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Since many have undertaken to write a commentary on the Gospel of Luke, I too decided, after accepting an invitation from the editors of the New Covenant Commentary Series, to write an accessible explanation of this narrative on the life of Jesus for you, my dear readers. I hope this journey of discovery will be as enjoyable and edifying for you as it has been for me.

Alongside the authors of Matthew, Mark, and John, the third evangelist paints his distinctive portrait of Jesus while offering the added bonus of a sequel. The Acts of the Apostles carries the narrative beyond Jesus’ ascension into the burgeoning mission of the early church. It is useful to refer to the two documents, Luke and Acts, as Luke-Acts, despite their separation in the canonical ordering by the Gospel of John. Not only do Luke and Acts share the same author and identify Theophilus as the dedicatee (Luke 1:3; Acts 1:1), the mission of Jesus in the Gospel is continued by the apostles and the early church in its sequel. Many echoes of Luke are found in Acts. For example, the range of healings performed by Jesus is mirrored in the miracles of Peter and Paul. The motif of journeying is prominent in both books, with Jesus’ journey from Galilee to Jerusalem in Luke, and Paul’s many missionary journeys as well as his final voyage to Rome in Acts. Even though this commentary covers only the Gospel of Luke, it is helpful to maintain a forward glance to Acts when reading the Lukan narrative, knowing that the larger story extends beyond Luke 24, and, for that matter, even beyond Acts 28 to the many generations of Christians that follow.

This introduction briefly addresses items “behind” the narrative, such as matters of authorship, dating, place of writing, intended audience, genre, purpose, thematic elements, and the like. While some may find these discussions tedious and speculative, they remind us that this narrative, which Christians embrace as holy Scripture and inspired word of God, is a historical document written by a human author for an actual audience in a language and setting very different from our modern context. It behooves us therefore to exercise intellectual humility and prudence in our interpretation of these ancient words even as we believe that God continues to speak powerfully through them to us today. There are many ways to engage a scriptural text, but the strategy employed in this commentary emphasizes a historical and literary reading as a helpful starting point for interpretation.

Authorship

It may come as a surprise to some readers that the original autographs of the four Gospels no longer exist. All the ancient manuscripts and fragments thereof that we have of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are copies. In the earliest of these manuscripts the author is not explicitly named, rendering the four Gospels anonymous documents. The designations found in our English Bibles, “the Gospel of Luke” or “the Gospel according to Luke,” reflect traditional attributions. In many of the writings of the early church fathers, dated to the first few centuries CE, we find references to a person named Luke as the author of this account of the life of Jesus. Because this information does not come from within the narrative itself, we call these references “external evidence.”

One of the earliest manuscripts of the Gospel of Luke written on papyrus has a postscript that reads, “Gospel according to Luke.”1 Among the patristic writings of the early church fathers, we find attestations to a person named Luke as the author of this Gospel, who was a fellow-laborer and companion of Paul, a physician from Syrian Antioch, and the author of the Acts of the Apostles as well.2 In addition, the anonymous Anti-Marcionite Prologue for Luke states that the author was unmarried, had no children, and died in Boeotia at the age of eighty-four.3 Three Pauline letters in the NT mention a man named Luke, known to Paul’s readers as “the beloved physician” (Col 4:14), a companion of Paul (2 Tim 4:11), and a coworker of Paul (Phlm 24). In the book of Acts, there are segments in which the narrative switches to the use of the first person plural pronoun, suggesting that the author was with Paul when those events occurred (Acts 16:10–17; 20:5–15; 21:1–18; 27:1—28:16). Some interpreters view these so-called “we-passages” as evidence of the author’s knowledge of Paul, hence his ability to write extensively about Paul’s ministry in Acts.4 While it is possible that an initial erroneous attribution of the authorship to Luke was passed down from one generation of Christians to another, it seems more likely that the broad agreement of Lukan authorship across a wide range of ancient documents other than the NT has to do with the veracity of that attribution. Given that Luke-Acts constitutes a rather substantial piece of writing, it is unlikely that nobody in the early Christian movement knew who wrote it. Anonymous does not mean unknown.

