22 Jan 2024

The church embarked on studying the Gospel of Luke in the series of sermons preached, and in Bible studies in the disciples’ groups.

I am reminded that each book of the Bible has its own agenda and purpose; it was both inspired and preserved by the Holy Spirit to provide a particular revelation of the character and works of God, which none of the other 65 books does in quite the same way. There is both a unity and a differentiation between the books which make up God’s self-revelation.

When it comes to the Gospel of Luke, there are certain helpful things to remember: Luke is the first volume of two volumes written by him, the second being Acts; the first volume tells how the salvation promised to Israel was realised through the birth, life, passion, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. The second volume tells how appointed witnesses proclaimed this salvation in Jerusalem, Samaria, and even wider circles, so that the word of God grew and even Gentiles became participants in that salvation.
There is interrelatedness between the first three Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke); the Gospel of John stands in a class by itself. The similarity among the three is so pronounced that Matthew, Mark and Luke have been grouped as the “Synoptic” Gospels. They may be set side by side and “viewed together” in a comparative way.

Luke adopted the geographical structure of the Gospel of Mark as the basic pattern to is own Gospel. His narration of the life of Jesus contains, as did Mark’s Gospel, an early period of ministry in Galilee and a later, shorter ministry in Jerusalem, when Jesus executed and resurrected.
Luke added to the beginning of the story structure that he found in the Gospel of Mark the conception traditions of John the Baptist and of Jesus; and the John the Baptise infancy stories (chapter 1), the infancy and nativity narratives of Jesus, and his genealogy (chapter 2 and 3). He also expanded Mark’s conclusion to include post-resurrection appearance (Luke 4:13-53).
The most obvious alteration to Mark’s structure appears with the journey account. In Mark the transition journey that takes Jesus from the region of Galilee to Jerusalem is described in a little over one chapter; Luke stretched his version of that journey narrative over almost ten chapters (Luke 9:51-19:40). This expansion enabled Luke to include a great amount of additional teaching material that is not in Mark.

We need to take note that behind the human authors in each book of the Bible is the one divine mind, inspiring, shaping, and verbalising the truth. Yet the Holy Spirit’s activity in inspiration does not over-ride or sublimated the individuality of the human authors, and they each write from their own particular point in history, along the line of progressive revelation, and with their own characteristic style and vocabulary.

There is another important ingredient in the opening of the Gospel of Luke (and Matthew as well) and that is the climax of the Old Testament Story – we can only understand the person who is the subject of the book if we take into account all that has preceded him. We may have to refer back to the Old Testament part of the story of God’s loving purpose for the human race (and Israel) to understand what Luke (and for that matter Matthew) will present to us as the climax of this process.

The Gospel presents, in a sense, a two-way conversation between itself and the Old Testament, in which we understand Christ in the light of Old Testament prophecy but also that prophecy in the light of Christ, because he is its fulfilment.