divinely empowered utterance which the Holy Spirit at that moment is said to give to the disciples. So here the descent of the Holy Spirit as a dove could conceivably be an emblematic expression of the Father's complacent and satisfied delight in the Son which the voice from heaven simultaneously announces. Whatever the truth of the matter, the main thing we must grasp is Luke's insistence that the Holy Spirit came down in bodily form, that is, visibly. We are not dealing here with some private experience within Christ's inner consciousness, invisible to others, and only known about because Christ later on told his disciples about it. The express point of Luke's narrative is that the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father to the Son was on this occasion deliberately made visible (in John 1:32–34, John the Baptist is on record as [p 77] claiming to have seen it). And with the Holy Spirit's presence made visible the Father's presence is made audible as he declares 'You are my beloved Son: in you I have found delight'. The words were addressed to the Son: 'You are . . .'. According to Matthew (Matt 3:17) other people heard them and rightly interpreted the voice as giving them to understand 'This is my beloved Son.' But for his part Luke is content to concentrate our attention solely on the three persons so that we might see Jesus as the Son of God in his unique relation with the Father and with the Holy Spirit. Here is no doctrine of the Trinity in complicated philosophical-theological terminology, appropriate and necessary as that would later become. Here is a revelation from an open heaven and a demonstration, divine in its sublime simplicity, of the delightful relationships of the three persons of the Trinity. It points to the unique sense in which Jesus is the Son of God.
There is, of course, another sense in which he was son of God; and Luke, careful as always to maintain the balance of truth, now inserts Christ's genealogy to show that he was '. . . son of Adam, son of God', that is, that he was son of God in the sense that Adam was son of God. Jesus was truly human.24 God and man: not one without the other, but both. Truly man, but not merely man.
With this Luke passes to the temptation. The flow of the narrative—the son of Adam, son of God, being tempted by the devil in respect of, among other things, eating—takes us back in thought to the story of Adam's disobedient eating of the tree; and that in turn throws further light on our two basic questions: who is Jesus and what has he come to do? He is the second man come to triumph where the first man failed, destined in resurrection to be the beginning and head of a new humanity as Adam was the beginning and head of the old. Yet the first temptation shows the difference between him and the first man. 'If you are the Son of God', said the devil, 'command this stone to become bread' (Luke 4:3). Such a suggestion, [p 78] needless to say, would never have been a temptation to Adam, any more than it would be to any of us. Adam did not have the power to turn stones into bread, nor has any mere man since. For Christ, by contrast, the whole force of the temptation lay in the fact that he, as Son of God, had the power to turn stones into bread if he pleased. He did not reply to the devil—let it be said reverently—'Don't be foolish: I have not the power to turn stones into bread', but 'Man shall not live by bread alone'. The Greek word for man which Luke uses (anthrōpos) is the one which means man in the sense of human being. Christ's reply, therefore, indicates that while he is indeed the Son of God, he is also human and proposes to live on the terms that are right and appropriate for a man, a son of Adam.
And so the first victory was won. It was not, however, a victory for mere asceticism. Human life, if it is going to be truly life, and not a form of living death, needs more than bread for its maintenance: it depends on God's Word and on fellowship with him in loving obedience to that Word. Adam in the garden, surrounded by every conceivable kind of food, was tempted to disobey God's word, disobeyed it and found that disobedience led to death. Israel in the desert was allowed to hunger (see Deut 8:3) and then fed with manna so as to be taught that man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. Now hungry after his forty days of fasting in the desert, Christ willingly submits to the written Word—'It stands written'—and refuses to eat independently of God's Word spoken to his heart.
The second temptation did not rely for its force on the question of who Jesus was so much as on the authority which the devil himself claimed to have: 'all this authority . . . has been given to me and I give it to whomsoever I will'. We need not try to decide to what extent the claim was true. Some of it certainly was. Compare Revelation 13:2 where Scripture says of the beast 'the dragon gave him his power and his throne and great authority'. Admittedly, the very phrase 'all this authority . . . has been given to me' shows the devil's ineradicable sense that he is a creature and derives his power ultimately from the Creator. But in this very fact lies the [p 79] force of the temptation: why does God allow the devil such long-lasting and apparently successful power? If the first temptation tested faith in God as the provider of life's necessities, the second is going to test faith in God as the moral governor of the universe, and in his promises that 'the Son of Man and the saints' (see Dan 7) should be given universal dominion.
