Luke 3v3

And he came into all the country about Jordan, preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins;

From the previous verse we see that “the word of God came unto John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness” (v2). John would later be known as ‘John the Baptist’, but for now he was known as ‘John the son of Zacharias’. This is Luke’s first mention of John the Baptist, and he uses the normal way that a prophet might introduce their writings in the Old Testament – by letting us know who their father was or who they were descended from (for examples of this see Isaiah 1v1, Jeremiah 1v1, etc.)

The events of this verse happened immediately after the word of God came to John in the wilderness. Straight away we find him preaching the message of repentance, baptism and remission of sins. This is quite a clear and direct pointer to the fact that baptism was instituted by God himself, and first revealed to John as he was praying in the wilderness.

We can also see that John at first ministered by travelling around the country close to the river Jordan. This was his ‘invitation phase’, and we see that it quickly came to the point where people were coming to him to be baptized in verse 7 {31 }.

A reading of this chapter to verse 18 {31 } {32 } {33 }, also expands on the point made in the section on Matthew 3v7 {3 }, that repentance must have fruit. In this chapter John explains how specific repentant souls are to firstly show their repentance, and secondly behave into the future. This is discussed in greater detail in the section on Luke 3v12 {32 }.