Luke pins the start of this whole story to six named rulers at once, the kind of precision a courtroom would demand. A preacher in the wilderness is asked, by ordinary people, tax collectors, and soldiers alike, the same blunt question — “what shall we do?” — and gives each of them an answer suited exactly to their own temptation. Jesus is praying, not just standing, when heaven opens over Him. And when Luke finally traces His family line, he doesn’t stop at Abraham, father of the Jews. He keeps going, generation by generation, all the way back to Adam — the father of everyone.
A study in Luke 3 · Arthur Baldwin · StandUp4Jesus.Org · 23 min read
Now In The Fifteenth Year Of The Reign Of Tiberius Caesar
“Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Cæsar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judæa, 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.”
Luke 3:1-2
No other Gospel dates anything this precisely. Luke names an emperor, a governor, two tetrarchs, a third tetrarch most historians outside this verse have never heard of, and two high priests — six separate, checkable anchors in secular and religious history, pinning down a single year with the kind of specificity a courtroom would demand. This is the same historian who opened his Gospel promising “perfect understanding of all things from the very first,” making good on that promise before John has spoken a single word.
“And he came into all the country about Jordan, preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins; As it is written in the book of the words of Esaias the prophet, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth; And all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”
Luke 3:3-6
Both Matthew and Mark quote this same prophecy from Isaiah, but both of them stop one line short. Luke alone carries the quotation through to its final clause — “all flesh shall see the salvation of God” — not just Israel’s own paths made straight, but every nation’s. It is the same note Simeon already struck over the infant Jesus in the temple, “a light to lighten the Gentiles,” and Luke returns to it here at the very first mention of John’s own ministry, before Jesus has even appeared on the scene.
What Shall We Do Then
This site’s own study of Matthew 3 already told this same preaching in full — the fiery rebuke, the axe laid to the root, the warning against relying on Abraham’s own bloodline for safety.
“Then said he to the multitude that came forth to be baptized of him, O generation of vipers, 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: for I say unto you, That God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham. And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: every tree therefore which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.”
Luke 3:7-9
“The Jews regarded their natural descent from Abraham as giving them a claim to this promise. But they overlooked the conditions which God had specified.”
Ellen G. White · The Desire of Ages, p. 106
What comes next belongs to Luke alone. Neither Matthew’s nor Mark’s account of John’s preaching records what happened when the crowd, stung by his rebuke, actually asked him what to do about it.
“And the people asked him, saying, What shall we do then? He answereth and saith unto them, He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise. Then came also publicans to be baptized, and said unto him, Master, what shall we do? And he said unto them, Exact no more than that which is appointed you. And the soldiers likewise demanded of him, saying, And what shall we do? And he said unto them, Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely; and be content with your wages.”
Luke 3:10-14
“Under his heart-searching words, his hearers were convicted. They came to him with the inquiry, ‘What shall we do then?’ He answered, ‘He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise.’ And he warned the publicans against injustice, and the soldiers against violence.”
Ellen G. White · The Desire of Ages, p. 107
John does not tell the crowd to abandon their occupations. He does not tell the tax collectors to quit collecting taxes, or the soldiers to lay down their weapons. He tells each of them, with striking specificity, to stop doing the exact thing their own profession makes easiest to get away with — hoarding, overcharging, extortion. Repentance, in Luke’s own telling, is never left as an abstraction. It always lands on the particular temptation of the particular person standing in front of John, asking.
“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 Ghost 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.”
Luke 3:15-17
The crowd is ready to crown the wrong man. John, offered the one title that would have made him the most celebrated figure in the nation, points past himself without a moment’s hesitation.
“And many other things in his exhortation preached he unto the people. But Herod the tetrarch, being reproved by him for Herodias his brother Philip’s wife, and for all the evils which Herod had done, Added yet this above all, that he shut up John in prison.”
Luke 3:18-20
Luke closes out John’s whole story here, imprisonment and all, before turning back to narrate the baptism — a deliberate break from strict chronological order, the historian setting one man’s account fully in place before moving on to the next.
Thou Art My Beloved Son
“Now when all the people were baptized, it came to pass, that Jesus also being baptized, and praying, the heaven was opened, And the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him, and a voice came from heaven, which said, Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased.”
