Luke 3:21 - Meaning and Application

The evangelist mentioned John’s imprisonment before Christ was baptized, even though it happened nearly a year later. He does this because he wants to finish John’s ministry first, then introduce Christ’s. Here we have a short account of Christ’s baptism, which Matthew tells more fully.

Jesus came to be baptized by John, and he was baptized when all the people were baptized, that is, with the crowd then present. Christ chose to be baptized last, among ordinary people and behind them, and in this he humbled himself. He made himself of no reputation, taking the place of the least, even lower than the least. He waited until the people had been prepared and then appeared among them.

Luke also notices that Christ was praying when he was baptized, something Matthew does not mention. He did not confess sin, because he had none to confess, but he did pray, as others did, because he kept fellowship with his Father. The inward and spiritual grace, the saving gift hidden behind the outward sign of the sacrament, must be received by prayer. So prayer should always go with the sacraments.

We may reasonably think Christ was praying for the Father’s favor to be shown to him, which followed at once. He prayed that his Father’s approval would be revealed and that the Spirit would come down on him. What was promised to Christ, he would receive by prayer: “Ask of me, and I will give you,” and so on. In this way he honored prayer, bound us to it, and encouraged us in it.

When he prayed, heaven was opened. The one who by his power divided the waters to make a path through the sea to Canaan now divided the air, another fluid element, to open a way of fellowship with the heavenly Canaan. In this way a new and living way was opened to Christ, and through him to us, into the most holy place. Sin had shut heaven up, but Christ’s prayer opened it again. Prayer is an act that opens heaven: “Knock, and it will be opened to you.”

The Holy Spirit descended on him in a bodily shape like a dove. The Lord Jesus was now to receive greater measures of the Spirit than before, to fit him for his prophetic office, his work as a preacher and spokesman for God (Isaiah 61:1). When he begins to preach, the Spirit of the Lord is upon him. This visible sign gave him encouragement in his work and gave John the Baptist clear proof, since he had been told before that this sign would identify the Christ.

Dr. Lightfoot suggests that the Holy Spirit came in a bodily shape so that he would be shown as a real personal being, not just an action of God. In this way, he says, there was a full, clear, and visible display of the Trinity at the beginning of the gospel. It was fitting that this happened at Christ’s baptism, since he was to make baptism the sign of faith in the doctrine of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Then came a voice from heaven, from God the Father, from the excellent glory (as 2 Peter 1:17 puts it): “You are my beloved Son.” In Matthew, the words are spoken about Christ, “This is my beloved Son.” In Mark and here, they are spoken directly to Christ. It comes to the same thing. It was meant to tell John who Jesus was, and in that sense, “This is my beloved Son” is proper. It was also an answer to Christ’s prayer, and in that sense, “You are” is most fitting. This had long been promised about the Messiah: “I will be his Father, and he will be my Son” (2 Samuel 7:14). “I will make him my firstborn” (Psalm 89:27). It was also foretold that he would be God’s chosen one, in whom his soul delights (Isaiah 42:1). So the voice declares, “You are my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”

Luke then gives a longer account of Christ’s family line, which Matthew had already given in shorter form. Jesus was now about thirty years old. Joseph was thirty when he stood before Pharaoh (Genesis 41:46), David was thirty when he began to reign (2 Samuel 5:4), and the priests were to begin full service at thirty (Numbers 4:3). Dr. Lightfoot thinks the wording here shows that Jesus had just completed twenty-nine years and was entering his thirtieth year, in the month Tisri. After this, he lived three and a half years and died when he was thirty-two and a half.

Those three and a half years are a very notable period in Scripture. In Elijah’s time, the heavens were shut for three years and six months (Luke 4:25; James 5:17). This was the half-week in which the Messiah was to confirm the covenant (Daniel 9:27). The prophets speak of it as a time, times, and half a time (Daniel 12:7; Revelation 12:14), and also as forty-two months and one thousand two hundred sixty days (Revelation 11:2-3). It is the set time for the witnesses to preach in sackcloth, matching Christ’s own preaching in his humiliation for that same length of time.

Matthew had already given part of Christ’s pedigree. He does not go higher than Abraham, but Luke carries it back as far as Adam. Matthew wanted to show that Christ was the son of Abraham, in whom all the families of the earth are blessed, and that he was heir to David’s throne. So Matthew begins with Abraham and traces the line down to Jacob, Joseph’s father and the male heir of David’s house. Luke, however, wants to show that Christ is the seed of the woman who would crush the serpent’s head, so he traces the line upward to Adam and begins with Eli, or Heli, who was the father, not of Joseph, but of the virgin Mary.

Some think the wording our translators supply throughout this genealogy is not quite right. They suggest it should not read that Joseph was the son of Heli, but that Jesus was the son of Joseph, of Eli, of Matthat, and so on, and then that he, meaning Jesus, was the son of Seth, of Adam, of God (Luke 3:38). The difference between Matthew’s and Luke’s genealogies has been used by unbelievers as an excuse to criticize Scripture, but learned men, both in the early church and in later times, have explained it well. Matthew traces the line through Solomon, whose natural line ended in Jeconiah, while the legal right passed to Salathiel, who came from the house of Nathan, another son of David. Luke follows that other line and therefore leaves out the kings of Judah.

It is good for us that our salvation does not depend on solving every difficulty in these family lines. The divine authority of the Gospels is not weakened by them. The Gospel writers were not expected to draw up these genealogies from personal memory or by fresh revelation, but to copy them from official Jewish records, the public family registers. So in those records they found Jacob, Joseph’s father, in Matthew’s line, and Heli, Mary’s father, in Luke’s line.

That is the meaning of the phrase in Luke 3:23, “as it was recorded,” not merely, “as was supposed” about Joseph alone. It means, “as it stands on record.” In this way it appears that Jesus was the Son of David through both his father’s and his mother’s side. The Jews themselves could check these records against the originals at the time, so the Gospel writers did not need to go any farther. In fact, if they had changed the record, they would have lost their case.

The fact that no one objected to these records then is enough for us now to accept them as true copies. It is also worth noticing that those Jewish family records lasted only thirty or forty years after these Gospel excerpts were made. That was long enough to confirm what the Gospel writers had written. After that, the records were lost when the Jewish nation and state were destroyed, because there was no longer any use for them.

One difficulty appears between Abraham and Noah in Luke 3:35-36. Luke says Sala was the son of Cainan, and Cainan the son of Arphaxad, but Genesis says Sala was the son of Arphaxad (Genesis 10:24; Genesis 11:12), and no such man as Cainan is named there. The simplest answer is that the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament used before Christ’s time, included Cainan for reasons known to its translators. Luke wrote among Greek-speaking Jews, so he used that translation as he found it.

The genealogy ends with these words, “who was the son of Adam, the son of God.” Some take this to mean Adam, who was in a special way God’s son because he was formed directly by creation, more immediately than any of his descendants. Others take it as referring to Christ, so that the last words point to both his human and divine nature. He was the Son of Adam and the Son of God, so he could be the proper Mediator, a go-between who brings God and humans together, and could bring the sons of Adam to become, through him, the sons of God.