Luke 1:78

Nine months earlier the angel Gabriel had told Zacharias that his wife Elisabeth, old and childless, would bear a son. Zacharias doubted the message, and Gabriel told him he would be dumb until it came to pass (Luke 1:20). The child was born, and on the eighth day the family gathered for his circumcision and naming. It was the custom to name a boy after someone in the family, and the relatives expected him to be called Zacharias after his father. Elisabeth said he would be called John, Zacharias confirmed it in writing, and at that moment his mouth was opened and he spoke, praising God (Luke 1:57–64, 1:64). The name John means “the Lord is gracious”. By holding to it against family custom, Zacharias publicly obeyed the word he had been given and owned that the child’s identity came from God.

Luke then tells us that Zacharias “was filled with the Holy Ghost, and prophesied”. The verb plḗthō means to fill up completely, so that he was wholly taken up by the Spirit, and the New Testament uses it for a powerful and often sudden filling for a particular task or utterance. Here the task is speech. “Holy Ghost” joins hágios, sacred and pure, with pneûma, spirit or breath, and names the Spirit of God himself, the third person of the Trinity and the source of all holiness and inspiration. To prophesy, prophēteúō, is to speak under inspiration, to foretell, to exercise the office of a prophet. The song that follows is praise, and it is also revelation of God’s will and plans, given through a man and coming from God.

Israel had known this before. When the Spirit rested on the seventy elders in the wilderness, they prophesied (Numbers 11:25), and Joel promised a day when God would say, “I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy” (Joel 2:28–29). Zacharias’s filling is an early sign of all that follows in Luke’s story. The Spirit descended on Jesus at his baptism (Luke 3:22), and Jesus “returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee” (Luke 4:14). Jesus promised his disciples another Comforter (John 14:16–17), and at Pentecost “they were all filled with the Holy Ghost” (Acts 2:1–4, 2:4).

For centuries Israel had waited for a prophetic voice. Malachi is counted as the last of the prophets, and the silence after him is often reckoned at about four hundred years. An angel’s visit, a child born to elderly parents and now a priest speaking by the Spirit were signs that God was at work again and that his ancient promises were about to be kept. The order of events is a picture of grace as well. The man whose doubt had closed his mouth is the man God fills and uses, and the first words of his restored voice are praise.

The song begins by blessing God, and everything after the first line gives the reason. Eulogētós, “blessed”, comes from a verb meaning to speak well of someone. Used of God it means that he is worthy of praise, “adorable” in the old sense of the word. We bless him by praising him for who he is and what he has done. “The Lord God of Israel” is a Hebrew way of naming God from the Old Testament, and it calls to mind the covenant he made with his chosen people and his faithfulness to them through their whole history. The little word “for” (hóti) gives the reason for the praise: “he hath visited and redeemed his people”.

To visit, episképtomai, is to go and look in on someone with the purpose of helping them, the way a person goes to see after a friend in need. Scripture uses it for God drawing near to save. When Israel suffered in Egypt, the LORD said that he had seen their affliction and had come down to deliver them (Exodus 3:7–8), and a psalmist prayed, “O visit me with thy salvation” (Psalm 106:4–5). After the long waiting, God has come. The fullest form of his visit is the incarnation, when “the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). Paul says that “when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son”, and sent him to redeem (Galatians 4:4–5).

Redemption, lýtrōsis, is a ransoming, a setting free by the payment of a price, the word used for buying back slaves or captives. It is the language of the Exodus, where God said, “I will redeem you with a stretched out arm” (Exodus 6:6), and Moses sang of “the people which thou hast redeemed” (Exodus 15:13). The price of the redemption Zacharias announces was paid at the cross. In Christ “we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins” (Ephesians 1:7), we are “justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:24), and he has “obtained eternal redemption for us” (Hebrews 9:12) as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). The freedom this brings reaches every kind of bondage, from the power of sin to the hand of enemies, as the next verses go on to say.

Before he says a word about his own son, Zacharias praises God for the Saviour. The horn, kéras, is literally an animal’s horn. Animals use their horns to defend themselves and to prevail, so in Scripture the horn (Hebrew qeren) became a picture of strength, dignity and kingly power. David calls the LORD “the horn of my salvation” (Psalm 18:2), and God promised of Zion, “There will I make the horn of David to bud: I have ordained a lamp for mine anointed” (Psalm 132:17). A horn of salvation is a mighty deliverer, a Saviour with the strength and authority to rescue completely.

