In Luke 3.23 we read that “Jesus began his work.” Interestingly, if you were to translate Luke’s writing directly from Greek to English, the most accurate rendering of the text would say: “Jesus beginning.” Obviously, that doesn’t make great sense grammatically, but it does make Luke’s intention very clear: he is connecting Jesus’ beginning to The Beginning by using the Greek word arche, which means “source” (and which Greek translators used to translate Genesis 1.1 from Hebrew to Greek).
Jesus Christ came to bring us a new genesis. This is a favorite theme within Luke’s gospel and within Paul’s theology. Luke was a gentile (non-Jewish) doctor, and by all accounts a student of Paul, the chief thinker and itinerant authority for the earliest followers of Christ after the resurrection.
Luke talks about “Jesus beginning” also at the end of his gospel (Luke 23.5), reminding us that it was always God’s intention for Christ’s work to act as a kind of new Creation. Luke then opens up the Book of Acts by reminding us that Jesus’ new beginning did not end with his death and resurrection but continues now through us, his church (see Acts 1.1).
What God started in Genesis, Jesus restarted in Luke.
Adapted from Dying For A Fix