at all. (4) He has a habit of giving Hebrew words in their Greek equivalent so that a Greek would understand. Simon the Cananaean becomes Simon the Zealot (cf. Luke 6:15; Matthew 10:4). Calvary is called not by its Hebrew name, Golgotha, but by its Greek name, Kranion. Both mean the place of a skull. He never uses the Jewish term Rabbi of Jesus but always a Greek word meaning Master. When he is tracing the descent of Jesus, he traces it not to Abraham, the founder of the Jewish race, as Matthew does, but to Adam, the founder of the human race (cf. Matthew 1:2; Luke 3:38).
Because of this Luke is the easiest of all the gospels to read. He was writing, not for Jews, but for people very like ourselves.
The Gospel of Prayer
Luke’s gospel is specially the gospel of prayer. At all the great moments of his life, Luke shows us Jesus at prayer. He prayed at his baptism (3:21); before his first collision with the Pharisees (5:16); before he chose the Twelve (6:12); before he questioned his disciples as to who they thought he was; before his first prediction of his own death (9:18); at the transfiguration (9:29); and upon the cross (23:46). Only Luke tells us that Jesus prayed for Peter in his hour of testing (22:32). Only he tells us the prayer parables of the friend at midnight (11:5–13) and the unjust judge (18:1–8). To Luke the unclosed door of prayer was one of the most precious in all the world.
The Gospel of Women
In Palestine the place of women was low. In the Jewish morning prayer a man thanks God that he has not made him ‘a Gentile, a slave or a woman’. But Luke gives a very special place to women. The birth narrative is told from Mary’s point of view. It is in Luke that we read of Elizabeth, of Anna, of the widow at Nain, of the woman who anointed Jesus’ feet in the house of Simon the Pharisee. It is Luke who makes vivid the pictures of Martha and Mary and of Mary Magdalene. It is very likely that Luke was a native of Macedonia where women held a more emancipated position than anywhere else; and that may have something to do with it.
The Gospel of Praise
In Luke the phrase praising God occurs oftener than in all the rest of the New Testament put together. This praise reaches its peak in the three great hymns that the Church has sung throughout all her generations – the Magnificat (1:46–55), the Benedictus (1:68–79) and the Nunc Dimittis (2:29–32). There is a radiance in Luke’s gospel which is a lovely thing, as if the sheen of heaven had touched the things of earth.
The Universal Gospel
But the outstanding characteristic of Luke is that it is the universal gospel. All the barriers are down; Jesus Christ is for all people without distinction.
(a) The kingdom of heaven is not shut to the Samaritans (9:51–6). Luke alone tells the parable of the Good Samaritan (10:30–7). The one grateful leper is a Samaritan (17:11–19). John can record a saying that the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans (John 4:9). But Luke refuses to shut the door on anyone.
(b) Luke shows Jesus speaking with approval of Gentiles whom an orthodox Jew would have considered unclean. He shows us Jesus citing the widow of Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian as shining examples (4:25–7). The Roman centurion is praised for the greatness of his faith (7:9). Luke tells us of that great word of Jesus, ‘People will come from east and west, from north and south, and will eat in the kingdom of God’ (13:29).
(c) Luke is supremely interested in the poor. When Mary brings the offering for her purification it is the offering of the poor (2:24). When Jesus is, as it were, setting out his credentials to the emissaries of John, the climax is, ‘The poor have good news brought to them’ (7:22). He alone tells the parable of the rich man and the poor man (16:19–31). In Luke’s account of the beatitudes the saying of Jesus runs, not, as in Matthew (5:3), ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit’, but simply, ‘Blessed are you who are poor’ (Luke 6:20). Luke’s gospel has been called ‘the gospel of the underdog’. His heart runs out to everyone for whom life is an unequal struggle.
(d) Above all Luke shows Jesus as the friend of outcasts and sinners. He alone tells of the woman who anointed Jesus’ feet and bathed them with her tears and wiped them with her hair in the house of Simon the Pharisee (7:36–50); of Zachaeus, the despised tax-gatherer (19:1–10); of the penitent thief (23:43); and he alone has the immortal story of the prodigal son and the loving father (15:11–32). When Matthew tells how Jesus sent his disciples out to preach, he says that Jesus told them not to go to the Samaritans or the Gentiles (Matthew 10:5); but Luke omits that altogether. All four gospel writers quote from Isaiah 40 when they give the message of John the Baptist, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God’; but only Luke continues the quotation to its triumphant conclusion, ‘And all flesh shall see the salvation of God’ (Isaiah 40:3–5; Matthew 3:3; Mark 1:3; John 1:23; Luke 3:4, 6). Luke of all the gospel writers sees no limits to the love of God.
The Book Beautiful
As we study this book we must look for these characteristics. Somehow of all the gospel writers one would have liked to meet Luke best of all, for this Gentile doctor with the tremendous vision of the infinite sweep of the love of God must have been a lovely individual. F. W. Faber wrote the lines:
There’s a wideness in God’s mercy,
Like the wideness of the sea;
There’s a kindness in his justice,
Which is more than liberty.
For the love of God is broader
Than the measures of man’s mind;
And the heart of the Eternal
Is most wonderfully kind.
Luke’s gospel is the demonstration that this is true.
A HISTORIAN’S INTRODUCTION
LUKE
Luke 1:1–4
Since many have set their hands to the task of drawing up an account of the events which were completed among us, telling the story just as those who were the original eyewitnesses and who became the servants of the word handed it down to us, I too made up my mind to carry out a careful investigation of all things from the beginning, and to write to you, Theophilus, your excellency, an orderly account of them, so that you might have in your mind a full and reliable account of the things in which you have been instructed.
LUKE’S introduction is unique in the first three gospels because it is the only place where the author steps out upon the stage and uses the pronoun ‘I’. There are three things to note in this passage.
(1) It is the best bit of Greek in the New Testament. Luke uses here the very form of introduction which the great Greek historians all used. Herodotus begins, ‘These are the researches of Herodotus of Halicarnassus.’ A much later historian, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, tells us at the beginning of his history, ‘Before beginning to write I gathered information, partly from the lips of the most learned men with whom I came into contact, and partly from histories written by Romans of whom they spoke with praise.’ So Luke, as he began his story in the most sonorous Greek, followed the highest models he could find.
It is as if Luke said to himself, ‘I am writing the greatest story in the world and nothing but the best is good enough for it.’
