Luke and His Gospel: Getting Started

(Luke 1:1–4)

History and story—these are the basic hallmarks of the Gospel of Luke. The writer gives us history, what really happened in the past, but he tells it as a story—in fact, as the story of stories, the story that matters more than all others. It’s the historical story of Jesus, and like all good stories, it includes a cast of characters, all of whom are just as real as Jesus: for example, Mary and Joseph, Elizabeth and Zechariah, King Herod, a prophet named John, Jesus’ disciples, and religious leaders such as the Pharisees and Sadducees. Luke tells about good angels and demons, healings and parables, discussions and refutations, prophetic pronouncements, betrayals, trials, and executions. And the writer ends the story with a resurrection and an ascension, events that open to the rest of the story—the other part of the story that the writer tells in his follow-up book, the Acts of the Apostles. Throughout his Gospel, however, the central figure is the man Jesus, who, the writer maintains, is God’s Son in the flesh. And that’s the most remarkable, life-changing event in human history. Truly the story of all stories, the historical fact of all facts.

The Writer’s Identity

The Gospel of Luke is the third of four Gospels, the others being Matthew, Mark, and John.

The earliest testimonies we have unanimously name Luke as the writer of the third Gospel book. The Gospel itself doesn’t mention who its writer is, but early church leaders, such as Irenaeus (late second century), Clement of Alexandria (ca. 155–220), Origen (ca. 185–254), and Tertullian (ca. 160/70–215/20), specify that the author is Luke and that he also wrote the Acts of the Apostles. Even the heretic Marcion (ca. 135) named Luke as the writer of the third Gospel. Following such testimony, the church’s tradition never wavered that Luke was the author of the third Gospel and that he was also the one who wrote Acts.

So what do we know about Luke the man?

As the author of Acts, he humbly mentions a time when he was traveling with the apostle Paul. Luke doesn’t name himself, but the language changes from talking as a historian about Paul and his travels by using the third person voice (“they”) to talking as a participant, a fellow traveler, using the second person voice “we” (Acts 16:10–17; 20:5–15; 21:1–18; 27:1–28:16). And Paul verifies Luke’s companionship in his travels as well as mentioning Luke’s medical vocation (Colossians 4:14; Philemon 24; 2 Timothy 4:11). As a physician and one of Paul’s occasional traveling companions, Luke would have cared for the apostle’s health needs. One scholar states that Luke was “Paul’s medical adviser, and doubtless prolonged his life and rescued him from many a serious illness.”4

•Discover more about Dr. Luke by reading the opening paragraph of the section titled “Author and Audience” in The Passion Translation’s introduction to the Gospel of Luke. Summarize what you find there about this early Christian.

We don’t know much about the man Luke. We do, however, know quite a bit about the writing he produced. He left us with the Gospel that bears his name and the follow-up book of Acts. Bible scholar Joseph Fitzmeyer wrote: “[Luke] was a perceptive, sensitive writer with a knack for telling a story and depicting a scene, and his Gospel has been described as ‘the most beautiful book’ ever written. His two books constitute the earliest history of the Christian church.”5

Luke’s vocabulary is extensive. Although he shares a good deal of his subject matter with Mark and Matthew, he “uses 266 words (other than proper names) which are not found elsewhere in the New Testament.”6 Another New Testament scholar points out that “Luke was a Greek who had the ‘native instinct’ not only to write well but to vary his style scene by scene…His writings are generally held to be superb in style and structure.”7

So while we have little information about the human author, his writings tell us that he was a first-rate wordsmith and storyteller, and his attention to detail and historical accuracy tell us that he was a master historian. In fact, scholar William Ramsay, who went into his studies of Luke assuming that the writer was not a good historian, came to the conclusion that “Luke’s history is unsurpassed in respect of its trustworthiness.” He also said about Luke: “No writer is correct by mere chance, or accurate sporadically. He is accurate by virtue of a certain habit of mind,” and this accuracy is “produced by his moral and intellectual character.”8 Luke shows through his writings that, intellectually, he was astute, and morally, he was a faithful member of the Way—a name that became attached to the Christian movement very early in its history.

•What about the man Luke do you identify with?

•Luke was not an eyewitness of the events he records in his Gospel (Luke 1:1–4). This made him a second-generation Christian writing about the believers in Jesus who came first. What advantages, if any, do you think this gave him in the writing of his book?

Luke’s Audience, Purpose, and Date

Luke opens his Gospel unlike any of the other three Gospels in the New Testament.

•Read Luke 1:1–4 and study note ‘a’ in TPT, then answer the following questions:

Whom did Luke address as the first recipient(s) of his Gospel?

Did Luke know of other biographies of Jesus? Support your answer.

Why did Luke choose to write his account of Jesus’ life?

On what resources did he base his Gospel? Why do such resources matter in the writing of history, especially the history of a person’s life?

•Now compare Luke’s opening verses with those of the other three Gospels. How does his opener differ from that of Matthew’s, Mark’s, and John’s?

Matthew 1:1–17

Mark 1:1

John 1:1–5

In TPT, the phrase “mighty lover of God” gets at the heart of the Greek word Theophilus, the original recipient of Luke’s Gospel (Luke 1:1). Much speculation has developed over the identity of Theophilus, for he is mentioned just twice in the New Testament (the other place is in Acts 1:1), and in both instances, Luke provides little information about him. All we know for certain is his name and what it means. This has led some scholars to wonder whether there ever was an individual named Theophilus. Perhaps Luke just meant to write his Gospel to anyone who identified as a lover or friend of God, especially those “non-Jewish lovers of God who may have felt out of place in the originally Jewish” side of the Christian movement.9

Whoever the original audience was, Luke strives to give them verified information about Jesus in the form of “an orderly account of what Jesus accomplished and fulfilled among us.” Luke refers to his Gospel as an “accurate compilation of my own meticulous investigation based on numerous eyewitness interviews.” His goal is to reassure his readers that what they had been taught about Jesus was true and trustworthy (Luke 1:1–4; cf. Acts 1:1).

•Are you at a point in your life when you could use some reassurances about what you have learned about Jesus and his teachings? This Bible study on Luke’s Gospel could help meet this need. Take some time to ask God to use this study to accomplish that for you and to meet other needs that arise as a result of learning and applying Luke’s Gospel.

Determining the time when Luke wrote his Gospel is based largely on Acts and what that book does and does not record. The opening words of Luke and Acts imply an order, with Luke as the first book and Acts the second one.

•Review Luke 1:1–4 and Acts 1:1. What do you find there that would indicate that Acts was written after Luke and not before it?

Also, the book of Acts does not mention several events that had a major impact on the early church—events that Luke would likely have mentioned if he had not yet concluded writing Acts. These omitted events include the following:

•In the spring of AD 62, the Jewish ruling body, the Sanhedrin, put to death James, the Lord’s brother, without securing the permission of Roman authorities.

•In 64, the Roman emperor Nero brought cruel and controversial atrocities upon Christians in the city of Rome and its surrounding districts.

•Between 64 and 68, the apostles Peter and Paul were executed in Rome under the emperor Nero’s reign.

•The Zealots, a Jewish party who worked to purge Israel of its Roman overlords, led an armed revolt against the Romans from 66 to 73. The church historian Eusebius (ca. 265–339) records a tradition that, before the war against Rome began, “believers had been warned through a prophetic utterance to flee from Jerusalem to the city of Pella in Perea…Perhaps some Jerusalem believers remembered the words of Jesus (Matt. 24:15–16 [parallels Mark 13:14; Luke 21:20–21]): ‘So when you see standing in the holy place “the abomination...