Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Luke · About this commentary
One Mightier Than I
Luke 3:15-20
15 As the people were in expectation, and all men reasoned in their hearts concerning John, whether perhaps he was the Christ, · WEB
Offered the title himself, he refuses it — and the account tells us how his ministry ended before it tells us how it peaked.
As the people were in expectation, and all men reasoned in their hearts concerning John, whether perhaps he was the Christ Luke 3:15.
Only this Gospel says the thought was general. The country was waiting, a prophet had appeared after four hundred years of silence, and the obvious conclusion was being drawn in private by everyone.
What follows is a refusal, and it is the measure of the man. The exchange is told in the earlier accounts Mark 1:1–13 Matthew 3:1–12.
"I indeed baptize you with water, but he comes who is mightier than I, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to loosen" Luke 3:16. Untying a sandal was the work of a slave, and a Hebrew slave could not be required to do it. He puts himself below the lowest position in the household.
"He will baptize you in the Holy Spirit and fire." Two elements, and the second is not decorative. Fire in the next sentence burns chaff, and fire in the Scriptures both purifies and destroys; which of the two it is depends on what is put in it.
"His winnowing fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly cleanse his threshing floor, and will gather the wheat into his barn; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire" Luke 3:17.
Winnowing is the picture: grain thrown into the wind so that the light husk blows off and the heavy kernel falls back. Nothing is added to the pile and nothing is taken away — the process only reveals what each thing already was. The fire is called unquenchable, meaning nothing will put it out before it has done its work, and what it does to chaff is burn up.
Then with many other exhortations he preached good news to the people Luke 3:18. After the vipers and the ax and the fire, the account calls it good news, which is worth registering. A warning delivered in time is a kindness.
But Herod the tetrarch, being reproved by him for Herodias, his brother's wife... added this also to them all, that he shut up John in prison Luke 3:19–20.
Luke closes John's account here, out of sequence, before the baptism he is about to describe. It is a historian's tidiness — finish the man's story, then return to the main line — and it has an effect the writer surely intended. John goes into prison two verses before the heavens open, so the reader watches the ministry begin with the forerunner already off the stage.
settled What this mark means