6 LIBERATION FOR THE WHOLE WORLD And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up for to read. And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised [downtrodden, oppressed], To preach the acceptable year of the Lord. And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him. And he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears (Luke 4:16-21).
This passage invokes the language of deliverance. It is from Isaiah 61:1-2. The prophet's language promised longed-for deliverance. The jubilee year was the year of deliverance for the poor of Israel under the Mosaic law (Lev. 25). It was the archetype of liberation, the restoration of the family's land to those who had been dispossessed or sold into servitude.
The Hebrew Masoretic text does not seem to mention sight to the blind. The Greek translation of the Old Testament (the Septuagint) does. William Hendriksen mentions an alternate reading of the Hebrew text, "to those bound opening of eyes."(1) But the Septuagint's rendering is "to the blind recovery of sight," just as Jesus quoted it.(2) Jesus gave sight to the blind on several occasions. These miracles were literal fulfillments of the prophecy in Isaiah.
The phrase, "to set free the oppressed," does not appear in either the Masoretic text or the Septuagint. There is no obvious explanation for this discrepancy. Was this phrase Jesus' comment on the text, offered without warning in the middle of the reading? If He had added to the text, some of His listeners would have recognized this discrepancy. This would have undermined His authority. But there was no objection. Did this scroll differ from the copies that we have today? This seems unlikely, given the Jews' care in making exact copies and destroying imperfect ones. Did Luke add these words? Did some early scribe? I wish I had an answer. I don't.
The statement regarding the freeing of captives is highly significant. The Jubilee law authorized the intergenerational enslavement of foreigners (Lev. 25:44-46). This announcement of liberty for the captives suggests that the end of the law of permanent enslavement was at hand.(3) This would mean the annulment, through Jesus' fulfillment, of the jubilee laws.
The Dispossessed The groups named in Isaiah were the dispossessed: the poor, the enslaved, and the blind. They were the brokenhearted and bruised. These people were at the bottom of the social and economic pyramid. Isaiah had singled them out as the objects of God's concern. They would be liberated in the future. Now, Jesus was saying, the day of liberation was at hand.
The day of liberation would not be welcomed by those at the top of the economic pyramid. Yet Jesus did not object to an economic pyramid as such. He merely warned the rich of their eternal risk (Luke 18:25). His mother had testified of God: "He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away" (Luke 1:53). Her implicit prophecy of her son's ministry was not a call for economic equality; it was a call for the replacement of the individuals in the hierarchy.(4)
Jesus' message was not well received that day. He made it clear to His listeners that this prophecy of liberation did not apply exclusively to Israel. Worse; He implied that the liberation of the gentiles would constitute the fulfillment of this prophecy. "But I tell you of a truth, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when great famine was throughout all the land; But unto none of them was Elias sent, save unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow. And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Eliseus the prophet; and none of them was cleansed, saving Naaman the Syrian" (vv. 25-27). The dispossessed were not limited to those who were politically oppressed citizens of the Jewish nation. For His implying this, the entire synagogue threw Him out and tried to toss Him off a cliff (vv. 28-29).
Jesus regarded Himself as a prophet, as He announced to the members of the synagogue: "And he said, Verily I say unto you, No prophet is accepted in his own country" (v. 24). This also would not please His listeners, as He well knew. By invoking the prophecy of Isaiah, He was announcing a great reversal of fortune, just as His mother had. But this reversal would not be limited to the circumcised. It would apply universally. This was what moved the application of this prophecy far beyond the boundaries of the covenanted nation. Jews were willing to imagine that they, as conquered subjects of Rome, would someday be released from bondage. They did not have in mind the liberation of the gentiles. But Jesus made it clear that He did, and if He was a true prophet, then Isaiah had, too.
There are Christians who claim that Jesus had no social concerns, no program of liberation. They also argue that His ministry was the annulment of the Mosaic economy. Both claims are wrong. His fulfillment of this prophecy annulled one aspect of the Mosaic economy, namely, the jubilee laws, but in so doing, this fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah. He announced that the day of liberation had arrived. This liberation meant that the dispossessed would now gain a stake in society. What society? The kingdom of God. Gentiles were among the oppressed. How do we know this? Because Jesus told the Jews, "Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof" (Matt. 21:43). As heirs of the kingdom, gentiles were also heirs of Isaiah's prophecy.
The dispossessed would soon have new hope in Christ. The acceptable year of the Lord meant liberation from the status of dispossessed. But if this promise also applied to the gentiles, then Israel would lose its unique covenantal status. This is exactly what Jesus implied when He reminded them that the widow of Zarephath and Naaman had been blessed when Israelites were not. This was a direct challenge to traditionalists in Israel, who saw Israel as the unique recipient of the covenantal blessings of God.
The various deliverances in the text of Isaiah were not limited to the spiritual realm. Isaiah's language referred to physical deliverance, economic status, and liberty. "The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn" (Isa. 61:1-2). The implication here is that Jesus' message regarding spiritual liberation from sin will have positive visible effects in the lives of those granted spiritual liberation. Jesus did heal the blind as part of His ministry, but He did not go into prisons and release people. He did not send slaves away from their owners. Then what did He have in mind? He realized that His message of liberation from sin would, over time, provide liberty in the broadest sense.
Definitively, the captives were going to be set free by His ministry. That is, judicially speaking, those in sin were about to be freed from their bondage. But, over time, there would be a progressive fulfillment of this definitive liberation. This promise had to do with the social effects of God's law and the work of the Holy Spirit in history. Jesus was not a revolutionary who called for violent action for immediate liberation of masses of dispossessed people. He was a revolutionary in the messianic sense: providing the supernatural basis of progressive liberation over time. Spiritual liberation would produce social, judicial, and economic liberation.
The Abolition of Slavery Jesus' declaration was the judicial basis for the abolition of the Old Covenant's system of intergenerational slavery. The laws governing intergenerational slavery in Israel appear in Leviticus 25, the laws governing the jubilee year. "Both thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids. Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land: and they shall be your possession. And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your bondmen for ever: but over your brethren the children of Israel, ye shall not rule one over another with rigour" (vv. 44-46).
Jesus' fulfillment of the jubilee year annulled it definitively. It was annulled finally in A.D. 70, with the destruction of the temple. That event ended the Old Covenant order forever. It also ended the biblical justification for intergenerational slavery.(5)
Conclusion The gospel liberates men from the tyranny of sin. Jesus' pre-crucifixion ministry was laying the foundations of the gospel. What was definitive -- liberation -- was broader than the internal life of the spirits of men. Jesus was extending Isaiah's prophecy to the whole world and its institutions. The jubilee year had come definitively, not just for Israel, but for redeemed mankind everywhere. Jesus was laying the foundations for liberty. This included economic liberty. The poor would be the beneficiaries.
Footnotes:
1. William Hendriksen, New Testament Commentary: An Exposition of the Gospel According to Luke (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Boom House, 1978), p. 253.
2. Ibid., p. 252.
3. Gary North, Leviticus: An Economic Commentary (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1994), ch. 31.
4. See Chapter 1, above.
5. North, Leviticus, ch. 31. See also North, Tools of Dominion: The Case Laws of Exodus (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1990), ch. 4.
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