Luke 3:21-22
Only Luke records that Jesus was praying in the moment heaven opened over Him — a detail that fits a Gospel that returns to Jesus at prayer again and again, more than any other. This site’s own study of Matthew 3 already told what happened at the Jordan in full detail; what belongs here is simply this: the Father’s voice answers not a request, but a posture.
“As Jesus asked for baptism, John drew back, exclaiming, ‘I have need to be baptized of Thee, and comest Thou to me?’ With firm yet gentle authority, Jesus answered, ‘Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness.’ And John, yielding, led the Saviour down into the Jordan, and buried Him beneath the water.”
Ellen G. White · The Desire of Ages, p. 111
“Of the vast throng at the Jordan, few except John discerned the heavenly vision. Yet the solemnity of the divine Presence rested upon the assembly. The people stood silently gazing upon Christ.”
Ellen G. White · The Desire of Ages, p. 112
A whole crowd stands at the river that day, and most of them never see what John sees. The dove and the voice are given to the one man whose eyes had already been prepared, by a lifetime in the wilderness, to recognize glory when it finally appeared in front of him.
Which Was The Son Of Adam, Which Was The Son Of God
This site’s own study of Matthew 1 already walked through that Gospel’s own genealogy of Jesus — three sets of fourteen generations, running forward from Abraham to David to the exile to Christ, a legal line proving Jesus’s throne-right through Joseph. Luke’s own genealogy, placed here rather than at the very start of his Gospel, does something different.
“And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli, Which was the son of Matthat, which was the son of Levi, which was the son of Melchi, which was the son of Janna, which was the son of Joseph, Which was the son of Mattathias, which was the son of Amos, which was the son of Naum, which was the son of Esli, which was the son of Nagge, Which was the son of Maath, which was the son of Mattathias, which was the son of Semei, which was the son of Joseph, which was the son of Juda, Which was the son of Joanna, which was the son of Rhesa, which was the son of Zorobabel, which was the son of Salathiel, which was the son of Neri, Which was the son of Melchi, which was the son of Addi, which was the son of Cosam, which was the son of Elmodam, which was the son of Er, Which was the son of Jose, which was the son of Eliezer, which was the son of Jorim, which was the son of Matthat, which was the son of Levi, Which was the son of Simeon, which was the son of Juda, which was the son of Joseph, which was the son of Jonan, which was the son of Eliakim, Which was the son of Melea, which was the son of Menan, which was the son of Mattatha, which was the son of Nathan, which was the son of David, Which was the son of Jesse, which was the son of Obed, which was the son of Booz, which was the son of Salmon, which was the son of Naasson, Which was the son of Aminadab, which was the son of Aram, which was the son of Esrom, which was the son of Phares, which was the son of Juda, Which was the son of Jacob, which was the son of Isaac, which was the son of Abraham, which was the son of Thara, which was the son of Nachor, Which was the son of Saruch, which was the son of Ragau, which was the son of Phalec, which was the son of Heber, which was the son of Sala, Which was the son of Cainan, which was the son of Arphaxad, which was the son of Sem, which was the son of Noe, which was the son of Lamech, Which was the son of Mathusala, which was the son of Enoch, which was the son of Jared, which was the son of Maleleel, which was the son of Cainan, Which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God.”
Luke 3:23-38
Two differences from Matthew’s list stand out at once. Luke runs the genealogy backward, from Jesus toward the beginning of the human race, rather than forward from a founding father toward Jesus — the direction of a family tree being traced, not a legal case being built. And Luke does not stop at Abraham, father of the Jewish nation. He keeps going, generation after unfamiliar generation, past Noah, past Enoch, all the way to a name no other genealogy in Scripture reaches: Adam, “which was the son of God.”
Matthew, writing for a Jewish audience, needed Jesus tied to Abraham and David. Luke, the physician writing for Theophilus and for a wider Greco-Roman readership, ties Jesus to Adam instead — the one ancestor every human being, Jew and Gentile alike, already shares. The same note struck by Simeon over the infant in the temple, and again in Isaiah’s own words at the Jordan, sounds one final time in a list of names most readers will never be able to pronounce: this Saviour did not come only for the children of Abraham. He came for the whole family of Adam, which is to say, for everyone who has ever read this sentence.