The worship demanded by Satan did not presumably include that element of admiration and praise which worship of God normally includes. What Satan was demanding was that Christ should recognize him as an ultimate fact and authority which cannot be overcome but has to be reckoned with and compromised with. On those terms the devil was prepared to let Christ gain worldwide success. Many movements, before and since, both political and religious have bought success and power on those terms, justifying their attitude on grounds of expediency or realism or necessity. The result has been to leave mankind in spite of much apparent progress a prisoner to demonic forces of evil both in their personal lives and in their social and political institutions. Christ citing Scripture once more as the authoritative expression of God's absolute authority (see Luke 4:8), refused to bow down to any but God. In the mystery of God's purposes and government of the universe this refusal would cost Christ the cross; but it would win for mankind that possibility of freedom of which we shall soon hear him speak when he begins his public ministry (see Luke 4:18).
The third temptation relied for its power once more on the fact that Jesus was the Son of God, but also on his demonstrated determination to trust Holy Scripture and to obey God. The devil therefore quoted a Scripture which promised Messiah angelic protection, and challenged Christ not just to trust it, but to give evidence of his trust by acting upon it. The temptation was exceedingly subtle. We recall how John the Baptist had rightly urged it on the people that it was useless simply claiming to be children of Abraham: they must act, they must produce practical evidence of the validity of their claim. Moreover to the godly mind the challenge to trust God's word and 'step out in faith' has a powerful attraction, and refusal or even [p 80] hesitancy to act can appear as lack of faith. But Christ saw through the deception: it was in fact a challenge not to trust God but to tempt him, not to prove his Sonship, but to abuse it. No word had come from God bidding Christ jump off the temple; no necessity of God's work or human need required it. The only motive for doing it would either be vainglory or the desire to test God to see whether he would keep his promise; and Scripture forbids man's testing of God in that way. God is not on probation; there is no doubt about his faithfulness that has to be cleared up by putting him through an examination. To jump off the temple would have been to take the initiative and force God into a situation where he would have no choice but to back up the action in order to avert disaster, or else to be accused of unfaithfulness if he did not. That would have been to reverse the role of man and God, and of Son and Father. Satan's demand for action as evidence of Christ's Sonship was false, and Christ refused to act. All the devil had succeeded in doing was to demonstrate that Jesus was indeed the true Son of God.
3. Christ at Nazareth (Luke 4:16–30)
It is at first sight remarkable that for his first major example of Christ's public ministry, Luke should have chosen an incident in which the people's reaction was so hostile and their verdict on his claims so decidedly negative. Admittedly, Luke carefully indicates that before Christ met with this negative response at Nazareth he had been very well received throughout the whole of Galilee (see Luke 4:14–15); and he immediately balances the rejection at Nazareth with the good reception at Capernaum (see Luke 4:31–43). Even so, why give such prominence to the Nazareth incident?
One reason could be that the sermon at Nazareth was programmatic. It therefore makes a fitting introduction to Christ's public ministry. To identify himself and his mission Christ cited Isaiah 61:1–2 and 58:6, and it recalls the way Luke identified John and his mission at Luke 3:4–6 by a similar quotation from Isaiah. It is an essential part of the gospel that neither John nor Jesus came in order to start some new religion or movement never heard of before. Both claimed [p 81] to be the fulfilment of Scripture's prophetic programme. Naturally, of course, no responsible person was going to accept Christ's claim without examining the evidence for it. The people of Nazareth, however, decided that the evidence was inadequate and the claim spurious. In recording their decision Luke is obviously not intending to admit that it was a fair decision; but having advertised it so boldly, Luke will presumably take great pains to show us why it was false.
