Bible Study series: Luke 4:16-21. I love these verses because they show that Jesus was called and anointed of the Spirit to help people. We are too.
Friendly greetings and a warm welcome to this Bible study! I write to learn, so let’s learn together.
I also translate to learn. The translations are mine, unless otherwise noted. If you would like to see many others, please click here:
In the next link to the original chapter, I comment more and offer the Greek text. At the bottom you will find a “Summary and Conclusion” section geared toward discipleship. Check it out!
In this post, links are provided for further study.
Let’s begin.
Scripture: Luke 4:16-21
16 He came to Nazareth, where he was raised, and according to his custom on the Sabbath day he entered the synagogue and stood up to read. 17 And the book of the prophet Isaiah was given him, and he opened the scroll and found the place where it was written:
18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
Because he has anointed me.
He sent me to preach the good news to the poor,
To proclaim release to the captives
And sight to the blind,
To set at liberty the shattered,
19 To proclaim the Lord’s year of favor” [Is. 61:1-2].
20 After he rolled up the scroll and gave it to the attendant, he sat down. Everyone’s eyes in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 He began to tell them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:16-21)
Comments:
I like Liefeld’s and Pao’s summary of 4:14-30: “Even the content of Jesus’ sermon resembles that of the synagogue sermons later in Acts as Jesus focuses on his own identity, the call to evangelize, and the message of forgiveness. Therefore the significance of Luke 4:14-30 should not be limited to the ministry of Jesus; it also serves as a theological introduction to the early Christian movement as recorded in Acts” (p. 103).
16:
Nazareth was not on the Lake of Galilee, and Nathanael said, “Nazareth! Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” (John 1:46). The people of this small town may have felt like outcasts in Galilee. This explains why they spoke favorably of him (Luke 4:22). He was raised there. A hometown boy made good.
It was his custom to go into his hometown synagogue. We can have no doubt that Mary, perhaps Joseph, if he had not passed away, and his younger brothers and sisters were there. They are about to hear his bold and seemingly presumptuous claim to an important verse. It is no wonder that later they would claim he was out of his mind and looked for him (Mark 3:21, 31-35; see Luke 8:19-21).
17-19:
Alternative translation:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He sent me to proclaim release to the captives and sight to the blind, to set at liberty the oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”
Those verses are Messianic, and when he finished reading it, he said that it was fulfilled in their hearing (literally “ears”). Imagine that! You stand up and read such an important passage and proclaim to the people, “Today, this Scripture is fulfilled.” And you imply that no other person will fulfill it!” And later you say, “False Messiahs will come!” (Matt. 24:24). That shuts the door on any other claimant to that title. It must have been marvelous and startling to the listeners because this was real. The Messiah was standing right in front of them.
The Spirit is upon him. This verses echoes Acts 10:38, which says that “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Spirit and power.” We cannot claim the title Messiah, but we can claim the Spirit’s anointing to do his works on earth.
3. Titles of Jesus: The Son of David and the Messiah
Jesus stopped the quotation short, because originally it reads in Isaiah, “The day of vengeance.” What does this mean originally? God’s vengeance is not his flying off at the handle and losing his temper. Rather, it is a divinely judicial process by which God judges the oppressors and captors and rescues his people from them. But Jesus stopped to indicate acceptance and favor and welcome without getting entangled with the vengeance theology, a perfectly legitimate aspect of God’s character.
God’s wrath is judicial.
It is not like this:
(Source)
But like this:
(Source)
That is a picture of God in judgment.
The Wrath of God in the New Testament
Do I Really Know God? He Shows Wrath
The Wrath of God in the Old Testament
Everyone Shall Be Judged by Their Works and Words
Bible Basics about the Final Judgment
“anointed” it is the verb chriō (pronounced khree-oh) and it is related to Christ. The idea is to anoint or drench with oil on the head, which is the symbol of the Spirit.
“preach the good news”: as noted in previous verses in Luke, the phrase is one verb in Greek: euangelizō (pronounced eu-ahn-geh-lee-zoh, and the “g” is hard, as in “get”). Eu– means “good,” and angel means “announcement” or “news”; and izō is the verb form. (Greek adds the suffix -iz- and changes the noun to the verb and we do too, as in “modern” to “modernize”). Awkwardly but literally it means “good-news-ize,” as in “Let’s ‘good-news-ize’ them!”
“release”: it comes from the Greek noun aphesis (pronounced ah-feh-seess), which means “release” or “cancellation” or “pardon” or “forgiveness.” Let’s look at a more formal definition of its verb, which is aphiēmi (pronounced ah-fee-ay-mee), and BDAG defines it with the basic meaning of letting go: (1) “dismiss or release someone or something from a place or one’s presence, let go, send away”; (2) “to release from legal or moral obligations or consequence, cancel, remit, pardon”; (3) “to move away with implication of causing a separation, leave, depart”; (4) “to leave something continue or remain in its place … let someone have something” (Matt. 4:20; 5:24; 22:22; Mark 1:18; Luke 10:30; John 14:18); (5) “leave it to someone to do something, let, let go, allow, tolerate.” The Shorter Lexicon adds “forgive.” In sum, God lets go, dismisses, releases, sends away, cancels, pardons, and forgives our sins. His work is full and final. Don’t go backwards or dwell on it.
