Luke 3.12-14.
The gospel of Matthew doesn’t tell us about the crowd of repentant Israelis asking John the baptist what they now should do. Doesn’t have him tell people
Luke 3.12-14 KWL 12 Taxmen are also coming to be baptized,- and tell Johnᴾ, “Teacher, what might we do?”
13 John is telling them,- “Do nothing more than your² orders.”
14 Soldiers are also questioning Johnᴾ,- saying, “And we? What might we do?”
- John is telling them, “Shake no one down,
- nor extort silver from anyone.
- Be content with your² salary.”
The gospels say the crowd had come to John to repent, but in the Jesus movies, they’re doing no such thing. They’re sitting on the riverside, watching other people come to John. Meanwhile they stand back and watch, grumbling, all judgey. In the gospels when John addresses
Hence the question, “What might we do?” Now that we’re following God, how ought we live? And John went right for the most obvious deficiency in their lifestyle and character. He went right for the throat of
Yep, Mammon. Money’s always been a rival with God for our affections. Was in Moses’s day, was in John’s, is in ours. So John told the people they oughta share what they had. Told the taxmen they oughta stop charging people more than what the Romans expected. Told the soldiers they oughta stop angling for bribes and extorting evildoers, and be content with what they were paid. These are money temptations. So, y’know, Mammonism.
Most of the time, the first thing we go after when we’re instructing new Christians, is we try to get ’em to come to church, read their bibles, pray regularly—to get in the basic habits of the Christian religion. Which is fine! We should teach all that stuff. But we’re not always that great at reminding them to resist basic temptations. Or if we do, it’s usually
John, same as his fellow biblical prophets, went good ’n hard against the biggest idol Israel had: Wealth. That’s what they coveted: Enough money to buy off the Romans and make their lives comfortable. That’s what got Israelis to turn their backs on their own people and work as tax-gatherers for the despised Romans. That’s what got people to leave their homelands and join the Roman army and hope to gain Roman citizenship: People got rich doing that, and they wanted some of those riches too.
But our treasure is in God, and if we wanna follow him, we gotta put our wealth under his feet too. And stop doing every morally questionable, evil compromise we can, just to get at that wealth.
Bad guys who repent.
Taxmen come up in Jesus’s
As for the soldiers: The Jesus movies make ’em look like Romans who were standing on the shore, who were only there for crowd control. This wasn’t that. These were Israeli soldiers; fellow countrymen who believed in the L
Some commentators speculate these might also have been temple police, working for
But since these two groups—taxmen and soldiers—were already working with and for the Romans, their fellow Judeans and Israelis would’ve seen them as traitors to their homeland and ethnic group. They would’ve hated them. Some would’ve seen them as irredeemable. Clearly John didn’t share that sentiment—everybody is redeemable. God accepts every repentant person who comes to him.
So now that they’ve returned to God, what were they to do? Must they now quit being taxmen and soldiers? And—probably to the surprise, maybe even the horror, of the other Jews in his audience—John actually doesn’t tell them to quit working for the Romans. Because
Therefore it does matter how you do your job, and that’s what John instructed: If you’re gonna follow God now, stop abusing your power. If you’re a taxman, don’t force people to pay more than your commission. If you’re a soldier, don’t threaten people with stabbing, caning, flogging, slavery, or death in exchange for blackmail or a bribe. You don’t have to quit your job, but you do have to become one of the “good ones.”
Christians in a broken system.
This instruction is really pragmatic of John. I mean, most people’s knee-jerk reaction would be to quit a corrupt system entirely. Just because they’re outraged at the corruption. Just because they’d rather take the whole system down. It’s way more fun and satisfying to throw Molotov cocktails, than try to fix and reform things.
But if you quit your corrupt organization, they’re just gonna replace you with another corrupt person. Why don’t you stick around and actually help people?
Sad to say, most Christians don’t bother to tell new believers what John did. “Oh, you work at a marijuana dispensary? Well you need to quit selling weed.” No; you need to stay where you are, and help steer the potheads towards Jesus. If they’re using weed to avoid him, you’ll be his way around that avoidance. Remind ’em the Doobie Brothers were all right with Jesus; why not them?
If you’re working for a greedy company, be the one person there who’s not trying to rip everyone off. If for law enforcement, be the one cop who cares about the people they’re meant to protect and serve. If for an ineffective government agency, be the one person there who helps. If for a business which caters to people’s vices, watch out for the addicts, and discourage the habitual users. Yeah, you certainly won’t be profitable to the Mammonists who run these corporations, but you’re working for Jesus now—and if you’re serving him properly, he has his ways of keeping you where he needs you.
In John’s day, it wasn’t so easy to quit your job and go into a “more righteous” career. Darn near impossible in some cases. (Roman soldiers couldn’t just desert, after all; it’d be way worse for them than if you went
But even if Levi had returned to his job, he should be—as John the baptist instructed—a good taxman. One who treated the Israelis fairly, didn’t overtax, didn’t exploit, didn’t burden people, and even helped out when you were in financial difficulty. One like Zacchæus, who gave a lot of money to the needy.