“Hath raised up”, egeírō, means to rouse, lift up or cause to arise. God is the one acting, and the deliverer is his gift. The verb (ēgeiren) is an aorist, which speaks of a completed action, so Zacharias speaks of the Saviour’s coming as already done, so certain is it. Salvation, sōtēría, is rescue or safety, both bodily and moral, and the word returns in verses 71 and 77. “For us” means Israel first, as the people of the covenant promises, and through them all who believe.

A house, oîkos, is a dwelling, and here it means a family line, the royal dynasty of David. God had promised David a house, a kingdom and a throne established for ever (2 Samuel 7:12–16), and Isaiah foretold a child who would reign “upon the throne of David” (Isaiah 9:6–7). David is called God’s servant, paîs, a word that can mean a boy or child, an attendant of a king, or above all a minister of God, which speaks of humble and privileged service. Jesus was born into David’s line, as both genealogies record (Matthew 1:1–17, Luke 3:23–38), and Paul preached that “of this man’s seed hath God according to his promise raised unto Israel a Saviour, Jesus” (Acts 13:22–23). His strength showed itself on the cross and in his rising, when through death he destroyed “him that had the power of death, that is, the devil” (Hebrews 2:14–15). He reigns now as KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS (Revelation 19:16).

The Saviour comes exactly as God said he would. “Spake”, laléō, means to utter words, and “mouth”, stóma, is the mouth itself, used here for the channel God spoke through. God is the speaker, and the prophets were his mouth, so their message was his own word. They are called holy because God set them apart for this. This is how Scripture speaks of its own inspiration: “All scripture is given by inspiration of God” (2 Timothy 3:16), and “holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” (2 Peter 1:21).

“Since the world began” translates a phrase built on aiṓn, an age or long span of time. With “from” before it (ap’ aiōnos) it means “from of old”, from ancient times, and it may or may not reach back to the first moment of creation. Either way, God’s plan of salvation runs deep into the past and was made known step by step through generation after generation. “Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world” (Acts 15:18). The first promise came in Eden, where God said of the woman’s seed, “it shall bruise thy head” (Genesis 3:15). It continued in the promise to Abraham (Genesis 12:1–3), the promise to David, Isaiah’s child on David’s throne and his Suffering Servant who bore our iniquities (Isaiah 53:4–6).

The rest of the New Testament speaks the same way. Jesus told his disciples that “all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me” (Luke 24:44). Peter used Zacharias’s very words, speaking of what “God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began” (Acts 3:21). Paul calls the gospel the message God “had promised afore by his prophets in the holy scriptures” (Romans 1:2), and Hebrews opens, “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son” (Hebrews 1:1–2).

Verse 71 says what the salvation is: “That we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all that hate us”. Sōtēría again means rescue. The word for enemies, echthrós, comes from a root meaning to hate and describes someone hostile, an adversary, and the New Testament often uses it of Satan. The hand, cheír, stands for power and control, and by a Hebrew turn of speech it can also mean the means or instrument by which someone acts. The second line repeats the first with more force, so that the rescue is complete, from every enemy and every hostile power. A psalm says the same: “so shall I be saved from mine enemies” (Psalm 18:3).

Israel had a long memory of enemies. God brought them out of Egypt on the Passover night of Exodus 12, and after that they lived under Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece and, in Zacharias’s day, Rome. God’s oath to Abraham had included victory: “thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies” (Genesis 22:17). Zacharias very likely had Israel’s earthly oppressors in mind. Because he spoke by the Spirit, his words reach further than he could see, to the enemies behind all the others. Jesus led no revolt against Rome. He won his victory over sin, death and the devil. Paul writes, “we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Ephesians 6:12). At the cross Christ, “having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it” (Colossians 2:15), and the Father “hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son” (Colossians 1:13). Sin is an enemy within as well, since “your iniquities have separated between you and your God” (Isaiah 59:1–2). The fear of death is another, and Christ delivers those “who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage” (Hebrews 2:14–15).

