God’s Redemptive Plan Includes All People
“God’s Redemptive Plan Includes All People” – July 27th, 2025
Even though every day is a gift from God that contributes to the tapestry of your life, some days do seem to be more significant than others, perhaps more noticeable in retrospect. Milestones like births, weddings, or deaths; achievements like driver’s licenses, graduations, or new jobs; life changing days like giving your life to Jesus, reaching a major goal, or overcoming a significant challenge. As we continue our journey through the Gospel of Luke today, we are going to look at a key passage in chapter 4 about a significant day in Jesus’ ministry that would reveal a crucial aspect of God’s redemptive plan.
Preparation
Luke has already told us about the preparation leading up to this day:
Jesus’ birth – Luke 2:10b-11 – “I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord …’”
Jesus’ years of preparation – Luke 2:40, 52 – “The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him … And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.”
Jesus’ life of prayer and baptism – Luke 3:21-22 – “Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’”
Jesus’ testing in the wilderness – Luke 4:1-2a, 14 – “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil … Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country.”
Synagogue
That brings us to a significant day for Jesus, when he went to his own hometown’s synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his regular habit.
Luke 4:15-16a – “He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone. When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom.”
Our text today tells us that Jesus taught in synagogues. A synagogue is a place of worship for Jews or Samaritans. It is a place for gathering, prayer, Scripture reading (the Torah and Prophets), celebration, study, community, and charitable donations. Teaching in synagogues was a key part of Jesus’ strategy to proclaim and demonstrate the good news of the kingdom of God (a strategy continued by the early church in the book of Acts and beyond). Jesus actively participated in the communal reading of Scripture, teaching, and open discussion about the meaning of the text. Incidentally, in case you have a picture in your head of a synagogue filled with men only, Liturgical Press’s Wisdom Commentary on Luke tells us that “there is no evidence that the prayer spaces for women and men were separate or that there was a women’s balcony at the time of Jesus.” Luke records several instances of women being present in the synagogue, in Jesus’ Sabbath healing of a crippled woman, in Lydia’s conversion at Philippi, and in Apollos’ preaching to Priscilla and Aquila and others in a synagogue at Ephesus.
On this significant day, Jesus came to his local synagogue in Nazareth, the town where he’d grown up. He knew everyone, and everyone knew him. They’d already gotten wind of what he’d been doing in the larger fishing village of Capernaum.
A significant day
Luke 4:16b-21 – “He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’ And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’
What Jesus read was a direct quote from the first two verses of Isaiah 61. This day in the Nazareth synagogue was significant, marking the inauguration of Jesus’ public ministry, because he laid out his messianic mission and then said, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Jesus’ clear and unambiguous announcement was, I am the Messiah.
Luke 4:22-23 – “All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, ‘Is not this Joseph’s son?’ He said to them, ‘Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, “Doctor, cure yourself!” And you will say, “Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.”’”
The crowd reacted initially with, Will you look at that? Joseph’s son! We’re so proud of him because he’s one of ours! Luke tells us that all spoke well of Jesus and were amazed at what he said. But then Jesus threw them a curve ball. By calling them out on one of their favorite formulas, “Doctor, cure yourself!” he exposed the attitudes of their hearts. And then he called them out for small-minded, sectarian thinking. Basically, they were saying, Jesus, we are not going to accept you as Messiah unless you do for us and our little town what you did in the city. In other words, they selfishly wanted Jesus all for themselves, for both beneficial restoration and bragging rights. The attitude in the synagogue that day was We want Messiah to rescue us! We want you all to ourselves and to do things the way we think you should. If you really are the Messiah, you’ll prove it by liberating us from our pagan enemies and destroying them.
Luke 4:24-27 – “And he said, ‘Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.’”
It is so interesting how Jesus chose to respond to his hometown crowd. There are all kinds of examples he could have provided of how God had intervened in the lives of his people. But Jesus focused on two incidents involving two of the “big three” prophets who performed mighty miracles and were pivotal in Israel’s history: Elijah and Elisha. In his first example, Jesus mentioned Elijah’s ministry to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. It was bad enough that Elijah ministered to a widow, a nobody, someone of very low social status. She wasn’t even rich or influential; she was poor and powerless! Worse, she wasn’t even a Jewess in Israel; she was a foreigner in Sidon! In his second example, Jesus mentioned Elisha’s ministry to a leper, Naaman. Naaman wasn’t even a Jew in Israel; he was a foreigner in Syria! Far worse, he was the commander of an enemy army! Jesus highlighted these incidents intentionally to point out that God had sent him to bless and serve more than just the people of Nazareth. Jesus’ message was very clear: I am the Messiah! Today I am launching my mission. The good news of the kingdom of God that I am proclaiming and demonstrating is for everyone – both the “in crowd” and outcasts; both poor and rich; both powerless and powerful; both untouchable and accepted; both citizens and foreigners; both residents and refugees; both friends and enemies; both Gentiles and Jews. God’s redemptive plan includes all people!
Luke 4:28-30 – “When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.”
The villagers’ initial wonder and amazement turned so very quickly to so much anger that they even wanted to hurl Jesus off a cliff. Why? Because the reality is that this was an us vs. them situation. The synagogue attendees that day cared only about us. They didn’t care about them: social outcasts, poor, powerless, untouchables, foreigners, refugees, enemies, Gentiles. They wanted God’s blessing and liberation for us, for our nation, for our land, for our people. They longed for God to condemn and destroy them. So, when Jesus pointed out that the great prophets, Elijah and Elisha, did things that blessed only a foreign, poor, powerless widow or only a foreign, untouchable, enemy army commander, it made them really mad – “all in the synagogue were filled with rage.” They didn’t want to hear about God’s blessing on enemies. They wanted a Messiah who would eradicate their enemies with military might. They didn’t want to hear about God’s healing for the nations. They wanted a Messiah who would inflict God’s punishment on the nations. But instead, Jesus shocked them by announcing, I am the Messiah who is here to bring God’s love and mercy to all. God’s redemptive plan includes all people. And the result? The same thing that happened that day still happens today, whenever people pursue their own interests or agendas instead of pursuing the kingdom of God. They reacted with violence to the good news of God’s surprising grace.
Love one another
How, then, does God want us to respond to the good news of the kingdom? Jesus summed up everything in Luke 10:27 – “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” Six different words in the Bible are translated “love” in the English language. Jesus repeated one of the Greek words for love twice in those verses, agape. Agape, the highest form of love, is selfless, unconditional love that prioritizes the well-being of another person. This describes how God loves us! What is love? Thirteenth century Christian philosopher and theologian, Thomas Aquinas offers this famous and foundational definition: “to love is to will the good of the other.”
Of course, as we all know, it’s easy to say we ought to love others. Much harder to do! It’s much easier to love people who love us back. But what about people we disagree with or don’t get along with or even enemies? Inspired by theology professor Miroslav Volf, known as a “theological bridge builder,” I want to propose four essentials in being able to love others, precisely because God’s redemptive plan includes all people.
Repentance
The first essential in being able to love others is repentance. To repent is to turn and go the other way, to resist the seductiveness of sinful values and practices. To repent is to let the new order of God’s reign be established in our hearts and minds. Jesus calls us to repent by primarily letting go of two things.
The first thing Jesus calls us to let go of is envy. Included in the second century list of seven deadly sins, envy is characterized by an insatiable desire such as greed or lust. Envy says to God, “I don’t need you or your help.” Envy is a sad or resentful covetousness towards the traits or possessions of another person. Envy focuses on self and cuts us off from others. Aquinas describes a person’s descent into envy: debasing a person’s reputation; enjoying their misfortune; despising their prosperity; outright hatred. Philippians 2:3-4 instructs us to “do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.”
The second thing Jesus calls us to let go of is hatred of enemies. Volf challenges us to consider: “When war is raging – a war with words or with weapons – why should we want to make a movement from the self to the other? … in the midst of enmity we [must] refuse to project dehumanizing images on them and [be] willing to embrace them as friends.” God loved us while we were still God’s enemies. This is how we Christ-followers are to treat others, with the risky and hard work of love.
Turning away from envy and enmity sets us free to love others with selfless, unconditional love that prioritizes their well-being.
Forgiveness
The second essential in being able to love others is forgiveness. I often come back to C. S. Lewis’s wisdom in Mere Christianity, his classic of Christian faith and theology which was adapted from a series of BBC radio talks Lewis made during World War II. He starts with what he calls the unpopular Christian rule: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself … Because in Christian morals ‘thy neighbor’ includes ‘thy enemy’ … we come up against this terrible duty of forgiving our enemies. Every one says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive, as we had during the war. And then, to mention the subject at all is to be greeted with howls of anger. It is not that people think this too high and difficult a virtue: it is that they think it hateful and contemptible … I am telling you what Christianity is. I did not invent it … It is made perfectly clear that if we do not forgive we shall not be forgiven. There are no two ways about it. What are we to do? It is going to be hard enough, anyway, but I think there are two things we can do to make it easier … [if we really want] to learn how to forgive, perhaps we had better start with something easier than the Gestapo. One might start with forgiving one’s husband or wife, or parents or children, or the nearest N.C.O., for something they have done or said in the last week. That will probably keep us busy for the moment. And secondly, we might try to understand exactly what loving your neighbor as yourself means. I have to love him as I love myself … what really matters is those little marks or twists on the central, inside part of the soul which are going to turn it, in the long run, into a heavenly or a hellish creature. We may kill if necessary, but we must not hate and enjoy hating. We may punish if necessary, but we must not enjoy it.” As we practice the kind of forgiveness that C. S. Lewis describes, it sets us free to truly love others as we love ourselves.
Make space in ourselves for the other
The third essential in being able to love others is to make space in ourselves for the other. Forgiveness heals wounds of exclusion and breaks down dividing walls of hostility. Yet, forgiveness is not enough, because it leaves a distance between people, a kind of neutrality where each one simply goes their own way. The way of Christ, the way of love, demands that we seek more than just the absence of hostility. Real peace, the peace that Jesus made possible on the cross, is communion between former enemies. Volf describes it like this: “The cross is the giving up of God’s self in order not to give up on humanity … The arms of the crucified are open – a sign of a space in God’s self and an invitation for the enemy to come in.” This is how we are to love, and it is what we celebrate each week during Communion, in the presence of Christ together. God has made space for us and invited us in, and so we make space in ourselves for others and invite them in, even enemies, so that we may freely rejoice together in the eternal embrace of the triune God.
See each person as a child of God
The fourth and final essential in being able to love others is to see each person as a child of God. We love to slap labels on others: gender, ethnicity, background, age, orientation, socioeconomic or relationship status, religious or political affiliation. But how often does labeling someone else make us feel justified in excluding them, avoiding them, ignoring them, marginalizing them, demeaning them, or even hating them? What if we instead saw each person simply as a child of God, created by God to belong together as a community of love? When agape love guides our thoughts, our words, and our actions, it shapes the very content of justice and changes the world. When we see each person as a child of God, we are better able to welcome, include, love, and embrace them in the kingdom of God, in which God’s redemptive plan includes all people.
A nonviolent embrace without end
As followers of Jesus, we also need to consider how we view the end of the world. If we think of the end of the world primarily as a final battle in which God is all about punishing people who have sinned against him, that will color how we treat people now. Volf invites us to consider the Bible’s apocalyptic language as a continuation of the main storyline of the God who loves: “The judgment against the beast and the false prophet is the obverse of the salvation of those who suffer at their hands. God can create the world of justice, truth, and peace only by making an end to deception, injustice, and violence. The purpose of the judgment is not the deadly calm of the final closure, but an eternal dance of differences that give themselves to each other in peaceful embrace. The end of the world is not violence, but a nonviolent embrace without end.” May we learn how to live in the eternal embrace now by choosing to will the good of others with the kind of love which Jesus showed us – selfless, unconditional love that prioritizes the well-being of the other.
A dozen confessions
We are now going to do a practical exercise by reflecting on a dozen statements of confession. We all fall far short of God’s love every single day. Each of the statements includes a blank space. As I read these slowly, let’s pay attention to either an individual or a group who comes to mind. You may want to jot a name or initials or group in the blank. When I have read all of the statements, I will lead us in a prayer in which we confess our sins, specific ways in which we have failed to love others, and we will pray to receive God’s forgiveness and cleansing.
1. My relationship with ____________________ falls far short of the kind of self-giving love that Jesus taught and modeled.
2. I have excluded, avoided, ignored, marginalized, demeaned, or hated ____________________ instead of seeing, welcoming, and accepting them.
3. I despise ____________________’s prosperity.
4. I have debased ____________________’s reputation in my heart or with my words.
5. I have secretly enjoyed learning of ____________________’s misfortune.
6. I have not prioritized ____________________’s well-being.
7. I project dehumanizing images on ____________________ in my mind or with my words.
8. I have not yet forgiven ____________________ for something they did or said in the last week.
9. I have not made space for ____________________ in myself.
10. I have settled for neutrality instead of pursuing peace with ____________________.
11. I look forward to God punishing ____________________ for their sin.
12. I struggle to accept anyone who identifies as ____________________ as my brother or sister in the body of Christ.
Gracious God, our sins are too heavy to carry, too real to hide, and too deep to undo. Forgive what our lips tremble to name, what our hearts can no longer bear, and what has become for us a consuming fire of judgment. Set us free from a past that we cannot change; open to us a future in which we can be changed; and grant us grace to grow more and more in your likeness and image, through Jesus Christ, the light of the world. Amen.
When we are separated, our love is so very limited. Together in the body of Christ, our love extends to the whole world. May we embody the love of Jesus as we walk the way of love, proclaiming and demonstrating the good news that God’s redemptive plan includes all people!