It is not easy to determine whether Luke the physician was a Jew or a gentile. Even though one may deduce from Col 4:11 that the Luke mentioned in Col 4:14 could be a gentile, there is no indication in the writings of the patristic fathers to confirm it. Can the internal evidence, drawn from the Gospel itself, shed light on the ethnicity of the author whom we assume to be Luke the physician? From the prologue we note that the author was not an eyewitness to the ministries of Jesus (1:2). The sophistication of the Greek prose of Luke-Acts points to a highly educated individual, who was simultaneously at home in Greco-Roman culture and philosophy and well-versed in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures. This information, however, is not sufficient to draw firm conclusions about Luke’s ethnicity. He could have been a Jewish Christian of the Diaspora, a gentile who converted from paganism to the Christian faith, or a gentile God-fearer who had spent time exploring Judaism and its Scriptures before becoming a Christian (cf. Acts 10:35; 13:16, 26). A well-educated man in any of these categories could fit the profile. Even the universal outlook in Luke-Acts does not necessitate that the author be gentile.

In spite of the widely-accepted opinion that Luke the physician authored this Gospel, our inability to draw a definitive conclusion about the author begs the question of the importance of an irrefutable answer for understanding the book’s message. Put differently, does not knowing more about Luke beyond some general tidbits change our reading of the narrative as a credible presentation and sound interpretation of Jesus? The answer is, “No, not as far as the key theological message about God’s plan of salvation is concerned.” We believe that the transmitters of the Jesus traditions, from whom Luke gathered his materials, as well as Luke himself, remained faithful in passing on the teachings and actions of Jesus as truthfully and accurately as they knew how. Some uncertainty on the issue of authorship notwithstanding, the text of the Gospel of Luke, as we now have it, is trustworthy for faith and discipleship.

Reading the Gospel as Scripture is at its core a matter of trust. The reader has to trust Luke the historian, biographer, theologian, and Christ-follower. More importantly, the reader has to trust God’s intervention in the writing, transmission, and reading of this Gospel. The process by which the Holy Spirit connects the author, the text, and the reader for the latter’s formation and edification remains a mystery of faith. In this commentary, I will refer to the author as Luke, with the understanding that this identification, albeit an educated guess, comes with a considerable amount of credible circumstantial evidence.

Recipients, Dating, and Place of Writing

Ideally, information on Luke’s original readers and their situation would shed light on the impetus behind Luke’s writing and the interpretation of his message. Among the four evangelists, Luke was already the most specific in naming the person for whom he crafted his narrative—one “most excellent Theophilus” (1:3), a man of considerable standing in his community. Beyond the fact that Theophilus is a Greek name, hardly anything else is known of this person; his location, profession, and the reason for his elevated status remain opaque to us. Also, we cannot assume that Luke was located where Theophilus and his community of faith were at the time of writing. Guesses among scholars on the location of the author and his original audience cover a wide geographical area, from Syrian Antioch, Ephesus, Philippi, Corinth, to Rome.5 From the letters of Paul, we note that these are all cities where Christian communities were operational in the first century CE.

Even though there is only one specifically named dedicatee, Luke’s narrative would have been read by more than Theophilus alone. A wider circle of followers of Jesus, perhaps the faith community of which Theophilus was part, would have listened to a public reading of Jesus’ story. Given the content of Luke-Acts, the sophisticated Greek prose, and the direction in which the gospel was spread from Palestine to the larger Greco-Roman world in the first few decades of the early church, one may surmise that Luke’s audience consisted mainly of urban gentile Christians, though Christian communities across the Roman Empire would have had a mix of Jewish and gentile believers in differing proportions.

The challenge of dating the Gospel of Luke is bound up with at least three considerations: the dating of the Gospel of Mark, the dating of the Acts of the Apostles, and the interpretation of the description of the fall of Jerusalem within the narrative. First, since Mark is widely accepted to be one of Luke’s sources, Luke must post-date Mark. Second, since the opening line in Acts refers to the Gospel of Luke as “the first book” (Acts 1:1), Luke must predate Acts, whether by a little or a lot. Third, the description of Jesus’ judgment on Jerusalem (19:43–44; 21:20–24; cf. 13:34–35) seems very similar to how Jerusalem was conquered by the Romans in the First Jewish Revolt. One wonders if what actually happened was written back into the predictions of Jesus. If so, the Gospel of Luke would have had to be composed after 70 CE. Given that there is no mention of the fall of Jerusalem in Acts, and that Acts concludes not with the death of Paul but with his house arrest in Rome, some scholars place the dating of Luke to the early 60s. Most are content with situating the Gospel of Luke within the two decades after the fall of Jerusalem, somewhere between 70 and 90 CE.6 The outer edges of scholarly guesses put the Gospel as early as the 60s and as late as the first part of the second century.7 It is difficult to be precise with the when and where of writing because so little information is available on either Luke or Theophilus.

