Good news to the poor

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord” (Luke 4v18-19).

The Scriptures tell us that one Sabbath day, as His custom was, Jesus went into the synagogue in Nazareth where He had been brought up. That day he read from the book of the prophet Isaiah, what we may consider to be His mission statement. He began by declaring, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor”; … and “… to set at liberty those who are oppressed.” When He finished reading from the text, and with all eyes fixed upon Him, Jesus declared: “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” The Gospels bear witness to the fact that the words of Jesus were not merely a declaration but a reflection of both proclamation and demonstration of the good news of God’s saving grace.

Today we are also called by the Lord Jesus Christ to preach good news to the poor, as well as to work at all that is contained in the text of the prophet Isaiah that Jesus read from in Nazareth that day. The audience in the synagogue must have listened attentively as He declared all that the Spirit of the Lord upon Him called Him to proclaim. There must have been several that were poor in spirit as well as materially poor listening eagerly for some Good News. Among them may also have been some that were economically disadvantaged and marginalised. His words concerning prisoners, the blind, and the oppressed would have resonated well for those who have waited so long for the Good News of “the year of God’s favour”. For several of such, the year of God’s favour would include the year of Jubilee when the nation was to experience God’s restoration.

Today, in the context of various people in our needy world, the same Holy Spirit of the Lord that was upon Jesus is on all of us who have known and experienced God’s saving grace through Jesus. Like Him, we are called to proclaim the Good News of God’s saving grace to all people that are yet to know Him. As evangelicals, we often emphasise proclamation as evangelism, and as important as it is to do that, we must not forget other aspects of what Jesus Himself declared as being anointed by the Holy Spirit to declare. Our proclamation of the gospel must also be accompanied by visible evidence of our participation in binding or healing the brokenhearted wherever we are; proclaiming liberty to people in various situations of captivity or injustice; recovery of sight to the blind, and our witness in word and deed that gives those around us a deeper sense of the acceptable year of the Lord, whatever their circumstances may be. The hope is that, as we remain faithful both to proclamation and demonstration of the Good News of God’s saving grace, more people would be able to proclaim as Mary did in Luke 1v 46: “My soul magnifies the Lord … he has shown strength with his arm; he has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.”