Then a new scene opens in chapter 3. “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar” (for men soon pass away, and slight is the trace left by the course of earth’s great ones), “Pontius Pilate being governor of Judaea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of Ituraea and of the region of Trachonitis, and Lysanias the tetrarch of Abilene, Annas and Caiaphas being the high priests, the word of God came unto John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness.” How strange is this state of things! Not only have we the chief power of the world passed into another hand; not only do we see the Edomite—a political confusion in the land, but a religious Babel too. What a departure from all divine order. Who ever heard of two high priests before? Such were the facts when the manifestation of the Christ drew near, “Annas and Caiaphas being the high priests.” No changes in the world, nor abasement in the people of the Lord, nor strange conjunction of the priests, nor mapping out of the land by the stranger, would interfere with the purposes of grace; which, on the contrary, loves to take up men and things at their worst, and shows what God is towards the needy. So John the Baptist goes forth here, not as we traced him in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, but with a special character stamped upon him akin to the design of Luke. “He came into all the country about Jordan, preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins.” Here we see the remarkable largeness of his testimony. “Every valley shall be filled,” he says, “and every mountain and hill shall be brought low.” Such a quotation puts him virtually in connection with the Gentiles, and not merely with the Jew or Jewish purposes. “All flesh,” it is therefore added, “shall see the salvation of God.”
It is evident that the terms intimate the widening of divine grace in its sphere. This is apparent in the manner in which John the Baptist speaks. When he addresses the multitude, observe how he deals with them. It is not a question now of reproving Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, as in Matthew, but while he here solemnly warns the multitude, the evangelist records his words to each class. They were the same as in the days of the prophets; they were no better after all. Man was far from God: he was a sinner; and, without repentance and faith, what could avail their religious privileges? To what corruption had they not been led through unbelief? “O generation of vipers,” he says, “who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance, and begin not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father.” This, again, accounts for the details of the different classes that come before John the Baptist, and the practical dealing with the duties of each—an important thing, I believe, for us to bear in mind; for God thinks of souls; and whenever we have real moral discipline according to His mind, there is a dealing with men as they are, taking them up in the circumstances of their everyday life. Publicans, soldiers, people—they each hear respectively their own proper word. So in that repentance, which the Gospel supposes as its invariable accompaniment, it is of moment to bear in mind that, while all have gone astray, each has also followed his own way.
But, again, we have his testimony to the Messiah. “And as the people were in expectation, and all men mused in their hearts of John, whether he were the Christ, or not; John answered, saying unto them all, I indeed baptize you with water; but one mightier than I cometh, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose: he shall baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire: whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and will gather the wheat into his garner; but the chaff he will burn with fire unquenchable. And many other things in his exhortation preached He unto the people.” And here, too, you will observe an evident and striking illustration of Luke’s manner. Having introduced John, he finishes his history before he turns to the subject of the Lord Jesus. Therefore he adds the fact, that Herod the tetrarch, being reproved by him, added yet this above all the evil that he had done, that he shut up John in prison. Hence it is clear that the order of Luke is not here, at any rate, that of historic fact. This is nothing peculiar. Anyone who is at all acquainted with historians, either ancient or modern, must know that they do the same thing. It is common and almost inevitable. Not that they all do so, any more than all the evangelists; but still it is the way of many historians, who are reckoned amongst the most exact, not to arrange facts like the mere chroniclers of an annual register, which confessedly is rather a dull, rude way of giving us information. They prefer to group the facts into classes, so as to bring out the latent springs, and the consequences even though unsuspected, and, in short, all they desire of moment in the most distinct and powerful manner. Thus Luke, having introduced John here, does not care to interrupt the subsequent account of our Lord, till the embassy of John’s messengers fell into the illustration of another theme. There is no room left for misunderstanding this brief summary of the Baptist’s faithful conduct from first to last, and its consequences. So true is this, that he records the baptism of our Lord by John immediately after the mention that John was put in prison. Chronological sequence here manifestly yields to graver demands.
Next comes the baptism of those who resorted to John, and above all of Christ. “And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph,” and so forth. Now, at first sight, the insertion of a pedigree at this point seems irregular enough; but Scripture is always right, and wisdom is justified of her children. It is the expression of a weighty truth, and in the most fitting place. The Jewish scene closes. The Lord has been fully shown to the righteous remnant, that is what He was to Israel. God’s grace and faithfulness to His promises had presented to them an admirable testimony; and the more so, as it was in the face of the last great, or Roman, empire. We have had the priest fulfilling his function in the sanctuary; then the angel’s visits to Zechariah, to Mary, and, finally, to the shepherds. We have had also the great prophetic sign of Immanuel born of the virgin, and now the forerunner, greater than any prophet, John the Baptist, the precursor of the Christ. It was all vain. They were a generation of vipers, even as John himself testified about them. Nevertheless, on the part of Christ, there was ineffable grace wherever any heeded the call of John, albeit the faintest working of divine life in the soul. The confession of the truth of God against themselves, the acknowledgment that they were sinners, drew the heart of Jesus to them. In Him was no sin, no, not the smallest taint of it, nor connection with it: nevertheless, Jesus was with those who repaired to the baptism of John. It was of God. No necessity of sin brought Him there; but, on the contrary, grace, the pure fruit of divine grace in Him. He who had nothing to confess or repent was none the less the One that was the very expression of the grace of God. He would not be separated from those in whom there was the smallest response to the grace of God. Jesus, therefore, does not for the present take people out of Israel, so to speak, any more than from among men severally into association with Himself; He associates Himself with those who were thus owning the reality of their moral condition in the sight of God. He would be with them in that recognition, not, of course, for Himself, as if He personally needed, but their companion in His grace. Depend upon it, that this same truth connects itself with the whole career of the Lord Jesus. Whatever the changes may have been before or at His death, they only illustrated increasingly this mighty and fruitful principle.
Who, then, was the baptized man on whom, as He prayed, heaven opened, and the Holy Spirit descended, and a voice from heaven said, “Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased”? It was One whom the inspiring Spirit here loves to trace finally up thus: “Which was the Son of Adam, which was the Son of God.” One that was going to be tried as Adam was tried—yea, as Adam never was tried; for it was in no Paradise that this Second Adam was going to meet the tempter, but in the wilderness. It was in the wreck of this world; it was in the scene of death over which God’s judgment hung; it was under such circumstances where it was no question of innocence, but of divine power in holiness surrounded by evil, where One who was fully man depended on God, and, where no food, no water was, lived by the word of God. Such, and far, far more, was this man Christ Jesus. And hence it is that the genealogy of Jesus seems to me precisely where it ought to be in Luke, as indeed it must be, whether we see it or not. In Matthew its insertion would have been strange and inappropriate, had it there come after His baptism. It would have no suitableness there, because what a Jew wanted first of all to know was the birth of Jesus according to the Old Testament prophecies. That was everything, we may say, to the Jew in the first place, to know the Son that was given, and the child that was born, as Isaiah and Micah predicted. Here we see the Lord as a man, and manifesting this perfect grace in man—a total absence of sin; and yet the very One who was found with those who were confessing sin “The Son of Adam, who was the Son of God.” That means, that He was One who, though man, proved that He was God’s Son.