Luke

What Luke is about

Luke is the only Gospel that opens by explaining itself. The author says that many have undertaken to compile accounts, that he has followed everything closely from the beginning, and that he is writing an orderly account for Theophilus so that he may have certainty about what he has been taught. It is the nearest thing in the Gospels to a historian’s preface, and it sets the tone: this is a careful book.

It is also the most attentive to people on the edges. Luke’s birth narrative is told largely through women — Elizabeth, Mary, Anna — and Mary’s song announces a God who brings down the mighty and lifts up the lowly before her child is born. The shepherds hear the announcement first. Throughout the Gospel, tax collectors, Samaritans, lepers, widows, and the poor keep occupying the centre of the frame, and the parables unique to Luke are among the most beloved in scripture: the good Samaritan, the prodigal son, the rich man and Lazarus, the persistent widow.

Luke also notices prayer more than the other Gospels — Jesus is repeatedly shown withdrawing to pray at the turning points — and joy, which breaks out at the birth, at the return of the seventy, at a found sheep, a found coin, and a found son.

The last chapter contains the walk to Emmaus, where the risen Jesus explains from Moses and all the prophets the things concerning himself, and is recognised in the breaking of bread.

Where it sits in the story

Luke is volume one of a two-part work; Acts is volume two, addressed to the same Theophilus and picking up exactly where the Gospel stops. Reading them back to back is the way they were meant to be taken, and it turns the resurrection and Pentecost into one continuous movement.

Luke is the longest book in the New Testament, and with Acts, its author contributed more of it than anyone else.

Why it is worth reading

Because it is the Gospel for people who want to know whether this actually happened, and the Gospel for people who suspect they are not the sort the good news is aimed at. Luke answers both, at length and with unusual warmth.