Please read these verses for how forgiving God is:
10 He does not deal with us according to our sins,
nor repay us according to our iniquities.
11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;
12 as far as the east is from the west,
so far does he remove our transgressions from us. (Ps. 103:10-12)
And these great verses are from Micah:
18 Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity
and passing over transgression
for the remnant of his inheritance?
He does not retain his anger forever,
because he delights in steadfast love.
19 He will again have compassion on us;
he will tread our iniquities underfoot.
You will cast all our sins
into the depths of the sea. (Mic. 7:18-19, ESV)
Here the noun means a literal release or letting captives go free.
“captives”: the noun is used only here in the NT. It is related to the even more ancient Greek word for spear. So the Scripture in Isaiah would have brought to the mind of native Greek speakers at the time people standing with their hands up at the tips of spears. People were captured and imprisoned by the spearpoint.
“liberty”: it is again the noun aphesis (set free or released).
Who are some captives who are released? They are shackled by Satan, and Jesus delivers them. The woman bent double was freed from her from Satan’s captivity (13:6; see Acts 10:36-38). Captives are also imprisoned by sin (see 1:77; 3:3), and the chains of iniquity (Acts 8:23) captivate people. The noun “release” is also used primarily to forgive people of sins (1:77; 3:3; 24:47; Acts 2:38; 5:31; 10:43; 13:38; 26:18) (Garland, comment on 4:18)
“shattered”: the verb is used only here in the NT. It means at its root to be “broken,” so some translations have “set at liberty the brokenhearted.” God intends the restore and heal the shattered. That’s an accurate translation. It speaks to the condition of many people. Most translations go with “oppressed,” and that’s fine too. People are shattered or broken by oppression.
“favor”: it can be translated as “acceptable” (Phil. 4:18); “welcome” (Luke 4:24; Acts 10:35); “favorable” (Luke 4:19; 2 Cor. 6:2). Those are the only verses where the adjective is used. (By the way, it is related to the standard verb for “welcome” or “receive” or even “take.” The picture is God opening his arms and welcoming and accepting you and pouring his favor on you.
“year”: it does not mean one-year duration, and then favor shuts off like a dry well. No, it means, now is the year or time to launch the Lord’s welcome, favor and acceptance, and those gifts go on and on.
“favor”: the adjective could be translated as “acceptable,” “welcome,” or “favorable.” In other words, the Lord welcomes and accept all oppressed and captured and blind people.
All of this evokes the image of Jubilee, which announces that all our past debts are canceled.
Liberty and Redemption in Leviticus 25 from a NT Perspective
Jesus cut short the quotation so that the day of vengeance on the Gentiles is omitted. “and the day of vengeance of our God” (61:3). This edit is deliberate. God will soon reach out to the Gentiles. God will give his favor to them, when the Gospel of Luke ends and Luke writes his book of Acts (see 1:8, for example).
20-21:
I like how Luke matter-of-factly describes what Jesus did. I sense Jesus’s courtesy to the synagogue attendant, but also his resolve and firm purpose. Then his application of that verse was startling and spectacular. He applied it to himself! We already talked about how gutsy that was, if you imagine your doing that (vv. 17-19)! No more can we say that Jesus was just a good moral teacher with bright ideas from a bright mind—though he was that, too. We might be able say he was deluded, as his family may have thought (Mark 3:21, 31-35). But the problem is that he showed brilliance and clarity of thought. He was on a mission. The only analogues are the prophets of old who did outlandish things, and this could give us the impression that they were deluded, but God endorsed their behavior. Now, in Luke 4:18-19 God endorsed his Messiah and placed an extra-surge of permanent anointing and the Spirit on him. The anointing in someone else can make ordinary people react negatively, as the Nazarenes are about to do.
“In your hearing”: it “is a vital component of the fulfillment. Jesus is not speaking in the air but speaking in community (see 1:1)” (Garland, comment on 4:20-21).
“Scripture” gives authority to Jesus pronouncement. Synagogues may not have head every book in the Bible in scrolls, but they had the Torah and Isaiah, and probably Psalms.
GrowApp for Luke 4:16-21
1. Describe your story of how God set you at liberty from your captivity and oppression and shattered, broken heart.
2. What does God’s acceptance and favor and welcome look like for you? Do you believe or disbelieve it? On what do you base God’s favor and welcome and acceptance? Your feelings or his Word?
RELATED
11. Eyewitness Testimony in Luke’s Gospel
3. Church Fathers and Luke’s Gospel
2. Archaeology and the Synoptic Gospels
1. The Historical Reliability of the Gospels: Introduction to Series
SOURCES
For the bibliographical data, please click on this link and scroll down to the very bottom:
Dr. Jim's Essential Bible Teaching 