And all the people that heard him, and the tax collectors, justified God, being baptized with the baptism of John.
All Commentaries on Luke 7:29 Go To Luke 7
Ambrose of Milan
AD 397
God is justified by baptism, wherein men justify themselves confessing their sins. For he that sins and confesses his sin to God justifies God, submitting himself to Him who overcomes, and hoping for grace from Him; God therefore is justified by baptism, in which there is confession and pardon of sin.
Let us not then despise (as the Pharisees did) the counsel of God, which is in the baptism of John, that is, the counsel which the Angel of great counsel searches out. No one despises the counsel of man Who then shall reject the counsel of God?.
But the prophets sung, repeating in spiritual strains their oracles of the common salvation; they wept, soothing with mournful dirges the hard hearts of the Jews. The songs were not sung in the market-place, norin the streets, but in Jerusalem. For that is the Lord's forum, in which the laws of His heavenly precepts are framed.
The Son of God is wisdom, by nature, not by growth, which is justified by baptism, when it is not rejected through obstinacy, but through righteousness is acknowledged the gift of God. Herein then is the justification of God, if he seems to transfer His gifts not to the unworthy and guilty, but to those who are through baptism holy and just.
He well says, ofall, for justice is reserved for all, that the faithful may be taken up, the unbelievers cast out.