Genre

Understanding the genre of a piece of writing allows us to read it cooperatively and intelligently. How we read a letter is different from a newspaper editorial or, for that matter, a tabloid we pick up while waiting in a supermarket check-out line. At first glance, the Gospel of Luke is a narrative, within which specific portions are given to other genres such as prologue, poetry, genealogy, and parable, just to name a few. Narrative, however, is still too broad a genre. Fable and fiction are narrative in form, but neither fits what we read in Luke. “Gospel” is not in and of itself a genre, at least not among secular Greco-Roman writings of the time. The word “gospel,” which means “good news” in the Greek (euangelion), describes the content of the narrative rather than its literary form. The good news is about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.8 Subsequently, this particular message of salvation comes to be known as “the gospel,” lending a more technical meaning to the word euangelion in Christian parlance.9

How, then, do we classify the genre of the third Gospel? Comparing Luke to other ancient writings in form and content, the most relevant correspondence is that of ancient historiography.10 Since the focus of the narrative is on the life of Jesus, it may be more fitting to call it biography than historiography.

Some characteristics of ancient biographies, such as Plutarch’s Lives or Suetonius’s The Twelve Caesars, may be found in the Gospel of Luke. For example, ancient biographies tend to be less concerned about chronological exactitude, something to which modern biographies are held accountable. In Luke’s Gospel, the general chronology of Jesus’ life is rather non-negotiable: for example, the infancy narrative must come before Jesus’ adult baptism and temptations, followed by his Galilean ministry. At some point Jesus heads for Jerusalem where he is crucified, buried, raised, and then he ascends into heaven. This overall framework of Jesus’ chronology, including major milestones of Jesus’ life, is fixed. But in between key events, the author has some freedom in the detailed ordering of the accounts of Jesus’ teachings and healings. Given how the traditions of Jesus were passed down in bits and pieces in oral and written forms through multiple channels over a span of decades, it would be unrealistic to expect Luke to present the sequence of events in exact chronological order. Using the order of Mark’s story as a point of departure,11 Luke sometimes steps out of Mark’s ordering, rearranges it for a better narrative flow and inserts materials from other sources. This redactional freedom does not make Luke a more credible or less credible historian than Mark. Furthermore, this editorial necessity was not unique to Luke, as Matthew, Mark, and John faced similar challenges.

Another similarity between ancient biography and the Gospel of Luke is a heavy focus on the subject’s ideas, words, deeds, and the way in which the person dies, especially in the case of a heroic death. Much of Luke’s story contains Jesus’ teachings, miracles, healings, and exorcisms. Through Jesus’ encounters with the crowd, his disciples, his family, and his enemies, the storytelling discloses the identity and mission of Jesus. In particular, the death of Jesus and its significance receive much emphasis. The passion narrative, from Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem to his resurrection and ascension, covers twenty percent of the entire book.

Aside from Luke being a historian qua biographer, the interpretive lens through which he filters his historical account about Jesus is first and foremost theological. As stated in the prologue, Luke writes in order that Theophilus might “know the truth concerning the things about which [he had] been instructed” (1:4), a truth embedded in “the events that had been fulfilled among [them]” (1:1). This truth is about God and God’s actions in human history, which leads us to the following section on several prominent themes found in the Gospel that reflect the author’s purpose and agenda.

Purpose and Themes

In the opening prologue of his long narrative, Luke does not denigrate the contributions of his predecessors as inadequate or inaccurate. His goal is not to improve on others’ stories about Jesus, nor to generate new converts, but to bring edification and spiritual nurture to his readers who are already Christians. Even though anyone may be led to faith in Jesus from reading the Gospel of Luke, this work is not an evangelistic tract but a means to strengthen the faith of Theophilus and his community.

Without knowing with precision the date and place of writing of the Gospel of Luke, we could only take an educated guess at the challenges faced by Christians living in urban areas across the Roman Empire in the first century, and how Luke-Acts would be an encouragement to them. At that time, Jewish and gentile Christians alike would feel pressure coming externally from unbelieving Jews and unbelieving gentiles, as well as internally from fellow Christians as they struggled to cross racial-ethnic barriers to live peaceably with one another in their shared reality as equal members of God’s household. In light of these points of tension, Luke’s presentation of Jesus’ salvific mission as the fulfillment of God’s promises to Israel would connect the Christian movement to its Jewish roots. His universal outlook, noticeable already in the Gospel but further developed in Acts, would maintain that God’s plan of salvation is ultimately for the whole world even if it came first to the Jews. Luke thus uses his narrative to assure Theophilus and his community, wherever they might be, that what they have learned about Jesus is true and trustworthy, and that they must stay firm in their bold witness and faithful discipleship in spite of persecution and rejection.