Before, however, we consider why the people of Nazareth decided against the claim, we had better consider exactly what the claim was. First Christ claimed to be the anointed Servant of the Lord: 'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me' (Luke 4:18). Secondly he described his mission as a preaching mission: 'to preach good news to the poor'. Poor in what sense? There is no reason why the term should not mean among other things the financially poor; but it will certainly include poverty of other kinds. Before Christ's sermon is over he will have cited two people who in times past had received God's grace: one was a poor widow (see Luke 4:26), but the other was an exceedingly rich nobleman, commander of the Syrian armies, whose poverty lay not in lack of money but in his utter resourcelessness against leprosy (see Luke 4:27). And to go no further than the next chapter, Luke 5:27–30, some of the first to benefit from the gospel were the financially rich tax-collectors. Their poverty was moral and spiritual. This in fact is the pattern throughout the Gospel: the term 'poor' covers poverty of every kind, but denotes above all else the spiritual poverty from which all alike suffer.
In what then did the good news for the poor consist? Presumably the next clauses and phrases of the quotation tell us. One element, 'release', receives a double emphasis: 'release to the captives . . . to send forth the crushed in freedom (literally, in release)'. The Greek word for 'release' on both occasions is aphesis. Its associated verb carries a wide range of meaning: 'to send away, discharge, let go, release, allow' and then the specialized sense 'to forgive', since to forgive is to release someone from his debts, guilt, obligations and deserved penalties. The noun aphesis can mean 'release', 'discharge', 'setting free' in a general sense or else 'forgiveness'. Its meaning [p 82] in this passage will depend on the sense in which the terms 'captives' and 'crushed' are intended. Let us notice then that the word for 'captive' in Greek (aichmalōtos) means, at the literal level, a war captive. It is not the word one would use for someone imprisoned for a crime or for a political offence (which in New Testament language would be desmios). It follows therefore that our Lord could not have been using the word in its literal sense in the synagogue at Nazareth. He claimed that the promise of Isaiah was being fulfilled that very day in the ears of the congregation: captives were having release offered to them. Obviously he was not talking of literal captives of war. In the metaphorical sense, on the other hand, there are plenty of examples in the Gospel of Christ giving freedom to people who were captives to guilt (see Luke 7:41–50), to the crushing and bruising power of Satan (see Luke 8:26–39), to the love of money (e.g. Luke 19:1–10) and so forth. One must conclude, therefore, that this was the sense in which he spoke of captives.
The other element in the gospel to the poor was the offer of recovery of sight to the blind. This obviously included the offer of literal sight to the physically blind, since various cases of healing of blind people are recorded in the Gospel (see Luke 7:21; 18:35–43). But once more it is impossible to think that the offer was restricted to the blind in this literal sense. What kind of a programme would it have been that announced that it had two major concerns: freedom for literal prisoners-of-war and physical sight for the blind? Understood in a spiritual sense, however, the twin offer was an apt summary of the gospel, as is seen from the fact that the same two elements, expressed in other words, reappear in other summaries of the gospel by later preachers. Here for instance is Paul, as recorded by Luke, explaining his mission before Agrippa: 'to open their eyes that they may turn from darkness to light [i.e. the recovery of sight to the blind] and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness [aphesis] of sins [i.e. the release for captives] and an inheritance among those who are sanctified . . .' (Acts 26:18). Understood in this spiritual sense, moreover, the offer was immediately relevant to the congregation in the synagogue at Nazareth—disturbingly so, as we shall see in a moment. [p 83]
The final element in the programme had to do with timetable. Isaiah's prophecy had predicted that the anointed Servant of the Lord would 'proclaim the Lord's favourable year and the day of vengeance of our God' (Isa 61:2); and Luke is obviously concerned to make sure that we understand exactly how much of this programme Christ claimed was being fulfilled that day in Nazareth. He paints the scene in graphic detail. Christ stands up to read; the attendant hands him the scroll; he finds the passage in Isaiah and reads it through until he comes to this twin phrase; he reads the first part up to 'the Lord's favourable year', stops in the middle of the sentence, and with the eyes of everyone in the synagogue rivetted on him, deliberately rolls up the scroll, gives it back to the attendant, sits down, and begins to say 'Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing'.
It is almost impossible to exaggerate the importance of the point which Christ was so dramatically making: he was the Messiah, his coming had instituted the Lord's favourable year; but it had not begun the day of vengeance: he had no intention of executing the wrath of God upon evil men or evil societies and institutions at this stage in history.
