What was Jesus’ "Good News"?

By Brian Knowles

Among those who were at first disappointed, later encouraged, was John the Baptist. John, like most Jews of his day, was looking for the Messiah to come as a conquering King who would deliver Israel from the oppressive boot of the occupying Romans. Jesus made no attempt to accomplish this prophesied task. Instead, he came with good news for the poor, the sick and the demonized. The nature of Jesus’ good news is revealed in an incident fully recorded only by Luke.

Jesus in the synagogue
Following his 40-day period of testing at the hands of the devil in the wilderness, Jesus returned to the Galilee "in the power of the Spirit" (Luke 4:14). He taught in the local synagogues each Shabbat, and performed many miracles. As Luke’s account tells us, "Everyone praised him" (Luke 4:15). Later we’ll see why.

Following this successful tour, Jesus returned to his hometown, Nazareth, where he apparently wished to visit his family. As was his custom, Jesus participated in the weekly synagogue services (Luke 4:16). There, he was invited to read from the synagogue’s precious Isaiah scroll (v. 17a).

Jesus rolled open the megillah (scroll) to a particular passage and began reading. The words he read were, in the minds of his listeners, the very words they one day expected to hear from the Davidic Messiah:

"The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor."

These words come from Isaiah 61:1a. As he quotes Isaiah, Jesus makes a sudden change – he omits the words of Isaiah which read "He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted" and inserts instead some words from an earlier section, "to set the oppressed free" (Isaiah 58:6b). The King James Version translates "To proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison."

Then Jesus returns to the text he began with and reads "to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor" (Luke 4:19, Isaiah 61:2a). Jesus stops short of quoting the remainder of the verse which says "and the day of vengeance of our God" (Isaiah 61:2b).

Why did Jesus omit these words? -- because it was not then his time to fulfill them. That part of the divine commission would come later – as it turns out much later.

Jesus came with good news for the underclasses of his day and time. The verse from Isaiah 58:6 that Jesus inserted in his reading has special significance. The term "opening of the prison" could in Hebrew be understood as "opening of the eyes of the blind".

Jesus, in quoting these verses the way he did, was saying two things: 1). That he was the promised Messiah and 2). That he had come at that time to destroy the work of the devil in people’s lives, to heal the sick, give back to the blind their eyesight, make the lame walk, and so bring good news to the "broken" people of his day and time. To many of the leaders of Judaism, Jesus’ message did not appear to be good news. It didn’t, sadly, relate to their interests. But to those who were healed or delivered, it was the best news they could hear. In Jesus, they experienced redemption, deliverance and freedom from all of their ills and oppressions. Jesus was, in this very Jewish sense, their Savior. He performed in their lives a powerful redemptive work. They experienced the benefits of his Messiahship in concrete, personal ways.

This is why the common people praised him wherever he went (Luke 4:15).

Where is the King?
To other Jews, Jesus failed to fulfill the messianic promise. They anticipated a conquering King – one who would reestablish the prosperity of Israel as a sovereign nation ruled by God. Indeed this was the prophesied role of God’s Anointed One (Mashiach). When Jesus did not fulfill it, many Jews of his day – especially the leaders who had to deal with the Romans – were disappointed. The fact that Jesus did not accomplish this messianic task is still, to this day, one of the major reasons Jews reject Jesus as Messiah. Note for example this statement from Trude Weiss-Rosmarin:

"Judaism…maintains that Jesus was not the Messiah for he did not fulfill the Messianic hopes…not one of the Messianic promises was fulfilled through Jesus. He neither established universal peace and social justice for all mankind nor did he redeem Israel and raise the Lord’s mountain as the top of the mountains. As far as the Jews are concerned, their own exile and homelessness and the continuation of war, poverty and injustice are conclusive proof of the fact that Messiah has not yet arrived, for his coming, according to the prophetic promises, will usher in the redemption of Israel from exile and the redemption of all the world from the evils of war, poverty and injustice."

Ms. Weiss-Rosmarin penned those words in 1943, during the Holocaust and before Israel was reconstituted in its historic homeland in 1948. If Messiah had been present on the earth, the Holocaust would never have happened. Yet Ms. Weiss-Rosmarin was wrong in saying that Jesus fulfilled "not one of the Messianic promises…" In reality, he fulfilled dozens of them, perhaps hundreds. The apostle Paul, himself an observant Jew and a Pharisee, took great pains to explain to his fellow Jews in Thessalonica how Jesus had in his suffering fulfilled specific messianic texts (Acts 17:2-3). Earlier, in Antioch, he had spoken in a synagogue. Just as Jesus had come with good news, so Paul said to his Jewish audience, "We tell you good news: What God promised our fathers he has fulfilled for us, their children, by raising up Jesus. As it is written in the second Psalm, ‘You are my Son; today I have become your Father.’ The fact that God raised him from the dead, never to decay, is stated in these words, ‘I will give you the holy and sure blessings promised to David.’ So it is stated elsewhere: ‘You will not let your Holy One see decay…’" (Acts 13:32-35). Yet Jesus did not then fulfill the one role the leaders of the Jews had hoped he would fulfill, thus their disappointment and rejection of Jesus as Messiah.

