Text -- Luke 4:31 (NET)

Ministry in Capernaum

4:31 So he went down to Capernaum, a town in Galilee, and on the Sabbath he began to teach the people.

Commentary -- Word/Phrase Notes (per phrase)

Robertson: Luk 4:31

Came down ( katēlthen ).

Mar 1:21 has the historical present, they go into (eisporeuontai ). Capernaum (Tell Hum) is now the headquarters of the Galilean ministry, since Nazareth has rejected Jesus. Luk 4:31-37 is parallel with Mar 1:21-28 which he manifestly uses. It is the first of Christ’ s miracles which they give.

Robertson: Luk 4:31

Was teaching them ( ēn didaskōn autous ).

Periphrastic imperfect. Mark has edidasken first and then en didaskōn . "Them"here means the people present in the synagogue on the sabbath, construction according to sense as in Mar 1:22.||

Vincent: Luk 4:31

Taught ( ἠν διδάσκων )

Correctly, as Rev., was teaching. The finite verb and participle denoting continuance.

Vincent: Luk 4:31

On the Sabbath-days ( τοῖς σάββασιν )

Rev., day. The word is often used in the plural form for the single day, as in Luk 4:16; probably after the analogy of plural names of festivals, as τὰ ἄζυμα , the feast of unleavened bread; τὰ γενέσια , the birth-day; or perhaps following the Aramaic plural.

Wesley: Luk 4:31

And dwelt there, entirely quitting his abode at Nazareth. Mar 1:21.

JFB: Luk 4:31

It lay on the Sea of Galilee (Mat 4:13), whereas Nazareth lay high.

Clarke: Luk 4:31

Came down to Capernaum - Which it is likely he made his ordinary place of residence from this time. See on Mat 4:13 (note).

TSK: Luk 4:31

came : Mat 4:13; Mar 1:21

taught : Mat 10:23; Act 13:50-52, Act 14:1, Act 14:2, Act 14:6, Act 14:7, Act 14:19-21, Act 17:1-3, Act 17:10,Act 17:11, Act 17:16, Act 17:17, Act 18:4; Act 20:1, Act 20:2, Act 20:23, Act 20:24

Commentary -- Word/Phrase Notes (per Verse)

Barnes: Luk 4:31-44

See this explained in the notes at Mark 1:21-39.

Poole: Luk 4:31-32

Ver. 31,32. Capernaum was a city in the other Galilee, under the jurisdiction of Philip, whither Matthew and Mark mention our Saviour’ s motion upon the report of the imprisonment of John. Philip is not only by historians reported of a less bloody temper than his brother Herod, but Herod having taken away his wife, it is very probable that there was no good understanding between him and Philip. So that two things promised our Saviour more quiet in Philip’ s jurisdiction:

1. The tameness of his temper.

2. The hatred between him and Herod.

It appears, from Luk 4:23 , he had been at Capernaum before, but stayed very little, hastening to his own country of Nazareth in the other Galilee: from thence he now again removeth, hearing of John’ s imprisonment, and seeing the baseness of his countrymen. When he came there, he keeps on his course preaching upon the Jewish sabbath, not abolished till his resurrection. It appeareth by Luk 4:33 , that he preached in the synagogue here also.

It is said that the people

were astonished at his doctrine Astonishment is one thing, believing is another. Men may be some ways and to some degrees affected at the word of God, that yet are far enough from believing, as the most of these Capernaites were; else Christ had never upbraided them as he did, Mat 11:23 .

For his word was with power That this phrase is to be understood only of those powerful and miraculous operations, by which Christ confirmed the word which he preached to be from God, I cannot yield. It is better interpreted by Mar 1:22 , He taught them as one that had authority, not as the scribes; and to be understood of the gravity and spirituality of his doctrine, his majesty and life in the delivering of it, and the power of God going along with it for the conviction of sinners; to all which were added his miraculous operations, of which the evangelist goeth on giving us a more particular account.

Haydock: Luk 4:31

Although Christ was well acquainted with the obduracy of the Jews, nevertheless, like a good physician, he condescends to pay them another visit, and try what a fresh medicine might effect in this their last stage, as it were, of existence. He publicly preaches therefore in the synagogue, according as Isaias had declared of him, and struck amazement into every heart. The Jews themselves considered him as something very extraordinary; as one of the prophets, or ancient saints. But Christ, that they might conceive a higher opinion of his persons, does not make use of the expressions they did, but speaks as Lord and Master of the law. (St. Cyril)

Gill: Luk 4:31

And came down to Capernaum,.... Which was, as Dr. Lightfoot thinks, sixteen miles or more from Nazareth; and Christ may be said to "come down" to it, because of the situation of Nazareth, which was upon an hill:

a city of Galilee: of lower Galilee, near the sea of Galilee:

and taught them on the sabbath days: that is, he went into the synagogue at Capernaum, on the sabbath days, whenever he was there, and taught the inhabitants, explained some passage or other in the Old Testament, as he had done at Nazareth and instructed them in the doctrines of the Gospel.

Commentary -- Verse Notes / Footnotes

NET Notes: Luk 4:31

¹ tn Here καί (kai) has been translated as “so” to indicate the continuation of the topic; in light of his rejection at Nazareth, Jesus went on to Capernaum.

² sn Capernaum was a town on the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee, 680 ft (204 m) below sea level. It was a major trade and economic center in the North Galilean region, and it became the hub of operations for Jesus’ Galilean ministry.

map For location see Map1 D2; Map2 C3; Map3 B2.

³ tn Or “city.”

⁴ tn Grk “them”; the referent (the people) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

Commentary -- Verse Range Notes

TSK Synopsis: Luk 4:1-44

1 The temptation and fasting of Christ.

14 He begins to preach.

16 The people of Nazareth admire his gracious words, but being offended, seek to kill him.

33 He cures one possessed of a devil,

38 Peter's mother-in-law,

40 and divers other sick persons.

41 The devils acknowledge Christ, and are reproved for it.

42 He preaches through the cities of Galilee.

MHCC: Luk 4:31-44

Christ's preaching much affected the people; and a working power went with it to the consciences of men. These miracles showed Christ to be a controller and conqueror of Satan, a healer of diseases. Where Christ gives a new life, in recovery from sickness, it should be a new life, spent more than ever in his service, to his glory. Our business should be to spread abroad Christ's fame in every place, to beseech him in behalf of those diseased in body or mind, and to use our influence in bringing sinners to him, that his hands may be laid upon them for their healing. He cast the devils out of many who were possessed. We were not sent into this world to live to ourselves only, but to glorify God, and to do good in our generation. The people sought him, and came unto him. A desert is no desert, if we are with Christ there. He will continue with us, by his word and Spirit, and extend the same blessings to other nations, till, throughout the earth, the servants and worshippers of Satan are brought to acknowledge him as the Christ, the Son of God, and to find redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins.

Matthew Henry: Luk 4:31-44

When Christ was expelled Nazareth, he came to Capernaum, another city of Galilee. The account we have in these verses of his preaching and miracles there we had before, Mar 1:21, etc. Observe,

I. His preaching: He taught them on the sabbath days, Luk 4:31. In hearing the word preached, as an ordinance of God, we worship God, and it is a proper work for sabbath days. Christ's preaching much affected the people (Luk 4:32); they were astonished at his doctrine, there was weight in every word he said, and admirable discoveries were made to them by it. The doctrine itself was astonishing, and not only as it came from one that had not had a liberal education. His word was with power; there was a commanding force in it, and a working power went along with it to the conscience of men. The doctrine Paul preached hereby proved itself to be of God, that it came in demonstration of the Spirit and of power.

II. His miracles. Of these we have here,

1. Two particularly specified, showing Christ to be,

(1.) A controller and conqueror of Satan, in the world of mankind, and in the souls of people, by his power to cast him out of the bodies of those he had taken possession of; for for this purpose was he manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.

Observe, [1.] The devil is an unclean spirit, his nature directly contrary to that of the pure and holy God, and degenerated from what it was at first. [2.] This unclean spirit works in the children of men; in the souls of many, as then in men's bodies. [3.] It is possible that those who are very much under the power and working of Satan may yet be found in the synagogue, among the worshippers of God. [4.] Even the devils know and believe that Jesus Christ is the Holy One of God, is sent of God, and is a Holy One. [5.] They believe and tremble. This unclean spirit cried out with a loud voice, under a certain fearful looking for of judgment, and apprehensive that Christ was now come to destroy him. Unclean spirits are subject to continual frights. [6.] The devils have nothing to do with Jesus Christ, nor desire to have any thing to do with him; for he took not on him the nature of angels. [7.] Christ has the devil under check: He rebuked him, saying, Hold thy peace; and this word he spoke with power; phimōthēti - Be muzzled, Christ did not only enjoin him silence, but stopped his mouth, and forced him to be silent against his will. [8.] In the breaking of Satan's power, both the enemy that is conquered shows his malice, and Christ, the conqueror, shows his over-ruling grace. Here, First, The devil showed what he would have done, when he threw the man in the midst, with force and fury, as if he would have dashed him to pieces. But, Secondly, Christ showed what a power he had over him, in that he not only forced him to leave him, but to leave him without so much as hurting him, without giving him a parting blow, a parting gripe. Whom Satan cannot destroy, he will do all the hurt he can to; but this is a comfort, he can harm them no further than Christ permits; nay, he shall not do them any real harm. He came out, and hurt him not; that is, the poor man was perfectly well in an instant, though the devil left him with so much rage that all that were present thought he had torn him to pieces. [9.] Christ's power over devils was universally acknowledged and adored, Luk 4:36. No one doubted the truth of the miracle; it was evident beyond contradiction, nor was any thing suggested to diminish the glory of it, for they were all amazed, saying, What a word is this! They that pretended to cast out devils did it with abundance of charms and spells, to pacify the devil, and lull him asleep, as it were; but Christ commanded them with authority and power, which they could not gainsay or resist. Even the prince of the power of the air is his vassal, and trembles before him. [10.] This, as much as any thing, gained Christ a reputation, and spread his fame. This instance of his power, which many now-a-days make light of, was then, by them that were eye-witnesses of it (and those no fools either, but men of penetration), magnified, and was looked upon as greatly magnifying him (Luk 4:37); upon the account of this, the fame of him went out, more than ever, into every place of the country round about. Our Lord Jesus, when he set out at first in his public ministry, was greatly talked of, more than afterwards, when people's admiration wore off with the novelty of the thing.

(2.) Christ showed himself to be a healer of diseases. In the former, he struck at the root of man's misery, which was Satan's enmity, the origin of all the mischief: in this, he strikes at one of the most spreading branches of it, one of the most common calamities of human life, and that is bodily diseases, which came in with sin, are the most common and sensible corrections for it in this life, and contribute as much as any thing towards the making of our few days full of trouble. These our Lord Jesus came to take away the sting of, and, as an indication of that intention, when he was on earth, chose to confirm his doctrine by such miracles, mostly, as took away the diseases themselves. Of all bodily diseases none are more common or fatal to grown people than fevers; these come suddenly, and suddenly cut off the number of men's months in the midst; they are sometimes epidemical, and slay their thousands in a little time. Now here we have Christ's curing a fever with a word's speaking; the place was in Simon's house, his patient was Simon's wife's mother, Luk 4:38, Luk 4:39. Observe, [1.] Christ is a guest that will pay well for his entertainment; those that bid him welcome into their hearts and houses shall be no losers by him; he comes with healing. [2.] Even families that Christ visits may be visited with sickness. Houses that are blessed with his distinguishing favours are liable to the common calamities of this life. Simon's wife's mother was ill of a fever. Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick. [3.] Even good people may sometimes be exercised with the sharpest afflictions, more grievous than others: She was taken with a great fever, very acute, and high, and threatening; perhaps it seized her head, and made her delirious. The most gentle fevers may by degrees prove dangerous; but this was at first a great fever. [4.] No age can exempt from diseases. It is probable that Peter's mother-in-law was in years, and yet in a fever. [5.] When our relations are sick, we ought to apply ourselves to Christ, by faith and prayer, on their account: They besought him for her; and there is a particular promise that the prayer of faith shall benefit the sick. [6.] Christ has a tender concern for his people when they are in sickness and distress: He stood over her, as one concerned for her, and compassionating her case. [7.] Christ had, and still has, a sovereign power over bodily diseases: He rebuked the fever, and with a word's speaking commanded it away, and it left her. He saith to diseases, Go, and they go; Come, and they come; and can still rebuke fevers, even great fevers. [8.] This proves Christ's cures to be miraculous, that they were done in an instant: Immediately she arose. [9.] Where Christ gives a new life, in recovery from sickness, he designs and expects that it should be a new life indeed, spent more than ever in his service, to his glory. If distempers be rebuked, and we arise from a bed of sickness, we must set ourselves to minister to Jesus Christ. [10.] Those that minister to Christ must be ready to minister to all that are his for his sake: She ministered to them, not only to him that had cured her, but to them that had besought him for her. We must study to be grateful to those that have prayed for us.

2. A general account given by wholesale of many other miracles of the same kind, which Christ did.

(1.) He cured many that were diseased, even all without exception that made their application to him, and it was when the sun was setting (Luk 4:40); in the evening of that sabbath day which he had spent in the synagogue. Note, It is good to do a full sabbath day's work, to abound in the work of the day, in some good work or other, even till sun-set; as those that call the sabbath, and the business of it, a delight. Observe, He cured all that were sick, poor as well as rich, and though they were sick of divers diseases; so that there was no room to suspect that he had only a specific for some one disease. He had a remedy for every malady. The sign he used in healing was laying his hands on the sick; not lifting up his hands for them, for he healed as having authority. He healed by his own power. And thus he would put honour upon that sign which was afterwards used in conferring the Holy Ghost.

(2.) He cast the devil out of many that were possessed, Luk 4:41. Confessions were extorted from the demoniacs. They said, Thou art Christ the Son of God, but they said it crying with rage and indignation; it was a confession upon the rack, and therefore was not admitted in evidence. Christ rebuked them, and did not suffer them to say that they knew him to be the Christ, that it might appear, beyond all contradiction, that he had obtained a conquest over them, and not made a compact with them.

3. Here is his removal from Capernaum, Luk 4:42, Luk 4:43.

(1.) He retired for awhile into a place of solitude. It was but a little while that he allowed himself for sleep; not only because a little served him, but because he was content with a little, and never indulged himself in ease; but, when it was day, he went into a desert place, not to live constantly like a hermit, but to be sometimes alone with God, as even those should be, and contrive to be, that are most engaged in public work, or else their work will go on but poorly, and they will find themselves never less alone than when thus alone.

(2.) He returned again to the places of concourse and to the work he had to do there. Though a desert place may be a convenient retreat, yet it is not a convenient residence, because we were not sent into this world to live to ourselves, no, not to the best part of ourselves only, but to glorify God and do good in our generation. [1.] He was earnestly solicited to stay at Capernaum. The people were exceedingly fond of him; I doubt, more because he had healed their sick than because he had preached repentance to them. They sought him, enquired which way he went; and, though it was in a desert place, they came unto him. A desert is no desert if we be with Christ there. They detained him that he should not depart from them, so that if he would go it should not be for want of invitation. His old neighbours at Nazareth had driven him from them, but his new acquaintances at Capernaum were very importunate for his continuance with them. Note, It ought not to discourage the ministers of Christ that some reject them, for they will meet with others that will welcome them and their message. [2.] He chose rather to diffuse the light of his gospel to many places than to fix it to one, that no one might pretend to be a mother-church to the rest. Though he was welcome at Capernaum, and had done abundance of good there, yet he is sent to preach the gospel to other cities also; and Capernaum must not insist upon his stay there. They that enjoy the benefit of the gospel must be willing that others also should share in that benefit, and not covet the monopoly of it; and those ministers who are not driven from one place may yet be drawn to another by a prospect of greater usefulness. Christ, though he preached not in vain in the synagogue at Capernaum, yet would not be tied to that, but preached in the synagogues of Galilee, Luk 4:44. Bonum est sui diffusivum - What is good is self-diffusive. It is well for us that our Lord Jesus has not tied himself to any one place or people, but, wherever two or three are gathered in his name, he will be in the midst of them: and even in Galilee of the Gentiles his special presence is in the Christian synagogues.

Barclay: Luk 4:31-37

We would have liked to know as much about Capernaum as we do about Nazareth, but the strange fact is that there is even doubt as to the site of this lake-side town where so much of Jesus' mighty work was done.

This passage is specially interesting because it is the first in Luke where we encounter demon possession. The ancient world believed that the air was thickly populated with evil spirits which sought entry into men. Often they did enter a man through food or drink. All illness was caused by them. The Egyptians believed there were thirty-six different parts of the human body and any of them could be entered and controlled by one of these evil spirits. There were spirits of deafness, of dumbness, of fever; spirits which took a man's sanity and wits away; spirits of lying and of deceit and of uncleanness. It was such a spirit that Jesus exorcised here.

To many people this is a problem. On the whole, modern thought regards belief in spirits as something primitive and superstitious which men have outgrown. Yet Jesus seemed to believe in them. There are three possibilities.

(i) Jesus actually did believe in them. If that is so, as far as scientific knowledge went he was not in advance of his own age but under all the limitations of contemporary medical thought. There is no need to refuse such a conclusion for, if Jesus was really a man, in scientific things he must have had the knowledge then open to men.

(ii) Jesus did not believe in them. But the sufferer did believe intensely and Jesus could cure people only by assuming their beliefs about themselves to be true. If a person is ill and someone says to him, "There's nothing wrong with you," that is no help. The reality of the pain has to be admitted before a cure can follow. The people believed they were possessed of devils and Jesus, like a wise doctor, knew he could not heal them unless he assumed that their view of their trouble was real.

(iii) Modern thought has been swinging round to the admission that perhaps there is something in demons after all. There are certain troubles which have no bodily cause as far as can be discovered. There is no reason why the man is ill, but he is ill. Since there is no physical explanation some now think there must be a spiritual one and that demons may not be so unreal after all.

The people were astonished at Jesus' power--and no wonder. The east was full of people who could exorcise demons. But their methods were weird and wonderful. An exorcist would put a ring under the afflicted person's nose; he would recite a long spell; and then all of a sudden there would be a splash in a basin of water which he had put near to hand--and the demon was out! A magical root called Baaras was specially effective. When a man approached it, it shrank into the ground unless gripped, and to grip it was certain death. So the ground round it was dug away; a dog was tied to it; the struggles of the dog tore up the root; and when the root was torn up the dog died, as a substitute for a man. What a difference between all this hysterical paraphernalia and the calm single word of command of Jesus! It was his sheer authority which staggered them.

Jesus' authority was something quite new. When the Rabbis taught they supported every statement with quotations. They always said, "There is a saying that . . ." "Rabbi so and so said that ..." They always appealed to authority. When the prophets spoke, they said, "Thus saith the Lord." Theirs was a delegated authority. When Jesus spoke, he said, "I say to you." He needed no authorities to buttress him; his was not a delegated authority; he was authority incarnate. Here was a man who spoke as one who knew.

In every sphere of life the expert bears an air of authority. A musician tells how when Toscanini mounted the rostrum authority flowed from him and the orchestra felt it. When we need technical advice we call in the expert. Jesus is the expert in life. He speaks and men know that this is beyond human argument--this is God.

Constable: Luk 4:14--9:51

IV. Jesus' ministry in and around Galilee 4:14--9:50

Luke commenced Jesus' public ministry with His return to Galilee following His temptation. This section of his Gospel ends with Jesus' decision to leave Galilee for Jerusalem and the Cross (9:51).

Constable: Luk 4:14--5:12

A. Jesus' teaching ministry 4:14-5:11

This section of the Gospel records some of Jesus' initial preaching and various responses to it. Much of the material appears only in Luke. Interspersed are instances of Jesus performing mighty works. Luke, as the other evangelists, stressed the essential message that Jesus proclaimed.

Constable: Luk 4:31-44

3. Jesus' ministry in and around Capernaum 4:31-44

The people of Nazareth rejected Jesus because they did not believe that He was the Messiah or the Son of God. Luke next gave many proofs of Jesus' messiahship and deity. He chose incidents from Jesus' ministry in and around Galilee to demonstrate this. The first four incidents happened in Capernaum and its environs. Even though these incidents involved miracles, they occurred in a broader context of teaching.

Constable: Luk 4:31-37

The exorcism of a demoniac in the Capernaum synagogue 4:31-37 (cf. Mark 1:21-28)

4:31-32 Jesus had to go down topographically from Nazareth, that stood approximately 1,200 feet above sea level, to Capernaum, that lay almost 700 feet below sea level. This notation, and the mention that Capernaum was a city of Galilee, were undoubtedly for Luke's original readers' benefit many of whom were unfamiliar with Palestinian geography. Again Luke recorded that Jesus was teaching in the synagogue (cf. v. 16). There He demonstrated the liberating work that Isaiah wrote that Messiah would do (v. 18).

"Teaching [Gr. didache] in Luke-Acts is seen as a broad term encompassing much more than the offer of the gospel, whereas preaching [kerygma] in Luke-Acts [only in Luke 11:32] tends to be limited to the salvation message."¹⁶⁵

Jesus' unusual authority amazed (Gr. exeplessonto) those present (cf. Deut. 18:18). Later Jesus' works elicited the same response (9:43). It was particularly Jesus' word (Gr. logos, cf. 1:1-4) that impressed them here. As a prophet, Jesus spoke directly from God and for God. The people of Capernaum recognized Jesus' authority, but the Nazarenes did not.

4:33 Messiah's appearance served notice on the demon world that He purposed to destroy their work. Consequently the demons began to oppose Jesus immediately. Jesus continued this holy war throughout His ministry, and His disciples extended it after His departure (9:1-2; 10:9-10, 17). The Gospel writers used the terms "evil" and "unclean" interchangeably to describe these demons. They were evil in their intent and they produced uncleanness in contrast to the goodness and holiness that the Holy Spirit produces in those whom He inhabits.¹⁶⁶ Possibly Luke specified that this was an unclean demon because the Greeks thought there were good and evil demons.¹⁶⁷

4:34-35 "Ha!" translates an expression of "indignant surprise."¹⁶⁸ "What do we have to do with you" means something like, "Why this interference?"¹⁶⁹ The demon testified to Jesus' messianic and divine character. He was the "Holy One of God" in contrast to the unclean demon. Jesus may have silenced the demon to prevent a premature movement to recognize Him as simply a political Messiah. Again Jesus' authority is obvious in His command to keep quiet. Jesus also expelled the demon on His own authority, not by invoking the name of some other power. Luke, who consistently showed interest in people's physical conditions, noted that even though the demon exited violently he did not hurt the man. Jesus affected the release of one whom Satan had held captive, and He did it completely (v. 18).

4:36-37 Again Luke noted the amazement of the observers (Gr. thambos, wonder mixed with fear). The people questioned the powerful word (Gr. logos, v. 32) of Jesus marked by authority (Gr. exousia) and power (Gr. dynamei) over unclean spirits (i.e., demons). Perhaps Luke stressed the "word" of Jesus because the Greeks put much stock in the power of a great person's words, people such as the great Greek orators, for example. The reports of this miracle spread Jesus' fame farther into the surrounding areas.

This incident established the authority that Jesus had claimed in Nazareth. Testimony to His deity from the spirit world should have convinced many of Jesus' hearers. Luke probably recorded the incident to strengthen Jesus' greatness in the minds of his readers.

College: Luk 4:1-44

LUKE 4

C. THE TEMPTATION OF JESUS (4:1-13)

¹ Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the desert, ² where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry.

³ The devil said to him, " If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread."

⁴ Jesus answered, " It is written: 'Man does not live on bread alone.' ^a"

⁵ The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. ⁶ And he said to him, " I will give you all their authority and splendor, for it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. ⁷ So if you worship me, it will all be yours."

⁸ Jesus answered, " It is written: 'Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.' ^b"

⁹ The devil led him to Jerusalem and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. " If you are the Son of God," he said, " throw yourself down from here. ¹⁰ For it is written:

" 'He will command his angels concerning you

to guard you carefully;

¹¹ they will lift you up in their hands,

so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.' ^c"

¹² Jesus answered, " It says: 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.' ^d"

¹³ When the devil had finished all this tempting, he left him until an opportune time.

^a 4 Deut. 8:3 ^b 8 Deut. 6:13 ^c 11 Psalm 91:11,12 ^d 12 Deut. 6:16

As further preparation for his ministry, Jesus is now tempted after his baptism (just as in Matt 3). Since God has just declared Jesus to be Son of God (" You are my beloved Son" ), all three temptations will test Jesus to see if he will act as God's Son (that is, obediently). Jesus knows well what path he is to take to Messiahship, and it is the path of self-denial and complete submission to God's will. Satan will offer a more glorious and less painful path, suggesting that the Son of God should have all of his desires met, whether they be needs of the body, the desire for power, or the desire for God to prove himself. In this episode Luke shows Jesus to be God's Son by showing his obedience, over against another who was also " God's son," the nation of Israel (see Exod 4:22; Hos 11:1). Jesus here " relives" the wilderness experience of the Israelites. This is clear from the references to Jesus being led to the wilderness forty days (paralleling Israel's forty years), and the scriptural citations by Jesus, all of which are from Deuteronomy 6 and 8 (where Moses reminds the Israelites of their wilderness experiences). The point seems to be that, just as God led Israel through the wilderness where they so miserably failed, succumbing to every temptation, Jesus was also led by God (through his Spirit) into the wilderness, where he faced the same temptations but was successful. Deuteronomy 8:2-5 provides the proper perspective: " The Lord your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands . . . . Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord your God disciplines you."

Second, Luke emphasizes how Jesus was victorious over temptation. Jesus relied upon 1) the Holy Spirit, and 2) Scripture. The guidance of the Spirit is mentioned twice in verse 1 and also in verse 14. Luke-Acts will abound with examples of others who do God's will through the help of God's Spirit. A prime example is Acts 4:8, where Peter, " filled with the Holy Spirit," remained bold and faithful when faced with persecution. The only words Jesus utters in this story are those from Scripture. The guiding role of Scripture will be emphasized on many further occasions. For example, Abraham will tell the rich man in torments concerning his brothers, " They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them" (16:29).