What then is characteristic of Luke’s Gospel, given that it shares quite a bit of common traditions with at least two of the three other Gospels?12 We find materials that are peculiar to Luke but not found in Matthew and Mark especially helpful in identifying a Lukan distinctiveness. While space does not permit an exhaustive treatment of Luke’s emphases in this short introduction, it is helpful to consider the following themes that can be traced from the Gospel of Luke all the way into the Acts of the Apostles.

First, the story of Jesus is the centerpiece of the plan of salvation ordained by the sovereign God, a plan that began with Israel but is intended for the nations. The Gospel opens with Gabriel’s appearance to Zechariah at the temple in Jerusalem and concludes with the disciples worshiping at the same temple. Between these bookends, Jesus carries out his mission among the Jewish people with occasional forays into gentile territory. Yet hints of the universality of this divine plan may be detected early in Luke’s narrative. Holding Jesus in his arms, Simeon refers to the infant as God’s salvation, “a light for revelation to the gentiles and for glory to [God’s] people Israel” (2:32). Citing from Isaiah, the author then identifies John the Baptist as the voice crying out in the wilderness to prepare the way of the Lord, so that “all flesh shall see the salvation of God” (3:4–6). While Acts also opens with the disciples waiting in Jerusalem for the outpouring of Holy Spirit, by the end of Acts, we find Paul under house arrest in Rome. Throughout the book, the apostles bear witness to the gospel, according to Jesus’ charge, “from Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Because everything that happened to Jesus, even his suffering and death, is part of God’s sovereign plan (Acts 2:23; 4:38), Theophilus and his community, as well as later generations of Christians, can read the Gospel of Luke with hope.

Second is Luke’s realized eschatology, his message that in Jesus’ coming God’s future salvation has impinged upon the present. Those who believe in Jesus experience the relationships and ethics of the kingdom of God now even as its final consummation lies in the future. Eternal salvation is not effected only through the death, resurrection, and exaltation of Jesus. Even during his earthly ministry, Jesus brings release from bondage and reversal of conditions to those who repent and humbly receive the gift of salvation. Jesus’ direct ministry to those around him is salvific in the eschatological sense, as the poor receive the good news of God’s kingdom, the captives and the oppressed are set free, the blind see, the lame walk, the deaf hear, the lepers are cleansed, and even the dead are raised (4:18–19; 7:22). Because Jesus embodies the saving power of God both in life and in death, the theological use of the word “today (sēmeron)” in Luke connotes both the immediacy of God’s salvation through Jesus and the urgency of its proclamation (2:11; 4:21; 19:9; 23:43).

Third, and consonant with the theme of reversal, the Lukan narrative puts a heavy emphasis on the faith and humility of those with low status in their openness to the good news of Jesus. Tax collectors, sinners, gentiles, Samaritans, women, children, the sick, the handicapped, and the demon-possessed are recipients of Jesus’ healing touch and acceptance.13 By contrast, the religious leaders who criticize Jesus for breaking Sabbath and purity laws while bringing people to wholeness are indicted for their self-righteousness (5:31–32; 11:42). This emphasis on lifting up the lowly and putting the proud in their place is also apparent among the many parables of Jesus found only in Luke. These include stories such as the two debtors (7:41–43), the good Samaritan (10:25–37), the lost sons (15:11–32), the rich man and Lazarus (16:19–31), the widow and the unjust judge (18:1–8), and the Pharisee and the tax collector (18:9–14). It is no wonder that this Gospel is deeply embraced by liberationist theologians and communities that identify with the oppressed and the underdogs in various times and places.

