Biblion Bible Commentary
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What Then Shall We Do?
Luke 3:7-14
7 He said therefore to the multitudes who went out to be baptized by him, “You offspring of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? · WEB
He calls the crowd a brood of snakes, they ask what to do about it, and every answer is about money.
"You offspring of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?" Luke 3:7.
The greeting is addressed to the multitudes who went out to be baptized by him — that is, to the people who came. They have already walked into the desert to be washed, and this is what they get.
The charge is precise. Who warned you implies they are fleeing rather than repenting, the way animals run ahead of a grass fire, and the danger is the coming wrath rather than anything they feel about themselves.
"Don't begin to say among yourselves, 'We have Abraham for our father;' for I tell you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones!" Luke 3:8. Descent is not a defense. The line is preserved in this Gospel too, in a book that has just spent two chapters on genealogies and songs about Abraham's offspring — so the point is not that ancestry counts for nothing but that it counts for nothing on its own.
"Even now the ax also lies at the root of the trees" Luke 3:9. The tool is already down at the base, which is the position for a cut rather than a warning.
The multitudes asked him, "What then must we do?" Luke 3:10.
Here this Gospel goes where the others do not. Three groups ask the same question, and the preaching turns immediately practical.
"He who has two coats, let him give to him who has none. He who has food, let him do likewise" Luke 3:11. To the crowd: not a religious act, and not a heroic one. A man with a spare coat gives it away. The threshold set for repentance in the general population is having more than you need and noticing someone who has less.
"Collect no more than that which is appointed to you" Luke 3:13. To the tax collectors — and what is striking is what is not said. He does not tell them to leave the job, which is what everyone assumed a repentant tax collector would have to do. He tells them to stop stealing inside it.
"Extort from no one by violence, neither accuse anyone wrongfully. Be content with your wages" Luke 3:14. To the soldiers, the same. No instruction to desert; an instruction to stop using the uniform as leverage. And the last clause names the engine under both abuses — men squeeze others because what they have is not enough.
The pattern across all three is worth stating plainly. Repentance is not asked to produce a change of occupation, a pilgrimage or a sacrifice. It is asked to produce honesty about money and generosity with surplus, which is the fruit this preacher will accept as worthy of repentance.
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