Third, Luke may be using the story to underscore the humanity of Jesus. Like other human beings, Jesus is truly tempted. He will be tempted again to give up the hard road to Messiahship in Gethsemane (22:39-46), where he will again rely on God (through prayer and the strengthening angel).

It should be noticed that Luke's order of the three temptations is different than that of Matthew. Both begin with the stone to bread temptation, but Luke has Matthew's second temptation (the invitation to jump off the pinnacle of the temple) in the third position. The reasons for the difference are unclear, the best guess being that Luke wants to end the story in Jerusalem, a common feature of Luke.

1. Jesus was led by the Spirit , meaning that this encounter with the devil was chosen by God as a part of Jesus' preparation for the temptations of ministry. It is quite likely that Jesus went to the wilderness in order to fast, pray, and meditate in order to be able to defeat the devil. These disciplines, especially fasting (denying himself the satisfaction of bodily desires), assisted him so that he would be able to win over the first temptation. The solitude of the wilderness confirmed for him that he could depend on God alone, not needing power over others or the acclaim of the crowds. He was then enabled, by this realization, to withstand the second and third temptations. During these forty days Jesus faced some of the major temptations which must have accompanied him during his ministry: the desire to use his power and position to satisfy his physical appetites, to force others to do his will, or to force God to give him a sign.

2. Forty days reminds the reader not only of the forty years of Israel's wanderings but also the forty days in which both Elijah and Moses fasted (1 Kgs 19:8; Exod 34:28). It may be that Luke wishes to portray Jesus as a sort of new Moses, especially given Luke's further references to Moses and Moses' prediction of the " prophet like me" whom God would one day send (Deut 18:15).

3-4. The sin which would have been committed by Jesus commanding the stone to become bread is not spelled out and must be inferred from the Old Testament Exodus background and from Jesus' answer, man does not live on bread alone . Jesus would have been using divine power for his own ends (satisfying his terrific hunger) rather than trusting in God to provide him with all his needs. Israel had also been hungry in the wilderness and had shown a lack of faith (Exod 16-19). The reader may note that Jesus never uses his power for himself, even when he later does miraculously provide bread (and fish; see 6:10-17).

5-8. The devil , after showing Jesus all the kingdoms of the world , offered him all their authority and splendor , for, he said, they were his to give. Perhaps the devil (diavbolo" [ diabolos ], interchangeable in Luke with Satana'" [ Satanas ]) is overstating the case for his own authority. More likely, though, he is stating the truth, for in much of early Christian thinking the world is the kingdom of Satan (see 1 Cor 2:6; 2 Cor 4:4; Eph 2:2; John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11). This temptation offers Jesus a way to the final goal (every knee bowing before him) while bypassing the cross. It also places Jesus in the position of the Israelites, who yielded to other gods in the wilderness (Exod 32).

9-12. In the third temptation, the highest point of the temple may refer to the highest point of the building itself, or it may be the top of the high retaining wall at the southeast corner of the temple mount. The devil himself uses Scripture this time (Ps 91:11, 12), only to have Jesus show his use to be invalid. It is unclear what sin Jesus would be committing by throwing himself down and being rescued by God's angels. It may be that Jesus would be attempting to impress a crowd and therefore gain a following based on such an incredible feat. However, since no spectators are mentioned, the sin is more likely that of attempting to force God to prove himself, or, as Jesus phrases it, putting the Lord your God to the test . Jesus' answer (a reference to Deut 6:6) recalls the experience of the Israelites in Exodus 17:1-7 in which they questioned God's care when there was no water to drink. As suggested in the supplemental study on " Miracles and Sign-Seeking," this is a theme Luke will return to on several occasions. The desire to see a miracle is not a sign of faith but rather of a lack of faith.

13. The devil . . . left him until an opportune time . This does not imply that the devil gave up on Jesus until the final week. Jesus goes about plundering Satan's kingdom throughout his ministry (10:18; 11:18; 13:16). However, the next explicit mention of the devil's activity against Jesus comes in 22:3, in which " Satan entered Judas . . . ."

IV. JESUS' MINISTRY IN GALILEE

(4:14-9:50)

A. JESUS REJECTED AT NAZARETH (4:14-30)

¹⁴ Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. ¹⁵ He taught in their synagogues, and everyone praised him.

¹⁶ He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. And he stood up to read. ¹⁷ The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:

¹⁸" The Spirit of the Lord is on me,

because he has anointed me

to preach good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners

and recovery of sight for the blind,

to release the oppressed,

¹⁹ to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." ^a

²⁰ Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, ²¹ and he began by saying to them, " Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing."

²² All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. " Isn't this Joseph's son?" they asked.

²³ Jesus said to them, " Surely you will quote this proverb to me: 'Physician, heal yourself! Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.'"

²⁴" I tell you the truth," he continued, " no prophet is accepted in his hometown. ²⁵ I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah's time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. ²⁶ Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. ²⁷ And there were many in Israel with leprosy ^b in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed - only Naaman the Syrian."

²⁸ All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. ²⁹ They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him down the cliff. ³⁰ But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way.

^a 19 Isaiah 61:1,2 ^b 27 The Greek word was used for various diseases affecting the skin - not necessarily leprosy.

14. Luke begins his account of Jesus' actual ministry with a summary. This summary links what went before (Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit) with what is to come (he taught in their synagogues). The final phrase, and everyone praised him , sets the stage for the first episode in Jesus' ministry.

The account of Jesus' visit to his hometown of Nazareth has a special importance for Luke. When one compares Luke's version of the story with that of Matthew (13:53-58) and Mark (6:1-6), two facts become obvious. First, Luke has placed the story first in his narrative, whereas Matthew and Mark tell this story only after many other episodes. Second, Luke's account is a much longer one with different emphases. Because of these facts, most scholars believe that Luke has carefully selected this episode to be his first in order to accomplish several objectives. First, in this story the reader is told what sort of Messiah Jesus is to be. The remainder of the narrative will show Jesus carrying out the mission he expounds in these verses. He has been anointed by the Spirit of the Lord to preach good news to the poor, to give sight to the blind, to release the oppressed, and the like. Precisely because of these characteristics, Jesus will be portrayed by Luke as a prophetic Messiah. Almost everything Luke will teach about Jesus has always been true of the prophets God sent to Israel. Second, this story gives the reader several hints regarding how Jesus will be received. At first he will be praised, but in a short time he will be rejected. In fact, they will even try to kill him. Once again, this is to be expected of a prophet. Third, this story hints at the coming Gentile mission (to be carried out in Acts), as Jesus talks of the earlier prophets Elijah and Elisha. It is because of this talk of God's concern for Gentiles that Jesus is rejected. Interestingly, beginning in Acts 13 the apostle Paul will do what Jesus does here. He will enter synagogue after synagogue, receiving a positive hearing at first, only to be soon rejected and excluded from the synagogue, after which he will turn to the Gentiles. In summary, this first episode reveals the essence of Jesus' ministry as it introduces its most important themes: the guidance of the Holy Spirit; Jesus' acceptance and then rejection by his own people; the fulfillment of Scripture; God's love for the poor, the handicapped, and the oppressed; the prophetic nature of Jesus' ministry; and God's love for Gentiles.

14-15. The power of the Spirit is precisely what the apostles of Jesus will also receive according to Acts 1:8. As suggested in the introduction, in Luke-Acts all power comes from God, and Jesus' followers are empowered by the same Spirit who empowered Jesus. News about him spread because he taught in their synagogues . Luke wants his readers to know that Jesus has already been preaching and healing in Galilee, even though he has not narrated any instance of that ministry yet. Luke wants to present the rejection at Nazareth first, even though he knows it was not chronologically first.

16-19. Nazareth (see on 1:26) was where Jesus had been brought up (see 2:51) and where his family apparently still lived (Mark 6:3). Luke emphasizes that it was his custom to attend the synagogue on the Sabbath , perhaps to remind the reader that Jesus too kept the Law as a faithful Jew. He stood up to read as was customary for the one reading the word of God in that day. Only after the reading did he sit down to teach. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him perhaps because the worshipers were in Isaiah in the lectionary cycle, a two- or three-year schedule of planned readings through the Old Testament. The synagogue would have had one or more copies of the Scriptures, written on scrolls at this time in history. The book of Isaiah may have filled two scrolls or could possibly have been on one. The book of Isaiah was especially important for Luke, as he cites it far more often than any other prophet. Jesus found the place , implying that this was no chance reading; this is the Scripture Jesus himself chose in order to justify his ministry and mission. The words which Jesus will read are primarily from Isaiah 61:1-2 and will describe Jesus' activities over the next five chapters.

When Jesus says, " The Spirit of the Lord is on me," he looks back to the baptism scene (see Acts 10:38), the time at which he was anointed to fill his messianic role. The phrase, to preach good news , is a single verb in Greek (eujaggelivzw, euangelizô, from which we get " evangelize" ) which Luke uses to describe all talk about Jesus and the kingdom he brings, whether from the lips of John, Jesus, or his followers in Acts. The poor are a major Lukan concern, as seen often and especially in 6:20. The freedom for the prisoners refers to the captivity imposed by demons, sin, and other forces of the devil. The term translated " freedom" is more often in Luke translated " forgiveness." Recovery of sight refers at least to the literal healing of the blind which Jesus accomplished (18:35-43; see 7:21-22). It may also refer to the " seeing" which comes to those who are in darkness or are otherwise spiritually blind. The oppressed is a generic category, covering all those who are beaten down by sin, demons, sickness, circumstances, and other people. The year of the Lord's favor refers to the remarkable time in which Jesus' listeners were privileged to live, the time of salvation for which the prophets longed. Jesus has just said in essence that he is the Messiah and that he is bringing in the messianic age which the people have been awaiting. And yet he has redefined the traditional portrait of the Messiah, rejecting the political and military images in favor of a Messiah more interested in defeating sin, poverty, disease, and oppression. In fact, this Messiah looks more like a prophet than the traditional picture of the Messiah. Luke makes much of this prophet image, Jesus himself even claiming the title " prophet" in verse 24.

20-21. If anyone present at the synagogue missed his personal claim to be God's anointed one, Jesus clarified his role when he sat down and said, " Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing." Through the words of Jesus, Luke here underscores his theme of scriptural fulfillment. Luke offers more fulfilled prophecies from the Old Testament than any other Gospel writer in his effort to provide " certainty" for his readers. Perhaps he thought it particularly necessary to provide scriptural proof for what was to many a very unorthodox view of the Messiah.

22-27. All spoke well of him at first, but the praise was short-lived. It is difficult to know exactly when they began to be offended. Was it when they realized he was Joseph's son? Perhaps the offense was related to the idea of the hometown boy who presumed to have outgrown the rest of the town (v. 22). Was the problem related to his unwillingness to do his miracles there (v. 23)? Or did Jesus almost encourage their rejection by his spoken assumption that no prophet is accepted in his hometown (v. 24)? Or did the townspeople turn against him only after he began to speak about God's love for Gentiles (vv. 25-27)? One cannot be sure; but fortunately, one need not be. Luke's point seems to be that they first accepted him but soon enough opposed him. As suggested above, Luke is almost certainly foreshadowing the whole of Luke-Acts, in which Jesus comes to his own people (the Jews) who first accept him but then reject him. His followers, especially Paul, are also accepted by the Jews in the early days but were soon rejected. And just as Jesus speaks in this passage of God reaching out to Gentiles and not Jews (in the ministry of Elijah and Elisha), so Jesus' followers will reach out to the Gentiles, who will accept the good news.

The phrase gracious words might better be translated " words of grace," suggesting that his messages were about grace (as they are so often in Luke). When Jesus suggests, " Surely you will quote this proverb to me . . . ," he is reading their thoughts, as he will frequently do in Luke (see 5:22; 6:8; 9:47; 11:17). Their thoughts are that Jesus should perform miracles in order to prove himself, always a negative attitude in Luke, as seen in 11:29-32.

The proverb, " Physician, heal yourself!" has many parallels in Jewish and Greek literature. In the present context it apparently means, " You certainly make big claims; we don't think you can deliver!" " Do here what . . . you did in Capernaum." Jesus' statements presuppose a healing ministry in Capernaum, a place Jesus has not yet visited in Luke's narrative. The next episode narrates just such a visit. The proverb, " No prophet is accepted in his own hometown," expressed the common fate of prophets throughout Israel's history.

The Elijah and Elisha stories are found in 1 Kings 17 and 2 Kings 5. Jesus' point is that these greatly respected prophets of Israel went to Gentiles (the widow and Naaman both were Gentiles), just as Jesus will go to Gentiles (especially through the agency of his church in the book of Acts). However, Jesus expects to be rejected for doing so. That rejection begins in this story and is found throughout the book of Acts.

28-30. If the townspeople were skeptical before, they became furious when they heard this . Perhaps their plans are to treat him as Moses said to treat the prophet who speaks presumptuously in the name of God (Deut 18:20: " that prophet shall die" ). Though they tried to hurl him off the cliff . . . he passed through the midst of them . Luke appears to be unconcerned with the details of Jesus' escape. It is not yet time for Jesus to suffer (see 22:53).

B. JESUS' MINISTRY IN CAPERNAUM (4:31-44)

1. Jesus Drives Out an Evil Spirit (4:31-37)

31 Then he went down to Capernaum, a town in Galilee, and on the Sabbath began to teach the people. 32 They were amazed at his teaching, because his message had authority.

33 In the synagogue there was a man possessed by a demon, an evil ^a spirit. He cried out at the top of his voice, 34 " Ha! What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are - the Holy One of God!"

35 " Be quiet!" Jesus said sternly. " Come out of him!" Then the demon threw the man down before them all and came out without injuring him.

36 All the people were amazed and said to each other, " What is this teaching? With authority and power he gives orders to evil spirits and they come out!" 37 And the news about him spread throughout the surrounding area.

^a 33 Greek unclean ; also in verse 36

The next four episodes will parallel the order of events in Mark 1:21-39. These are the first of almost two dozen miracle stories narrated by Luke.

Supplemental Study:

Miracles and Sign-Seeking

Luke's miracle stories always imply that Jesus has great power. However, Luke uses these stories to teach far more than this. First, the miracles will give insight into Jesus' identity. Although Jesus does not publicly reveal his identity until the end of the Gospel, the miracles offer hints to those who have eyes to see. Jesus will be seen as one who has power over nature, demons, disease, disabilities, and even death. Jesus will display his power over Satan and his various agents, and he will on several occasions do that which only God can do, giving the onlookers a glimpse at his divine nature.

Secondly, Luke emphasizes that Jesus' power is not available to just anyone. Those who are the recipients of Jesus' miracles are almost always those who show great faith. Luke underscores this teaching by repeating it many times. He is especially fond of the expression, " Your faith has saved you," using it in 7:50; 8:48; 17:19; 18:42. Luke is telling his readers that one must have faith in order to receive Jesus' marvelous blessings.

Thirdly, Luke makes it clear that Jesus' miracles do not often lead to faith in those who observe them. They cause wonder, amazement, and much talk, but rarely do people come to faith as a result. Luke's point seems to be that those with closed minds and hearts will not believe, no matter what the evidence. Some will even attribute Jesus' exorcisms to the devil (11:15). Others will ask Jesus for spectacular miraculous signs to prove that he is from God (11:16, 29-33). Jesus refuses each time, saying that it is " a wicked generation" which asks for a miraculous sign. His belief is that those who are looking for God's activity in the world will respond to his preaching. The desire to see a miracle is a sign of unbelief and a hard heart. Jesus' attitude is well summarized in his parable of the rich man and Lazarus: " If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead" (16:31).

31-32. In the following stories, Jesus will be well received. Opposition will begin only after the initial acceptance.

The following verses seem to present almost a " day in the life" of Jesus, as it shows him casting out demons, healing, preaching, and finally withdrawing for time alone with God. He went down to Capernaum . This would be true from almost anywhere, since Capernaum, on the northeast corner of the Sea of Galilee, is 695 feet below sea level. Luke's need to locate this town in Galilee suggests that his readers would be unfamiliar with its location, a hint that they are probably non-Palestinian Gentiles. On the sabbath . . . he began to teach. As in Nazareth (4:16) Jesus has the opportunity to speak in the synagogue. They were amazed , as those who witness Jesus will be throughout Luke. Unfortunately, amazement does not necessarily lead to faith, as will be seen on many occasions. The authority which his message had was most likely due to the freshness and boldness of his teaching (as at Nazareth). Very much unlike the Pharisees, Jesus' teaching hinted at his own role in fulfilling God's promises and did not rely on the traditions of earlier interpreters.

33-35. There was a man possessed by a demon, an evil spirit , as there will be on many occasions in Luke. Demons are mentioned with some frequency in Jewish and pagan sources of the period. These agents of Satan's unseen kingdom seem to have been extremely active during the ministry of Jesus. They inhabited people against their wills, causing convulsions, loud shrieking, incredible strength, and abnormal behavior. The question, " What do you want with us?" is a taunt and a challenge. They know who Jesus is and that he is far more powerful than they (" Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are" ) .

Luke will later clarify that Jesus' exorcism of demons is a clear sign that the kingdom of God is gaining the victory over the kingdom of Satan (11:14-23). The Holy One of God is another in Luke's long list of near synonyms for Messiah. The demon knows this because it is also from the unseen spiritual world. The evil spirit is correct about Jesus' identity (see 4:41), but Jesus stops him from further testifying: " Be quiet!" This is the first instance in Luke of what has been called " the messianic secret." Jesus will prohibit those who know his identity as Messiah from telling others in 4:41; 5:14; 9:21. The reason for the prohibition seems to be that, even though he constantly gives hints regarding his identity, Jesus is not ready to claim the explicit title " Messiah." His understanding of the role is, of course, quite different from that of his countrymen, who were looking for a political savior. Jesus will not be clearly identified even by his disciples until chapter 9, and he will not publicly accept the title of Messiah until it can be understood. That moment will not come until the final week (19:28-40; 22:3).

All the people were amazed , as was typical when Jesus performed a miracle. Jesus' miracles in Luke tend to gain him a hearing, but they do not necessarily engender faith.

36-37. As in verse 32, the people were amazed because of his teaching , which is done with such authority . At this point Jesus is gaining popularity, and the news about him spread throughout the surrounding area . Jesus' reputation will " spread all the more" in 5:15; there will be a " great number of people" from all over in 6:17; and the news will " spread throughout Judea" in 7:17. Only then will the opposition become more pronounced and the rejection begun.

2. Jesus Heals Many (4:38-44)

³⁸ Jesus left the synagogue and went to the home of Simon. Now Simon's mother-in-law was suffering from a high fever, and they asked Jesus to help her. ³⁹ So he bent over her and rebuked the fever, and it left her. She got up at once and began to wait on them.

⁴⁰ When the sun was setting, the people brought to Jesus all who had various kinds of sickness, and laying his hands on each one, he healed them. ⁴¹ Moreover, demons came out of many people, shouting, " You are the Son of God!" But he rebuked them and would not allow them to speak, because they knew he was the Christ. ^a

⁴² At daybreak Jesus went out to a solitary place. The people were looking for him and when they came to where he was, they tried to keep him from leaving them. ⁴³ But he said, " I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns also, because that is why I was sent." ⁴⁴ And he kept on preaching in the synagogues of Judea. ^b

^a 41 Or Messiah ^b 44 Or the land of the Jews ; some manuscripts Galilee

38-39. Having narrated a miracle involving a man, Luke now shows Jesus healing a woman. Simon is mentioned without introduction in 4:38. He will later be called Peter (6:14; see also Acts 15:14). It is common for Luke to mention briefly a character who will later play an important role. He does the same with Stephen (Acts 6:5) and Saul (7:58). The narrative presupposes that Jesus knows Simon, since he went to his home (in Capernaum). It also indicates that Simon was married (see 1 Cor 9:5), since his mother-in-law was suffering from a high fever . Jesus' followers will later perform nearly identical miracles to those of Jesus. Parallel to this episode is that of Paul in Acts 28:8, where he healed the father-in-law of Publius, who had a fever.

Simon's family's faith is implicit, because they asked Jesus to help her . Most of the healing miracles in Luke will underscore the importance of faith. The principle is most clearly seen in 17:6: " If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted . . . .'" Jesus rebuked (ejpetivmhsen, epetimçsen) the fever , just as he had spoken sternly (same term, epetimçsen) to the demon in verse 35. Luke does not equate disease with demon possession, but it does appear that both are agents of Satan in Luke's way of thinking.

The response of Peter's mother-in-law is an appropriate one, as she got up at once and began to wait on them . Luke will emphasize the importance of a thankful response to the blessings imparted by Jesus (8:38-39; 17:11-19).

40-41. When the sun was setting , the Sabbath (with its prohibition of carrying heavy loads) was over. Therefore the people were able to bring to Jesus all who had various kinds of sickness . This is the first mention of Jesus laying his hands on people, a practice he and his followers will often repeat (5:13; 13:13; Acts 3:7; 9:17). He healed them and cast demons out of many people . Just as before (verse 34), the demons knew he was the Son of God . And just as before, Jesus demands their silence. This verse is the clearest explanation for Jesus' desire for secrecy: they knew he was the Messiah ( Christ ).

Luke does not mention why Jesus went out to a solitary place , though the reader will soon know that he does this regularly in order to pray (5:16; 6:12; 9:28). When the people found him, they tried to keep him from leaving . Jesus' response to the people of Capernaum emphasizes his need to " preach" (twice in vv. 43-44) in other towns. It may be that Luke is giving " preaching" a higher priority than healing, as Jesus says, " I must preach . . . because that is why I was sent."

42-43. Jesus summarizes the content of his preaching as the good news of the kingdom of God .

Supplemental Study:

Kingdom of God

This is the first of Luke's more than thirty uses of the phrase " kingdom of God" in the Gospel (and eight in Acts). The phrase is never defined and is in fact somewhat shrouded in mystery. Just as Jesus' contemporaries could not grasp his view of the Messiah, neither could they understand the kingdom of God. Therefore Jesus speaks about it in parables and riddles (see 8:10). He talks of entrance requirements for the kingdom: one must become like a child (18:16); it is hard for a rich man to enter (18:25); one must renounce all in order to enter (9:57-62). At times he talks of its nearness, even its presence already (17:20-21); and yet at other times, it appears to come later in that generation (19:11-12) or even at the final judgment (13:28-29). Most distinctively for Luke (over against the other Gospels), the establishment of the kingdom of God goes hand in hand with the restoration of Israel (22:29-30). The book of Acts continues the mystery, as Jesus begins the book talking about the coming kingdom (1:3). His talk leads his disciples to ask, " Is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?" (1:6) After Pentecost the apostles go everywhere teaching people how to enter the kingdom of God (8:12; 14:22; 19:8; 20:25; 28:23, 31).

The Jews of Jesus' day were for the most part looking for an everlasting political kingdom led by a new David. That is, Israel would be restored to her former glory, her king would rule with justice and righteousness, and all the nations would be subdued and then would accept Israel's God and Israel's ways. All of this would be accomplished by God, and it would occur in the last days. It is no wonder that Jesus' hearers had trouble understanding; neither is it too surprising that modern Christians have similar problems.

The reason for the confusion has to do with the very nature of the kingdom. The kingdom (basileiva, basileia ) may be defined, most simply, as that group of people who have accepted the reign of God through Jesus Christ. Therefore this kingdom has no boundaries and is in fact invisible: only God knows those who are truly his. At the same time, there is a sense in which Jesus' followers make up the visible kingdom of God, a group that is generally distinguishable from the kingdoms of others. With regard to the coming of the kingdom of God, there is a sense in which the kingdom had begun with the sending of Jesus (see 11:20; 17:20-21). God had sent the king, and the kingdom was growing unseen (as a mustard seed or yeast; see 13:18-21). In another sense, however, the kingdom had not yet arrived " with power," which happened perhaps at the cross, or at the resurrection, or at Pentecost. In another sense, however, the kingdom will not be fully present until all of its subjects gather around the messianic table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (see 13:28-29).

Luke's special contribution to the discussion is his teaching that the kingdom was established in a very important sense when a remnant of Jews " from every nation under heaven" (Acts 2:5) were gathered in Jerusalem on Pentecost. At that time God restored the kingdom to Israel (1:6) when thousands of believing Jews entered it. At that time Jesus' apostles began to " sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel" (Luke 22:29-30). It is only after this restoration, Luke makes clear, that Gentiles are allowed to join the people of God, which they do in large numbers (see Acts 15:12-18). However, even as the Gentiles have begun to join the restored kingdom, in each city Paul goes first to the Jews and then (and only then) to the Gentiles.

In summary, Jesus was not completely out of step with the thoughts of his contemporaries. The kingdom of God was to be an everlasting kingdom established by God at the end of time. It was to be a kingdom of justice and righteousness, and it did give priority to the Jews. However, unlike the thinking of his contemporaries, it is made up of those humble ones who repent and have their sins forgiven by Jesus.

44. Luke's summary note that Jesus preached in the synagogues of Judea is difficult to reconcile with the fact that Jesus has been in Galilee (v. 31) and seems to remain in Galilee for many chapters. The fact that some manuscripts read " synagogues of Galilee" is almost certainly due to some early copyists noticing the discrepancy and " fixing" it. The best solution seems to be that Luke is using the term " Judea" for the entire land in which the Jews lived. That is, for Luke the large region just east of the Mediterranean is Judea.