For many people, particularly those who believed in him, this was a shock and a disappointment, especially when they found out what it would mean. John the Baptist, we recall, had announced that the Christ would do two things: he would not only impart God's Holy Spirit to those who believed; but he would also burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire (see Luke 3:16–17). The expectation was true: Christ will one day execute the wrath of God (see 2 Thess 1:7–10). John's disappointment seems to have arisen, however, from the mistaken idea that Christ would immediately proceed to put down evil and destroy unrepentant men. In the name of the coming Christ, John had denounced Herod's sins, and Herod, unrepentant, had John imprisoned. John therefore apparently expected Christ to come, chastise Herod and release him; and when Christ made no attempt to do so, John was disappointed (see Luke 7:18–23), and had to be reassured that the fulfilment of the prophetic programme had not failed, ceased or gone astray. It was not that evil was so powerfully [p 84] entrenched and Christ and his followers so few and weak that it was not prudent just yet to attack Herod and try to break his power. Christ had no intention of overthrowing Herod's political power in order to open John's prison door, or of executing judgment on Herod or on any other evil men. He had come to institute the Lord's favourable year, the purpose of which was the proclamation of the gospel and the provision of a way of escape from the wrath to come. Not until that year was over—and God's merciful long-suffering would see to it that it was a very long year—would the comparatively short, sharp day of vengeance come.
That then was the claim and that was the programme. The congregation had to admit the astonishing grace of his words; but on the other hand, to them, his relatives, friends and neighbours, he was after all only Joseph's son (see Luke 4:22). And where was there any evidence enough to prove the stupendous claim that he had just made?
Christ read their thoughts. 'I am sure,' he said, 'you will quote this proverb at me, "Physician heal yourself."' It is perfectly clear what they meant by their unspoken proverb: it was their defence against the charge of unbelief. They did not believe him, that they admitted. But the fault was not theirs, but his, for not supplying adequate evidence. The cure was in his own hands. It was no good finding fault with them for not believing; they were prepared to believe if he provided them with sufficient evidence. It was up to him to provide it. They had heard that he had done many marvellous things in Capernaum. But that wasn't enough; if he wanted them to believe his claim, he would have to prove it true by doing many more works like that in his own hometown.
Put like that (and notice it was Christ who put it like that, see Luke 4:23) the people's case seemed eminently reasonable. Had not John argued in the very same way with the people that it was no use merely saying they were Abraham's true children and had repented: they must produce practical evidence that their claim was true? It would be very strange therefore if, as some commentators seem to think, Christ not only refused to give them the evidence they so reasonably asked for, but instead said many things which [p 85] were not strictly relevant and served only to anger them beyond endurance. In fact, what Christ said was neither irrelevant nor rude. It was an attempt to get them to see first that the kind of evidence that they were asking for was not the kind of evidence that could ever give them proof of his claims; secondly, that the evidence which could give them perfect assurance that his claim was true was readily available to them; and thirdly, that whether they took advantage of this available evidence was not up to him, but up to them. To borrow their metaphor: as a physician he could heal them, and their resultant good health would be incontrovertible evidence that his claim was true; but whether they would admit they were sick and in need of healing, and whether they would allow him to heal them and so supply them with the desired evidence was not up to him, but up to them.
First, then, Christ reminded them of the reports of his miracles at Capernaum. They had already provided them with objective prima facie evidence that his claim was not nonsense, but had genuine substance. To have gone on simply repeating that kind of objective evidence at Nazareth, however, would not have advanced the case any further.
Secondly, he pointed out that their difficulty in accepting his claim did not arise solely from the lack of objective evidence. There was another factor involved, a subjective psychological difficulty so well and universally recognized that it had been expressed in the common saying: no prophet is acceptable in his hometown (see Luke 4:24). The difficulty was nothing to do with the adequacy of the evidence. It had nothing to do with logic. It was an irrational—or at least non-rational—instinctive, emotional bias. It would be difficult for them to overcome this emotional bias; but the difficulty was on their side not on his. They would have to recognize its existence, and overcome it, if ever they were going to be fair to the evidence. If they did not recognize it in themselves, their complaint that the evidence was inadequate could be a mere rationalization of their bias.
