Luke 1:77 Commentary and Bible Study

The prophecy goes on to speak more about the future ministry of John the Baptist. The way this is put, repentance is key because it leads to forgiveness. John will be used by God to give knowledge of salvation to God’s people by preaching repentance of sins and administering a baptism of repentance leading to the remission of sin. Sin is the great problem that needs to be dealt with. Until our guilt and sin is removed, God cannot deal with us except in judgment. We say that Christ receives sinners. Yes, but he can only do so if at the same time he atones for sin, removes sin, creates a new nature in the sinner. He cannot receive sinners as sinners, as those whose guilt will never be paid for, who have no intention of leaving their sins. He himself pays the price for sin, and as we come to him we bring our sins out into the open for him to see. We must recognize that we need him to be the sacrifice for our sins, and we must be willing to die to sin. There is a death in every conversion; it is as radical as that. There is a profound death to sin worked by the Holy Spirit, so that the soul says, I am willing to part with sin forever. The fact that the Christian continues to sin on a daily basis does not alter this. That is the work of the old nature, the flesh, which is allowed by God to remain in all his people until the moment of death. But the new nature is now also present, and this has from the start made the decision to leave sin forever. The remission of sin leads to the knowledge of salvation. John is said here to give the knowledge of salvation through his preaching to the people, but he is only the messenger, and we know that the knowledge of salvation comes through the Spirit of God alone. It is the Spirit who gives us all true knowledge, working in the heart, in the innermost person, where only he can work. Salvation requires knowledge. Knowledge of what? Of ourselves and how sinful we are, how inexcusable we are, and how incapable of improvement we are in any significant sense. It requires knowledge of the holiness of God and his power, how incorruptible he is, so impossible for us to manipulate, or bend to our advantage. He is ready to punish all who disobey him with an eternal punishment. It requires knowledge of God’s standard for us, of the inflexibility of that standard, and the consequences of not meeting that standard. All this teaches us our need. But it also includes knowledge of his pity for lost mankind, of the enormous steps he has gone to make salvation possible, the mechanism of salvation: the sending of the Son of God into the world, and the sacrifice that he offered up on Calvary for all who seek him and come to him. The preacher must regularly explain these things, for he does not know when the Spirit is going to grant understanding to any of those before him.