-College Press New Testament Commentary: with the NIV

McGarvey: Luk 4:16-31

LX.
JESUS VISITS NAZARETH AND IS REJECTED.
^aMATT. XIII. 54-58; ^bMARK VI. 1-6; ^cLUKE IV. 16-31.

   ^b1 And he went out from thence [from Capernaum]; and he cometh {^aAnd coming} binto his own country; and his disciples follow him.  ^c16 And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up [As to this city, see Mar 1:39, Mar 3:1, Mar 3:2). For comment on this usage of the synagogue see Isa 61:1, Isa 61:2; but the quotation embraces other lines from Isaiah.] where it was written,  18 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, Because he anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor [Anointing was the method by which prophets, priests, and kings were consecrated or set apart to their several offices. This prophecy says that the Holy Spirit came upon Jesus because he was appointed to do [358] a work of divine helpfulness]: He hath sent me to preach release to the captives, And recovering of sight to the blind, To set at liberty them that are bruised,  19 To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. [The prophecy set forth in physical terms what Jesus should perform in both the physical and spiritual realms. The prophecy closes with a reference to the jubilee year, which, being a time of liberation, forgiveness, and fresh starts, was a type of Christ's ministry and kingdom.]  20 And he closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant [This officer corresponded to our sexton. Part of this duty was to take charge of the synagogue rolls], and sat down [Reader and congregation both stood during the reading; then, usually, both sat down to hear the passage explained. They stood out of reverence for God's word]: and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fastened on him. [They had heard of his miracles, and were curious to see what he would say and do.]  21 And he began to say unto them, To-day hath this scripture been fulfilled in your ears.  22 And all bare him witness, and wondered at the words of grace which proceeded out of his mouth [The word grace refers rather to the manner than to the matter. The speech of Jesus flowed easily, and gracefully]:  ^a54 And he taught {bbegan to teach} athem in their {bthe synagogue}: ainsomuch that bmany hearing him were astonished, aand said, {bsaying,} Whence hath this man these things? athis wisdom, and these might works? band, What is the wisdom that is given unto this man, and what mean such mighty works wrought by his hands? [They admitted his marvelous teaching and miraculous works, but were at a loss to account for them because their extreme familiarity with his humanity made it hard for them to believe in his divinity, by which alone his actions would be rightly explained. Twice in the early part of his ministry Jesus had been at Cana, within a few miles of Nazareth, and turning away from it had gone down to Capernaum. He did not call upon his townsmen to believe in him or his divine mission until [359] the evidences were so full that they could not deny them.]  3 Is not this the carpenter, ^cJoseph's son? athe carpenter's son? bthe son of Mary, and brother of James, and Joses, and Judas, and Simon? ais not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joseph, and Simon, and Judas?  56 And his sisters, are they not all bhere with us? [They brought forth every item of trade and relationship by which they could confirm themselves in their conviction that he was simply a human being like themselves. The question as to his identity, however, suggests that he may have been absent from Nazareth some little time. As to Jesus' kindred, see 1Ki 17:8-16, and the second at 2Ki 5:1-14. Palestine was filled with poor people even in times of plenty, so there must have been large numbers of hungry people during the long-continued period of famine. There has always been a large number of lepers in the land, and surely if any disease ought to prompt a man to lay aside his prejudices that he might obtain healing it was leprosy; but as Nazareth was now rejecting Jesus, so their ancestors had despised the two mighty prophets. Not one of all the hungry would have received bread from Elijah by an act of faith, nor did one of all the lepers ask healing from Elisha.]  28 And they were all filled with wrath in the synagogue, as they heard these things [The Nazarenes were jealous enough of the claims of Jesus when put in their most modest dress; but when Jesus placed himself alongside Elijah and Elisha, and likened his hearers to widows for want, and lepers for uncleanness, they were ready to dash him to pieces];  29 and they rose up, and cast him forth out of the city, and led him [they evidently had hold of him] unto the brow of the hill whereon their city was built, that they might throw him down headlong. [Near the eastern end of Nazareth there is a cavern in the rock which forms a precipice down which, if a man were hurled, he would be killed. At the western end there is a perpendicular cliff about forty feet high, with a naked floor of rock at the bottom. To which place they led Jesus we can not decide.]  30 But he passing through the midst of them [361] went his way. [A simple statement of a marvelous fact. Miracles are not explained in the Bible.]  ^b5 And he could there do no mighty work,  ^a58 And he did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief. bsave that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them.  6 And he marvelled because of their unbelief. [As to this statement that Jesus felt surprised, see page 273. "It should also be borne in mind," says Canon Cook, "that surprise at the obtuseness and unreasonableness of sin is constantly attributed to God by the prophets." The statement, therefore, is perfectly consonant with the divinity of Jesus.]  ^c31 And he came down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee. [We have followed the chronology of Mark, according to which Jesus had already been living in Capernaum for some time. Luke tells of the rejection early in his narrative, and adds this line to show that from the earlier days of his ministry Jesus made Capernaum his headquarters.]

[FFG 358-362]

McGarvey: Luk 4:31-37

XXXI.
HEALING A DEMONIAC IN A SYNAGOGUE.
(At Capernaum.)
^bMARK I. 21-28; ^cLUKE . iv. 31-37.

   ^b21 And they [Jesus and the four fishermen whom he called] go into {che came down to} Capernaum, a city of Galilee. [Luke has just spoken of Nazareth, and he uses the expression "down to Capernaum" because the latter was on the lake shore while Nazareth was up in the mountains.] And bstraightway on the sabbath day he entered into the synagogue and taught. {cwas teaching them}  ^b22 And they were astonished at his teaching: for he taught them as having {chis word was with} bauthority, and not as the scribes. [Mark uses the adverb "straightway" and the particle "again" (which has a similar meaning) to depict the rapid movement of Jesus. As used by him in this connection it probably indicates that this was the next Sabbath after the calling of the four fishermen. The astonishment of the people was natural. Not yet recognizing Jesus' divinity, they could not understand how one so humble could speak with such authority. They contrasted his teaching with that of the scribes. The scribes were learned men who preserved, copied and expounded the law and the tradition (Ezr 7:6, Ezr 7:12, Neh 8:1, Mat 15:1-6, Mat 23:2-4, Mar 12:35, Luk 11:52). They were also called "lawyers" (Mar 12:28, Mat 22:35), and "doctors of the law" (Luk 5:17-21). Though the teaching of Jesus differed from the teaching of the scribes as to matter, the contrast drawn is as to manner. They spoke on the authority of Moses or the elders, but Jesus taught by [166] his own authority. Their way was to quote minute precedents supported by endless authorities. A passage taken from later rabbinical writings starts thus: "Rabbi Zeira says, on the authority of Rabbi Jose bar Rabbi Chanina, and Rabbi Ba or Rabbi Chija on the authority of Rabbi Jochanan," etc. Contrast this with the oft-repeated "I say to you" of Jesus -- Mat 5:18, Mat 5:20, Mat 5:22, Mat 5:26, Mat 5:28, Mat 5:34.]  23 And straightway there was in their {cthe} bsynagogue a man with {cthat had} ban unclean spirit {ca spirit of an unclean demon} [Matthew, Luke and Mark all concur in pronouncing demons unclean; that is, wicked. They thus corrected the prevailing Greek notion that some of the demons were good. The word "demon," as used in our Saviour's time by both Jews and Greeks, meant the spirits of the departed or the ghosts of dead men, and the teaching of that and prior ages was that such spirits often took possession of living men and controlled them. But whatever these demons were, the Scripture, both by its treatment of them and its words concerning them, clearly indicates that they were immaterial, intelligent beings, which are neither to be confused with maladies and diseases of the body, nor with tropes, metaphors, or other figures of speech. In proof of this we adduce the following Scripture facts: 1, the legislation of the Old Testament proceeded upon the assumption that there was such a thing as a "familiar spirit" (Lev 19:31); 2, in the New Testament they are spoken of as personalities (Jam 2:19, Rev 16:14), Jesus even founding a parable upon their habits (Luk 11:24-26); 3, Jesus distinguished between them and diseases, and so did his disciples (Mat 10:8, Luk 10:17-20); 4, Jesus addressed them as persons, and they answered as such (Mar 5:8, Mar 9:25); 5, they manifested desires and passions (Mar 5:12, Mar 5:13); 6, they showed a superhuman knowledge of Jesus (Mat 8:29). It would be impossible to regard demon possession as a mere disease without doing violence to the language used in every instance of the expulsion of a demon. The frequency of demoniacal possession in the time of Jesus is probably due to the fact that his advent [167] formed a great crisis in the spiritual order of things. For fuller treatment of the subject, see Millennial Harbinger, 1841, pp. 1Jo 3:8). At his second coming the workers themselves shall suffer (Mat 25:41). We find that they recognized that the time of this "torment" had not yet come -- Mat 8:29.] I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of God. [It is impossible that fever or disease, mental or physical, could give such supernatural knowledge. The demon called Jesus the Holy One, 1, because it was one of his proper Scriptural names (Psa 16:10, Act 3:14); 2, because holiness was that characteristic which involved the ruin of demons as unholy ones -- just as light destroys darkness. We should note here the unfruitful knowledge, faith, and confession of demons. They lacked neither knowledge (Mat 8:29), nor faith (Jam 2:19), nor did they withhold confession; but Jesus received them not. Repentance and willing obedience are as necessary as faith or confession.]  35 Jesus rebuked him, saying, Hold thy peace, and come out of him. [We have in this phrase two personages indicated by the personal pronoun "him"; one of whom is commanded to come out of the other; one of whom is now rebuked and hereafter to be destroyed, the other of whom is delivered. In commanding silence Jesus refused to receive the demon's testimony. We can see at least three reasons for this: 1, it was not fitting that the fate of the people should rest upon the testimony of liars; 2, because receiving such testimony might have been taken as an indication that Jesus sustained friendly relations to demons -- something which the enemies of [168] Christ actually alleged (Mat 12:24); 3, the Messiahship of Jesus was to be gradually unfolded, and the time for its public proclamation had not yet come.] And when the demon {bunclean spirit} chad thrown him down in the midst, btearing him and crying with a loud voice, che came out of him, having done him no hurt. [The demon first racked the body of the man with a convulsion, and then, with a cry of rage, came out. All this was permitted that, 1, there might be clear evidence of demoniacal possession; 2, the demon's malignity might be shown; 3, it might be manifested that the spirit came not out of its own accord, but because compelled thereto by the command of Christ. The cry was, however, a mere impotent expression of anger, for Luke, "the beloved physician," notes that it did the man no hurt.]  ^b27 And they were all amazed, {aamazement came upon all}, binsomuch that they questioned among themselves, cand they spake together, one with another, saying, ^bWhat thing is this? ^cWhat is this word? ba new teaching! cfor with authority and power he commandeth beven the unclean spirits, cand they come out. band they obey him. [The power to command disembodied spirits thus amazed the people, because it was more mysterious than the power to work physical miracles. By this miracle Jesus demonstrated his actual possession of the authority which he had just assumed in his teaching.]  28 And the report of him went out straightway {^c37 And there went forth a rumor concerning him} beverywhere into all {cevery place of} bthe region of Galilee roundabout. [This fame was occasioned both by the miracle and the teaching. The benevolence and publicity of the miracle, and its power -- the power of one mightier than Satan -- would cause excitement in any community, in any age. Though this is the first miracle recorded by either Mark or Luke, yet neither asserts that it was the first miracle Jesus wrought, so there is no conflict with Joh 2:11.] [169]

[FFG 166-169]

Lapide: Luk 4:1-44

CHAPTER  4

Ver. 1.— And Jesus, being full of the Holy Ghost, returned from Jordan, having been there baptized by John a little time before, and having visibly received the Holy Spirit, whose fulness He had already obtained invisibly in the first instant of His conception.

Ver. 2.— Tempted of the devil. In the Greek πειζαξόμενος, suffering or sustaining temptation by the devil. See Commentary on Mat 4:5.

Ver. 5. — ln a moment of time. S. Ambrose says, "It is not so much the quickness of the view which is indicated, as the fleeting frailty of power which is expressed. For in a moment they all pass away. And often the honour of the world is gone ere it is come. For what can be lasting in the world when the worlds themselves are not lasting."

Ver. 14.— And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee. In the Greek ε̉ν δυνάμει, in the power, strength, or force of the Spirit. Under a strong impulse of the Spirit, Jesus returned to Galilee. For the Holy Ghost was moving Him, and powerfully impelling Him to put forth at this time that spiritual power which He had received from the beginning of His conception, but which He had hitherto shut up and hidden within Himself, and to begin in Galilee with immense ardour and zeal, His ministry of preaching, and, confirm it by His admirable holiness of life and His stupendous miracles. Hence Theophylact renders it ε̉νθουσιω̃ν,driven and urged on by the enthusiasm and Divine afflatus of the Holy Ghost.

Ver. 16.— And He came to Nazareth. Note here that while Christ is said, in v. 14, to have gone into Galilee, He is not said to have entered Nazareth which is situated there, as S. Matthew (Mat 4:13) has it, but Capernaum, and there to have done the things which S. Matthew relates in iv. to xiii., all of which S. Luke passes over here, and then He is said to have come to Nazareth.  S. Luke wished at the very outset to state the reason why Christ would not teach in Nazareth, namely, that He was despised by His fellow-townsmen as being the son of a carpenter. And though this only happened subsequently, yet Christ foresaw that it would be the case, and therefore turned aside from Nazareth and went to Capernaum, which He made the seat of His ministry, as S. Matthew relates in (Mat 4:13).

And stood up for to read. It was (and still is) the custom among the Jews that each one should read the Hebrew books of Holy Scripture in the synagogue on the Sabbath-day, both that he might learn the law of God from it, and also that he might be stirred up to the worship, love, and service of God. Moreover, it was the part of the Rabbin and the teachers, such as Jesus was, to read the Holy Scripture publicly, to interpret it, to preach, and to teach.

Ver. 17.— And there was delivered unto Him (by the attendant) the book of the prophet Esaias. This was done by the counsel and direction of God, that Jesus might show from Isaiah that He was the-Messiah described by that prophet.

And when He had opened the book, He found the place where it was written (Isa. lxi. i). Christ seems so to have opened the book that, without looking for it, He lighted upon this passage of Isaiah by the will and guidance of God. The Vulgate, "as He unrolled the book," is better; and Vatablus, "when He had unfolded;" others, "when He had spread out," for this is the meaning of the Greek α̉ναπτύξαζ. For the books of the Hebrews were not divided into leaves, but consisted of one long piece of parchment which was rolled round a cylinder from beginning to end, as maps are nowadays. In order to read this parchment it was therefore necessary to unroll it, and spread it out.

Ver. 18.— The Spirit of the Lord is upon me: because He hath anointed me. The Holy Spirit, who was in Me from the beginning, descending upon Me here in the baptism which I have now received from John the Baptist, descending visibly in the form of a dove, while the voice of God the Father spoke forth in thunder, "This is My beloved Son; hear ye Him," has by this sign, as by a visible anointing, publicly declared, authorised, and, as it were, consecrated Me as the Teacher, Prophet, Saviour, and Lawgiver of the world, and especially of the Jews to whom I was promised, and therefore—

He hath anointed Me to preach the Gospel to the poor, for the rich Scribes and Pharisees despise My lowliness and My poverty.

Observe the words "hath anointed me;" for in Hebrew "Messiah," and in Greek Χζιστὸς, mean "anointed." This anointing of Christ was accomplished secretly in the Incarnation—

(1.) By the grace of the hypostatic union, which made Him in the highest degree holy and divine—nay, made Him God.

(2.) By the plenitude of graces which flowed from this union. For other saints are said to be anointed with the grace and the gifts of the Holy Ghost, but Christ was anointed with the Holy Ghost Himself, as though with the very fountain and plenitude of all graces, that the Man Christ might become a superabundant fountain pouring forth its grace into all the apostles, martyrs, virgins, and confessors, so says Basil ( de Spiritu Sancto, ch. xxvi.). Christ was, as I have said, publicly anointed in His baptism, to heal them that are brokenhearted—heal and console those who, by reason of their sins, and the burden of the law of Moses, as well as their ignorance of the things of God, are afflicted in spirit, and pant for the knowledge of God, His pardon, His grace, and His salvation, and who, therefore, look for the Messiah. Hence Symmachus and Theodotus render it; so S. Jerome tells us in his Commentary on Isa. lxi., "to bind up the wounds of sinners."

To preach deliverance to the captives—that I may preach, announce, and bring freedom, through penance and My grace, to those who are held captive by sin and the devil.

And recovering of sight to the blind. The Hebrew and Chaldee versions of Isaiah give " open to those bound," i.e., as Symmachus has it, " loosening of those bound." But the Septuagint, and S. Luke following them, render it in the Greek άνάβλεψιν, " looking again," that they may see again. For the Hebrews call those that are blind bound, or shut, like the Latin idiom, "Moses seized in their eyes," and consequently they call the illumination by which the eyes of the blind are opened "opening." The meaning, therefore, is, Christ shall both restore sight to those who are physically, and illumine those who are spiritually, blind, and are ignorant of God and of the way of salvation. He shall teach them the knowledge of God and the way to save their souls. This was what Isaiah (Isa 42:7) clearly foretold that the Messiah should do: "I will give Thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles, to open the eyes of the blind." And hence it is plain that Isaiah in ch. xlii., is not speaking literally of the deliverance from the Babylonian captivity wrought by Cyrus, as Toletus would have it, but of the deliverance from the captivity of sin and of the devil wrought by Christ; for Cyrus restored sight to no one, but Christ to many. I confess, however, that there is an allusion to Cyrus, he being a type of Christ. To the Hebrews in Babylon who were "bound" he gave "opening and loosening," as the Hebrew version has it, when he freed them from captivity and sent them back into Judæa.

To set at liberty them that are bruised—intoliberty and health. The Arabic has "to send thee bound into remission." Pagninus, "that I may send forth the broken by remission." So also Vatablus. These words are not in Isaiah lxi 1. in the Hebrew; they have been added paraphrastically by S. Luke or his interpreter, and seem to form another explanation of "to heal them that are brokenhearted." So Forerius on Isaiah lxi., and Francis Lucas on this passage. Origen omits "to heal them that are brokenhearted," and reads instead, "to send forth the broken into liberty;" and he adds, "What was so broken or shattered as the man who, when sent away by Jesus, was healed?"

For "broken" the Greek has τετζανσμένους, which Vatablus and others translate "broken."

Ver. 19.— To preach the acceptable year of the Lord—the pleasing year—in Hebrew, רצון מנת scenat raston ; in the Septuagint ε̉νιαυτὸν ε̉υδοκίας, that is, as S. Jerome renders it, "the placable year," or, as others with propriety, "the year of the good pleasure," of divine benevolence and liberality, such as was the year of the jubilee to which he here alludes. For the year of the jubilee was the type and figure of this evangelical year which Christ brought. So the whole time of the preaching of Christ, and thenceforward all the time of Christianity, is a year of jubilee to those who obey Christ and accept His liberty—a year of grace, mercy, peace, remission, liberality, and salvation, in which, after God's long anger against us, we are restored to His grace, His favour, His heirship, His glory, and all the former blessings which we had in Paradise in the state of innocence. This is what S. Paul says in 2Co 6:2, "Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation."

The Vulgate adds, and the day of retribution, of vengeance. The year of the jubilee, that is, the time of Christianity, shall be to the enemies of Christ a time of vengeance, when God shall avenge the human race on its enemies and oppressors, the demons that oppress it; for Christ shall deliver men from the devils, and shall cast them down, according to Isa 35:4, "Say unto the timid, Be comforted, and fear not; behold, your God shall bring the vengeance of retribution. God Himself shall come and shall save you." Vulgate. And Christ says, in Joh 12:31, "Now is the judgment of the world, now shall the prince of this world be cast forth."

Ver. 20.— And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on Him. "That they might hear," says Euthymius, "how He interpreted what He had read." For already the fame of what He had said and done at Capernaum had been noised abroad everywhere, so that many held Him to be the Messiah; and they especially desired to hear this from Christ. For they knew that the passage of Isaiah read by Him was a prophecy of the Messiah, and so they listened with eagerness to Him while He explained it.

Ver. 21.— And He began to say unto them, This day is this Scripture ("which has sounded," says Euthymius, and the Syriac version), fulfilled in your ears. This day is fulfilled in your hearing this prophecy of Isaiah, while you hear me preaching to you and to the rest of the poor of Galilee the year of full remission, and I am prepared to do, nay, I have already done in Capernaum, all that Isaiah has here foretold. I am the Messiah of whom Isaiah there prophesies, whom you, in accordance with the predictions of Jacob and Daniel, are already eagerly expecting every moment. For, though Jesus does not clearly say that He is the Messiah, yet He tacitly implies it.

Ver. 22.— And all bare Him witness, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of His mouth. And they said, Is not this Joseph's son? "Words of grace," he calls them (1) gracious, beautiful, suave, and pleasant; (2) full of grace and the Holy Spirit; (3) efficacious to move and persuade; (4) full of wisdom and eloquence, so as to convince those that heard them. For Christ spoke with a tongue that was more than human. "He was teaching them as one having power, and not as the Scribes," Mat 7:29.

Bore Him testimony—thatHe spoke well, not that He was the Messiah. Hence they call Him "the son of Joseph;" and, a little after, when they were rebuked by Him, they despised Him and wished to cast Him down headlong. So, nowadays, many people praise a preacher so long as he says to them what is pleasing and elegant, but when he attacks their vices they abuse and persecute him. Such is the way of the fickle multitude, who love themselves and their own desires. However, Bede takes this as meaning that they bore witness that He was the Messiah of whom Isaiah had prophesied these things; and he adds:—"How great their blindness, when, only on account of their knowledge of His origin, and because they had seen Him nourished, and that He had developed, through the stages of life among themselves, they set Him at nought whom, by his words and works, they knew to be Christ."

Ver. 23. — And He said unto them. ye will surely say unto Me this proverb (in the Greek παζαβολὴν—parable, proverb, or adage, in common use), Physician, heal thyself—thatis, cure Thine own people and Thine own country, which should be as dear to Thee as Thyself; cure Thy fellow Nazarenes as Thou hast cured or art said to have cured the Capernaites. Thus it was that Christ presently explains it, He, by His Divine Spirit, seeing the hidden thoughts of the Nazarenes, and that they were wishing in their hearts for that which He now said. Anticipating their secret thought, He meets and answers it. "It was common among the Jews," says Titus, "to taunt physicians who had caught any disease with this impudent and ironical saying, Physician, heal thyself." For the common sense of mankind holds, and reason favours the opinion, that he who cannot cure himself, or neglects to do so, cannot cure others or should not attempt it. In point of fact, however, experience not seldom shows that the physician who cures others is unable to effect his own cure, but hands himself over to other physicians to be treated, because appetite often blinds the reason, and diseases obscure one's scientific knowledge. Hence we judge better and more safely about the diseases of others than about our own. Self-love often perverts our judgment, so that Solomon warns us with the words, "Lean not unto thine own understanding," Pro 3:5.

Tropologically, S. Anthony thus expounded the saying "Physician, heal thyself;" He that will cure the faults of others let him first cure his own. For they that will help others before they cure themselves shall relapse into their own faults. Indeed experience teaches us that they who remedy any fault in themselves easily cure it in others.

Whatsoever we have heard done in Capernaum, do also here in Thy country. Hence it is, plain that these events took place in Nazareth after Jesus had preached and worked many miracles in the city of Capernaum, as has been said at v. 16, and S. Augustine ( De Consensu, bk. ii. cap. 42) observes. The Gloss interprets, "We do not believe what a vague rumour has published, seeing that among us, on whom favours of the kind would have been more fittingly conferred, Thou hast done no such work." Here in Nazareth, Thy fatherland which conceived Thee, nourished Thee, and brought Thee unto manhood, Thou hast brethren, sisters, kinsfolk, and neighbours, some rich, others poor, some sick, others suffering in other respects. Why then dost Thou not miraculously succour these Thine own people, to whom Thou art bound by blood, by love of home, and by natural affection?

Ver. 24.— And He said, Verily I say unto you, No prophet is accepted in his own country. Ye, 0 Nazarenes, despise Me as your fellow-townsman, and the son of a carpenter; wherefore you are unworthy that I should confer benefits upon you., Therefore (says the Interlinear), I work not among you, not because I hate my own country, but because you are incredulous.  S. Cyril adds that a citizen, being always near to his fellow-citizens, is deprived of the reverence which is his due at the hands of those who know him.

Thirdly, S. Chrysostom says, "Christ had abstained from miracles among the Nazarenes that He might not provoke them to envy." For, as S. Ambrose says, God is a despiser of the envious; and the Gloss remarks that it is almost natural for fellow-citizens to envy one another; nor do they take account of merit, but call to mind a man's frail childhood.

Chrysologus (Serm. 48, at the end,) remarks, "To be powerful is, among one's own people, a biting and a burning; to be eminent among one's fellow-citizens and neighbours burns up one's neighbours' glory; and if neighbours owe honour to a neighbour they count it slavery." There is an amusing apologue of a parrot, which touches this subject. A parrot, brought from the East to the West, where birds of this kind are not common, wondered that he was held in greater esteem and honour than he had been accustomed to in his own country. He occupied an ivory cage plaited with silver wire, and fed on the daintiest viands, such as did not fall to the share of the others, which were only western birds, but inferior to himself neither in beauty nor in the power of imitating the human voice. Then says a turtle-dove, shut up in the same cage with him, "There is nothing wonderful in this, for no one receives in his own country the honour which is his due."

Tropologically, Christ here teaches the faithful, particularly men devoted to the Apostolic calling, that they ought to curb or to divert themselves of all excessive affection for their own country and kinsfolk, that they may be useful to all men—

"The fishes' native country is the boundless sea;

 Let the wide earth the brave man's country be."

S. Gregory Nazianzen ( Orat. xviii.) says very well, "For great and noble men there is one country—that Jerusalem which is perceived by the mind, not those countries which we see here, now inhabited by one race of men, now by another." And again ( Orat. xxv.) "These earthly fatherlands, these differences of race, are the scenes, the illusions, of this our short fleeting life. For whatsoever country each one has previously got possession of, whether by injustice or by misfortune, that is called his country, while we are all alike strangers and sojourners, however much we may play upon the meaning of words." Such was S. Basil, of whom S. Gregory of Nyssa, in his life, writes, "Basil the Great was free from the fear of exile, because he held that the only fatherland of men was Paradise, and regarded all the earth as nature's common place of exile."

Vers. 25 and 26.— But I tell you of a truth, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when great famine was throughout all the land; But unto none of them was Elias sent, save unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow. Three years and six months— This does not appear in the Old Testatment, but Jesus, as God, knew it, and revealed it to S. James, Ep. v. x7, for as to what is said in 1Ki 18:1, "The word of the Lord came to Elias, in the third year, saying, Go and show thyself to Ahab that I may give rain upon the face of the earth." This third year is not to be taken from the beginning of the drought, but as from the sojourn of Elias in Sarepta.

In all the land— Israel and the neighbouring region, such as Sidon, and Sarepta, where this widow was.

