GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
LUKE 4:18-19
18 “The Spirit sent from the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to release the oppressed,
19 and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Jesus was reading from Isaiah 61:1-2. Luke’s quotation is a translation of the Hebrew text that’s very similar to the Greek Septuagint. The only important difference is that Luke’s text adds the words “to release the oppressed” (at the end of verse 18), which comes from Isaiah 58:6. Jesus will tell us later that he is the fulfillment of these verses. Let’s see why.
The Spirit sent from the Lord is upon me. The Holy Spirit came to Jesus and landed on his body in the form of a dove at his baptism. Our God in his three Persons is always in agreement; always at one with himself. There is no division between the will of the Father, the will of the Son, or the will of the Spirit. The role of each Person can be different, because God in his miraculous entity has his three Persons, so that the Son was the one who was crucified (not the Father), and the Spirit was the one who descended on the Apostles at Pentecost (not the Father or the Son), but there is no ulterior motive within either of the Persons. The Holy Spirit was and is with Jesus. Here it was to show God’s favor on Jesus as he entered into his office as the prophet of God, different from any other prophet, since he is also divine and infallible. Whatever Jesus preached is the Word of God, without fail.
because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. Jesus was anointed by the Holy Spirit. The word “anointed” is significant because it is echrisen (ἔχρισεν), from which we get our word Christ (Xριστός), “the Anointed One.”
Who are the poor? Luke uses this term more than any other Gospel writer (twice as often), and in each case, the speaker—always Jesus—is talking about people who have nothing. This doesn’t just mean people who have no coin for the plate, but much more literally nothing at all. The term ptochos (πτωχός) has the root meaning “to cringe, to crouch” in complete submission. The poor repentant man bows before God with nothing at all to offer for his soul, because man cannot offer anything for his soul. Christ has everything to offer; we can only receive. When we come to him, helpless, not trying to justify ourselves or to act as if we are anything he should notice, then he preaches the Gospel to us, and he offers us everything he has to offer.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom to the captives. Here he says the same thing: freedom to the captives is the gospel to the poor. Here are prisoners, captives in the war against Satan, bound by sin and condemned to eternal death. The Devil would hold us captive with no hope of escape, and even our own sinful human flesh remains our enemy throughout this lifetime, a “damned heathen” as one of my college religion professors used to say, until at last it is defeated by death. When the spirit of man is reborn in baptism, we are made alive with faith; when the flesh of man is reborn in the resurrection, we are made alive for eternal life, and a faith that will see God in person, forever. Until then we have spiritual freedom as children of God, and children of the promise.
and recovery of sight to the blind, The Hebrew of this phrase says “release from darkness for prisoners,” but the Holy Spirit has allowed the Greek translation to stand here. And there are few prisons darker than human blindness. We could talk about spiritual blindness and set it next to physical blindness, but the point is that all of these kinds of darkness—physical, spiritual, imprisoning—will all come to an end. There will be recovery and freedom for all.
to release the oppressed, The wording of this phrase is from Isaiah 58:6, but the idea is present in a phrase from Isaiah 61:1 which is not translated here, but which is “to bind up the brokenhearted.” The oppressed, the brokenhearted, are those who are oppressed by the great Enemies: the Devil, the world, and our flesh. Today, the world around us is being manipulated by the Devil more and more to be our enemy. The world hounds Christians and wants to crush and squeeze the faith out of us with its ridiculous “God just wants me to be happy” mantra. What God wants is for us to know forgiveness. True happiness can only be possible when man’s will is brought into sync with God’s will, not the other way around. Otherwise, the new puppy rules the house, and there is chaos everywhere. The only release from the oppression of the world is in the solace and comfort of forgiveness in Christ, and the promise that comes with it, the promise of eternal life.
and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” This is the Year of Jubilee from the Old Testament calendar, the fiftieth year in which all debts were canceled and all prisoners were set free. Families could go home to their ancestral property, because even the loss of the family farm was undone, and everything got put back as it used to be.
Jesus was not ushering an actual Jubilee year, but rather the Event for which the Jubilee of Leviticus 25:10-55 was a mere Type. Release from human bondage, from human debts, from human separation—this was the old Jubilee. Release from the bondage of sin, from death, from the power of the Devil—this was the new Jubilee, Christ’s Jubilee, the Jubilee of the cross and empty tomb. This is the Jubilee for which we have been baptized. This is the release which never needs to be repeated, because it never ends. This Jubilee is for good.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Archives by Wisconsin Lutheran Chapel: http://www.wlchapel.org/worship/daily-devotion/
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota