“The Spirit of the Lord Is upon Me, Because He Hath Anointed Me”
Luke 4:18–19
18 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,
19 To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.
Elder Jeffrey R. Holland said:
“In what would be the most startling moment of His early ministry, Jesus stood up in His home synagogue in Nazareth and read these words prophesied by Isaiah and recorded in the Gospel of Luke: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and . . . set at liberty them that are bruised’ [Luke 4:18].
“Thus the Savior made the first public announcement of His messianic ministry. But this verse also made clear that on the way to His ultimate atoning sacrifice and Resurrection, Jesus’s first and foremost messianic duty would be to bless the poor, including the poor in spirit.
“From the beginning of His ministry, Jesus loved the impoverished and the disadvantaged in an extraordinary way. He was born into the home of two of them and grew up among many more of them. We don’t know all the details of His temporal life, but He once said, ‘Foxes have holes, and . . . birds . . . have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head’ [Matthew 8:20]. Apparently the Creator of heaven and earth ‘and all things that in them are’ [2 Nephi 2:14; 3 Nephi 9:15] was, at least in His adult life, homeless.
“Down through history, poverty has been one of humankind’s greatest and most widespread challenges. Its obvious toll is usually physical, but the spiritual and emotional damage it can bring may be even more debilitating. In any case, the great Redeemer has issued no more persistent call than for us to join Him in lifting this burden from the people.”
(“Are We Not All Beggars?” Ensign or Liahona, Nov. 2014, 40.)