Fourth, a journey motif cuts across Luke-Acts. The saving plan of God is always in motion, seen in the lives and proclamation of Jesus’ disciples. From the very beginning, Mary travels south to visit Elizabeth. The two women, both with child, confirm that God is about to fulfill his promise to Israel (1:39–45). Nine months later, Joseph and Mary travel from Nazareth to Judea. Even though the couple embark on that journey to comply with the edict of Caesar, the emperor’s oppressive act of census-taking becomes an unwitting instrument to situate the Messiah’s birthplace in Bethlehem in fulfillment of the words of the prophet Micah (2:1–7; cf. Mic 5:2). Throughout the narrative, Jesus conducts an itinerant ministry around Galilee, moving from one town to another to preach the good news (4:14–15, 43–44). Twice, he sends his disciples to do likewise (9:1–6; 10:1–12). Most distinctively, however, is the large section from 9:51—19:27, commonly known as the “travel narrative,” which begins with Jesus setting his face toward Jerusalem and ends right before his entry into the city. On the one hand, these chapters cover a physical journey, as Jesus and his entourage make their way from Galilee to Judea where Jesus will meet his destiny.14 On the other hand, this section is replete with teaching materials concerning the path of discipleship, addressing topics from prayer and money to repentance and judgment. After the death and resurrection of Jesus, the final chapter of Luke contains one more important journey to and from Emmaus. On this journey two disciples leave Jerusalem in despair and return with great joy and insight, having traveled and shared table with the risen Christ (24:13–33). The twin themes of the dynamic movement of the gospel and the notion of journey as discipleship continue into Luke’s second volume. Known as “the Way,”15 the early Christian movement is shown in Acts to take the good news of salvation out of Jerusalem and Judea into Samaria, Phoenicia, Syria, Cyprus, Asia Minor, Macedonia, Achaia (Greece), and Rome.

Beyond these key themes, others, such as God’s fatherhood, Luke’s prophetic portrayal of Jesus, the importance of prayer, the proper use of wealth, and the call for perseverance are also worthy of attention when reading the Lukan narrative. The more familiar we are with the individual vignettes and how they contribute to the overall flow of this long book, the better equipped we are in finding those delightful nuggets of rhetorical and theological truths that the author has artfully woven into the narrative. As we invest time and energy into the meaning of the text, may we also sit with prayerful hearts ready to receive the instruction and convictions of the Holy Spirit. Welcome aboard this journey through the Gospel of Luke.

1. P75, dated to 200 CE.

2. See Clement of Alexandria (second century) Strom. 5.12; Irenaeus (second century) Haer. 3.1.1; 3.14.1; Tertullian (second/third century) Marc. 4.2.2; 4.2.5; 4.5.3; Eusebius (third/fourth century) Hist. eccl. 3.4.6; Jerome (fourth/fifth century) Vir. ill. 7.1.

3. The Prologue to Luke within the Anti-Marcionite Prologues is dated to the second half of the second century (Koester 1992: 335).

4. Hagner 2012: 246; Edwards 2015: 6.

5. Marshall 1978: 35; Edwards 2015: 12–13.

6. Marshall 1978: 34–35; Edwards 2015: 11–12.

7. Carroll 2012: 4.

8. In the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, the verb euangelizō is found in contexts that speak of God’s salvation, e.g., Pss 11:1; 95:2; Isa 49:2; 52:7; Joel 3:5.

9. E.g., Matt 4:23; Mark 1:14; Rom 1:1; Rev 14:6. This term is used in Acts (15:7; 20:24) but not in Luke.

10. Green 1997: 2–6; Carroll 2012: 5–6.

11. E.g., Mark 1:14—3:19//Luke 4:14—6:16; Mark 11:27—13:32//Luke 20:1—21:33.

12. With the majority of NT scholars, I subscribe to both Markan priority and the four-document hypothesis to account for the literary relationship between the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke). First, Mark is the earliest of the four canonical Gospels. Second, both Matthew and Luke used Mark and Q as their sources. Q, a hypothetical source, contains the sayings of Jesus common to both Matthew and Luke. Third, all remaining materials found only in Matthew is attributed to the M source, and those found only in Luke, to the L source. In short, these four documents (Mark, Q, M, and L), together explain how Matthew, Mark, and Luke can have overlapping materials but are not identical in order and detail.

13. E.g., 4:33–35; 5:17–26, 29–32; 7:11–15, 36–50; 17:11–19; 18:15–17, 35–43.

14. Even so, the name places in these stories, if plotted out on a map, show a rather meandering itinerary. The point is not to track Jesus’ geographical progress from town to town but to show a deliberate movement toward the climax of his mission.

15. E.g., Acts 9:2; 18:25–26; 19:9, 23; 22:4; 24:14, 22.