The sense is that, as Elias, in the time of the famine, procured food for no Israelite, but only for the widow of Sarepta, a Sidonian, a Gentile, and a foreigner, because, valuing the prophet very highly, and believing him that God would provide for her hunger according to his word, she gave him the little oil and meal which she had, postponing her own and her children's wants to his; so Christ, in like manner, puts the Capernaites before the Nazarenes, His own fellow-citizens, because the former hear Him as a Teacher sent from Heaven, honour Him and pay Him respect, but the latter despise Him as a carpenter, and their own fellow-townsman; and so He imparts to the former the spiritual bread of heavenly doctrine and miracles, but leaves the latter in their spiritual want. For Elias was the type and precursor of Christ, and the widow of Sarepta the type and first-fruits of the Gentiles whom Christ preferred before the Jews, His fellow-countrymen. Bede says that "Sidon" in Hebrew signifies "useless hunting;" "Sarepta," "conflagration" or "neediness"—namely, of bread; that is, the Gentile world given up to the pursuit of worldly things, and suffering from the conflagration of their carnal passions and the want of spiritual bread. Elias is the prophetic, word, which, being received, feeds the hearts of them that believe.

Ver. 27.— And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Eliseus the prophet; and none of them was cleansed saving Naaman the Syrian, a foreigner and a Gentile. As Elisha, following his master Elias, did not prophecy to the Jews, his own people, but to foreigners, and did not therefore heal the lepers that were in Judæa, but Naaman the Gentile, by reason of his faith and their incredulity; so I preach and work miracles among these Capernaite strangers, on account of their faith, reverence, and good-will towards Me, but I leave you Nazarenes alone for your infidelity, your irreverence, and your contempt of Me. For Elisha, like Elias, was a type and forerunner of Christ; and Naaman the Gentile, a type of the Gentiles to whom Christ, leaving the Jews, would, by the apostles, transfer His faith, His church, and His grace. So Bede, Titus, Theophylact, Euthymius, Jansenius, Toletus, and others.

Ver. 28.— And all they in the synagogue, when they heard these things, were filled with wrath—because they knew that they were touched by these two examples of the widow and Naaman, as being incredulous, and that a slur was cast upon them as being unworthy of the miracles of Jesus; and again because they were indignant that Jesus, their fellow-townsman and equal, should compare Himself with, and place Himself before, Elias and Elisha, nay, make Himself out the Messiah, from the prophecy of Isaiah; and, lastly, because Christ hinted that He would transfer His gifts from the Jews to the Gentiles. So S. Thomas, Toletus, Francis Lucas, and others.

Ver. 29. — And rose up and thrust him out of the city, and led him unto the brow of the hill, whereon their city was built, that they might cast him down headlong—" led him "—dragged Him, as it seemed to them, by violence, but, in reality, Christ of His own accord allowed Himself to be led and dragged.

That they might cast him down headlong—fromthe top of the hill to the bottom, and so kill Him, as one who had defamed his own native place, and inflicted injury and insult upon it; and therefore they brought Him forth outside of the city, as being unworthy of it, that they might cast Him from the top of the mountain, dash Him down upon the rocks, and break His whole body to pieces. This was a grievous piece of violence on the part of the Nazarenes against Christ, their fellow-citizen, and thus, as Euthymius observes, they confirmed in act, what He had spoken in words, namely, that a prophet is not held in honour in his own country, but dishonoured, nay, slain; and that therefore the Nazarenes were unworthy of the preaching and miracles of Christ.

S. Bonaventure, Toletus, and others add, that they took Christ out of the city to the top of the hill that they might slay Him as a blasphemer, because He had made Himself the Messiah. For though, by the law, the blasphemer was to be stoned, still they wished to cast Christ headlong upon the rocks and stones, because this is the same as if they had stoned Him. Whether the stones are cast at the man, or the man hurled headlong upon the stones, is all one; indeed, the latter is more cruel and terrible. So it was that they cast S. Stephen out of Jerusalem as a blasphemer, and stoned him; and S. James, the first Bishop of Jerusalem, was hurled down from a pinnacle of the Temple as a blasphemer, because He taught that Christ was the Messiah.

S. Ambrose points out that these men were worse than the devil, who did but set Christ upon a pinnacle of the Temple, and say to Him, "Cast thyself down," while these did their best to hurl Him down by force. "The heritage of the disciples," he says, "is worse than that of the master - he tempts the Lord by word, they attempt His life by their act—he says, 'Cast thyself down,' they do Him violence in order to cast Him down."

Ver. 30 . — But He passing through the midst of them went His way. Maldonatus thinks that Christ here made Himself invisible, S. Ambrose and Bede that He changed their wills, so that they consented to let Him go. Others hold the better opinion that Christ turned away their imagination or their eyes, or suspended their consciousness and held their hands and feet, so that, like men bereft of their senses, though they saw Him they could not or dared not lay hold of Him. Wherefore Christ here manifested His Godhead. S. Ambrose says, "Behold! the minds of these furious men, being suddenly changed, or stupefied, He goes down through the midst of them." And he adds the reason, "For when He wills He is taken; when He wills He slips away; when He wills He is slain; because His hour had not yet come," John vii. 30. For as yet he must preach, and at last be crucified at Jerusalem by the Father's decree, but not cast down headlong in Nazareth. So Bede, S. Chrysostom, Euthymius, and others. Brocardus, in his "Description of the Holy Land," gives the tradition that Christ glided away from out of the hands of the Jews, and suddenly appeared on the opposite side of the mountain, and that therefore the place is called "the Leap of the Lord."  N. de Lyra adds that the rock on which Christ stood yielded, and received like wax the impress of His feet, just as, when ascending into heaven from Mount Olivet, He left the marks of His feet there. This is what Adrichomius says, in his "Description of the Holy Land," on the word "the Leap of the Lord:" "The tradition is that Christ fled to a high mountain, which is called from that circumstance 'the Leap of the Lord,' and that, at the touch of His garment, the rock flowed, and being melted and loosened like wax, made a kind of hollow for the Lord's body to be received in and protected, a hollow of a capacity equal to the quantity of the Lord's body. And in this, even at the present day, the lineaments and folds of the garment on the Lord's back, and the marks of His feet are preserved, marked out as though by the hand of a sculptor." This, however, lacks confirmation.

On verse 32 see what I have said on Mat 13:5, Mat 8:14; on verse 33 see Mar 1:23.

Introduction / Outline

Robertson: Luke (Book Introduction)

THE GOSPEL OF LUKE

By Way of Introduction

There is not room here for a full discussion of all the interesting problems raised by Luke as the author of the Gospel and Acts. One can find them ably handled in the Introduction to Plummer’s volume on Luke’s Gospel in the International and Critical Commentary , in the Introduction to Ragg’s volume on Luke’s Gospel in the Westminster Commentaries , in the Introduction to Easton’s Gospel According to St. Luke , Hayes’ Synoptic Gospels and the Book of Acts , Ramsay’s Luke the Physician , Harnack’s Date of the Acts and the Synoptic Gospels , Foakes-Jackson and Kirsopp Lake’s Beginnings of Christianity , Carpenter’s Christianity According to St. Luke , Cadbury’s The Making of Luke-Acts , McLachlan’s St. Luke: The Man and His Work , Robertson’s Luke the Historian in the Light of Research , to go no further. It is a fascinating subject that appeals to scholars of all shades of opinion.

The Same Author for Gospel and Acts

The author of Acts refers to the Gospel specifically as " the first treatise," ton prōton logon , (Act_1:1) and both are addressed to Theophilus (Luk_1:3; Act_1:1). He speaks of himself in both books as " me" ( kamoi , Luk_1:3) and I made ( epoiēsamēn , Act_1:1). He refers to himself with others as " we" and " us" as in Act_16:10, the " we" sections of Acts. The unity of Acts is here assumed until the authorship of Acts is discussed in Volume III. The same style appears in Gospel and Acts, so that the presumption is strongly in support of the author’s statement. It is quite possible that the formal Introduction to the Gospel (Luk_1:1-4) was intended to apply to the Acts also which has only an introductory clause. Plummer argues that to suppose that the author of Acts imitated the Gospel purposely is to suppose a literary miracle. Even Cadbury, who is not convinced of the Lucan authorship, says: " In my study of Luke and Acts, their unity is a fundamental and illuminating axiom." He adds: " They are not merely two independent writings from the same pen; they are a single continuous work. Acts is neither an appendix nor an afterthought. It is probably an integral part of the author’s original plan and purpose."

The Author of Acts a Companion of Paul

The proof of this position belongs to the treatment of Acts, but a word is needed here. The use of " we" and " us" in Act_16:10 and from Act_20:6 to the end of chapter Acts 28 shows it beyond controversy if the same man wrote the " we" sections and the rest of the Acts. This proof Harnack has produced with painstaking detail in his Date of the Acts and the Synoptic Gospels and in his volume The Acts of the Apostles and in his Luke the Physician .

This Companion of Paul A Physician

The argument for this position lies in the use of medical terms throughout the Gospel and the Acts. Hobart in his Medical Language of St. Luke proves that the author of both Gospel and Acts shows a fondness for medical terms best explained by the fact that he was a physician. Like most enthusiasts he overdid it and some of his proof does not stand the actual test of sifting. Harnack and Hawkins in his Horae Synopticae have picked out the most pertinent items which will stand. Cadbury in his Style and Literary Method of Luke denies that Luke uses Greek medical words more frequently in proportion than Josephus, Philo, Plutarch, or Lucian. It is to miss the point about Luke merely to count words. It is mainly the interest in medical things shown in Luke and Acts. The proof that Luke is the author of the books does not turn on this fact. It is merely confirmatory. Paul calls Luke " the beloved physician" ( ho iatros ho agapētos , Col_4:14), " my beloved physician." Together they worked in the Island of Malta (Act_28:8-10) where many were healed and Luke shared with Paul in the appreciation of the natives who " came and were healed ( etherapeuonto ) who also honoured us with many honours." The implication there is that Paul wrought miracles of healing ( iasato ), while Luke practised his medical art also. Other notes of the physician’s interest will be indicated in the discussion of details like his omitting Mark’s apparent discredit of physicians (Mar_5:26) by a milder and more general statement of a chronic case (Luk_8:43).

This Companion and Author Luke

All the Greek manuscripts credit the Gospel to Luke in the title. We should know that Luke wrote these two books if there was no evidence from early writers. Irenaeus definitely ascribes the Gospel to Luke as does Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, the Muratorian Fragment. Plummer holds that the authorship of the four great Epistles of Paul (I and II Corinthians, Galatians, Romans) which even Baur accepted, is scarcely more certain than the Lukan authorship of the Gospel. Even Renan says: " There is no very strong reason for supposing that Luke was not the author of the Gospel which bears his name."

A Sketch of Luke

His name is not a common one, and is probably a shortened form of Lukios and Lukanos . Some of the manuscripts of the Gospel actually have as the title Kata Lukanon . Dean Plumptre suggests that the Latin poet Lucanus was named after Luke who probably was the family physician when he was born. That is conjecture as well as the notion of Hayes that, since the brothers Gallio and Seneca were uncles of Lucanus they were influenced by Luke to be friendly toward Paul both in Corinth and in Rome. It is probable that Luke was a Greek, certainly a Gentile, possibly a freedman. So this man who wrote more than one-fourth of the New Testament was not a Jew. It is not certain whether his home was in Antioch or in Philippi. It is also uncertain whether he was already converted when Paul met him at Troas. The Codex Bezae has a " we" passage after Act_11:27 which, if genuine, would bring Luke in contact with Paul before Troas. Hayes thinks that he was a slave boy in the family of Theophilus at Antioch, several conjectures in one. We do not know that Theophilus lived at Antioch. It may have been Rome. But, whether one of Paul’s converts or not, he was a loyal friend to Paul. If he lived at Antioch, he could have studied medicine there and the great medical temple of Aesculapius was at Aegae, not far away. As a Greek physician, Luke was a university man and in touch with the science of his day. Greek medicine is the beginning of the science of medicine as it is known today. Tradition calls him a painter, but of that we know nothing. Certainly he was a humanist and a man of culture and broad sympathies and personal charm. He was the first genuine scientist who faced the problem of Christ and of Christianity. It must be said of him that he wrote his books with open mind and not as a credulous enthusiast.

The Date of the Gospel

There are two outstanding facts to mark off the date of this Gospel by Luke. It was later than the Gospel of Mark since Luke makes abundant use of it. It was before the Acts of the Apostles since he definitely refers to it in Act_1:1. Unfortunately the precise date of both termini is uncertain. There are still some scholars who hold that the author of the Acts shows knowledge of the Antiquities of Josephus and so is after a.d. 85, a mistaken position, in my opinion, but a point to be discussed when Acts is reached. Still others more plausibly hold that the Acts was written after the destruction of Jerusalem and that the Gospel of Luke has a definite allusion to that event (Luk_21:20.), which is interpreted as a prophecy post eventum instead of a prediction by Christ a generation beforehand. Many who accept this view hold to authorship of both Acts and Gospel by Luke. I have long held the view, now so ably defended by Harnack, that the Acts of the Apostles closes as it does for the simple and obvious reason that Paul was still a prisoner in Rome. Whether Luke meant the Acts to be used in the trial in Rome, which may or may not have come to pass, is not the point. Some argue that Luke contemplated a third book which would cover the events of the trial and Paul’s later career. There is no proof of that view. The outstanding fact is that the book closes with Paul already a prisoner for two years in Rome. If the Acts was written about a.d. 63, as I believe to be the case, then obviously the Gospel comes earlier. How much before we do not know. It so happens that Paul was a prisoner a little over two years in Caesarea. That period gave Luke abundant opportunity for the kind of research of which he speaks in Luk_1:1-4. In Palestine he could have access to persons familiar with the earthly life and teachings of Jesus and to whatever documents were already produced concerning such matters. Luke may have produced the Gospel towards the close of the stay of Paul in Caesarea or during the early part of the first Roman imprisonment, somewhere between a.d. 59 and 62. The other testimony concerns the date of Mark’s Gospel which has already been discussed in volume I. There is no real difficulty in the way of the early date of Mark’s Gospel. All the facts that are known admit, even argue for a date by a.d. 60. If Mark wrote his Gospel in Rome, as is possible, it would certainly be before a.d. 64, the date of the burning of Rome by Nero. There are scholars, however, who argue for a much earlier date for his gospel, even as early as a.d. 50. The various aspects of the Synoptic problem are ably discussed by Hawkins in his Horae Synopticae , by Sanday and others in Oxford Studies in the Synoptic Problem , by Streeter in his The Four Gospels , by Hayes in his The Synoptic Gospels and the Book of Acts , by Harnack in his Date of the Acts and the Synoptic Gospels , by Stanton in his The Gospels as Historical Documents , and by many others. My own views are given at length in my Studies in Mark’s Gospel and in Luke the Historian in the Light of Research .

The Sources of the Gospel

In his Preface or Prologue (Luk_1:1-4) the author tells us that he had two kinds of sources, oral and written, and that they were many, how many we have no way of telling. It is now generally accepted that we know two of his written sources, Mark’s Gospel and Q or the Logia of Jesus (written by Matthew, Papias says). Mark is still preserved and it is not difficult for any one by the use of a harmony of the Gospels to note how Luke made use of Mark, incorporating what he chose, adapting it in various ways, not using what did not suit his purposes. The other source we only know in the non-Markan portions of Matthew and Luke, that is the material common to both, but not in Mark. This also can be noted by any one in a harmony. Only it is probable that this source was more extensive than just the portions used by both Matthew and Luke. It is probable that both Matthew and Luke each used portions of the Logia not used by the other. But there is a large portion of Luke’s Gospel which is different from Mark and Matthew. Some scholars call this source L. There is little doubt that Luke had another document for the material peculiar to him, but it is also probable that he had several others. He spoke of " many." This applies especially to chapters 9 to 21. But Luke expressly says that he had received help from " eye-witnesses and ministers of the word," in oral form this means. It is, then, probable that Luke made numerous notes of such data and used them along with the written sources at his command. This remark applies particularly to chapters 1 and 2 which have a very distinct Semitic (Aramaic) colouring due to the sources used. It is possible, of course, that Mary the mother of Jesus may have written a statement concerning these important matters or that Luke may have had converse with her or with one of her circle. Ramsay, in his volume, Was Christ Born at Bethlehem? shows the likelihood of Luke’s contact with Mary or her circle during these two years at Caesarea. Luke handles the data acquired with care and skill as he claims in his Prologue and as the result shows. The outcome is what Renan called the most beautiful book in the world.

The Character of the Book

Literary charm is here beyond dispute. It is a book that only a man with genuine culture and literary genius could write. It has all the simple grace of Mark and Matthew plus an indefinable quality not in these wonderful books. There is a delicate finish of detail and proportion of parts that give the balance and poise that come only from full knowledge of the subject, the chief element in a good style according to Dr. James Stalker. This scientific physician, this man of the schools, this converted Gentile, this devoted friend of Paul, comes to the study of the life of Christ with a trained intellect, with an historian’s method of research, with a physician’s care in diagnosis and discrimination, with a charm of style all his own, with reverence for and loyalty to Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. One could not afford to give up either of the Four Gospels. They each supplement the other in a wonderful way. John’s Gospel is the greatest book in all the world, reaching the highest heights of all. But if we had only Luke’s Gospel, we should have an adequate portrait of Jesus Christ as Son of God and Son of Man. If Mark’s is the Gospel for the Romans and Matthew’s for the Jews, the Gospel of Luke is for the Gentile world. He shows the sympathy of Jesus for the poor and the outcast. Luke understands women and children and so is the universal Gospel of mankind in all phases and conditions. It is often called the Gospel of womanhood, of infancy, of prayer, of praise. We have in Luke the first Christian hymns. With Luke we catch some glimpses of the child Jesus for which we are grateful. Luke was a friend and follower of Paul, and verbal parallels with Paul’s Epistles do occur, but there is no Pauline propaganda in the Gospel as Moffatt clearly shows ( Intr. to Lit. of the N.T. , p. 281). The Prologue is in literary Koiné and deserves comparison with those in any Greek and Latin writers. His style is versatile and is often coloured by his source. He was a great reader of the Septuagint as is shown by occasional Hebraisms evidently due to reading that translation Greek. He has graciousness and a sense of humour as McLachlan and Ragg show. Every really great man has a saving sense of humour as Jesus himself had. Ramsay dares to call Luke, as shown by the Gospel and Acts, the greatest of all historians not even excepting Thucydides. Ramsay has done much to restore Luke to his rightful place in the estimation of modern scholars. Some German critics used to cite Luk_2:1-7 as a passage containing more historical blunders than any similar passage in any historian. The story of how papyri and inscriptions have fully justified Luke in every statement here made is carefully worked out by Ramsay in his various books, especially in The Bearing of Recent Discovery on the Trustworthiness of the New Testament . The main feature of this proof appears also in my Luke the Historian in the Light of Research . So many items, where Luke once stood alone, have been confirmed by recent discoveries that the burden of proof now rests on those who challenge Luke in those cases where he still stands alone.

JFB: Luke (Book Introduction)

THE writer of this Gospel is universally allowed to have been Lucas (an abbreviated form of Lucanus, as Silas of Silvanus), though he is not expressly named either in the Gospel or in the Acts. From Col 4:14 we learn that he was a "physician"; and by comparing that verse with Col 4:10-11 --in which the apostle enumerates all those of the circumcision who were then with him, but does not mention Luke, though he immediately afterwards sends a salutation from him--we gather that Luke was not a born Jew. Some have thought he was a freed-man (libertinus), as the Romans devolved the healing art on persons of this class and on their slaves, as an occupation beneath themselves. His intimate acquaintance with Jewish customs, and his facility in Hebraic Greek, seem to show that he was an early convert to the Jewish faith; and this is curiously confirmed by Act 21:27-29, where we find the Jews enraged at Paul's supposed introduction of Greeks into the temple, because they had seen "Trophimus the Ephesian" with him; and as we know that Luke was with Paul on that occasion, it would seem that they had taken him for a Jew, as they made no mention of him. On the other hand, his fluency in classical Greek confirms his Gentile origin. The time when he joined Paul's company is clearly indicated in the Acts by his changing (at Act 16:10) from the third person singular ("he") to the first person plural ("we"). From that time he hardly ever left the apostle till near the period of his martyrdom (2Ti 4:11). EUSEBIUS makes him a native of Antioch. If so, he would have every advantage for cultivating the literature of Greece and such medical knowledge as was then possessed. That he died a natural death is generally agreed among the ancients; GREGORY NAZIANZEN alone affirming that he died a martyr.

The time and place of the publication of his Gospel are alike uncertain. But we can approximate to it. It must at any rate have been issued before the Acts, for there the 'Gospel' is expressly referred to as the same author's "former treatise" (Act 1:1). Now the Book of the Acts was not published for two whole years after Paul's arrival as a prisoner at Rome, for it concludes with a reference to this period; but probably it was published soon after that, which would appear to have been early in the year 63. Before that time, then, we have reason to believe that the Gospel of Luke was in circulation, though the majority of critics make it later. If we date it somewhere between A.D. 50 and 60, we shall probably be near the truth; but nearer it we cannot with any certainty come. Conjectures as to the place of publication are too uncertain to be mentioned here.

That it was addressed, in the first instance, to Gentile readers, is beyond doubt. This is no more, as DAVIDSON remarks [Introduction to the New Testament, p. 186], than was to have been expected from the companion of an "apostle of the Gentiles," who had witnessed marvellous changes in the condition of many heathens by the reception of the Gospel. But the explanations in his Gospel of things known to every Jew, and which could only be intended for Gentile readers, make this quite plain--see Luk 1:26; Luk 4:31; Luk 8:26; Luk 21:37; Luk 22:1; Luk 24:13. A number of other minute particulars, both of things inserted and of things omitted, confirm the conclusion that it was Gentiles whom this Evangelist had in the first instance in view.

We have already adverted to the classical style of Greek which this Evangelist writes--just what might have been expected from an educated Greek and travelled physician. But we have also observed that along with this he shows a wonderful flexibility of style, so much so, that when he comes to relate transactions wholly Jewish, where the speakers and actors and incidents are all Jewish, he writes in such Jewish Greek as one would do who had never been out of Palestine or mixed with any but Jews. In DA COSTA'S'S Four Witnesses will be found some traces of "the beloved physician" in this Gospel. But far more striking and important are the traces in it of his intimate connection with the apostle of the Gentiles. That one who was so long and so constantly in the society of that master mind has in such a work as this shown no traces of that connection, no stamp of that mind, is hardly to be believed. Writers of Introductions seem not to see it, and take no notice of it. But those who look into the interior of it will soon discover evidences enough in it of a Pauline cast of mind. Referring for a number of details to DA COSTA, we notice here only two examples: In 1Co 11:23, Paul ascribes to an express revelation from Christ Himself the account of the Institution of the Lord's Supper which he there gives. Now, if we find this account differing in small yet striking particulars from the accounts given by Matthew and Mark, but agreeing to the letter with Luke's account, it can hardly admit of a doubt that the one had it from the other; and in that case, of course, it was Luke that had it from Paul. Now Matthew and Mark both say of the Cup, "This is my blood of the New Testament"; while Paul and Luke say, in identical terms, "This cup is the New Testament in My blood" (1Co 11:25; Luk 22:20). Further, Luke says, "Likewise also the cup after supper, saying," &c.; while Paul says, "After the same manner He took the cup when He had supped, saying," &c.; whereas neither Matthew nor Mark mention that this was after supper. But still more striking is another point of coincidence in this case. Matthew and Mark both say of the Bread merely this: "Take, eat; this is My body" (Mat 26:26; Mar 14:22); whereas Paul says, "Take, eat, this is My body, which is broken for you" (1Co 11:24), and Luke, "This is My body, which is given for you" (Luk 22:19). And while Paul adds the precious clause, "This do in remembrance of Me," Luke does the same, in identical terms. How can one who reflects on this resist the conviction of a Pauline stamp in this Gospel? The other proof of this to which we ask the reader's attention is in the fact that Paul, in enumerating the parties by whom Christ was seen after His resurrection, begins, singularly enough, with Peter--"And that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures and that He was seen of Cephas, then of the Twelve" (1Co 15:4-5) --coupled with the remarkable fact, that Luke is the only one of the Evangelists who mentions that Christ appeared to Peter at all. When the disciples had returned from Emmaus to tell their brethren how the Lord had appeared to them in the way, and how He had made Himself known to them in the breaking of bread, they were met, as Luke relates, ere they had time to utter a word, with this wonderful piece of news, "The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon" (Luk 24:34).

Other points connected with this Gospel will be adverted to in the Commentary.

