Destitute of Righteousness

In Luke 4:18-19, Jesus quoted from Isaiah 61:1-2. I have found that people often misunderstand what Jesus intended to communicate here. Our modern "therapeutic" culture undoubtedly places a high value on feeling good, self-esteem, and self-actualization. Of course this should not be deemed entirely bad, but this current mindset could give people the wrong idea about what Jesus truly meant in these verses. Words like "poor", "brokenhearted", and "oppressed" makes us think of people who are beset by life's circumstances (i.e. poverty, divorce, addiction, or disease). Indeed, we need to care about and help such people in their afflictions. However, in these verses Jesus is speaking primarily in terms of spiritual poverty and spiritual brokenness, bondage, blindness, and oppression.

In other words, he is offering freedom to those who recognize their sinful state and are broken by the realization that their spiritual poverty and bondage separates them from a just and holy God.

Of course this does not mean that He didn't minister to those who were beset by life's circumstances. Scripture often discusses how we are to treat the poor, brokenhearted and oppressed. But the point is that Jesus' message was not only for those people. The following excerpt will demonstrate clearly that the freedom He offered was not freedom from the hardships of life.

Excerpt from "The Way of the Master":

In Luke 4:18-19, Jesus gives a summation of whom the gospel is for:

* The poor
* The brokenhearted
* The captives
* The blind
* The oppressed

When Jesus speaks of "the poor," He is not necessarily referring to those who lack financial resources. Instead, He's referring to the "poor in spirit" (Matthew 5:3) - those who are meek, humble, lowly. These are the blessed ones to whom the kingdom of God belongs: those who know that they are destitute of righteousness.

In his commentary on Luke 4:14-30, Matthew Henry writes: "Observe...to whom He was to preach: to the poor; to those that were poor in the world; whom the Jewish doctors disdained to undertake the teaching of and spoke of with contempt; to those that were poor in spirit, to the meek and humble, and to those that were truly sorrowful for sin" (emphasis in the original).

When Jesus speaks of the brokenhearted, He doesn't mean those unhappy people whose hearts are aching because they have been jilted by a sweetheart, but those who, like Peter and Isaiah, are contrite and sorrowing for their sin. In the words of Matthew Henry, "[Christ] was sent to heal the broken-hearted,...and to give peace to those that were troubled and humbled for sins,...and to bring them to rest who were weary and heavy-laden, under the burden of guilt and corruption."

The captives are those "taken captive by [the devil] to do his will" (2 Timothy 2:26). The blind are those whom "the god of this age has blinded...[to] to light of the gospel of the glory of Christ" (2 Corinthians 4:4). The oppressed are those who are "oppressed by the devil" (Acts 10:38).

The gospel of grace is for the humble, not the proud. "God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble" (James 4:6). The Scriptures tell us, "Everyone proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord" (Proverbs 16:5); "He has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted the lowly" (Luke 1:52); God looks on the one who "is poor and of a contrite spirit, and who trembles at [His] word" (Isaiah 66;2).

Only the sick need a physician, and only those who are convinced of the disease of sin will appreciate and appropriate the cure of the gospel.