Thirdly, Christ cited a couple of Old Testament case histories—but at this point we must proceed very carefully, since many [p 86] commentators have found it difficult to see the relevance of the two stories to the question of the congregation's demand for evidence which Christ was supposed to be discussing. Some indeed have claimed that the stories have no relevance to the preceding discussion: Luke has simply done a rather poor scissors-and-paste job with his sources and stuck a couple of stories in here which originally had nothing to do with the Nazareth incident. Others, observing that Christ emphasizes the fact that in both stories God's prophet was sent to bring blessing to Gentiles and not to Israelites, have thought that Christ was criticizing the narrow-mindedness of his Jewish congregation. This explanation is certainly better than the first, in that it suggests a reasonable flow of thought; Jesus is defending himself against the Jews' refusal to believe him by using these two Old Testament stories as a kind of a prophecy to predict that though rejected by his fellow-nationals he will one day be believed in by millions of Gentiles. But this explanation still does not get to the heart of the matter. The congregation was complaining that the evidence for his claim was inadequate. It was hardly enough to reply 'never mind; millions of Gentiles will believe it, just like Gentiles in the past have believed God's prophets when Israel did not'. The real question was on what grounds did the Gentiles in the past believe and on what grounds would the millions of Gentiles in the future believe? If the Jews of Nazareth found the evidence inadequate for their faith, how could it rightly be adequate for the Gentiles' faith? Were Gentiles simply credulous simpletons? Obviously we ought to take Christ's reference to these two Old Testament stories seriously and look at them in more detail.
When the widow of Zarephath met Elijah she had never set eyes on him before as far as we know (see 1 Kgs 17:8–16); and the demand he made on her was, in a sense, outrageous. She had only one handful of meal left, yet he insisted that she first make him a cake. He added, of course, that if she first did that and gave him the cake, then after that her supply of meal would be miraculously maintained. But she had to use up her handful of meal in making him a cake first. Why then did she trust him? He claimed to be a prophet, [p 87] but what evidence could she have that his claim was true? Had she been like the people of Nazareth, she would have demanded that Elijah must first do a miracle—filling her barrel miraculously would have been an appropriate one—and then she would believe him and make him a cake. But Elijah insisted that it must be the other way round. Without any evidence except Elijah's solemn promise in God's name, she had to use her last lot of meal to make him a cake first, and then, so he said, the miracle would happen.
Fortunately she did trust him, made the cake, and the miracle happened: she and her son were supplied with food for the rest of the famine. She had proved by experience that Elijah was true. She now had incontrovertible evidence. But what made her trust him in the first place? The answer is simple: it was the realization of her extreme poverty and fatal lack of resources. If she refused to trust him, she would keep her last handful of meal for herself and her son; they would eat it, and within a few days be dead. If she gave her last handful to Elijah and he turned out to be a fraud, what would it matter? She would die a few hours sooner, that's all. If she trusted him and he turned out to be true, she and her son were saved. Actually her extreme poverty made it easy for her to see the reality of the situation. Had she still had half a barrelful when she met Elijah, she might have been tempted to refuse to risk trusting him, in the vain hope that her half barrelful might somehow see her through to the end of the famine.
The relevance of the story to the congregation at Nazareth is not difficult to see. They wanted evidence that Christ's claim was true. Christ was saying that conclusive evidence was readily and immediately available. What after all was the claim? It was that he had come, as God's anointed Servant, to give salvation, forgiveness, release from guilt and from spiritual bondage to people who were spiritually captives, poor and resourceless. If they were poor and resourceless, they had only to call on him and he would demonstrate to them in their own personal subjective experience that his claim was true. Let them apply to him. If he turned out to be a fraud, they would have lost nothing. [p 88]
But there, of course, lay the trouble; they were not poor, at least, in their own estimation they were not. They were respectable, spiritually resourceful people, kind parents, loyal citizens, honest traders, regular attenders of the synagogue. His claim to be the Messiah come to put the world right was fantastic enough for a young man whom they had known from infancy; but they were prepared to consider the objective evidence of further miracles if he could repeat what he was reported to have done in Capernaum. But they were not in any urgent personal need. To suggest that there was any parallel or relevance to them in the story of this Gentile widow was an insult. Did he think that they, his aunts and uncles, sisters, brothers, cousins, friends and neighbours were going to admit to him that they were morally and spiritually poor, inadequate and resourceless, and call on him as their only hope? It was humiliating and offensive in the extreme.