JFB: Luke (Outline)

• ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE FORERUNNER. (Luke 1:5-25)
• ANNUNCIATION OF CHRIST. (Luk 1:26-38)
• VISIT OF MARY TO ELISABETH. (Luke 1:39-56)
• BIRTH AND CIRCUMCISION OF JOHN--SONG OF ZACHARIAS AND PROGRESS OF THE CHILD. (Luke 1:57-80)
• BIRTH OF CHRIST. (Luk 2:1-7)
• ANGELIC ANNUNCIATION TO THE SHEPHERDS--THEIR VISIT TO THE NEWBORN BABE. (Luk 2:8-20)
• PURIFICATION OF THE VIRGIN--PRESENTATION OF THE BABE IN THE TEMPLE-SCENE THERE WITH SIMEON AND ANNA. (Luke 2:22-40)
• FIRST CONSCIOUS VISIT TO JERUSALEM. (Luk 2:41-52)
• PREACHING, BAPTISM, AND IMPRISONMENT OF JOHN. (Luke 3:1-20) Here the curtain of the New Testament is, as it were, drawn up, and the greatest of all epochs of the Church commences. Even our Lord's own age (Luk 3:23) is determined by it [BENGEL]. No such elaborate chronological precision is to be found elsewhere in the New Testament, and it comes fitly from him who claims it as the peculiar recommendation of his Gospel, that he had "accurately traced down all things from the first" (Luk 1:3). Here, evidently, commences his proper narrative. Also see on Mat 3:1.
• BAPTISM OF AND DESCENT OF THE SPIRIT UPON JESUS. (Luk 3:21-22)
• GENEALOGY OF JESUS. (Luke 3:23-38)
• JESUS ENTERING ON HIS PUBLIC MINISTRY, MAKES A CIRCUIT OF GALILEE--REJECTION AT NAZARETH. (Luke 4:14-32)
• DEMONIAC HEALED. (Luk 4:33-37)
• PETER'S MOTHER-IN-LAW AND MANY OTHERS, HEALED. (Luk 4:38-41)
• JESUS SOUGHT OUT AT MORNING PRAYER, AND ENTREATED TO STAY, DECLINES FROM THE URGENCY OF HIS WORK. (Luk 4:42-44)
• MIRACULOUS DRAUGHT OF FISHES--CALL OF PETER, JAMES, AND JOHN. (Luk 5:1-11)
• LEPER HEALED. (Luk 5:12-16)
• PARALYTIC HEALED. (Luk 5:17-26)
• LEVI'S CALL AND FEAST. (Luk 5:27-32)
• PLUCKING CORN-EARS ON THE SABBATH. (Luk 6:1-5)
• WITHERED HAND HEALED. (Luk 6:6-11)
• THE TWELVE APOSTLES CHOSEN--GATHERING MULTITUDES--GLORIOUS HEALING. (Luke 6:12-49)
• CENTURION'S SERVANT HEALED. (Luk 7:1-10)
• WIDOW OF NAIN'S SON RAISED TO LIFE. (In Luke only). (Luk 7:11-17)
• THE BAPTIST'S MESSAGE THE REPLY, AND CONSEQUENT DISCOURSE. (Luke 7:18-35)
• CHRIST'S FEET WASHED WITH TEARS. (Luk 7:36-50)
• A GALILEAN CIRCUIT, WITH THE TWELVE AND CERTAIN MINISTERING WOMEN. (In Luke only). (Luk 8:1-3)
• PARABLE OF THE SOWER. (Luk 8:4-18)
• JESUS CROSSING THE LAKE, STILLS THE STORM. (Luk 8:22-25)
• JAIRUS' DAUGHTER RAISED AND ISSUE OF BLOOD HEALED. (Luke 8:40-56)
• MISSION OF THE TWELVE APOSTLES. (Luk 9:1-6)
• HEROD TROUBLED AT WHAT HE HEARS OF CHRIST DESIRES TO SEE HIM. (Luk 9:7-9)
• PETER'S CONFESSION OF CHRIST--OUR LORD'S FIRST EXPLICIT ANNOUNCEMENT OF HIS APPROACHING DEATH, AND WARNINGS ARISING OUT OF IT. (Luk 9:18-27)
• JESUS TRANSFIGURED. (Luk 9:28-36)
• DEMONIAC AND LUNATIC BOY HEALED--CHRIST'S SECOND EXPLICIT ANNOUNCEMENT OF HIS DEATH AND RESURRECTION. (Luk 9:37-45)
• STRIFE AMONG THE TWELVE WHO SHOULD BE GREATEST--JOHN REBUKED FOR EXCLUSIVENESS. (Luk 9:46-48) (See on Mat 18:1-5).
• THE PERIOD OF HIS ASSUMPTION APPROACHING CHRIST TAKES HIS LAST LEAVE OF GALILEE--THE SAMARITANS REFUSE TO RECEIVE HIM. (Luk 9:51-56)
• INCIDENTS ILLUSTRATIVE OF DISCIPLESHIP. (Luk 9:57-62)
• MISSION OF THE SEVENTY DISCIPLES, AND THEIR RETURN. (Luke 10:1-24)
• QUESTION OF A LAWYER AND PARABLE OF THE GOOD SAMARITAN. (Luk 10:25-37)
• MARTHA AND MARY. (Luk 10:38-42)
• THE DISCIPLES TAUGHT TO PRAY. (Luk 11:1-13)
• BLIND AND DUMB DEMONIAC HEALED--CHARGE OF BEING IN LEAGUE WITH HELL, AND REPLY--DEMAND OF A SIGN, AND REPLY. (Luke 11:14-36)
• DENUNCIATION OF THE PHARISEES. (Luke 11:37-54)
• WARNING AGAINST HYPOCRISY. (Luk 12:1-12)
• COVETOUSNESS--WATCHFULNESS--SUPERIORITY TO EARTHLY TIES. (Luke 12:13-53)
• NOT DISCERNING THE SIGNS OF THE TIME. (Luk 12:54-59)
• THE LESSON, "REPENT OR PERISH," SUGGESTED BY TWO RECENT INCIDENTS, AND ILLUSTRATED BY THE PARABLE OF THE BARREN FIG TREE. (Luk 13:1-9)
• WOMAN OF EIGHTEEN YEAR'S INFIRMITY HEALED ON THE SABBATH. (Luk 13:10-17)
• MISCELLANEOUS TEACHINGS. (Luk 13:18-30)
• MESSAGE TO HEROD. (Luk 13:31-35)
• HEALING OF A DROPSICAL MAN, AND MANIFOLD TEACHINGS AT A SABBATH FEAST. (Luke 14:1-24)
• ADDRESS TO GREAT MULTITUDES TRAVELLING WITH HIM. (Luk 14:25-35)
• PUBLICANS AND SINNERS WELCOMED BY CHRIST--THREE PARABLES TO EXPLAIN THIS. (Luke 15:1-32)
• I. THE LOST SHEEP. (Luk 15:3-7) Occurring again (Mat 18:12-14); but there to show how precious one of His sheep is to the Good Shepherd; here, to show that the shepherd, though the sheep stray never so widely, will seek it out, and when he hath found, will rejoice over it.
• II. THE LOST COIN. (Luk 15:8-10)
• III. THE PRODIGAL SON. (Luke 15:11-32)
• PARABLES OF THE UNJUST STEWARD AND OF THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS, OR, THE RIGHT USE OF MONEY. (Luke 16:1-31)
• OFFENSES--FAITH--HUMILITY. (Luk 17:1-10) (See Mat 18:6-7).
• TEN LEPERS CLEANSED. (Luk 17:11-19)
• COMING OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD AND OF THE SON OF MAN. (Luke 17:20-37)
• PARABLE OF THE IMPORTUNATE WIDOW. (Luk 18:1-8)
• PARABLE OF THE PHARISEE AND THE PUBLICAN. (Luk 18:9-14)
• LITTLE CHILDREN BROUGHT TO CHRIST. (Luk 18:15-17)
• THE RICH YOUNG RULER AND DISCOURSE THEREON. (Luk 18:18-30)
• FULLER ANNOUNCEMENT OF HIS APPROACHING DEATH AND RESURRECTION. (Luk 18:31-34)
• BLIND MAN HEALED. (Luk 18:35-43)
• ZACCHEUS THE PUBLICAN. (Luk 19:1-10)
• PARABLE OF THE POUNDS. (Luke 19:11-27)
• SECOND CLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE AND SUBSEQUENT TEACHING. (Luk 19:45-48) As the first cleansing was on His first visit to Jerusalem (Joh 2:13-22), so this second cleansing was on His last.
• THE AUTHORITY OF JESUS QUESTIONED, AND HIS REPLY--PARABLE OF THE WICKED HUSBANDMEN. (Luke 20:1-19)
• ENTANGLING QUESTIONS ABOUT TRIBUTE AND THE RESURRECTION--THE REPLIES. (Luke 20:20-40)
• CHRIST BAFFLES THE PHARISEES BY A QUESTION ABOUT DAVID AND MESSIAH, AND DENOUNCES THE SCRIBES. (Luk 20:41-47)
• THE WIDOW'S TWO MITES. (Luk 21:1-4)
• CHRIST'S PROPHECY OF THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM AND WARNINGS TO PREPARE FOR HIS SECOND COMING, SUGGESTED BY IT--HIS DAYS AND NIGHTS DURING HIS LAST WEEK. (Luke 21:5-38) (See on Mat 24:1-3.)
• CONSPIRACY OF THE JEWISH AUTHORITIES TO PUT JESUS TO DEATH--COMPACT WITH JUDAS. (Luk 22:1-6) (See on Mat 26:1-5.)
• LAST PASSOVER--INSTITUTION OF THE SUPPER--DISCOURSE AT THE TABLE. (Luke 22:7-38)
• AGONY IN THE GARDEN. (Luk 22:39-46)
• JESUS BEFORE CAIAPHAS--FALL OF PETER. (Luk 22:55-62)
• JESUS BEFORE HEROD. (Luk 23:6-12)
• JESUS AGAIN BEFORE PILATE--DELIVERED UP--LED AWAY TO BE CRUCIFIED. (Luke 23:13-38)
• THE TWO THIEVES. (Luk 23:39-43)
• ANGELIC ANNOUNCEMENT TO THE WOMEN THAT CHRIST IS RISEN--PETER'S VISIT TO THE EMPTY SEPULCHRE. (Luk 24:1-12)
• CHRIST APPEARS TO THE TWO GOING TO EMMAUS. (Luke 24:13-35)
• JESUS APPEARS TO THE ASSEMBLED DISCIPLES--HIS ASCENSION. (Luke 24:36-53)

TSK: Luke (Book Introduction)

Luke, to whom this Gospel has been uniformly attributed from the earliest ages of the Christian church, is generally allowed to have been " the beloved physician" mentioned by Paul (Col 4:14); and as he was the companion of that apostle, in all his labours and sufferings, for many years (Act 16:12; Act 20:1-6; Act 27:1, Act 27:2; Act 28:13-16. 2Ti 4:11. Phm 1:24), and wrote " the Acts of the Apostles," which conclude with a brief account of Paul’s imprisonment at Rome, we may be assured that he had the Apostle’s sanction to what he did; and probably this Gospel was written some time before that event, about ad 63 or 64, as is generally supposed. He would appear, from Col 4:10, Col 4:11, and his intimate acquaintance with the Greek language, as well as from his Greek name Λουκας [Strong’s 3065], to have been of Gentile extraction; and according to Eusebius and others, he was a native of Antioch. But, from the Hebraisms occurring in his writings, and especially from his accurate knowledge of the Jewish rites, ceremonies, and custom, it is highly probable that he was a Jewish proselyte, and afterwards converted to Christianity. Though he may not have been, as some have affirmed, one of the seventy disciples, and an eye-witness of our Saviour’s miracles, yet his intercourse with the apostles, and those who were eye-witnesses of the works and ear witnesses of the words of Christ, renders him an unexceptional witness, if considered merely as an historian; and the early and unanimous reception of his Gospel as divinely inspired is sufficient to satisfy every reasonable person.

TSK: Luke 4 (Chapter Introduction)

Overview

Luk 4:1, The temptation and fasting of Christ; Luk 4:14, He begins to preach; Luk 4:16, The people of Nazareth admire his gracious words, but being offended, seek to kill him; Luk 4:33, He cures one possessed of a devil, Luk 4:38. Peter’s mother-in-law, Luk 4:40. and divers other sick persons; Luk 4:41, The devils acknowledge Christ, and are reproved for it; Luk 4:42, He preaches through the cities of Galilee.

Poole: Luke 4 (Chapter Introduction)

CHAPTER 4

MHCC: Luke (Book Introduction)

This evangelist is generally supposed to have been a physician, and a companion of the apostle Paul. The style of his writings, and his acquaintance with the Jewish rites and usages, sufficiently show that he was a Jew, while his knowledge of the Greek language and his name, speak his Gentile origin. He is first mentioned Act 16:10, Act 16:11, as with Paul at Troas, whence he attended him to Jerusalem, and was with him in his voyage, and in his imprisonment at Rome. This Gospel appears to be designed to supersede many defective and unauthentic narratives in circulation, and to give a genuine and inspired account of the life, miracles, and doctrines of our Lord, learned from those who heard and witnessed his discourses and miracles.

MHCC: Luke 4 (Chapter Introduction)

(Luk 4:1-13) The temptation of Christ.

(v. 14-30) Christ in the synagogue of Nazareth.

(Luk 4:31-44) He casts out an unclean spirit and heals the sick.

Matthew Henry: Luke (Book Introduction)

An Exposition, with Practical Observations, of The Gospel According to St. Luke

We are now entering into the labours of another evangelist; his name Luke, which some take to be a contraction of Lucilius; born at Antioch, so St. Jerome. Some think that he was the only one of all the penmen of the scripture that was not of the seed of Israel. He was a Jewish proselyte, and, as some conjecture, converted to Christianity by the ministry of St. Paul at Antioch; and after his coming into Macedonia (Act 16:10) he was his constant companion. He had employed himself in the study and practice of physic; hence, Paul calls him Luke the beloved Physician, Col 4:14. Some of the pretended ancients tell you that he was a painter, and drew a picture of the virgin Mary. But Dr. Whitby thinks that there is nothing certain to the contrary, and that therefore it is probable that he was one of the seventy disciples, and a follower of Christ when he was here upon earth; and, if so, he was a native Israelite. I see not what can be objected against this, except some uncertain traditions of the ancients, which we can build nothing upon, and against which may be opposed the testimonies of Origen and Epiphanius, who both say that he was one of the seventy disciples. He is supposed to have written this gospel when he was associated with St. Paul in his travels, and by direction from him: and some think that this is the brother whom Paul speaks of (2Co 8:18), whose praise is in the gospel throughout all the churches of Christ; as if the meaning of it were, that he was celebrated in all the churches for writing this gospel; and that St. Paul means this when he speaks sometimes of his gospel, as Rom 2:16. But there is no ground at all for this. Dr. Cave observes that his way and manner of writing are accurate and exact, his style polite and elegant, sublime and lofty, yet perspicuous; and that he expresses himself in a vein of purer Greek than is to be found in the other writers of the holy story. Thus he relates divers things more copiously than the other evangelists; and thus he especially treats of those things which relate to the priestly office of Christ. It is uncertain when, or about what time, this gospel was written. Some think that it was written in Achaia, during his travels with Paul, seventeen years (twenty-two years, say others) after Christ's ascension; others, that it was written at Rome, a little before he wrote his history of the Acts of the Apostles (which is a continuation of this), when he was there with Paul, while he was a prisoner, and preaching in his own hired house, with which the history of the Acts concludes; and then Paul saith that only Luke was with him, 2Ti 4:11. When he was under that voluntary confinement with Paul, he had leisure to compile these two histories (and many excellent writings the church has been indebted to a prison for): if so, it was written about twenty-seven years after Christ's ascension, and about the fourth year of Nero. Jerome says, He died when he was eighty-four years of age, and was never married. Some write that he suffered martyrdom; but, if he did, where and when is uncertain. Nor indeed is there much more credit to be given to the Christian traditions concerning the writers of the New Testament than to the Jewish traditions concerning those of the Old Testament.

Matthew Henry: Luke 4 (Chapter Introduction)

We left Christ newly baptized, and owned by a voice from heaven and the descent of the Holy Ghost upon him. Now, in this chapter, we have, I. A further preparation of him for his public ministry by his being tempted in the wilderness, of which we had the same account before in Matthew as we have here (Luk 4:1-13). II. His entrance upon his public work in Galilee (Luk 4:14, Luk 4:15), particularly, 1. At Nazareth, the city where he had been bred up (Luk 4:16-30), which we had no account of before in Matthew. 2. At Capernaum, where, having preached to admiration (Luk 4:31-32), he cast the devil out of a man that was possessed (Luk 4:33-37), cured Peter's mother-in-law of a fever (Luk 4:38, Luk 4:39), and many others that were sick and possessed (Luk 4:40, Luk 4:41), and then went and did the same in other cities of Galilee (Luk 4:42-44).

Barclay: Luke (Book Introduction)

INTRODUCTION TO THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO SAINT LUKE

A Lovely Book And Its Author

The gospel according to St. Luke has been called the loveliest book in the world. When once an American asked him if he could recommend a good life of Christ, Denney answered, "Have you tried the one that Luke wrote?" There is a legend that Luke was a skilled painter; there is even a painting of Mary in a Spanish cathedral to this day which purports to be by him. Certainly he had an eye for vivid things. It would not be far wrong to say that the third gospel is the best life of Christ ever written. Tradition has always believed that Luke was the author and we need have no qualms in accepting that tradition. In the ancient world it was the regular thing to attach books to famous names; no one thought it wrong. But Luke was never one of the famous figures of the early Church. If he had not written the gospel no one would have attached it to his name.

Luke was a gentile; and he has the unique distinction of being the only New Testament writer who was not a Jew. He was a doctor by profession (Col_4:14 ) and maybe that very fact gave him the wide sympathy he possessed. It has been said that a minister sees men at their best; a lawyer sees men at their worst; and a doctor sees men as they are. Luke saw men and loved them all.

The book was written to a man called Theophilus. He is called most excellent Theophilus and the title given him is the normal title for a high official in the Roman government. No doubt Luke wrote it to tell an earnest inquirer more about Jesus; and he succeeded in giving Theophilus a picture which must have thrilled his heart closer to the Jesus of whom he had heard.

The Symbols Of The Gospels

Every one of the four gospels was written from a certain point of view. Very often on stained glass windows the writers of the gospels are pictured; and usually to each there is attached a symbol. The symbols vary but one of the commonest allocations is this.

The emblem of Mark is a man. Mark is the simplest and most straightforward of the gospels. It has been well said that its characteristic is realism. It is the nearest to being a report of Jesusife.

The emblem of Matthew is a lion. Matthew was a Jew writing for Jews and he saw in Jesus the Messiah, the lion of the tribe of Judah, the one whom all the prophets had predicted.

The emblem of John is the eagle. The eagle can fly higher than any other bird. It is said that of all creatures only the eagle can look straight into the sun. John is the theological gospel; its flights of thought are higher than those of any of the others. It is the gospel where the philosopher can find themes to think about for a lifetime and to solve only in eternity.

The symbol of Luke is the calf The calf is the animal for sacrifice; and Luke saw in Jesus the sacrifice for all the world. In Luke above all, the barriers are broken down and Jesus is for Jew and gentile, saint and sinner alike. He is the saviour of the world. Keeping that in mind, let us now set down the characteristics of this gospel.

An HistorianCare

First and foremost, Lukegospel is an exceedingly careful bit of work. His Greek is notably good. The first four verses are well-nigh the best Greek in the New Testament. In them he claims that his work is the product of the most careful research. His opportunities were ample and his sources must have been good. As the trusted companion of Paul he must have known all the great figures of the church, and we may be sure that he had them tell their stories to him. For two years he was Paulcompanion in imprisonment in Caesarea. In those long days he had every opportunity for study and research and he must have used them well.

An example of Lukecare is the way in which he dates the emergence of John the Baptist. He does so by no fewer than six contemporary datings. "In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar (1), Pontius Pilate being governor of Judaea (2), Herod being tetrarch of Galilee (3), and his brother Philip being tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis (4), and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene (5) in the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas (6), the word of God came to John" (Luk_3:1-2 ). Here is a man who is writing with care and who will be as accurate as it is possible for him to be.

The Gospel For The Gentiles

It is clear that Luke wrote mainly for gentiles. Theophilus was a gentile, as was Luke himself, and there is nothing in the gospel that a gentile could not grasp and understand. (a) As we have seen, Luke begins his dating from the reigning Roman emperor and the current Roman governor. The Roman date comes first. (b) Unlike Matthew, he is not greatly interested in the life of Jesus as the fulfilment of Jewish prophecy. (c) He very seldom quotes the Old Testament at all. (d) 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. (compare Luk_6:15 and Mat_10:4 ). Calvary is called not by its Hebrew name, Golgotha (compare H1538 and H1556), but by its Greek name, Kranion (G2898). Both mean the place of a skull. He never uses the Jewish term Rabbi (H7227) 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. (compare Mat_1:2 and Luk_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

Lukegospel 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 (Luk_3:21 ); before his first collision with the Pharisees (Luk_5:16 ); before he chose the Twelve (Luk_6:12 ); before he questioned his disciples as to who they thought he was; before his first prediction of his own death (Luk_9:18 ); at the Transfiguration (Luk_9:29 ); and upon the Cross (Luk_23:46 ). Only Luke tells us that Jesus prayed for Peter in his hour of testing (Luk_22:32 ). Only he tells us the prayer parables of the Friend at Midnight (Luk_11:5-13 ) and the Unjust Judge (Luk_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 Marypoint of view. It is in Luke that we read of Elizabeth, of Anna, of the widow at Nain, of the woman who anointed Jesuseet 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 (Luk_1:46-55 ); the Benediclus (Luk_1:68-79 ); and the Nunc Dimittis (Luk_2:29-32 ). There is a radiance in Lukegospel 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 men without distinction.

(a) The kingdom of heaven is not shut to the Samaritans (Luk_9:51-56 ). Luke alone tells the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luk_10:30-37 ). The one grateful leper is a Samaritan (Luk_17:11-19 ). John can record a saying that the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans (Joh_4:9 ). But Luke refuses to shut the door on any man.

(b) Luke shows Jesus speaking with approval of gentiles whom the orthodox Jew would have considered unclean. He shows us Jesus citing the widow of Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian as shining examples (Luk_4:25-27 ). The Roman centurion is praised for the greatness of his faith (Luk_7:9 ). Luke tells us of that great word of Jesus, "Men will come from east and west, and from north and south, and sit at the table in the kingdom of God" (Luk_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 (Luk_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 preached to them" (Luk_7:22 ). He alone tells the parable of the Rich Man and the Poor Man (Luk_16:19-31 ). In Lukeaccount of the Beatitudes the saying of Jesus runs, not, as in Matthew (Mat_5:3 ), "Blessed are the poor in spirit," but simply, "Blessed are you poor" (Luk_6:20 ). Lukegospel 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 Jesuseet and bathed them with her tears and wiped them with her hair in the house of Simon the Pharisee (Luk_7:36-50 ); of Zacchaeus, the quisling tax-gatherer (Luk_19:1-10 ); of the Penitent Thief (Luk_23:43 ); and he alone has the immortal story of the prodigal son and the loving father (Luk_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 (Mat_10:5 ); but Luke omits that altogether. All four gospel writers quote from Isa 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" (Isa_40:3-5 ; Mat_3:3 ; Mar_1:3 ; Joh_1:23 ; Luk_3:4 , Luk_3:6 ). 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 soul. Faber wrote the lines,

Therea wideness in Godmercy,

Like the wideness of the sea;

Therea kindness in his justice,

Which is more than liberty.

For the love of God is broader

Than the measures of manmind;

And the heart of the Eternal

Is most wonderfully kind.

Lukegospel is the demonstration that this is true.

Barclay: Luke 4 (Chapter Introduction)

The Battle With Temptation (Luk_4:1-13)

The Galilaean Springtime (Luk_4:14-15)

Without Honour In His Own Country (Luk_4:16-30)

The Spirit Of An Unclean Devil (Luk_4:31-37)

A Miracle In A Cottage (Luk_4:38-39)

The Insistent Crowds (Luk_4:40-44)

Constable: Luke (Book Introduction)

Introduction

Writer

Several factors indicate that the writer of this Gospel was the same person who wrote the Book of Acts. First, a man named Theophilus was the recipient of both books (Luke 1:3; Acts 1:1). Second, Acts refers to a previous work by the same writer. Third, both books have several common themes some of which do not receive the same emphasis elsewhere in the New Testament. Fourth, there are general structural and stylistic similarities including the use of chiasms and the tendency to focus on specific individuals.

The writer also acquired his knowledge of Jesus' life and ministry from research rather than from eyewitness observations (Luke 1:1-4). Therefore he was not one of the disciples who travelled with Jesus.

The early church identified the writer as Luke. The heretic Marcion is the earliest witness we have to Luke's authorship (c. 135 A.D.). The Muratorian Canon (c. 180 A.D.) mentioned Luke as the writer too. It described him as the physician who accompanied Paul on his journey (cf. Acts 16:10-17; 20:5-15; 21:1-18; 27:1-28:16; Col. 4:14; Phile. 24; 2 Tim. 4:11). Irenaeus (c. 180-185 A.D.) also believed Luke wrote this Gospel and called him the "inseparable" companion of Paul.¹ Later church fathers referred to Luke as the writer of this Gospel. Luke was evidently a Gentile (cf. Col. 4:10-14).² Church tradition identified Antioch of Syria as Luke's hometown, but this is impossible to validate.

Distinctive Features

The main doctrines of systematic theology that Luke stressed were Christology, soteriology, pneumatology, and eschatology. There is much emphasis on the glory of God, prayer, miracles, the divine plan that Jesus fulfilled, Israel, believing, discipleship, forgiveness, and God's Word.³

Luke stressed Jesus' concern for all people, especially for individuals that society of His day despised such as the poor, women, children, and "sinners." He used the Greek term nomikos, which means "lawyer," rather than the Hebrew term grammateus, meaning "scribe." He emphasized Jesus' practical teachings, such as what He taught about money (cf. chs. 12 and 16).

"In terms of its worldview, its theology, and its practical presentation of principles, this Gospel explains how we can serve God better."⁴

Luke showed interest in purpose, fulfillment, and accomplishment. He documented the joy that resulted from Jesus' saving and healing works. He stressed Jesus' call for people to become His disciples. He portrayed Jesus as dependent on the Holy Spirit and on the Father through prayer. Finally, Luke recorded many examples of Jesus' power.

"Luke's Gospel gives a reader a more comprehensive grasp of the history of the period than the other Gospels. He presented more facts about the earthly life of Jesus than did Matthew, Mark, or John."⁵

This is the longest book in the New Testament. Together with Acts it comprises about 27% of the Greek New Testament.⁶ Luke is the longest book in the New Testament, Matthew is second, and Acts is third, but only slightly shorter than Matthew.

Purposes

The Gospel of Luke is one of the books of the Bible that states the purpose of the writer. Luke said that he wrote to inform Theophilus about the truthfulness of the gospel that he had heard (1:4). In Acts, Luke said he had written previously about the things that Jesus began to do and teach before His ascension (Acts 1:1-2). He then proceeded to record the things Jesus continued to do and teach after His ascension through His apostles in Acts. Presumably Luke wrote both his Gospel and Acts with a larger audience than just Theophilus in view.