No one could have dreamed that the Messianic commission would be fulfilled in two stages, separated by millennia of time. Let us now return to our text.

The impact of Jesus’ reading
When he had finished reading from Isaiah, Jesus carefully rolled up the scroll and handed it back to the chazan (Luke 4:20). As Luke’s account says, "The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him" (v. 20b). They were waiting to hear his commentary on the verses he’d just read.

He made only one simple statement, "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing" (v. 21). The effect was electrifying. These people knew their Scriptures. They fully understood the implications of what Jesus was saying. Clearly, he was saying that he was the Messiah. The evidence he offered was that he was fulfilling the messianic promises to heal, to deliver, and to set the captives of ha Satan free.

On another occasion, when John the Baptist was in prison, he sent some of his talmidim (disciples or rabbinic students) to inquire of the Lord, "Are you the one who was to come, or should we look for another?" (Luke 7:20). On the basis of the kind of ministry Jesus was conducting, John himself may have wondered if Jesus was truly the Messiah. What proof did Jesus offer John of his Messiahship? "Go back," he told John’s disciples, "and report to John what you have seen and heard: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor. Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me" (Luke 7:22).

If you were blind, deaf, or dead, the fact that Jesus "cured many who had diseases, sicknesses and evil spirits, and gave sight to many who were blind" was incredibly good news! But to those who were expecting the Messiah to come as a conquering king, he was a great disappointment; thus the blessing upon those who were not offended by him to the point of falling out of faith.

Judgment comes later
On yet another occasion, Jesus had explained that at that time he had not come to judge the world, "As for the person who hears my words but does not keep them, I do not judge him. For I did not come to judge the world, but to save it. There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words; that very word which I spoke will condemn him at the last day. For I did not speak of my own accord, but the Father who sent me commanded me what to say and how to say it. I know that his command leads to eternal life. So whatever I say is just what the Father has told me to say" (John 12:47-50).

The final judgment of the world is reserved for the end time. It did not occur in the first century of our era. God, in his mercy, has created an interim period during which the world is being given an opportunity to hear the good news about Jesus the Messiah, to respond to it with repentance, and to experience in the present the "powers of the world to come" (Hebrews 6:5) – that is, healing, deliverance and empowerment from God (Acts 1:8).

God is not a respecter of persons. When he comes to judge the world, all of us will be judged by the same moral standard, whether Jew or gentile (circumcised, Noachide or pagan). The judgment of the world will be carried out during after the Messiah returns to fulfill the second half of his commission: "…and the day of vengeance of our God" (Isaiah 61:2b).

"Gracious words"?
In Luke 4:22, the NIV translation reads, "All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. ‘Isn’t this Joseph’s son?’ they asked." According to Dr. Robert Lindsey, a noted synoptic scholar, this verse, as translated, misses the meaning of the people’s reaction to Jesus’ preaching. The actual thought here is something like "We all know Joseph and he is a good man. How can his son get so big-headed as to think he is the Messiah himself? Maybe he has performed some miracles not far from us, but does that make him the Messiah?"

For Dr. Lindsey, the key to understanding this section is found in the Greek "words of grace" translated in our English versions as "gracious words" in verse 22 (NIV & NKJV). If we translate these words back to Hebrew, according to Lindsey, we have divrei chesed. Wrote Lindsey; "This expression could easily be understood by a Greek writer translating to Greek as ‘words of grace.’ But the word ‘chesed’ in Hebrew can also mean ‘a wicked thing’ or a ‘disgrace.’ In Leviticus 20:17 we read, for instance,

"If a man takes his sister…and they remove their clothes and see each other naked, it is a wicked thing (chesed hu)."

Lindsey also cites Proverbs 14:34 where the text says, "sin is a reproach (chesed) to any people."

In Luke 4:22, therefore, the words translated "gracious words" could also be translated "words of disgrace" or "words of apostasy."

In the NIV, the first words in verse 22 are translated "All spoke well of him…" Dr. Lindsey believed that this rendering also misses the intended meaning. The Greek word translated "spoke well" is martureo. In Greek this normally has the meaning of "testifying in favor" of someone. But when you translated it back into Hebrew, it means exactly the opposite – to testify against. An example is found in I Kings 21:10: "to bear witness against him…"

Dr. Lindsey therefore believed that the meaning of Luke 4:22 could actually be "And all of them spoke critically of him and were astonished at the words of apostasy coming out of his mouth."

This then would better explain the reaction of the synagogue members at the end of this story: "So all those in the synagogue were, when they heard these things, were filled with wrath, and rose up and thrust Him out of the city; and they led Him to the brow of the hill on which their city was built, that they might throw him down over the cliff" (Luke 4:28-29 NKJV).

