What Then Must We Do?

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Luke opens this chapter like a historian. He names the emperor, the governor, the local rulers, the high priests — everyone who held power in that corner of the world. And then he tells us where the word of God actually landed: not in a palace, not in the temple, but on a man out in the wilderness. Read the chapter slowly. Notice who God chooses to speak through, what John says repentance actually looks like, and the words spoken over Jesus before he has done a single thing.

Walk-through

The word comes to the wilderness (verses 1–6)

Luke is careful with dates. He fixes the moment against the reign of Tiberius Caesar, the rule of Pontius Pilate, the tetrarchs and the high priests — the names that would have been on every official document. He does this to make a point. With all those powerful people in place, "the word of God came to John, the son of Zacharias, in the wilderness" (Luke 3:2). Not to the emperor. Not to the temple authorities. To a man in the desert.

John went through the region preaching a baptism of repentance — a turning around, a change of direction — so that sins could be forgiven. Luke connects him to words spoken centuries earlier by the prophet Isaiah: a voice crying in the wilderness, make ready the way of the Lord. Every valley filled, every mountain brought low, the crooked made straight. And then a line Luke especially wants us to hear: "All flesh will see God's salvation" (Luke 3:6). Not one nation. All flesh. The door is open wider than anyone expected.

What then must we do? (verses 7–20)

John's preaching is blunt. He calls the crowds a brood of vipers and warns them not to lean on their family tree:

Therefore produce fruits worthy of repentance, and 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

This matters for anyone who has inherited their religion. John is saying that belonging to God is not passed down by blood, not secured by who your parents were or what your people have always done. God can raise up children for himself out of the rocks on the ground. What he is looking for is not your pedigree but your fruit — a changed life you can actually see.

So the crowds ask the obvious question: what then must we do? And John's answers are strikingly ordinary.

He who has two coats, let him give to him who has none. He who has food, let him do likewise.

Luke 3:11

Tax collectors ask the same thing, and he tells them to collect no more than they are owed. Soldiers ask, and he tells them not to extort anyone, not to accuse people falsely, and to be content with their pay. Notice what John does not say. He doesn't tell the tax collector to quit, or the soldier to desert. He tells them to do their work honestly, right where they already are. Repentance here is not a religious feeling. It is sharing your spare coat. It is fair dealing. It is being content. It can be measured.

The people begin to wonder whether John himself is the promised one. He shuts that down immediately and points away from himself:

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. He will baptize you in the Holy Spirit and fire.

Luke 3:16

John knows exactly what he is and what he is not. He is the voice; someone greater is coming. And telling the truth costs him — when he rebukes Herod the ruler for his marriage and his other wrongs, Herod locks him in prison. The man who prepared the way ends up behind bars for refusing to flatter power.

You are my beloved Son (verses 21–38)

Then Jesus comes to be baptized along with everyone else. Luke notes that he was praying. And as he prayed, heaven opened:

And the Holy Spirit descended in a bodily form like a dove on him; and a voice came out of the sky, saying 'You are my beloved Son. In you I am well pleased.'

Luke 3:22

Hold onto when this happens. Jesus has not yet preached a sermon, healed anyone, or worked a single miracle. The public ministry has not started. And already the Father says: you are my beloved Son; in you I am well pleased. The love comes first, before the work — not as a reward for it.

Luke then traces Jesus's family line, and where he ends it is telling. Matthew's genealogy stops at Abraham, the father of Israel. Luke keeps going — past Abraham, all the way back to "Adam, the son of God." He runs the line to the first human being, the father of everyone. Jesus does not belong to one nation only. He belongs to the whole human family.

Take with you

The word of God came to the wilderness, not the palace. That is worth remembering when you feel far from the centre of things — too ordinary, too overlooked, too far out. That is exactly the kind of place God's word has always tended to land.

And look again at what John says repentance is. Not a mood. Not a performance. Share your spare coat. Don't take more than you're owed. Be content with what you have. You do not have to leave your job to follow God; you have to do it honestly. Repentance in Luke 3 is something the people around you could actually notice.

But the deepest line in the chapter is the one spoken at the river: you are my beloved Son. In you I am well pleased. Said before Jesus had done anything to earn it. If faith has ever been sold to you as a ladder — perform well enough and maybe God will be pleased — Luke 3 runs the other way. The Father's pleasure came first, at the water, before the work began. That is the order the gospel keeps: loved first, then sent.