The distinctive emphases of the Gospel help us to identify secondary purposes. Luke demonstrated a zeal to convince his readers of the reliability of the facts that he recorded so they would believe in Jesus and become Christians. This concern is also clear in Acts.⁷ Obviously he wrote to preserve the record of events that happened during Jesus' earthly ministry, but few ancient writers wrote simply to narrate a chronicle of events.⁸ They wrote to convince their readers of something, and they used history to do that. Notwithstanding historical accuracy was important to them.⁹ We believe that Luke's Gospel is an accurate continuation of biblical history that God preserved in Scripture. This Gospel constitutes an apologetic for Christianity that would have been of special interest to Greeks because of Luke's selection of material, vocabulary, and style.¹⁰

Original Audience

Evidently Theophilus was a real person.¹¹ His name is Greek and means "friend of God." He appears to have been a fairly recent convert to Christianity from Greek paganism. Consequently it appears that Luke wrote for people such as Theophilus originally. Before his conversion, Theophilus may have been one of the Gentile God-fearers to which Luke referred several times in Acts. The God-fearers were Gentiles who had a certain respect for and who wanted to learn more about the God of the Jews. They came to the Jewish synagogues and listened to the Jewish Scriptures read there. Luke's orientation of his Gospel to the secular world and his references to Judaism also suggest that he wrote his Gospel with these people in mind. His use of the Septuagint version and his interest in the God-fearers suggest this too. The God-fearers had turned from Greek polytheism to Jewish monotheism, but many of them were not familiar with Palestinian geography and culture. Luke clarified these matters for his readers when necessary. The God-fearers were the Gentiles whom Paul found to be the most receptive soil for the gospel seed. Luke himself may have been one of this group, though there is no way to prove or to disprove that possibility.

"[Luke] writes to reassure the Christians of his day that their faith in Jesus is no aberration, but the authentic goal towards which God's ancient dealings with Israel were driving."¹²

By the first century most of the pagan Greeks had stopped believing in the gods and goddesses of their mythology and had abandoned fatalism. Many of them were following Eastern "mystery" religions that competed with Christianity for their allegiance. Both beliefs offered saviors, but the Savior of Christianity was a personal resurrected Lord whereas the savior of the mystery religions was impersonal and ideal. Luke evidently wrote to persuade these people to believe in Jesus and to give them a solid factual basis for their faith.

"That he wrote for an urban church community in the Hellenistic world is fairly certain."¹³

Literary Characteristics

Experts in Greek literary styles acknowledge Luke's style and structure as superb.¹⁴ No one knows Luke's educational background, but clearly he had training in Greek composition as well as medicine and a talent for writing. Luke used many words that the other Gospel writers did not, and many of them show a wide literary background. He also used several medical and theological terms that are unique. Luke's use of Semiticisms shows that he knew the Hebrew Old Testament well. However, his preference for the Septuagint suggests that it was the version his readers used most. Probably Luke was a Gentile who had much exposure to Semitic idioms from Paul and other Jews. He was a skillful enough writer to use chiasms as a major structural device.¹⁵ Chiasms were both Jewish and Greek literary devices that gave unity to a composition or section of text. Acts also contains them. Luke also repeated similar stories with variations (cf. 1:80; 2:40; 2:52). This literary device aids learning while giving additional new insights. He also tended to use a particular term frequently in one or more passages and then rarely or never after that. This makes the term stand out and calls attention to it where it occurs.¹⁶

Date

Practically all scholars believe that Luke wrote his Gospel before he wrote Acts. Many conservative scholars hold that he wrote Acts during Paul's first Roman imprisonment during which the book ends (60-62 A.D.). Luke accompanied Paul during much of that apostle's missionary ministry. At times Luke was not with Paul, but he was ministering as Paul's representative in one or another of the churches that Paul had founded. Evidently Paul was Luke's primary source of information for his Gospel and Acts as Peter was Mark's primary source for the second Gospel. Luke may have written his Gospel during Paul's first imprisonment in Rome along with Acts. However, it seems more likely in view of how Luke introduced these two books that he wrote the Gospel sometime earlier than Acts. Luke had the most time to write this Gospel during Paul's Caesarean imprisonment (57-59 A.D., cf. Acts 24:1-26:32). This seems to me to be the most probable date of writing.¹⁷

Message¹⁸

The first Gospel presented Jesus as the King. The second Gospel presented Him as the Servant. The third Gospel presents Him as the perfect Man. Matthew wrote to Jews about their King. Mark wrote to Romans about a Servant. Luke wrote to Greeks about the ideal Man. The title "Messiah" is most fitting for Jesus in Matthew. The title "Suffering Servant" is most appropriate in Mark. "Son of Man" is the title most characteristic of Luke's presentation of Jesus.

Luke stressed the saving work of Jesus in His Gospel. He presented Jesus as the Savior of mankind. He also proclaimed Jesus' work of providing salvation for mankind. Let us consider first the Savior that Luke presents and then the salvation that the Savior came to provide.

Luke presented Jesus as the Savior in three different relationships. He presented Him as the first-born of a new race. Second, He presented Him as the older brother in a new family. Third, He presented Him as the redeemer of a lost humanity.

Let us consider first Luke's concept of Jesus as the first-born of a new race. Luke's genealogy reveals how the writer wanted the reader to regard Jesus. Matthew traced Jesus' lineage back to David and Abraham in his genealogy to show His right to rule as Israel's Messiah. Luke traced Jesus' ancestry back to Adam. He did this to show Jesus' humanity.

However, Luke went back even farther than that to God. This indicates that Jesus was not just like other humans who descended from Adam. He was, as the Apostle Paul called Him, the "Last Adam." The first Adam that God placed on this earth failed and plunged his race into sin and death. The last Adam that God placed on the earth did not fail but saved His race from sin and brought it new life. The first man begins the Old Testament, but the "Second Man," to use another Pauline title, begins the New Testament. As Adam headed one race, so Jesus heads a new race. Both Adams were real men. Thus both men head real races of mankind. Luke viewed Jesus as succeeding where Adam failed, as atoning for Adam's transgression.

For Jesus to undue the consequences of Adam's fall, He had to be more than just a good man. He had to be a perfect man, a sinless man. Therefore Luke stressed Jesus' sinlessness. He did this primarily in his account of Jesus' birth. Luke stressed the virgin conception of Jesus. The Holy Spirit, not a sinful human, fathered Jesus. God regards the male as responsible in the human family. Husbands are responsible for their wives. Fathers are responsible for their children. God held Adam, not Eve, responsible for his descendants.

Human beings are sinners for three separate reasons. First, we are sinners because we commit acts of sin. However even if we never committed one act of sin we would still be sinners because we, second, inherited a sinful human nature. This nature apparently comes through our fathers (cf. Heb. 7:9-10).¹⁹ Third, we are sinners because God has imputed the guilt of Adam's sin to us because he is the head of the race to which we belong.

Jesus was not a sinner. He did not commit any acts of sin. Second, He did not inherit a sinful nature from His human father because God was His real Father. Third, God did not impute Adam's sin to Jesus because Jesus was the direct descendant of God and therefore the head of a new race. God gave the first Adam life by breathing the breath of life into the body that He had created. Likewise God gave the second Adam life by implanting His divine life into a body that He had created, namely Mary's body.

The doctrine of the virgin birth is extremely important because it establishes the sinlessness of Jesus in two of the three ways whereby people become sinners. If a virgin did not conceive Jesus, then He was a sinner. If Jesus was a sinner, then He cannot be the Savior.

The third way a person becomes a sinner is by committing acts of sin. Luke showed that Jesus did not do this in his account of Jesus' temptations.

In the wilderness Satan subjected Jesus to the strongest temptations that humans face. Satan directed Jesus' three tests at the three areas of human personality that constitute the totality of human existence. These areas are doing (the lust of the flesh), having (the lust of the eyes), and being (the pride of life). These are the same three areas in which Satan attacked Eve.

The first man fell in a garden, an environment conducive to withstanding temptation. The Second Man overcame temptation in a wilderness, an environment conducive to yielding to temptation. Rather than showing at every turn in Jesus' life that He did not sin, Luke showed that in the supreme test of His life Jesus did not sin. However, he continued to note Jesus' conflict with Satan, demons, and sin throughout His life. Luke's record of these encounters also demonstrates Jesus' sinlessness.

At the Transfiguration, God declared His Son acceptable to Him. This meant that He was sinless.

Second, Luke presented Jesus as the older brother in a new family. Since Jesus was the head of a new race we might think that Luke would have presented Jesus as a father. Jesus was the first and therefore the source of all that follow in the race that He established. Nevertheless Luke stressed Jesus' likeness with those in the new race. He is as an elder brother to us who have new life through Him. This is not to deny His deity. In one sense Jesus is completely different from us since He is God. However, Luke stressed the sense in which He is like us, namely in His humanity. He is one of us, fully human.

Luke presented Jesus as a man among men. He of all the Gospel writers wanted his readers to appreciate the fact that Jesus was a real person. There are many small indications of this throughout this Gospel that I have tried to identify in the notes. Luke did this because he was evidently writing to Greeks. Greeks had a background in polytheism and mythology. Because of their cultural background they tended to think of gods as superhumans. They were not real people, but they had the characteristics of people expanded into superhuman proportions. Luke wanted his readers to realize that Jesus was not that type of god. He was fully human, but He was also sinless. He had superhuman powers, but He was not the type of superman that the Greeks imagined.

Jesus was a fellow human being albeit sinless. This is very hard for us to imagine. Therefore Luke put much in his Gospel that helps us understand Jesus, from His birth announcements to His ascension into heaven.

Third, Luke presented Jesus as the redeemer of a lost humanity. Since he was writing to Greeks, Luke did not identify many allusions to the Old Testament or to Jewish life and history. These allusions are in the text, but Luke did not draw attention to them. One of the outstanding concepts in Israelite life that Luke did not identify as such, but which overshadows his portrait of Jesus, is the kinsman redeemer. His presentation of Jesus fits the image of the Jewish kinsman redeemer remarkably.

The kinsman redeemer had to be the next of kin to the person he redeemed. Luke presented Jesus as qualifying as our redeemer in this respect. He was a man as we are. Therefore He could provide redemption for His needy brothers.

The kinsman redeemer also had to accept personal responsibility for those he purposed to save from their miserable estate. Luke presented Jesus as taking personal responsibility for lost sinners. He recorded Jesus saying that He had to go to the Cross. He viewed the salvation of mankind as something that He needed to accomplish because He had made a personal commitment to do so. That commitment began in heaven but continued on earth throughout Jesus' life.

The kinsman redeemer had to overcome those who opposed his brethren. Luke presented Jesus as conflicting with Satan and his hosts. He showed Him interceding for the Father's help for His tempted brethren, Peter in particular. Jesus won the victory over mankind's great enemy for His brethren.

The kinsman redeemer had to create an opportunity for his brother's redemption. Luke presented Jesus as doing this. Luke's distinctive presentation of Jerusalem as Jesus' city of destiny contributes to this theme. Jesus deliberately advanced toward Jerusalem and the Cross because He was creating an opportunity for mankind's redemption.

The kinsman redeemer turned his back on his personal rights and privileges to provide redemption for his brother. Luke presented Jesus doing this as well. Jesus modeled this strongly for His disciples in this Gospel. He also taught the importance of disciples doing this so we can bring salvation to our brothers.

These themes are very strong in Luke. Jesus is the head of an entirely new race of people, the redeemed. He is the elder brother who provides an example for His brethren to follow. He is the Savior who has come "to seek and to save the lost."

We have considered how Luke presents Jesus as the Savior. Now let us turn to what he revealed about salvation. The key verse in the Gospel is 19:10: "The Son of Man is come to seek and to save the lost." We have been looking at the Son of Man. Now let us look as seeking and saving the lost.

Luke reveals that the Son of Man has redeemed mankind. This Gospel is a record of God's redeeming work in Jesus Christ. Jesus' work on the Cross is the climax of this Gospel as it is the climax of all the Gospels and history itself. Jesus was born to die. By His death Jesus purchased mankind's freedom at the cost of His own life. Jesus instituted the Lord's Supper so His disciples would always keep the memory of the significance of His death freshly before them. The Christian mission is to tell the world about this redemption.

Through redemption God regenerates those who are dead in sin. This is the second step in God's plan of seeking and saving the lost. Believers receive new life when they believe on Jesus. Comprehending what this new life involves, learning how to live in view of its reality, and appreciating its great potential are all things that Luke stressed in this Gospel. Jesus' disciples struggled with learning this as we do. Luke recorded many of Jesus' teachings that are helpful in understanding and appreciating regeneration.

Through regeneration God brings believers into relationship with Himself. This is the third step in this great salvation process. Luke helps the reader understand the difference between trusting for salvation and working for rewards. What is our relationship to Jesus as His followers? What are our privileges and our responsibilities? How does prayer enter into our relationship? Luke has more to say to disciples about our relationship to the Father and the Son than any other Gospel evangelist.

Then through relationship with Himself, God prepares believers for life after death as members of a new race. Luke recorded much that is of great help for us as readers here too. What is the next phase of our life with God going to be like? How should we prepare for it? What is ahead in the future? Luke teaches us what it means to be a member of the new redeemed race of humanity.

In addition to the central teaching of this Gospel let me also point out what I believe are the reasons for its abiding appeal. These are two: the personality of Jesus and the presentation of discipleship.

The personality of Jesus as Luke presents Him in this Gospel is very appealing. Possibly three things make Him so.

First, we feel that we can identify with the Jesus of Luke's Gospel. This is probably because Luke presented Him as a real man. It may be harder to identify with a King or with a Suffering Servant to say nothing about God, John's emphasis. Even though He is perfect He is someone with whom we feel a natural kinship because we share humanity together. Jesus faced what we do yet He was pleasing to God. This is very encouraging.

Second, the Jesus of Luke's Gospel is attractive because He is different from us. Even though we are of the same kind, He holds a fascination for us because He was the personification of ideal humanity. He was everything that God intended man to be. It is thrilling to view someone like that since we all fall so far short of what we should be.

Third, this Jesus is attractive because He was so sympathetic. One of the characteristic features of Luke's Gospel is the many references it contains to Jesus' concern for the needy including women, the poor, the sick, and outcasts of society. We read of the social outcasts of Jesus' day flocking to Him and feeling at home in His presence. We see Him welcoming children, and we feel ourselves drawn to Him.

Another reason for the appeal of this book is its presentation of discipleship. It contains some of the most straight talk and challenging demands for followers of Jesus that the New Testament holds. We read Jesus telling us that unless we hate our family members we cannot be His disciples, (14:26). He taught that we have to deny ourselves (14:27). We have to renounce all that we have (14:33). Interestingly these three conditions correspond to the three things that we mentioned earlier that Luke pointed out about Jesus.

Jesus calls us to sever our connections with our old race because we have become members of a new race. Jesus taught that our spiritual relations are really closer than our physical relations. Therefore we should let these old relations go if they interfere with our participation in the affairs of our new race.

Jesus calls us to accept the same responsibility that He accepted since we are now brothers. He denied Himself and took up His cross for us. Now we are brothers so we need to do the same for Him. Brothers sacrifice for each other.

Jesus also calls us to give up everything for Him. Having received the benefits of redemption because of the work of our Kinsman Redeemer who paid a great price for us, we need to pay a great price too. The price He calls us to pay is not to earn redemption. He has given that to us as a gift. It is to express our gratitude to Him for His grace and to advance the mission that He has given us to fulfill. He had a mission from God, and He gave up everything to fulfill it. We, too, have a mission from God, and we need to give up everything to fulfill it.

Finally this Gospel has a two-fold application, to the church and to the world.

To the church Luke says, "Be witnesses" (24:48).

We are to be such in view of the relationship that we now enjoy with the Son of Man. We should be such for three reasons. We have experienced redemption. We enjoy His fellowship. We have a future as members of a new race.

We are to be His witnesses also in view of the lost condition of mankind. Jesus came to seek and to save the lost. Our fellowship with Jesus requires participation in His mission to seek and to save the lost. We can do this for three reasons. He has transformed our lives. He will open people's eyes with His Word. He has empowered us with His Spirit (cf. ch. 24).

To the world Luke says, "You are lost, but the Son of Man has come to seek and to save the lost." A Redeemer has come. A brother is available. A new life is possible. Behold the Man! He understands you. Yet He is different from you. But He will receive you.

Constable: Luke (Outline)

Outline

I. Introduction 1:1-4

II. The birth and childhood of Jesus 1:5-2:52

A. The announcement of John the Baptist's birth 1:5-25

1. The introduction of John's parents 1:5-7

2. The angel's announcement to Zechariah 1:8-23

3. The pregnancy of Elizabeth 1:24-25

B. The announcement of Jesus' birth 1:26-56

1. The introduction of Mary and Joseph 1:26-27

2. The angel's announcement to Mary 1:28-38

3. Mary's visit to Elizabeth 1:39-56

C. The birth and early life of John the Baptist 1:57-80

1. The naming of John 1:57-66

2. Zechariah's song of praise 1:67-79

3. The preparation of John 1:80

D. The birth and early life of Jesus ch. 2

1. The setting of Jesus' birth 2:1-7

2. The announcement to the shepherds 2:8-20

3. Jesus' circumcision 2:21

4. Jesus' presentation in the temple 2:22-38

5. Jesus' development in Nazareth 2:39-40

6. Jesus' visit to the temple as a boy 2:41-50

7. Jesus' continuing growth 2:51-52

III. The preparation for Jesus' ministry 3:1-4:13

A. The ministry of John the Baptist 3:1-20

1. The beginning of John's ministry 3:1-6

2. John's preaching 3:7-18

3. The end of John's ministry 3:19-20

B. The baptism of Jesus 3:21-22

C. The genealogy of Jesus 3:23-38

D. The temptation of Jesus 4:1-13

IV. Jesus' ministry in and around Galilee 4:14-9:50

A. Jesus' teaching ministry and the response to it 4:14-5:11

1. An introduction to Jesus' Galilean ministry 4:14-15

2. Jesus' teaching in Nazareth 4:16-30

3. Jesus' ministry in and around Capernaum 4:31-44

4. The call of Peter, James, and John 5:1-11

B. The beginning of controversy with the Pharisees 5:12-6:11

1. Jesus' cleansing of a leprous Jew 5:12-16

2. Jesus' authority to forgive sins 5:17-26

3. Jesus' attitude toward sinners 5:27-32

4. Jesus' attitude toward fasting 5:33-39

5. Jesus' authority over the Sabbath 6:1-5

6. Jesus' attitude toward the Sabbath 6:6-11

C. Jesus' teaching of His disciples 6:12-49

1. The selection of 12 disciples 6:12-16

2. The assembling of the people 6:17-19

3. The Sermon on the Mount 6:20-49

D. Jesus' compassion for people ch. 7

1. The healing of a centurion's servant 7:1-10

2. The raising of a widow's son 7:11-17

3. The confusion about Jesus' identity 7:18-35

4. The anointing by a sinful woman 7:36-50

E. Jesus' teaching in parables 8:1-21

1. The companions and supporters of Jesus 8:1-3

2. The parable of the soils 8:4-15

3. The parable of the lamp 8:16-18

4. The true family of Jesus 8:19-21

F. Jesus' mighty works 8:22-56

1. The stilling of the storm 8:22-25

2. The deliverance of a demoniac in Gadara 8:26-39

3. The healing of a woman with a hemorrhage and the raising of Jairus' daughter 8:40-56

G. Jesus' preparation of the Twelve 9:1-50

1. The mission of the Twelve to Israel 9:1-6

2. Herod's question about Jesus' identity 9:7-9

3. The feeding of the 5000 9:10-17

4. Peter's confession of faith 9:18-27

5. The Transfiguration 9:28-36

6. The exorcism of an epileptic boy 9:37-43a

7. Jesus' announcement of His betrayal 9:43b-45

8. The pride of the disciples 9:46-50

V. Jesus' ministry on the way to Jerusalem 9:51-19:27

A. The responsibilities and rewards of discipleship 9:51-10:24

1. The importance of toleration 9:51-56

2. The importance of self-denial 9:57-62

3. The importance of participation 10:1-16

4. The joy of participation 10:17-20

5. The joy of comprehension 10:21-24

B. The relationships of disciples 10:25-11:13

1. The relation of disciples to their neighbors 10:25-37

2. The relation of disciples to Jesus 10:38-42

3. The relation of disciples to God the Father 11:1-13

C. The results of popular opposition 11:14-54

1. The Beelzebul controversy 11:14-26

2. The importance of observing God's Word 11:27-28

3. The sign of Jonah 11:29-32

4. The importance of responding to the light 11:33-36

5. The climax of Pharisaic opposition 11:37-54

D. The instruction of the disciples in view of Jesus' rejection 12:1-13:17

1. The importance of fearless confession 12:1-12

2. The importance of the eternal perspective 12:13-21

3. God's provisions for disciples 12:22-34

4. The coming of the Son of 12:35-48

5. The coming crisis 12:49-59

6. A call to repentance 13:1-9

7. A sign of Jesus' ability to affect change 13:10-17

E. Instruction about the kingdom 13:18-14:35

1. Parables of the kingdom 13:18-21

2. Entrance into the kingdom 13:22-30

3. Jesus' postponement of the kingdom 13:31-35

4. Participants in the kingdom 14:1-24

5. The cost of discipleship 14:25-35

F. God's attitude toward sinners ch. 15

1. The setting for Jesus' teaching 15:1-2

2. The parable of the lost sheep 15:3-7

3. The parable of the lost coin 15:8-10

4. The parable of the lost son 15:11-32

G. Jesus' warnings about riches ch. 16

1. Discipleship as stewardship 16:1-13

2. Jesus' rebuke of the Pharisees for their greed 16:14-31

H. Jesus' warning about disciples' actions and attitudes 17:1-19

1. The prevention of sin and the restoration of sinners 17:1-4

2. The disciples' attitude toward their duty 17:5-10

3. The importance of gratitude 17:11-19

I. Jesus' teaching about His return 17:20-18:8

1. A short lesson for the Pharisees 17:20-21

2. A longer explanation for the disciples 17:22-37

3. The parable of the persistent widow 18:1-8

J. The recipients of salvation 18:9-19:27

1. The parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector 18:9-14

2. An illustration of humility 18:15-17

3. The handicap of wealth 18:18-30

4. Jesus' passion announcement and the disciples' lack of perception 18:31-34

5. The healing of a blind man near Jericho 18:35-43

6. Zaccheus' ideal response to Jesus 19:1-10

7. The parable of the minas 19:11-27

VI. Jesus' ministry in Jerusalem 19:28-21:38

A. The Triumphal Entry 19:28-40

B. The beginning of Jesus' ministry in Jerusalem 19:41-48

1. Jesus' sorrow over Jerusalem 19:42-44

2. Jesus' cleansing of the temple 19:45-46

3. A synopsis of Jesus' teaching in the temple 19:47-48

C. Jesus' teachings in the temple 20:1-21:4

1. The controversy over authority 20:1-8

2. The parable of the wicked tenant farmers 20:9-19

3. The question of tribute to Caesar 20:20-26

4. The problem of the resurrection 20:27-40

5. Jesus' question about David's son 20:41-44

6. Jesus' condemnation of the scribes 20:45-47

7. Jesus' commendation of a widow 21:1-4

D. Jesus' teaching about the destruction of the temple 21:5-36

1. The setting and the warning about being misled 21:5-9

2. The need for faithful perseverance 21:10-19

3. The judgment coming on Jerusalem 21:20-24

4. The second coming of the Son of 21:25-28

5. The certainty of these events 21:29-33

6. The concluding exhortation to watchfulness 21:34-36

E. A summary of Jesus' ministry in Jerusalem 21:37-38

VII. Jesus' passion, resurrection, and ascension 22:1-24:53

A. The plot to arrest Jesus 22:1-6

1. The leaders' desire 22:1-2

2. Judas' offer 22:3-6

B. The preparations for the Passover 22:7-13

C. Events in the upper room 22:14-38

1. The Passover meal 22:14-18

2. The institution of the Lord's Supper 22:19-20

3. Jesus' announcement of His betrayal 22:21-23

4. Teaching about the disciples' service 22:24-30

5. Jesus' announcement of Peter's denial 22:31-34

6. The opposition to come 22:35-38

D. The arrest of Jesus 22:39-53

1. Jesus' preparation in Gethsemane 22:39-46

2. Judas' betrayal 22:47-53

E. The trials of Jesus 22:54-23:25

1. Peter's denial of Jesus 22:54-62

2. The mockery of the soldiers 22:63-65

3. Jesus' trial before the Sanhedrin 22:66-71

4. Jesus' first appearance before Pilate 23:1-7

5. Jesus' appearance before Herod 23:8-12

6. Jesus' second appearance before Pilate 23:13-25

F. The crucifixion of Jesus 23:26-49

1. Events on the way to Golgotha 23:26-32

2. Jesus' death 23:33-49

G. The burial of Jesus 23:50-56

H. The resurrection of Jesus 24:1-12

I. The post-resurrection appearances of Jesus 24:13-49

1. The appearance to the disciples walking to Emmaus 24:13-35

2. The appearances to the disciples in Jerusalem 24:36-49

J. The ascension of Jesus 24:50-53

Constable: Luke

Luke

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_____. Handbook of Biblical Chronology. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964.

Fitzmyer, Joseph A. Essays on the Semitic Background of the New Testament. London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1971.

_____. The Gospel according to Luke I--IX. Anchor Bible series. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1981.

_____. "The Story of the Dishonest Manager." Theological Studies 25 (1964):23-42.

Flender, Helmut. St Luke: Theologian of Redemptive History. London: SPCK, 1967.

Foakes-Jackson, F. J., and Lake, Kirsopp, eds. The Beginnings of Christianity. 5 vols. London: Macmillan and Co., 1920-33.

Forbes, Greg. "Repentance and Conflict in the Parable of the Lost Son (Luke 15:11-32)." Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 42:2 (June 1999):211-229.

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France, R. T. Jesus and the Old Testament: His Application of Old Testament Passages to Himself and His Mission. London: Tyndale House Publishers, 1971.

Freyne, Sean. Galilee from Alexander the Great to Hadrian 323 B.C.E. to 135 C.E. Wilmington, Del.: Michael Glazier, Inc. and Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1980.

Fruchtenbaum, Arnold G. Israelology: The Missing Link in Systematic Theology. Tustin, Cal.: Ariel Ministries Press, 1989.

Gaston, Lloyd. Horae Synopticae Electonicae; Word Statistics of the Synoptic Gospels. Missoula, Mont.: Society of Biblical Literature, 1973.

