Luke 12:17

12:17 so ¹  he thought to himself, ²  ‘What should I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ ³ 

Luke 3:8

3:8 Therefore produce ⁴  fruit ⁵  that proves your repentance, and don’t begin to say ⁶  to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ ⁷  For I tell you that God can raise up children for Abraham from these stones! ⁸ 

[12:17]  ¹ tn Here καί (kai) has been translated as “so” to indicate that this is a result of the preceding statement.

[12:17]  ² tn Grk “to himself, saying.” The participle λέγων (legwn) is redundant in contemporary English and has not been translated here.

[12:17]  ³ sn I have nowhere to store my crops. The thinking here is prudent in terms of recognizing the problem. The issue in the parable will be the rich man’s solution, particularly the arrogance reflected in v. 19.

[3:8]  ⁴ tn The verb here is ποιέω (poiew; see v. 4).

[3:8]  ⁵ tn Grk “fruits.” The plural Greek term καρπούς has been translated with the collective singular “fruit” (so NIV; cf. Matt 3:8 where the singular καρπός is found). Some other translations render the plural καρπούς as “fruits” (e.g., NRSV, NASB, NAB, NKJV).

[3:8]  ⁶ tn In other words, “do not even begin to think this.”

[3:8]  ⁷ sn We have Abraham as our father. John’s warning to the crowds really assumes two things: (1) A number of John’s listeners apparently believed that simply by their physical descent from Abraham, they were certain heirs of the promises made to the patriarch, and (2) God would never judge his covenant people lest he inadvertently place the fulfillment of his promises in jeopardy. In light of this, John tells these people two things: (1) they need to repent and produce fruit in keeping with repentance, for only that saves from the coming wrath, and (2) God will raise up “children for Abraham from these stones” if he wants to. Their disobedience will not threaten the realization of God’s sovereign purposes.

[3:8]  ⁸ sn The point of the statement God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham is that ancestry or association with a tradition tied to the great founder of the Jewish nation is not an automatic source of salvation.