Luke 3:18

Note

Straight after a sermon of winnowing forks and unquenchable fire, Luke sums up all of John the Baptist's preaching in one verb: he brought the people good news.

John had gone through all the region around the Jordan "preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins" (Luke 3:3). He told the crowds, the tax collectors and the soldiers what fruit each of them should bear (Luke 3:10–14). When the people wondered whether he might be the Christ, he pointed past himself to One more powerful: "He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire" (Luke 3:16), and "He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire" (Luke 3:17). This verse closes the sermon, and the next turns at once to Herod, whom John rebuked over Herodias and who "locked John up in prison" (Luke 3:20). The Greek binds the two together: the particle men in this verse is answered by the de of the next, "on the one hand … but," so that John's good news and Herod's prison stand side by side.

The verb euangelizomai is in the imperfect middle, euēngelizeto: an action going on and repeated, "he kept bringing good news." Its object is the people themselves, ton laon, in the accusative, as Luke writes it again of Philip and the towns (Acts 8:40): John did not only speak good news to the people, he ‘evangelized’ them. With it goes the participle parakalōn, "exhorting," from parakaleō, a word that can mean both to urge and to comfort. This is the first time in Luke that a human being brings good news; the two before were angels (Luke 1:19; 2:10). And it comes, strikingly, after the axe laid at the root of the trees (Luke 3:9) and the fire for the chaff. Luke calls all of it good news: that the Coming One is near, that He will baptize with the Spirit, that He will gather His wheat.

The KJV says only "many other things in his exhortation preached he unto the people," with no word for good news; "preach" carries the whole verb, as it often does in the KJV. The BSB has "John proclaimed the good news to the people," and the LSV "he was proclaiming good news to the people," which also keeps the imperfect. The modern versions bring out what kind of preaching Luke calls it; the KJV lets the authority of the preacher stand in front.

In the Catena, Theophylact says that "his exhortation was the telling of good things, and therefore is fitly called the Gospel" Theophylact. Origen takes "many other things" to mean that John said more than was ever written down, and marvels most that "he feared not Herod, nor dreaded death" Origen. Matthew Henry gives John a string of titles, an affectionate preacher, a practical preacher, a popular preacher, and then this one: "He was an evangelical preacher. In all his exhortations, he directed people to Christ" Matthew Henry.

John's message was not comfortable to hear, and yet Luke calls it good news. A word that names sin plainly can be glad tidings when it points beyond itself to the One who is coming. That is what this short verse says to anyone who hears a hard word and wonders whether there is good news in it.