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_____. "The Blind Men at Jericho." Bibliotheca Sacra 122:488 (October-December 1965):319-30.

_____. "The Centurion's Faith in Matthew and Luke." Bibliotheca Sacra 121:484 (October-December 1964):321-32.

_____. "Stop and Think! (Luke 14:13-14), Rewardable Hospitality." The KERUGMA Message 3:1 (Spring 1993):1, 3.

_____. "The Women and the Empty Tomb." Bibliotheca Sacra 123:492 (October-December 1966):301-9.

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_____. Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus. Rev. ed. Translated by S. H. Hooke. New York: Scribner, 1963.

_____. New Testament Theology. New York: Scribners, 1971.

_____. The Parables of Jesus. Translated by S. H. Hooke. London: SCM, 1963.

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_____. "Theological Motifs in the Transfiguration Narrative." In New Dimensions in New Testament Study, pp. 162-79. Edited by Richard N. Longenecker and Merrill C. Tenney. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1974.

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_____. "On the Mount - on the Plain (Mt. V. 1 - Lk. VI. 17)." Novum Testamentum 9 (1967):124-31.

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_____. The Gospel of Luke. New International Greek Testament Commentary series. Exeter, England: Paternoster Press, 1978.

_____. Luke: Historian and Theologian. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1971.

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_____. S.v. "Quirinius," by F. F. Bruce.

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_____. The Words and Works of Jesus Christ. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1981.

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_____. "Prophecies of Future Greatness: The Contribution of Greco-Roman Biographies to an Understanding of Luke 1:5-4:15." In The Divine Helmsman: Studies on God's Control of Human Events, Presented to Lou H. Silberman, pp. 129-41. Edited by James L. Crenshaw and Samuel Sandmel. New York: Ktav Publishing House, 1980.

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_____. S.v. "hepta," by K. H. Rengstorf.

_____. S.v. "makarios," by F. Hauck and G. Bertram.

_____. S.v. "nestis," by J. Behm.

_____. S.v. "pais," by Albrecht Oepke.

_____. S.v. "paristemi, paristano," by Bo Reicke.

_____. S.v. "pascha," by Joachim Jeremias.

_____. S.v. "stole," by Ulrich Wilckens.

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_____. S.v. "Demon, Demoniac, Demonology," by R. K. Harrison.

_____. S.v. "Diseases of the Bible," by R. H. Pousma.

_____. S.v. "Samaritans," by J. L. Kelso.

_____. S.v. "Quirinius," by E. M. Blaiklock.

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Copyright 2003 by Thomas L. Constable

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Haydock: Luke (Book Introduction)

THE

HOLY GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRIST,

ACCORDING TO ST. LUKE.

INTRODUCTION

St. Luke was a physician, a native of Antioch, the metropolis of Syria, and well skilled in the Greek language, as his writings sufficiently evince. In some ancient manuscripts, he is called Lucius, and Lucanus. Some conjecture that he was at first a Gentile and a pagan, and was converted by the preaching of St. Paul, at Antioch; others, that he was originally a Jew, and one of the seventy-two disciples. Sts. Hippolitus and Epiphanius say, that hearing from our Lord these words, he that eateth not my flesh, and drinketh not my blood, is not worthy of me, he withdrew, and quitted our Saviour, but returned to the faith at the preaching of St. Paul. But to leave what is uncertain, St. Luke was the disciple, travelling companion, and fellow-labourer of St. Paul. Of him St. Paul is supposed to speak: (2 Corinthians viii. 18.) We have sent also with him (Titus) the brother, whose praise is in the gospel, through all churches: and again, Luke, the most dear physician, saluteth you: (Colossians iv.) and, only Luke is with me. (2 Timothy iv.) Some are of opinion that as often as St. Paul, in his Epistles, says according to my gospel, he speaks of the Gospel of St. Luke. This evangelist did not learn his gospel from St. Paul only, (who had never been with our Lord in the flesh) but from the other apostles also, as himself informs us in the beginning of his gospel, when he says, according as they have delivered them unto us; who, from the beginning, were eye-witnesses, ( Greek: autoptai ) and ministers of the word. His gospel, therefore, he wrote as he heard it; but the Acts of the Apostles, from his own observations; and both, as some believe, about the same time in which his history of the Acts finishes, towards the year of Christ 63. But the received opinion now is, that St. Luke wrote his gospel in Achaia, in the year 53, ten years previously to his writing of the Acts, purposely to counteract the fabulous relations concerning Jesus Christ, which several persons had endeavoured to palm upon the world. It does not appear, as Calmet observes, that he had ever read the gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark. ... He chiefly insists in his gospel, upon what relates to Christ's priestly office; hence the ancients gave, of the four symbolical representations, mentioned in Ezechiel, that of the ox, or calf, to St. Luke, as an emblem of sacrifices. He lived 84 years in the state of celibacy, was crucified at Elœa, in Peloponnesus, near Achaia, and was buried in the church of the apostles, at Constantinople, to which city his remains were translated, together with those of St. Andrew and St. Timothy, in the year 357, by order of the emperor Constantius. When this church was repaired, by an order of Justinian, the masons found three wooden chests, in which the bodies of these saints were interred. Baronius mentions, that the head of St. Luke was brought by St. Gregory from Constantinople to Rome, in the year of Christ 586. St. Luke writes purer Greek than any of the other hagiographers; yet many Syriac words, and turns of expressions, occur in both his gospel and Acts of the Apostles; some also that imitate the genius of the Latin tongue. He cites Scripture according to the Septuagint, and not after the Hebrew text. St. Paul, in his Epistles, generally quotes the gospel in a manner the most conformable to St. Luke, as may be seen in the following instances; 1 Corinthians xi. 23. and 24. chap. xv. 5. The Marcionites would only receive the gospel of St. Luke, and from this they retrenched the first two chapters, with regard the birth of Jesus Christ, and only admitted ten of St. Paul's Epistles, as Tertullian and St. Epiphanius have remarked. Marcion embraced the errors of Cerdon: to these he added others, the offspring of his own brain. He began to disseminate his novel opinions at Rome, about the year of Christ 144. He could not bring himself to believe how a spirit, such as the human soul, could be shut up in a body, be subject to ignorance, to weakness, to pain; nor in what manner, or for what end, the great and good Lord, the Creator of spirits, could have thus degraded them. Revelation, which teaches us the fall of the first man, did not appear to the Marcionites, to solve the difficulty, since the first man was composed of a spiritual soul and a terrestrial body; they, moreover, imagined that an all-good, an all-powerful God, ought to have prevented the fall of man. No wonder then, that they refused to adopt the first two chapters of St. Luke, which contain the miraculous births of Jesus and his precursor [John the Baptist]; as also sundry texts of the very scanty portions of holy Scriptures which their party chose to retain. But what does this shew? that tradition, in the first instance, must be admitted, to inform us what is authentic scripture; and, secondly, an infallible Church-authority, to inform us what is the genuine interpretation of the genuine text. Without the assistance of apostolical tradition and Church-authority, could any Seeker (even with the assistance of Brown's Self-interpreting Bible, in 2 vols. 4to.) rest secure, that he properly understood the disputed points of holy writ; that his, and no other interpretation, was the genuine sense of these mysterious words, when he was informed that by far the greater part of learned societies, and learned individuals, gave a widely different interpretation to the same texts. This freedom of expounding Scripture, by unassisted reason and private spirit, was the first germ of the daily increasing spread of sects and heresies; this is the nucleus, which, after enveloping itself like the comet, in much nebulous obscurity, terminates in a fiery tail, of portentous magnitude, the ruinous effects of which can only be prevented by a speedy return to first principles, apostolical tradition, and Church-authority.

====================

Gill: Luke (Book Introduction)

INTRODUCTION TO LUKE

The writer of this Gospel, Luke, has been, by some, thought, as Origen ^a relates, to be the same with Lucius, mentioned in Rom 16:21, but he seems rather to be, and without doubt is, Luke the beloved physician, who was a companion of the Apostle Paul in great part of his travels in the Gentile world: he came with him to Jerusalem, and from thence accompanied him to Rome, and continued with him when in prison, and was with him to the last; see Act 16:10, &c. Col 4:14. Jerom ^b, and others, say, he was a physician of Antioch in Syria; where it may be the Apostle Paul met with him, and might be the happy instrument of his conversion; so that he seems to be, by nation, a Syrian, as Jerom ^c calls him. Grotius thinks his name is Roman, and that it is the contraction of Lucilius. It is not an Hebrew name, but might be in common use in Syria; for though the Jews reckon owqwl, "Lukus", among foreign names, yet say ^d a it was a very illustrious one, and well known to them, as it may well be thought to be if Syriac, the language being spoke by them: and many Jews lived in Syria, and particularly in Antioch. Some say that this Gospel was written by the advice, and assistance, and under the direction of the Apostle Paul, as the Gospel according to Mark was by that of Peter; though the following preface does not seem so well to accord with this. Eusebius says ^e that it was the sense of the ancients, that whenever the Apostle Paul makes mention of his Gospel, he intends this according to Luke. The time of the writing of it is not certain; some say it was written in the fifteenth year after the ascension of our Lord; others in the twenty second; and others in the twenty seventh. It is commonly thought to have been written after the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, according to the order in which it stands; but this is rejected by some learned men, who rather think that Luke wrote first of all: and indeed, there are some things in his preface which look as if there had not, as yet, been any authentic account published, at least which was come to the knowledge of this evangelist. The place where he wrote it is also uncertain. Jerom says ^f, he wrote it in the parts of Achaia, perhaps at Corinth: according to the titles prefixed to the Syriac and Persic versions, he wrote it in Alexandria: the former of these runs thus;

"the Gospel of Luke, the Evangelist, which he spake and published in Greek in Alexandria the great.''

And the latter thus;

"the Gospel of Luke, which he wrote in the Greek tongue in Alexandria of Egypt.''

However, it is agreed on all hands, that it is genuine, and of divine inspiration. Eusebius ^g relates, that it was affirmed by some, that this Gospel, together with those of Matthew and Mark, were brought to the Apostle John, who approved of them, and bore witness to the truth in them.

College: Luke (Book Introduction)

FOREWORD

"Many have undertaken" to write commentaries on the Gospel of Luke, and a large number of these are very good. "It seemed good also to me" to attempt to place in the hands of a popular audience the best of recent scholarship in an easily readable form. My prayer will have been answered if those without specialized training are able to come to a deeper understanding of Luke's message as a result of these efforts.

My debt to those who have written before me will be demonstrated throughout the commentary. I am equally indebted to many who have spent hours reading and making suggestions which have vastly improved my work. To my student assistant, Meg Grandstaff; to my mother, Peggy Black; and to my colleagues, Terry Briley, Brandon Fredenburg, and Gary Holloway, I can only say, "Thank you" and "I owe you one." I must also thank Lipscomb University for the Faculty Summer Grant which gave me the summer of 1996 to work on the book.

My greatest gratitude goes to Margo, Sara, Jessica, and Allison, who have tolerated too many hours taken away from them. They fill all my days with joy, and I must ask with Elizabeth (Luke 1:43), "Why am I so favored" to be their husband and father?

-College Press New Testament Commentary: with the NIV

TABLE OF

SUPPLEMENTAL STUDIES

Anti-Semitism 371

Baptism 84

Destruction of Jerusalem and End of Time 336

Forgiveness and Grace 163

Fulfillment of Scripture 42

Holy Spirit 93

Kingdom of God 112

Law 69

Messiah 88

Miracles and Sign-Seeking 107

Outcasts and Untouchables 127

Parables 167

Pharisees 120

Poor and Rich 142

Prayer 92

Prophet Theme 60

Repentance 83

Sadducees 327

Samaritans 200

Son of Man 124

Table Fellowship 126

Tax Collectors 87

Women 50

-College Press New Testament Commentary: with the NIV

INTRODUCTION

ABOUT THIS COMMENTARY

This commentary is written for serious students of the New Testament, including Bible class teachers, preachers, college students, and other motivated readers. The reader need not be acquainted with the Greek language or scholarly tools and methodology. The single goal of the present commentary is to place modern readers into the shoes of the first readers of Luke's Gospel. Two questions have been constantly asked: What did Luke want his readers to grasp as he penned each section? And what did he want them to believe and to do after they had read the whole? My assumption is that the Gospel of Luke was written for us but not directly to us. Since it was originally written for a people of a different culture almost two thousand years ago, we must attempt to understand it as they understood it in order to be faithful to Luke's intent.

Luke wrote in order to encourage active faith in Jesus, and he did so through the use of narrative literature. To put it differently, Luke has written to tell his readers what to believe, what reasons there are for believing, and what it means to live as a believer. To make his case he has chosen to tell a story, a literary form with few imperatives and exhortations directly to the reader. Since narratives teach indirectly, the reader must learn to "read between the lines" in order to grasp the message.

I have therefore taken a literary and theological approach in this commentary. I believe that Luke has given many clues regarding his intent and that a proper reading will discover that intent. Put simply, his method is to tell the story of Jesus, highlighting those aspects of the story which his readers need most to hear. He has woven many themes into the plot which begins with the birth and ends with the death and resurrection of Jesus. To understand his message, then, the reader must read the whole, paying close attention to the plot and the characters and to the many repeated themes. Therefore I am more concerned with Luke's message in any given story than I am with the attempt to discover how his source(s) told the story. Similarly, I am more concerned with the reasons for Luke's references to various events than I am with our ability to confirm the historicity of those events.

For each episode or section in Luke's Gospel, we will be concerned first with any terms, customs, institutions, places, and beliefs which might be unfamiliar to the modern reader. We will therefore offer brief introductions to Herod Antipas, first-century eating customs, messianic beliefs, and dozens of other matters with which Luke's readers would already be familiar. Our second and most important concern will be to discover the function of each section in the larger story. Does it further the plot, teach a lesson on what it means to be a disciple, encourage deeper faith, or function in some other way?

A third feature of the present commentary is the attempt to summarize Luke's teaching on a variety of topics. Luke had several areas of special concern, evidenced by his dealing with them again and again. The reader will find in the table of contents a list of one- or two-page treatments of special topics such as women, the poor, the Law, the Holy Spirit, prayer, the kingdom of God, and many others.

A final special interest (to be explained further in the introduction below) is the effort to relate the Gospel of Luke to its companion volume, the book of Acts. The reader gains inspired insight into what Luke thinks about the teachings of Jesus when he or she sees Jesus' disciples in Acts carrying out those teachings. We will regularly look ahead to Acts to understand what Jesus means in the Gospel of Luke.

I am greatly indebted to the fine commentaries on Luke's Gospel by Johnson, Nolland, Stein, and Tiede. These works, which have different purposes and perspectives, have been tremendously helpful in my writing. I have tried to footnote them when appropriate. However, having used them for several years, I am no longer sure whether many ideas are my own or borrowed from them. I recommend these four commentaries to the reader who wants more than I have provided herein. I have directed the reader to Stein's work more than the others, because his will prove easiest to understand for the nonspecialist.

AUTHORSHIP

The Gospel of Luke is anonymous. Like the other three Gospels, it makes no claim regarding authorship. However, from the late second century until the 19th, no one seems to have questioned that Luke the physician wrote Luke and Acts.

The Third Gospel was known as "The Gospel of Luke" by at least the late second century in order to distinguish it from the other three. It is impossible to know just why the early church attributed the book to Luke. Some would argue that he indeed wrote the book, and that his name was therefore associated with it from the beginning. Others argue that early Christians derived its authorship from evidence within the book of Acts (to be discussed below).

Supporting this early tradition are the Muratorian Canon (A.D. 170-180), Irenaeus (late 2nd century), the earliest actual copy of the Gospel (Bodmer Papyrus XIV, 175-225), an ancient Prologue to the Gospel written against the heretic Marcion (late 2nd), Tertullian (207-208), and later Origen (254), Eusebius (303), and Jerome (398). Such is the external evidence for Lukan authorship, and it is quite strong.

The internal evidence is also strong, and it comes from volume two, the book of Acts. There the author uses the first person plural pronoun ("we") in narrating the events in the life of Paul on three occasions (16:10-17; 20:5-15; 21:1-18; 27:1-28:16; often called the "we-passages" of Acts). These sections imply that the author was with Paul in Asia Minor, Macedonia, Judea, on the Mediterranean, and in Rome.

This of course does not point directly to Luke, but it does encourage some detective work on the part of the reader. Who was with Paul during these times? Paul's letters and Acts suggest a number of traveling companions (see the relevant portions of Acts and especially Col 4, Phlm, and 2 Tim 4). When one eliminates those whom the author mentions by name in Acts, and if one assumes that the author of Luke-Acts was a Gentile (see below), Luke emerges as the most likely author, given the strong weight of tradition.

Given strong external and internal evidence for Lukan authorship, one may wonder why much of contemporary scholarship rejects the notion entirely. The answer is based on internal evidence which is said to disallow Lukan authorship. Quite simply, the book of Acts presents a view of Paul the Christian who appears to be quite different from the Paul who wrote the letters, especially Galatians. The book of Acts does not cite or even mention Paul's letters. More significantly, it is argued that the theological portrait of Paul in Acts could not have been painted by a companion of Paul. Luke's portrait is especially problematic with regard to Paul's stance on keeping the Law. We must admit that it is somewhat surprising when Paul, who wrote that, "All who rely on observing the Law are under a curse," (Gal 3:10), consistently upholds the Law in Acts. Most notably, James in Acts 21:24 encourages Paul to help the four men under a vow in order to show that "you yourself are living in obedience to the Law."

At the risk of oversimplifying a very complex discussion, several points should be noted. First, we should admit and not apologize for the fact that Luke and Paul have very different agendas in writing their works. This has necessarily influenced which events they narrate and what they emphasize theologically. Paul is writing for churches in crises and tends to address only those areas where the church in question needs instruction. Luke on the other hand writes in order to show the unity within the early church and therefore stresses that which all churches shared. So Paul in Galatians writes against Judaizers (those who want Gentiles to keep the Law), whereas Luke writes to Gentiles who may not have enough understanding or appreciation of the Jewish heritage of Christianity. The difference may well be one of audience and perspective rather than theological position. One should remember that Paul in his letters does write that his policy is, "To the Jews I became like a Jew," and, "To those under the Law I became like one under the Law" (1 Cor 9). In other words, Luke in Acts may be showing a side of Paul that the letters largely do not show: Paul customarily lived as a Jew, especially around Jews.

Efforts to argue that the Third Gospel demonstrates that its author was a doctor have been abandoned today. Hobart argued that the sheer number of healing stories and the vocabulary demonstrated that Luke was a physician. However, Cadbury later refuted these claims by proving that Luke showed no more "medical" language than other educated writers of his day. Of course, the healing stories and "medical" vocabulary are consistent with authorship by a physician. They simply do not prove it.

While it can never be proven absolutely, I have taken the view that Luke, the companion of Paul, wrote Luke and Acts. This is largely because I accept the "we-sections" at face value. The author intended to represent himself as a companion of Paul, and the best candidate is Luke. However, we still know very little about our author, because the New Testament says little about Luke. What can be known about this author other than that he was a companion of Paul (Acts 16-28), a physician (Col 4:14), and a Gentile (Col 4:11)?

We actually learn more about Luke from his writing than from other sources. First, he was not an eyewitness to the ministry of Jesus (1:1-4). He got his information from "eyewitnesses and ministers of the word." Second, he was a man of some education, as is clearly evidenced by his learned Greek (see esp. 1:1-4) and his ability to imitate the style of the Greek Old Testament. Third, he does appear to have been a Gentile. While this cannot be proven with certainty, his references to "the Jews" probably imply that he was not one of them, especially the reference to "their language" in Acts 1:19. This is, of course, consistent with the statement of Colossians 4:14 (which implies that Luke was a Gentile). Fourth, he was thoroughly conversant with the Scriptures. Although he has been called a Gentile writing to Gentiles, we must not overlook his constant references to every section of the Old Testament (esp. Psalms), his overriding fulfillment theme, and his great concern to show that all of his Jewish characters continue to observe the Law of Moses (even those who become Christians). This Gentile, for example, is the only Gospel writer who tells us of Jesus' circumcision on the eighth day, of Mary's purification on the fortieth day, of the disciples' observance of the Sabbath "according to the commandment" after the death of Jesus (24:1), and of Paul's taking vows (18:18) and participating in the sacrificial system long after becoming a Christian (Acts 21). Perhaps Luke had for some time been a "God-fearer," a Gentile who worshiped God, appreciated Judaism, and attended the synagogue. God-fearers are an important group in Acts who very often become Christians (see 13:16; 16:14; 18:7).

Fortunately, we need not know the author's name to interpret his narrative. In fact, the narrative tells us much more about the author than any theory about the author tells us about the narrative.

DATE

It is fortunate also that the interpreter need not know the date of Luke's writing, because no one knows exactly when it was written. Though some argue that Luke wrote his Gospel long before he wrote Acts, there are many reasons to think the two volumes were written at the same time. If so, the Gospel was written after A.D. 60-62, the date of Paul's imprisonment in Acts 28. Thus the earliest possible date for Luke's Gospel is 62. A few scholars argue that Luke must have written at that time, and that this accounts for the abrupt and frustrating (did Paul live or die?) ending of Acts. Most, however, believe that Luke had other reasons than lack of information for ending Acts as he did. I concur with those who think Luke had simply accomplished his purpose in Acts 28. He wrote to give an account of the spread of the gospel from Jews (only) in Jerusalem to Gentiles (predominantly) in Rome. He did not intend to give a biography of Paul.

Most argue that Luke had to have been written after Mark, because, in their opinions, Luke used Mark's Gospel in writing his own. However, this opinion is not universally accepted; and even if it were, one then has to answer the equally difficult question, When was Mark written? On the other hand, Luke 1:1 does suggest that Luke was probably written relatively late among early Gospels.

Many would argue that the earliest date of writing must be at least A.D. 70 on the basis of likely allusions to the destruction of Jerusalem. Of course, Jesus alludes to the coming destruction of Jerusalem in the first two Gospels as well as in Luke. However, in Luke Jesus says, "When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies," (21:20) instead of, "When you see 'the abomination that causes desolation' standing where it does not belong," (Mark 13:14). Many believe that this more specific language suggests that Luke was looking back at the destruction and interpreting for his audience the meaning of Jesus' statement. This is likely, but it is far from certain.

The latest possible date for the writing of Luke's Gospel would be the first allusion to it in other literature. But even that is difficult to determine because allusions are notoriously difficult to ascertain. It could be 1 Clement (95-96), Ignatius (110), Polycarp (135), or 2 Clement (clear allusion but uncertain date, anywhere from 120-170).

The evidence tends to point to the period of A.D. 65-85 for the composition of the Gospel of Luke. Some might like to be more exact, but it matters little for the interpretation of Luke's work.

AUDIENCE

As suggested above, the Gospel of Luke appears to be addressed to Gentile Christians. Though Theophilus is the named recipient and was certainly an intended reader, Luke undoubtedly wrote for a much larger audience. Just as modern "letters to the editor" are meant for the larger public, so was Luke's work. Numerous hints within the work point to a larger audience which is predominantly Gentile. The most important are these: (1) He relates his work to a Greco-Roman literary tradition (1:1-4). (2) He dedicates the work to Theophilus, most likely a Gentile. (3) He is profoundly interested in the Gentile mission. (4) He uses Greek and Roman terms when other Gospel writers use Hebrew ("teacher" for "rabbi;" "lawyer" for "scribe;" "Skull" for "Golgotha"). (5) He refers to the Jews in the third person.

Most agree that the original readers were Christian and that Luke-Acts is intended to build up faith rather than help create it. This is perhaps more difficult to prove, but two factors seem to lead in this direction. First, it appears that the named reader, Theophilus, had already heard the story (1:4). Second, there are simply too many matters left unexplained which would have been far too confusing for the non-Christian. Almost every episode assumes that Luke's readers had a basic knowledge about Jesus and that Luke writes to provide certainty and various additional details.

PURPOSE

Luke tells us his purpose in Luke 1:4: he wants Theophilus to have "certainty" regarding the things he has been taught. This statement is at the same time helpful and ambiguous. On the one hand, it suggests that Luke is written with a quasi-apologetic motive. What it does not tell us, on the other hand, is in what area(s) his readers needed certainty. Did they simply need to be assured of the historicity of the events narrated? Or is it possible that they needed certainty regarding their own position before God? Or could it be that they needed certainty that God was behind all of the events they had heard about and witnessed? Might it even mean that they needed certainty about the proper response to the gospel message?

Luke's purpose has been called apologetic (to defend Christianity to Rome, or, in another sense, to defend God's actions), evangelistic (to engender faith among non-Christians), anti-heretical (to combat Gnosticism), and didactic (to teach Christians what to believe and how to act), to name only the most commonly suggested. In light of the many credible suggestions offered by scholars, we should be very careful about settling upon one purpose. The question of Luke's purpose must be answered by looking not only at Luke's Gospel but also at the Acts of the Apostles, and it can only be answered with reference to the themes which keep recurring throughout both volumes.

Perhaps it is best to suggest that Luke-Acts was written primarily for Gentiles who needed "assurance" in a number of areas, both historical and theological. Perhaps they did need the account of a careful and educated historian to give them confidence that events they heard about had actually occurred. There also may have been some among them who had not yet decided to become Christians. Most likely those who were Christians needed Luke to explain how God had kept his promises to the Jews in light of the fact that there seemed to be fewer and fewer Jews among those being converted. Probably these same Gentile Christians simply needed to understand better their own place in God's plan. And surely these readers, whoever they were, needed to be reminded that being Christian meant sharing possessions, undergoing persecution, welcoming the outcast, serving one another, and generally walking as Jesus walked.

LUKE AND ACTS

Eighteen hundred fifty years ago it was apparent that Luke's first volume was very much like the works of Matthew and Mark. At that time the Gospel was placed beside its peers in the New Testament. John, assumed to be the last Gospel written, was placed between Luke and Acts, and the two works by Luke have been separated ever since. While everyone acknowledges that one author wrote both, few have truly noted the import of that fact. Luke wrote not two independent documents, but a two-volume story, as he well explains.

When Luke is read along with Acts, Acts reads quite differently. No longer do we have the self-contained story of the spread of the Gospel from Jerusalem Jews to Roman Gentiles. We have nothing less than the story of Jesus, from his ministry in Galilee to his death and resurrection in Jerusalem to his continuing ministry in the Mediterranean world.