Verse 72 gives the reason God acts: “To perform the mercy promised to our fathers, and to remember his holy covenant”. To perform, poiéō, is simply to make or do, and here it means that God carries out what he promised and brings it to completion. Mercy, éleos, is compassion that acts, God’s loving-kindness showing itself in help, deliverance and salvation for the needy. The word “promised” makes plain that this mercy was pledged long ago. “Our fathers” are the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to whom God promised blessing, land and descendants through whom all nations would be blessed.

When God remembers, he brings his promise to mind in order to act on it, as a psalm says: “He hath remembered his covenant for ever” (Psalm 105:8–10). The covenant, diathḗkē, is properly a disposition or arrangement, a solemn and binding agreement set up by the greater party. God took the initiative, bound himself by his own promises and established the relationship by grace. The holy covenant here is first of all the covenant with Abraham (Genesis 12:1–3), the foundation of Israel’s identity and hope. God’s covenants through Moses, which made Israel “a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation” (Exodus 19:5–6), and with David (2 Samuel 7:12–16) belong to the same plan. It is holy because it comes from God’s own perfect character and is set apart and inviolable.

The mercy promised to the fathers came to its height when God gave his only begotten Son (John 3:16). Jeremiah foretold a new covenant (Jeremiah 31:31), Jesus established it in his blood with the words “This cup is the new testament in my blood” (Luke 22:20), and he is “the mediator of a better covenant” (Hebrews 8:6). Through him “the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles” (Galatians 3:14).

Verses 74 and 75 say what the oath was for. “That he would grant unto us” uses dídōmi, to give, and it presents our freedom as God’s gift. To be delivered, rhýomai, is to be rescued, drawn out of danger by a strong hand, as one pulls a person to oneself out of peril. And the rescue has a purpose: “that we… might serve him without fear”. When God first sent Moses he said, “ye shall serve God upon this mountain” (Exodus 3:12), and the deliverance from Egypt promised in Exodus 6:6 was so that Israel could belong to God. Paul describes the same movement: “Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness” (Romans 6:18).

The word for serve, latreúō, is used for religious service, the worship a worshipper offers to God. It belonged to Israel’s temple and its law, and it reaches into the whole of a life given to God’s will. Hebrews takes it up: “let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear” (Hebrews 12:28).

At verse 76 Zacharias turns to the baby: “And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest”. A prophet, prophḗtēs, is from pró, before or forth, and phēmí, to speak, so one who speaks forth God’s message, a foreteller and inspired spokesman. The Highest, hýpsistos, comes from hýpsos, height, and is a title of God Most High, speaking of his majesty and supreme authority. “Prophet of the Highest” (prophḗtēs Hypsistou) traces John’s calling and message straight to God himself, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and “shalt be called” means that this is the identity God gives him.

His task is to “go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways”. Gabriel had already said that John would go before the Lord “in the spirit and power of Elias”, “to make ready a people prepared for the Lord” (Luke 1:17), and Zacharias now confirms it by the Spirit. The words echo two prophecies. Malachi had written, “Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me” (Malachi 3:1), and later promised to send Elijah the prophet “before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD” (Malachi 4:5–6). Isaiah had heard “The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the LORD” (Isaiah 40:3), and Matthew says of John, “this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias” (Matthew 3:3). The Lord whose way John prepares is the coming Messiah, Jesus.

A forerunner was familiar in that world. A herald went ahead of a king to announce his coming and make ready for him, sometimes by clearing the road and sometimes by preparing the people. To prepare, hetoimázō, from hétoimos, ready, is to make ready and provide, which covers both readiness of heart and the clearing of obstacles from the path. John did this by “preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins” (Luke 3:3), calling people to turn from their sins. He was clear about who he was: “I am not the Christ”, he said, and “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness” (John 1:20–23). He pointed his hearers to Jesus as “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), he baptized him at the start of his public ministry (Matthew 3:13–17), and he summed up his whole calling in the words “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30).

Verse 77 says what John’s preparing will consist of: “To give knowledge of salvation unto his people by the remission of their sins”. Knowledge, gnōsis, is the act of knowing, and here it is knowledge that is lived and that changes a person, the kind that leads to repentance and faith. John is the one who makes the salvation known, and the Messiah is the one who brings it about. The salvation (sōtēría) that verses 69 and 71 spoke of as rescue from enemies is now named at its centre. It comes by the remission of sins.