But that is why the story of Naaman was so apt; for when Naaman heard what Elisha said he must do to get rid of his leprosy, he felt so humiliated that at first he went away in a rage (see 2 Kgs 5:9–14). What made him change his mind and submit? The simple but hard fact that he was a leper. His servants pointed out that if it was humiliating to be asked to do such a mean thing as to dip himself in the Jordan, it was better to do that and be cured than to let the leprosy go unchecked and eventually to suffer the humiliations which the advancing disease would inflict.
But the congregation at Nazareth had had enough. To be told that they were spiritually blind, resourceless and poverty-stricken was bad enough; now to be told that they were less wise than this Gentile leper was intolerable. They tried to destroy Christ.
Now we can see perhaps why Luke has given the Nazareth incident such prominence. It was, in the first place, an important statement of Christ's claim. But Luke was aware that it was not enough simply to make the claim: there had to be evidence to support it. Doubtless it was sad to have to report that Christ's own relatives and townspeople rejected the claim; but it was also important that he should be able to show Theophilus and us on what grounds they [p 89] rejected it. It may be that the people of Nazareth would have continued to argue that it was because the evidence for the claim was inadequate; we can now see that it had little to do with inadequacy of evidence, but everything to do with their refusal to face their true spiritual condition, their refusal, in other words, to repent. They could not see that Joseph's son was the Messiah. But then Isaiah had said, and John the Baptist had repeated it, that if the people would see the glory of the Lord when he came, and the glory of his salvation, they would have to build him an approach road.
4. Christ at Capernaum (Luke 4:31–43)
For the final movement in his 'Introduction of the Son of God' Luke has chosen virtually the same material as Mark has put in his first chapter, Mark 1:21–39. The fact that he shares this material with Mark does not mean, of course, that Luke is not to be credited with having intended to say everything he says in this movement to the same extent as he is in movements like Movement 3 that are peculiar to him. When Luke takes over material from some source or other, by the very decision to take it over he makes it his own. If he says the same as Mark it is because he wants to say the same as Mark. When he wants to emphasize certain features in the material more than Mark, he certainly feels free to do so as we have already seen [p . 68]. Our task now is to see, if we can, why Luke has chosen this material to complete his introductory account of who Jesus was and what he came to do.
Movement 4, then, tells us that when Christ went to Capernaum he taught in the synagogue (see Luke 4:31) as he had done in Nazareth. But on this occasion we are not told the contents of his sermon. Instead Luke concentrates on the authority of his preaching and its effects; and of the varied effects of his ministry Luke concentrates again on one thing more than others: his power over evil spirits. In the synagogue he cast out an unclean spirit from a man, and it forms for Luke the chief topic of interest (see Luke 4:33–36). Leaving the synagogue he went to Peter's home and there healed his mother-in-law (see Luke 4:38–39), and later that evening he healed a large number of people [p 90] of various (unspecified) illnesses (see Luke 4:40). But with that Reverts once more to Christ's power over demons and spends another whole verse describing it (see Luke 4:41). It is evident that for Luke the opposition of demons and Christ's triumph over it were not incidental to his ministry: they lay at the very heart of it. The emphasis within Movement 4 is enough by itself to show it; but when we recall what we have so recently been told in Movement 2 about Satan's attack on Christ in the temptations it puts the matter beyond doubt. We shall find in fact that as we consider this question of Christ's power over demons, it will bring together the major themes that have dominated this Stage Luke 2: the nature and purpose of Christ's mission, the authority of the Word, the identity of Jesus and the evidence for his claims.
First, then, the nature and purpose of his mission. At the temptation Satan's attempt to pervert the Son of God had failed; now in Movement 4 we see the Son of God turning to the offensive.
Luke reports how the demon-possessed man in the synagogue at Capernaum cried out at the top of his voice 'Ha! what do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God' (Luke 4:34–35). It was a rhetorical question; but if we must answer it, we might well borrow the words of John: 'For this purpose was the Son of God manifested that he might destroy the works of the devil' (1 John 3:8). It is at this level of spiritual warfare that the battle for man's salvation must ultimately be fought out.
