Expositor's Bible: The Gospel of St LukeBurton, Henry
Religion
Expositor's Bible: The Gospel of St Luke
Burton, Henry
Bible. Luke -- Commentaries
The Mosaic Code, in its play upon the temporal octaves, had made
provision, not only for a weekly Sabbath, and for a Sabbath year, but it
completed its cycle of festivals by setting apart each fiftieth year as
a year of special grace and gladness. It was the year of redemption and
restoration, when all debts were remitted, when the family inheritance,
which by the pressure of the times had been alienated, reverted to its
original owner, and when those who had mortgaged their personal liberty
regained their freedom. The "Jubilee" year, as they called it--putting
into its name the play of the priestly trumpets which ushered it in--was
thus the Divine safeguard against monopolies, a Divine provision for a
periodic redistribution of the wealth and privileges of the theocracy;
while at the same time it served to keep intact the separate threads of
family life, running its lines of lineage down through the centuries,
and across into the New Testament. Seizing upon this, the gladdest
festival of Hebrew life, Jesus likens Himself to one of the priests, who
with trumpet of silver proclaims "the acceptable year of the Lord." He
finds in that Jubilee a type of His Messianic year, a year that shall
bring, not to one chosen race alone, but to a world of debtors and
captives, remissions and manumissions without number, ushering in an era
of liberty and gladness. And so in these words, adapted and adopted from
Isaiah, Jesus announces Himself as the world's Evangelist, and Healer,
and Emancipator; or separating the general message into its prismatic
colours, we have the three characteristics of Christ's Gospel--(1) as
the Gospel of Love; (2) the Gospel of Light; and (3) the Gospel of
Liberty.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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