Remission, áphesis, from the verb aphíēmi, means a sending away or a release. The same word is used for freedom, deliverance and pardon, and for the cancelling of a debt. Sins remitted are fully pardoned, and the sinner is set free from their guilt. This was always God’s way, for “there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared” (Psalm 130:4). Isaiah saw it paid for by the Servant, “with his stripes we are healed”, and “the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:5–6). Jeremiah’s new covenant promised, “I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jeremiah 31:31–34), and Hebrews repeats it (Hebrews 8:12). Paul explains how, in a passage that begins, “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23–26). Jesus himself showed “that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins” (Mark 2:10).

Verse 78 goes back to the source of everything: “Through the tender mercy of our God”. “Tender” stands for splánchnon, the inward parts, which people then took to be the seat of deep feeling, especially compassion. God’s mercy is a heartfelt compassion that moves him to act. The Hebrew Scriptures speak of his mercy as hesed, his steadfast covenant love, kept toward Israel through all their unfaithfulness. Salvation flows from that mercy and from nothing we have earned, as Paul writes: “But after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared, Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us” (Titus 3:4–5). “God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

“Whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us”. The dayspring, anatolḗ, comes from a verb meaning to rise and means the rising of light, the dawn, the rising sun. In the Greek Old Testament the same word translates the Hebrew tsemach, “branch” or “shoot”, in promises of the Messiah, such as “I will raise unto David a righteous Branch” (Jeremiah 23:5). So the one word holds both the dawn breaking after a long night and the promised shoot from David’s royal line. Malachi had seen the same sunrise: “But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall” (Malachi 4:2). “From on high” means from heaven. The light is God’s own initiative, and it speaks of the divine nature of the Messiah, who was with God before he came.

“Hath visited” is episképtomai again, the word of verse 68, so the song closes where it began, with God coming to help his people. Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ (John 1:17), who said, “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12). Simeon would soon hold the child and call him “A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel” (Luke 2:32).

Luke closes the chapter by covering John’s whole youth in one sentence: “And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, and was in the deserts till the day of his shewing unto Israel”. The child, paidíon, is a diminutive, a little child or a half-grown boy. “Grew” is his ordinary bodily growth. “Waxed strong”, krataióō, from a word for might, means to be strengthened, and its imperfect tense speaks of strength that kept on growing. “In spirit”, pneûma, refers to John’s inner being, and it also points to the Holy Spirit’s work in him, since Gabriel had said that “he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother’s womb” (Luke 1:15). His character, will and spiritual strength were being made ready for the hard ministry ahead.

The deserts, érēmos (often written eremos), are lonely, waste places, the wilderness. Other servants of God had met him in such places. Moses was at Mount Sinai, Elijah went into the wilderness (1 Kings 19:4–8), and Jesus himself was “led by the Spirit into the wilderness” to be tempted (Luke 4:1–13, 4:1). In solitude and simplicity, apart from ordinary society, John was being formed for his calling, and when he came out it would be as the voice crying in the wilderness of Isaiah 40:3, the messenger of Malachi 3:1.

“The day of his shewing unto Israel” is the day he appeared in public and began his ministry, which Luke describes in Luke 3, where John preaches repentance (Luke 3:3) and baptizes Jesus (Luke 3:21–22). The hidden years had an end that God had fixed, and John came forward at God’s appointed time. He came to point to someone else, “the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world” (John 1:9).

The song Zacharias sings is the song of a man who once doubted God’s word, was silenced and then forgiven, and whose restored voice was used at once for praise. God deals with us the same way. He keeps faith with people who have faltered, and he fills them with his Spirit for his purposes. Every line of the Benedictus is about a promise kept, to the fathers, to David and to Abraham, sworn by God himself and spoken through his prophets from of old. The promises he has made to you in Christ rest on that same oath.

The redemption Zacharias praised cost the blood of Christ, and it sets you free for something. God rescued his people so that they could serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness, before his face, every day of their lives. Your worship can be glad and confident, because the enemies that most threaten you, sin and death and the devil, have been beaten by the horn of salvation, and your sins have been sent away.

The dawn Zacharias saw coming has risen. Christ shines on those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and he guides our feet, one day at a time, into the way of peace. And if God is growing you in a quiet, hidden season, as he grew John in the deserts, you can grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ (2 Peter 3:18) and wait for his timing with trust.