Luke

Summary of the Book of Luke

Written: c. AD 60–80

Luke alone tells us his method. Writing to "most excellent Theophilus," he claims careful investigation of eyewitness testimony so his reader might know the certainty of what he was taught. Traditionally attributed to Luke the physician, Paul's traveling companion, this is the first volume of a two-part work continued in Acts, and the longest single book in the New Testament. Its opening chapters are unmatched: the interwoven births of John the Baptist and Jesus, and the songs of Mary, Zechariah, and Simeon that the church still sings.

Luke's Jesus announces his agenda in the Nazareth synagogue — anointed "to preach good news to the poor" — and the Gospel follows through. Here are the people the other Gospels pass more quickly: widows, Samaritans, tax collectors like Zacchaeus, sinful women, the thief on the cross. The parables unique to Luke — the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, the Rich Man and Lazarus, the Pharisee and the Tax Collector — carry the book's heart: "The Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost" (19:10). At 9:51 Jesus "set his face to go to Jerusalem," and ten chapters of travel narrative move under that shadow.

Prayer, the Holy Spirit, and joy thread the whole book, from Jesus praying at his baptism to the disciples returning to Jerusalem with great joy after the ascension. The resurrection chapter is distinctively Lukan: the walk to Emmaus, where the risen Jesus explains "in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself" — Luke's claim in miniature that the entire Old Testament converges on the crucified and risen Messiah, whose message must now go to all nations, the story Acts picks up.

Written to give Theophilus, and every reader, an ordered and investigated account establishing certainty that God's salvation in Jesus reaches the lost, the poor, and the nations.