It would, of course, be untrue, foolish and dangerous to suggest that every man is possessed by some demon or other. Demon possession, according to the New Testament, is an extreme form of spiritual bondage. On the other hand the writers of the New Testament are serious in their assertion that every unregenerate man is in a very real sense under the power of Satan (see e.g. Acts 26:18; 2 Cor 4:3–4; Eph 2:2; Col 1:13; 1 Pet 2:9), and needs to have his eyes opened to the fact, and allow Christ to bring him out of his spiritual darkness and bondage into the freedom of God's light. And that is, of course, what Christ was talking about when at Nazareth he asserted that he had come to bring release to the captives and recovery of [p 91] sight to the blind. The congregation not only could not see he was the Messiah, but actually became enraged, and in a frenzy tried to destroy him. It was all too clear evidence that they were in captivity to Satan, blind to their own condition and to where their salvation lay. If ever such people were going to be liberated, Christ would have to break the power of Satan over them.
In this great spiritual warfare two matters are of supreme importance: the authority of the Word of God, both written and proclaimed, and the identity of Jesus. The first three movements have relentlessly emphasized the authority of the Word, the necessity of obeying it, the strategic importance of proclaiming it (Luke 3:2, 3–4; 4:4, 8, 12, 15, 16–21). Now Movement 4 takes up the story. It shows us Christ going forth to war against spiritual forces. How will he proceed? What weapons, what methods will he use? It was, says Luke, while 'he was teaching . . . on the Sabbath day and they were astonished at his teaching, for his word was with authority' (Luke 4:32) that the man with an evil spirit cried out in recognition of the superior power of Christ. Nor is Luke content to record the fact that Christ cast out the demon: Luke must give us the effect on the congregation: 'And amazement came on everybody and they talked together among themselves, saying, "What is this word? For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits and they come out"' (Luke 4:36). The emphasis is inescapable. In the temptation Christ had rejected the false authority the devil had offered him and had staked everything on the authority of the written Word of God. Now triumphant he exercises the very authority of God through his own spoken word. Nor only against demons; for when Luke comes to record how Christ delivered Peter's mother-in-law from her fever, he simply repeats the phrase he uses of Christ's methods with the demons: 'he rebuked the fever' (Luke 4:39, and cf. Luke 4:35 and 41).
The message of Movement 4 is clear. We know of course that for mankind's deliverance and redemption Christ would later have to fight another battle of a different kind at Calvary. But that does nothing to diminish the importance of the point that Movement 4 is making: in the fight for man's deliverance from the power of Satan, [p 92] the first and foremost tactic is the proclamation of the supremely and absolutely authoritative Word of God. And it follows that to neglect the preaching of that Word, or in any way to cast doubt in people's minds as to its authority and trustworthiness is to play directly into Satan's hands and to help maintain his bondage over them. It was a sense of the supreme importance of preaching the Word to as many as possible, says Luke (see Luke 4:42–44), that made Christ leave Capernaum, in spite of his popularity there, in order to preach elsewhere.
The second matter of supreme importance in the war against spiritual wickedness is the identity of Jesus. Twice over we are told (see Luke 4:34 and 41) that demons as they left their victims cried out in recognition that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God. On each occasion Christ silenced them. At first sight that is perhaps surprising. Throughout this stage the question of the necessity of evidence to prove who Jesus is has been very much to the fore. We might have expected Jesus therefore to call the attention of the people to the testimony of these defeated demonic forces. But of course he did not. In the course of the great war, Satan and his demons may for tactical reasons sometimes say what is true—in the third temptation Satan even quoted Scripture—or they may be forced against their will to say what is true: they never say it out of loyalty to the truth or with any intention of leading people to believe the truth. Truth is ultimately a person; in the great warfare of the ages his identity is all-important. Only those are to be trusted, in the ultimate sense, who speak in loyalty to that person. Those of course who deny that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, thereby declare plainly that they fight on the other side.
Notes
23 This (and not '. . . of Galilee') seems to be the correct reading. 'Judaea' presumably means, as in Luke 1:4, 'the whole country of Palestine', see Marshall, Luke, 199.
24 For the difficulties connected with the details of the genealogy see Marshall, Luke, 157–65. Whatever is the true solution of these difficulties, it goes without saying that in recording that Jesus was the son, as was supposed of Joseph, Luke is not forgetting or contradicting his account of the virgin conception. [p 93]
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