Luke chapter 03

the meaning and the importance of works of John the baptist

In this chapter, we see more details of the work of John the Baptist than the records in Matthew and in Mark, so let us think about it. Here we find that the area he worked is all the country around the Jordan(3.3), his task is preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins(3.3), and the result of his work is that all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. Confessing their sins, they were baptised by him in the Jordan River.(Mk 1.5) 

As what we often call John as "the pioneer of Jesus", he brought the baptism as a new form of alliance with God, replacing the Circumcision. While the Circumcision is as a stabe symbol of belonging to God, the baptism is moreover meangling with conscious reflections of recognizing someone's own sins and an active action of being baptised. Therefore, the teaching of this ritual is not only recognising sins, but also actively doing something: Produce fruit in keeping with repentance(3.8). The main ideas of John's preaching are individual practices of love which is actually the essence of God's law. His arguements thus changed people's religious habit in two aspects, one the one hand, from satisfing with themwelves to recognising the exsistence of their sins, and on the other, to push the laws from a docrine level to a spiritual and also pratical level. So that he prepare an available condition for Jesus's teaching.