Of course, between verses 22 and 26, Jesus said other things that could have been viewed as provocative. Though he had performed miracles throughout the Galilee, Jesus was not appreciated for who and what he was by his own people. Though he had grown up in the synagogue in Nazareth, familiarity with him and his family had bred contempt. To perform his messianic work of healing and deliverance, he had to be accepted as God’s Anointed, but "…no prophet is accepted in his own country" (Luke 4:24b). Where there is a climate of doubt, skepticism and unbelief, miraculous works are stifled (cf. Matthew 13:58 & 17:20). So it was in Nazareth.

Jesus had come to his own village with good news. He told them, in effect, "I’ve got good news! I am the Davidic Messiah – the prophesied Anointed One of God. I’m here to heal, to deliver from all forms of bondage, and to do a redemptive work! I am here to undo the work of the devil in people’s lives!" Had they believed him, they could have gotten in on it. Jesus could have done many mighty works among them. Yet they resisted him, viewing him instead as a blasphemer.

In Luke 4:25,26, Jesus is recorded as using the example of the widow of Zarephath, near Sidon, who because of her acceptance of God’s prophet, Elijah, was the sole recipient of God’s gracious gifts (I Kings 17:17 ff.). Many other widows apparently rejected God’s servant, and were therefore passed over for God’s blessing (Luke 4:26).

Jesus, as was his custom, used a second example ("two or three witnesses"), that of Naaman the Syrian. Naaman lived in the time of Elijah’s successor, Elisha. Of all the lepers in the land at the time, only Naaman was made clean through Elisha because he alone accepted him as God’s prophet (II Kings 5).

The lessons of this story
Luke’s account of Jesus’ experience among his own brethren in a synagogue in which he had grown up contains many lessons for us today. For one thing, it helps us to understand the nature of the "Gospel" or good news Jesus brought. Jesus’ good news was that he was God’s Messiah. He had just defeated the devil in a face-to-face confrontation lasting 40 agonizing days. Now Jesus could deliver people from the destructive works of the devil. Now he could set the captives free, give sight to the blind, heal the lame, and deliver people from the satanic strongholds in their lives. All they had to do was believe that he was who he was. They merely had to accept him as God’s Anointed.

But, as in the days of Elijah and Elisha, only a tiny minority in his home synagogue – mainly his own mother, brothers and sisters (Acts 1:14) – really grasped just Who was in their midst. The rest saw him as an impostor, a fake, and an egomaniac with a Messiah complex. To them, he was just "Joseph’s kid." Consequently, the unbelievers became his enemies and cut themselves off from the blessings he had been willing to freely give them.

When God does send a true servant, it is vital that we recognize him for what he is. Jesus, Elijah and Elisha were all rejected by those who could have been most helped. Jesus still has good news for the world, but who will accept it? God’s Messiah is still there to heal, to deliver, and to bless. Who will truly believe that He is God’s Anointed One and that He will return to complete his divine commission? This time, there will be no doubt about who and what he is! As Jesus said to the apostle John, "Behold, I come as a thief! Blessed is he who stays awake and keeps his clothes with him, so that he may not go naked and be shamefully exposed" (Revelation 16:15). Jesus was here speaking of spiritual readiness. His words to John echo his earlier message to all of his disciples (Matthew 24:36-51).

King Jesus, the conquering Messiah of God, must find his servants acting like they were his servants when he returns! We must be found carrying forward the same good news Jesus preached. We must be filled with belief and confidence in our Lord. We have been collectively commissioned to continue preaching the same good news Jesus preached. And when we do, the same Jesus will perform the same kind of miracles of healing and deliverance to back it up. He told his first apostles, "As you go, preach this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven is near.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons" (Matthew 10:7-8. Note also Luke 9:1-6).

The sovereign rule of God – the Kingdom of God – is breaking out wherever people will accept Jesus as their Savior, the Anointed One of God. To the degree that people believe and claim the promises of God, they are reaping the blessings of the kingdom. God hasn’t changed. He will heal and deliver today as He did in Jesus’ day – so long as we accept those He has sent as his servants. The original apostles operated in the power of the Spirit of God. As Paul wrote to the Corinthians, "My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power" (I Corinthians 2:4-5).

The power of God’s Spirit is still available to the Church today (Acts 1:8; Matthew 28:20) – but we have to be willing to access it. The Church, as the Body of Christ, still has good news for a dying, darkened world, but we have to get out there and preach it. We have to believe that when we use the name of Jesus, and when his anointing of our work in his name kicks in, people will be healed, demons will be cast out, and in some cases, the dead may be raised. This is the work of the advancing kingdom of God. It is a redemptive, healing work. It is a restorative work. It is a work of setting back in place the divine order of things. Like our Lord, we must be "about our Father’s business."