“Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.
Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth.”
Governments sometimes undertake infrastructure projects to address specfic problems, but those projects end up providing other benefits. For example, a road is upgraded to remove a specific bottleneck, the bottleneck is removed, but that also helps the community’s overall economy. The project ends up being a “twofer.”
We see something similar in Luke 3:2-14. God directed His people to undertake a spiritual infrastructure project. He told them to upgrade their individual relationships with Him by getting rid of things that had gotten between them and Him or that interfered with what He wanted for/from them. He did that by an analogy to a practice common in antiquity: improving roads to facilitate a king’s visit. The message was clear—these folks needed to deal with their sin on an individual, interior, basis.
Verses 9 through 14 describe the outward results of that interior change: treating others generously, fairly, righteously. That would benefit the community as a whole by meeting material needs and improving relationships.
In sum, the spiritual infrastructure improvement God directed—healed individual relationships with Him—would also produce real good for others. It would be a holy “twofer.”
That was not a one-time dynamic. It can and does happen today, whenever God’s folks truly, humbly, submit themselves to Him. That inevitably leads to changed conduct, conduct that benefits others in concrete ways.
Let me give you an example. A guy I know had been married for decades, but the marriage had atrophied. He remained faithful, but the joy had largely been replaced by obligation. My buddy noted that his examinations of conscience repeatedly revealed impatience with his wife. He also saw that his less than charitable attitude towards her interfered with what God wanted from him as a husband and father. God directed him to repent of that and to start loving his wife like Christ loves the Church, as mandated by Ephesians 5:25-29 and other scriptures. He worked hard to do that, primarily out of obedience to God. That not only reconciled him with God, it also returned joy to his marriage, benefitting him, his wife, and other family members in palpable ways. Another divine “twofer.”
The point is this: God, in His perfect love and knowledge, often brings multiple goods out of our obedience, blessing others with holy “twofers.” We are therefore wise to obey His instructions and take on the spiritual infrastructure projects He directs. We—and others—will be glad we did.
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