November 29
“He will turn many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. And He will go as forerunner before the Lord in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers back to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared for Him.”
Luke 1:16-17 (NET)
John the Baptist is appropriately called the forerunner, the one who prepared the way for Jesus. But what exactly does that mean? Luke 1:16-17 tells us, and there is a little surprise in the mix. That text reads, “He will turn many of the people of Israelto the Lord their God. And He will go as forerunner before the Lord in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers back to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared for Him.“
The idea that John called people back to God in preparation for the coming of Jesus is no surprise. That is what prophets do – call people back to God. The call to repent is what Elijah did when he challenged the prophets of Baal at Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18:16-46).
But notice John was to do something else: call father’s hearts back to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just. His preparatory work was also reconciling, whether in families or in public space. Then the passage goes on to say this is what a people prepared for the Lord look like! They are realigned not only with God but with their neighbor, or at least they are prepared to be so. This means that our religion is not a privatized affair between an individual and God. No, that vertical relationship has a horizontal dimension that impacts how we live and act with those around us. It opens the door to reconciliation.
Another example of this can be found in Luke 3:8-14. Repentance defines and impacts how we treat others. What this shows is that Jesus’s coming was to clear a path of restoring a person’s relationship not just with God but also with others. Jesus came and died in part to make that vertical-horizontal reconciliation possible. When we say Jesus came to save the world, this is one of the ways Jesus does it and that is part of the way John the Baptist prepared for it as Jesus’s forerunner.