In the tradition of the Restoration Movement it has long been argued that the book of Acts provides a pattern for the later church. My thesis is that there is indeed an intended pattern in Acts, but the pattern is not rooted primarily in the practice of the early church. The pattern is that established by Jesus. Quite simply, the early church does what Jesus did and what Jesus commanded it to do. In fact, Luke insists that it is still Jesus who is carrying out his ministry through the church. In Acts 1:1 when Luke writes of the former book in which he "wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach," what he implies is that Acts will narrate what Jesus continues to do and to teach.

This is especially clear in certain passages: it is Jesus himself who calls Paul on the road to Damascus in Acts 9. Later in that chapter Peter says, "Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you." In Acts 16:7 Paul and his companions attempt to enter Bithynia, "but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them." And in 18:9 Jesus himself speaks to Paul, encouraging him to have no fear. It should also be noted that Jesus had already said in Luke 21:15, "I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand." It is clear, of course, that in Acts Jesus is at the right hand of God, but he is active and very much in control as he directs the new movement through his Spirit. Jesus is so bound up with his church that he can tell Paul in 9:5, "I am Jesus whom you are persecuting."

Consider the following parallels or "patterns" in the ministry of Jesus and that of the early church:

(1) Luke shows Jesus praying at nearly every major event (baptism, choosing disciples, confession, transfiguration, Gethsemane, and on the cross). The early church does the same (waiting before Pentecost, choosing Matthias, Peter before going to Cornelius, sending Paul, healing, and many others).

(2) In Luke Jesus is empowered when the Holy Spirit descends upon him at his baptism. Only then does he begin his ministry of preaching and healing (3:22; see 1:35; 4:1). In Acts the apostles are told to wait until they are baptized with the Holy Spirit (1:5, 8). After the Spirit descends upon them (2:4), they also do signs and wonders and preach, just as did Jesus. All the major characters in Acts, like Jesus, are said to be filled with the Holy Spirit (Peter - 4:8; Stephen - 6:5; Paul - 13:9, and dozens of other references to the guidance of the Spirit).

(3) In Luke Jesus performs various miracles as part of his ministry. The church leaders in Acts not only perform miracles - they perform miracles which are remarkably similar to those of Jesus. For example, just as Jesus heals the mother-in-law of Peter who had a fever (Luke 4:38), Paul heals the father of Publius, who also had a fever (Acts 28:8). Just as Jesus casts out unclean spirits (Luke 4:36; 6:18, etc.), so do Peter (Acts 5:16), Philip (8:7), and Paul (16:18; 19:13). Jesus heals the lame (Luke 7:22), as do Peter and John (Acts 3:2), Philip (8:7), and Paul (14:8-10).

(4) The message of Jesus and that of the leaders in Acts is the same, emphasizing the kingdom of God (30 times in Luke; see Acts 1:3; 8:12; 14:22; 19:8; 20:25; 28:23), repentance, and forgiveness of sins. Jesus and the apostles on occasion even use the same Old Testament texts, such as Psalm 110 (Luke 20:42; Acts 2:34).

(5) Jesus suffers at the hands of his own people and the Gentiles, and so do the disciples. Of course, Jesus predicted that they would (12:11-12; 21:12-14). Jesus teaches in the synagogue at Nazareth and is rejected and almost killed. The same will happen on numerous occasions in Acts, as Paul enters synagogue after synagogue, only to be eventually rejected. Suffering is especially the lot of Paul, whose story Luke parallels in detail with that of Jesus. The journeys to Jerusalem and treatment there of both Jesus and Paul occupy the large final sections of Luke and Acts. In 18:32 Jesus announces that he "will be delivered to the Gentiles." In Acts 21:11, speaking of Paul the prophet Agabus predicts that the Jews will "deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles." Of Jesus, Luke later records that the people "all cried out together, 'Away with this man,'" and of Paul Luke writes, "for the mob of the people followed, crying, 'Away with him!'" Both Jesus and Paul face Jewish accusers, including the High Priest; both appear before Herodian princes as well as Roman procurators; and both are said to be innocent by the Roman leaders.

The Jesus/Stephen parallels are even more obvious. Both are full of the Holy Spirit; both are recipients of wisdom, grace and power; both do signs and wonders; both are led to the council, the eyes of whose members are fixed on them; both are cast outside the city; both pray that God will forgive their accusers; both commit their spirits to God; both are killed; and both are buried by devout persons.

(6) There are also many examples of the apostles obeying the directives of Jesus (Luke 6:22-23: "rejoice [when people persecute you] in that day and leap for joy"- see Acts 5:41; Luke 9:5: "shake the dust off your feet . . . as a testimony against them"- see Acts 13:51; 18:6). In fact, the entire plan of Acts was commanded by the risen Jesus in Acts 1:8, where he says, "You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."

One of the most important areas in which the church in Acts carries out the teaching of Jesus is that related to wealth and poverty. In Luke as in no other Gospel Jesus encourages the sharing of possessions and condemns the greedy and selfish. Many of these stories and sayings appear only in Luke: Zacchaeus; the rich man and Lazarus; "blessed are you poor;" the parables about inviting the poor, lame, maimed, and blind; the dishonest steward; and the command to all of the disciples, "sell your possessions and give alms." It is not surprising, then, that Acts contains many examples, both positive and negative, of the use of possessions in the early church: the selling of possessions for the needy in chapters 2 and 4; the generosity of Barnabas, Dorcas, Paul, and the Antioch church; and the negative examples of Ananias and Sapphira, Simon the Sorcerer, Felix, and Judas (who bought a field with his money (1:18), over against Barnabas, who sold a field in Acts 4:36).

Having argued this case, it would be a mistake to suggest that Luke had no notion of the church of his day being like the church which he writes about - he surely did. But the goal is not to replicate the church of the earliest decades; it is rather to be like Jesus, and the picture of a church that looked like Jesus could only further that goal. The intent may be very much like that of Paul, who tells the churches, "Imitate me as I imitate Christ." Paul knows the advantage of giving his readers an example which is easily grasped and will lead them toward the goal. Yet he also knows quite well that he has not yet reached the goal (Phil 3:12-13), and he never makes the imitation of himself the primary goal. Luke seems to have the same intent in Acts: the early church is well worthy of imitation, insofar as its members imitate Christ.

This commentary will be written from this perspective. The best commentary on Acts is the Gospel of Luke. And conversely, Luke has made clear what Jesus' statements mean in a later generation. Therefore, to read Acts is to read an inspired commentary on the Gospel of Luke. We will refer to Luke's two-volume work as "Luke-Acts."

HISTORY AND THEOLOGY

Luke has been accused often of being careless as a historian, at least by modern standards. His treatment of the census under Quirinius (Luke 2), the rebellion under Theudas (Acts 5), and several other matters have led many to argue that Luke is a better theologian than historian. While the present commentary cannot look in detail at these matters (there will be brief comments in the appropriate sections), one should keep in mind several things. First, there are many matters about which we will never have enough information to make a final judgment. However, the silence of extrabiblical sources should never be taken as proof that an event never occurred. Secondly, each passage must be evaluated independently. The number of cases in which Luke is clearly out of step with other ancient sources is very small, and those sources always had their own agenda, just as did Luke. Thirdly, most would concede that Luke proves to be accurate when there is sufficient evidence with which to compare his writing. Luke has obviously gone to great lengths in order to have accurate information on John the Baptist and on rulers in Judea and Galilee. Considering the large number of events and people in his narrative, the surprising thing is that there are not more alleged historical inaccuracies. There can be little doubt that Luke went to much trouble to ensure accuracy. Luke is both historian and theologian.

SOURCES

Luke got his information from various sources, as he tells us in 1:1-4. However, we do not know for certain the identity of any of these. Most scholars think that Luke (and Matthew) are somehow dependent on the Gospel of Mark. I have made no such assumption in this commentary. While there is undoubtedly some advantage in knowing any writer's sources, there is no final proof for any theory regarding the relationships between the Gospels. I have, however, made two assumptions about Luke's Gospel. First, I believe it to be inspired and thus completely reliable. Second, I believe that Luke had a great deal of information about Jesus from which to choose and that we gain a great deal by simply comparing what Luke wrote to what other Gospel writers wrote. In other words, Luke has selected and adapted his material, and while we do not have access to all the information he had at his disposal, we will learn a great deal through a comparative reading.

THEMES

There may be no clearer insight into Luke's purpose than that gained by examining those themes which recur with some frequency in Luke-Acts. Narrative writers express what their readers need most by returning to a point again and again. When looked at from this perspective, Luke has many concerns. It is clear that he has much to tell his readers, and there can be no more effective way for them to hear it than from the lips of Jesus. The following list is far from exhaustive, but it at least will steer the reader into some of those areas which apparently were close to Luke's heart. The following topics receive special attention in the commentary at the place where Luke first mentions them (see p. 11 for page numbers). They are listed here in order to give the reader a preview of some of Luke's major themes and in order to show the reader where to look in the commentary for more information.

Anti-Semitism Parables Baptism Pharisees Destruction of Jerusalem Poor and Rich and End of Time Prayer Forgiveness and Grace Prophet Theme Fulfillment of Scripture Repentance Holy Spirit Sadducees Kingdom of God Samaritans Law Son of Man Messiah Table Fellowship Miracles and Sign-Seeking Tax Collectors Outcasts and Untouchables Women

A FINAL WORD ABOUT

INTRODUCTORY QUESTIONS

Traditional introductory questions are being given less attention today than they were a generation ago. The reason is twofold. First, it is very difficult to give "sure" answers to many questions of introduction. The evidence is often insufficient to offer more than probabilities, and what is "probable" is evaluated differently by every scholar. Second, the interpretation of many New Testament works and especially the Gospels is not significantly aided by having answers to most of these questions. For example, knowing that the author of Luke was the companion of Paul does not change the understanding of any passage in the Gospel. Similarly, knowing the date aids interpretation very little. The following commentary does not assume sure answers to any of these questions for its interpretation.

-College Press New Testament Commentary: with the NIV

BIBLIOGRAPHY

PRIMARY SOURCES

Charlesworth, James H., ed. The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha , 2 vols. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1983, 1985.

Danby, Herbert. The Mishnah . Trans. from the Hebrew with Introductory and Brief Explanatory Notes. London: Oxford University Press, 1933.

Epstein, I., ed. The Babylonian Talmud . London: Soncino Press, 1935-48.

Freedman, H., and Maurice Simon, eds. Midrash Rabbah . London: Soncino Press, 1939-.

Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: Heinemann.

Martínez, Florentino García. The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated: The Qumran Texts in English . Trans. Wilfred G.E. Watson. Leiden and New York: E.J. Brill, 1994.

SECONDARY SOURCES

Bock, Darrell. Luke . Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament. 2 vols. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995-96.

Craddock, Fred B. Luke . Interpretation. Louisville: John Knox, 1990.

Danker, F.W. Luke . Proclamation Commentaries, 2nd ed. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987.

Ellis, E.E. The Gospel of Luke . New Century Bible, 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974.

Evans, Craig A. Luke . New International Biblical Commentary. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1990.

Fitzmyer, Joseph A. The Gospel according to Luke . Anchor Bible 28, 28A. 2 vols. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1981, 1985.

Green, Joel B., and Scot McKnight, eds. Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels . Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1992.

Jervell, Jacob. Luke and the People of God . Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1972.

Johnson, Luke T. The Gospel of Luke . Sacra Pagina 3. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991.

Marshall, I. Howard. The Gospel of Luke: A Commentary on the Greek Text . The New International Greek Testament Commentary. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978.

. Luke: Historian and Theologian . Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1970.

Morris, Leon. Luke . Revised edition. Tyndale New Testament Commentary. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983.

Nolland, John. Luke . Word Biblical Commentary, vols. 35A, 35B, 35C. Dallas: Word Books, 1989, 1993.

O'Toole, Robert F. The Unity of Luke's Theology: An Analysis of Luke-Acts . Good News Studies 9. Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1984.

Stein, Robert H. Luke . The New American Commentary 24. Nashville: Broadman, 1992.

Tannehill, Robert C. The Narrative Unity of Luke-Acts: A Literary Interpretation . Vol. I: The Gospel According to Luke. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986.

Tiede, David L. Luke . Augsburg Commentary on the New Testament. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1988.

-College Press New Testament Commentary: with the NIV

ABBREVIATIONS

DJG Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels

LXX Septuagint (Greek translation of the Old Testament)

NIV New International Version

NRSV New Revised Standard Version

RSV Revised Standard Version

Main Biblical Manuscript Texts:

Codex Sinaiticus (4th century A.D.)

A Codex Alexandrinus (5th century A.D.)

B Codex Vaticanus (4th century A.D.)

D Codex Bezae (5th-6th century A.D.)

⁶⁹ Papyrus 69 (3rd century A.D.)

⁷⁵ Papyrus 75 (early 3rd century A.D.)

-College Press New Testament Commentary: with the NIV

College: Luke (Outline)

OUTLINE

There is general agreement among serious students of Luke's Gospel regarding its structure.

I. Prologue Luke 1:1-4

II. Infancy Narrative 1:5-2:52

III. The Preparation for Jesus' Ministry 3:1-4:13

IV. Jesus' Ministry in Galilee 4:14-9:50

V. Jesus' Journey to Jerusalem 9:51-19:27

VI. Jesus' Ministry in Jerusalem 19:28-21:38

VII. Jesus' Suffering and Death 22:1-23:56

VIII. Jesus' Resurrection and Ascension 24:1-53

(The Book of Acts)

IX. From Easter to Pentecost (Acts 1)

X. From Jerusalem to Samaria (Acts 2-9)

XI. From Judea to Rome (Acts 10-28)

Those who are familiar with the other Gospels notice immediately several similarities and differences. Like Matthew, Luke begins with birth stories (although Luke's are very different than Matthew's). Like Matthew and Mark, Luke includes Jesus' temptation and baptism and has a large section in which Jesus teaches and heals in Galilee. And like all three other Gospels, Luke has Jesus go to Jerusalem for the final week and ends the Gospel with the trial, suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

What is most distinctive about the Gospel of Luke, however, is section V in the above outline, the journey to Jerusalem. It is the largest section in Luke's Gospel and contains a great number of stories found only in Luke. Luke uses this long journey to Jerusalem primarily to teach what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. It means doing what Jesus does: teaching, healing, serving, suffering, and dying to self. In other words, it means following Jesus - all the way to Jerusalem.

Finally, the greatest difference between Luke's writing and that of Matthew, Mark, and John is that Luke continues the story. The book of Acts tells how Jesus continues to teach and heal as he leads the growing kingdom throughout the Mediterranean world.

DETAILED OUTLINE

(Episode Titles Based on NIV Headings)

I. Prologue Luke - 1:1-4

II. Infancy Narrative - 1:5-2:52

A. The Birth of John the Baptist Foretold - 1:5-25

B. The Birth of Jesus Foretold - 1:26-38

C. Mary Visits Elizabeth - 1:39-45

D. Mary's Song - 1:46-56

E. The Birth of John the Baptist - 1:57-66

F. Zechariah's Song - 1:67-80

G. The Birth of Jesus - 2:1-7

H. The Shepherds and the Angels - 2:8-20

I. Jesus Presented in the Temple - 2:21-40

J. The Boy Jesus at the Temple - 2:41-52

III. The Preparation for Jesus' Ministry - 3:1-4:13

A. John the Baptist Prepares the Way - 3:1-20

B. The Baptism and Genealogy of Jesus - 3:21-38

C. The Temptation of Jesus - 4:1-13

IV. Jesus' Ministry in Galilee - 4:14-9:50

A. Jesus Rejected at Nazareth - 4:14-30

B. Jesus' Ministry in Capernaum - 4:31-44

1. Jesus Drives Out an Evil Spirit - 4:31-37

2. Jesus Heals Many - 4:38-44

C. The Calling of the First Disciples - 5:1-11

D. The Man with Leprosy - 5:12-16

E. The Beginning of Conflict - 5:17-6:11

1. Jesus Heals a Paralytic - 5:17-26

2. The Calling of Levi - 5:27-32

3. Jesus Questioned About Fasting - 5:33-39

4. Lord of the Sabbath - 6:1-11

F. The Sermon on the Plain - 6:12-49

1. The Twelve Apostles - 6:12-16

2. Blessings and Woes - 6:17-26

3. Love for Enemies - 6:27-36

4. Judging Others - 6:37-42

5. A Tree and Its Fruit - 6:43-45

6. The Wise and Foolish Builders - 6:46-49

G. Jesus the Prophet - 7:1-50

1. The Faith of the Centurion - 7:1-10

2. Jesus Raises a Widow's Son - 7:11-17

3. Jesus and John the Baptist - 7:18-35

4. Jesus Anointed by a Sinful Woman - 7:36-50

H. Jesus Teaches in Parables - 8:1-21

1. The Parable of the Sower - 8:1-15

2. A Lamp on a Stand - 8:16-18

3. Jesus' Mother and Brothers - 8:19-21

I. Jesus Shows His Divine Power - 8:22-56

1. Jesus Calms a Storm - 8:22-25

2. The Healing of a Demoniac - 8:26-39

3. A Dead Girl and a Sick Woman - 8:40-56

J. Jesus and His Apostles - 9:1-50

1. Jesus Sends Out the Twelve - 9:1-6

2. Jesus Feeds the Five Thousand - 9:7-17

3. Peter's Confession of Christ - 9:18-27

4. The Transfiguration - 9:28-36

5. The Healing of a Boy with a Demon - 9:37-45

6. Who Will Be the Greatest? - 9:46-50

V. Jesus' Journey to Jerusalem - 9:51-19:27

A. Jesus Faces Toward Jerusalem - 9:51-13:21

1. Samaritan Opposition - 9:51-56

2. The Cost of Following Jesus - 9:57-62

3. Jesus Sends Out the Seventy-Two - 10:1-24

4. The Parable of the Good Samaritan - 10:25-37

5. At the Home of Mary and Martha - 10:38-42

6. Jesus' Teaching on Prayer - 11:1-13

7. Jesus and Beelzebub - 11:14-28

8. The Sign of Jonah - 11:29-32

9. The Lamp of the Body - 11:33-36

10. Six Woes - 11:37-54

11. Warnings and Encouragements - 12:1-12

12. The Parable of the Rich Fool - 12:13-21

13. Do Not Worry - 12:22-34

14. Watchfulness - 12:35-48

15. Not Peace but Division - 12:49-53

16. Interpreting the Times - 12:54-59

17. Repent or Perish - 13:1-9

18. A Crippled Woman Healed - 13:10-17

19. Parables of Mustard Seed and Yeast - 13:18-21

B. Jesus Journeys Toward Jerusalem - 13:22-17:10

1. The Narrow Door - 13:22-30

2. Jesus' Sorrow for Jerusalem - 13:31-35

3. Jesus at a Pharisee's House - 14:1-14

4. The Parable of the Great Banquet - 14:15-24

5. The Cost of Being a Disciple - 14:25-35

6. The Parable of the Lost Sheep - 15:1-7

7. The Parable of the Lost Coin - 15:8-10

8. The Parable of the Lost Son - 15:11-32

9. The Parable of the Shrewd Manager - 16:1-15

10. Teachings on the Law and Divorce - 16:16-18

11. The Rich Man and Lazarus - 16:19-31

12. Sin, Faith, Duty - 17:1-10

C. Jesus Approaches Jerusalem - 17:11-19:27

1. Ten Healed of Leprosy - 17:11-19

2. The Coming of the Kingdom of God - 17:20-37

3. The Parable of the Persistent Widow - 18:1-8

4. The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector - 18:9-14

5. The Little Children and Jesus - 18:15-17

6. The Rich Ruler - 18:18-30

7. Jesus Again Predicts His Death - 18:31-34

8. A Blind Beggar Receives His Sight - 18:35-43

9. Zacchaeus the Tax Collector - 19:1-10

10. The Parable of the Ten Minas - 19:11-27

VI. Jesus' Ministry in Jerusalem - 19:28-21:38

A. The Triumphal Entry - 19:28-34

B. Jesus at the Temple - 19:45-48

C. The Authority of Jesus Questioned - 20:1-8

D. The Parable of the Tenants - 20:9-19

E. Paying Taxes to Caesar - 20:20-26

F. The Resurrection and Marriage - 20:27-40

G. Whose Son Is the Christ? - 20:41-47

H. The Widow's Offering - 21:1-4

I. Signs of the End of the Age - 21:5-38

VII. Jesus' Suffering and Death - 22:1-23:56

A. Judas Agrees to Betray Jesus - 22:1-6

B. The Last Supper - 22:7-38

C. Jesus Prays on the Mount of Olives - 22:39-46

D. Jesus Arrested - 22:47-53

E. Peter Disowns Jesus - 22:54-62

F. The Guards Mock Jesus - 22:63-65

G. Jesus Before Pilate and Herod - 22:66-23:25

H. The Crucifixion - 23:26-43

I. Jesus' Death - 23:44-49

J. Jesus' Burial - 23:50-56

VIII. Jesus' Resurrection and Ascension - 24:1-53

A. The Resurrection - 24:1-12

B. On the Road to Emmaus - 24:13-35

C. Jesus Appears to the Disciples - 24:36-49

D. The Ascension - 24:50-53

-College Press New Testament Commentary: with the NIV

Lapide: Luke (Book Introduction)

S. LUKE'S GOSPEL

Third Edition

JOHN HODGES,

AGAR STREET, CHARING CROSS, LONDON.

1892.

INTRODUCTION.

——o——

THE Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ, according to S. Luke , that is, the Holy Evangelical History of the words and acts of Jesus, as described by S. Luke. The Arabic says, "In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, one God, the Gospel of the Excellent Father, Luke the Evangelist, the laying open of the glorious Gospel." The Syraic, "In the name of the Lord and our God, we Jeschua Mescicho, sign the Gospel, the holy message of Luke the Evangelist, which he spoke and proclaimed in Greek, in Alexandria." From this diversity, it is clear that the above title or inscription was prefixed to the Gospel, not by S. Luke himself, but by the Church which, in like manner, inscribed one Gospel "According to S. Matthew," one "According to S. John," and another "According to S. Mark." Nay, as regards the faith of the future, this title would have been added to no purpose by S. Luke himself, unless the Church had declared his Gospel to be genuine and not supposititious, and had handed it down as such. This speaks for Tradition against the heretics, for why is the Gospel, bearing the name of S. Luke, to be received as truly his, whilst that with the title of "Matthew and Thomas" is not to be considered theirs? Or again, why is the Gospel of S. Luke more canonical than that of Apelles or Basilides? No other reason can be given but the proof, declaration, and tradition of the Church. For we accept it, not because it is written in the sacred books, but because it has been so handed down by the Church. For instance, we believe this to be the Gospel of S. Luke and canonical, not because he wrote it, but because the Church so delivers and teaches. For although its own authority pertains to this Gospel, as to the others, yet this authority would not be plain to us, but for the declaration of the Church. The same is, a pari , to be said of the sense of Scripture. For the true sense of Scripture is not what appears to you or me, for this would be uncertain and doubtful, for Calvin affirms one sense to be the true one, Luther another, and others another, but that which is taught and received by the Church, whose office it is to deliver as well what is the true Scripture as what is its true meaning. For Holy Scripture consists not in the bark (cortice) of letters or words, but in their genuine meaning. So the Fourth Session of the Council of Trent, and the Fathers everywhere, especially Tertullian (B. iv. cap. 5 against Marcion). See what I have said on S. Matthew i. 1.

Observe: I. S. Matthew was the first in order of the Evangelists. He wrote in Hebrew to the Jews in Judæa. S. Mark was the second. He wrote in Greek and Latin to the Romans in Italy; then S. Luke wrote to the Greeks in Greek; and S. John last of all, also in Greek; but S. Luke wrote the more elegantly, because he was the more perfect master of Greek. Hear S. Jerome (Ep. 84 to Paulinus): "Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the quadriga of the Lord, and true Cherubim (which is interpreted, the 'multitude of knowledge'), through their whole body they are 'full of eyes,' sparks shine from them, lightnings flash forth, their feet are 'straight,' and point upwards, their backs are winged, and they fly hither and thither. They hold themselves mutually one with another, and are 'enfolded' with one another, and are rolled together, like a wheel, and they go wherever the influence of the Holy Spirit directs them." See Ezekiel i. 9, x. 12; Revelation iv. 6-8.

Moreover, among the faces or forms of the four Cherubim, the third, that of the ox, is ascribed to S. Luke, as well because he begins from the priesthood of Zachariah, whose chief sacrifice was an ox, as because he underwent the labours of an ox in the Gospel, and bore about continually in his own body the mortification of the Cross for the honour of the name of Christ, as the Church sings of him. See what has been said on Revelation iv. 7, and Ezekiel i. 10.

II. S. Luke wrote his Gospel against certain gaping, ignorant, perhaps even false Evangelists, who had written, in Syria or Greece, an imperfect, it may be a lying Gospel, as S. Luke himself signifies in the beginning of his work. So say Origen, S. Ambrose, Theophylact, and S. Epiphanius ( Her . l. i), who, however, when he adds that S. Luke wrote against Cerinthus and Meritus, does not seem to speak correctly. For these two, and especially Basilides, were later than S. Luke, as is clear from Eusebius (Hist. B. iii. ch. 32). Theophylact and Bede think, with more truth, that S. Luke wrote against the Apocryphal Gospels of others, such as pass under the names of "Thomas, Matthew, and the Twelve Apostles."

III. S. Luke was not one of the seventy-two disciples of Christ, as Euthymius and S. Gregory in his preface on Job, chap. i. think, on the authority of Origen; for S. Luke never saw Christ in the flesh, but he wrote what he had heard of Him from the Apostles, as he says himself, i. 2. Hence the Fathers call S. Luke "the disciple of the Apostles," and S. Paul mentions him by name, as his "fellow-labourer." So S. Jerome, on the 65th chapter of Isaiah, and preface to S. Matthew; where he says, "The third" (evangelist) is Luke the physician, by nation a Syrian, of Antioch, whose praise is in the Gospel (2 Cor. viii. 18 and 22), who himself was a disciple of S. Paul. He wrote his Gospel in the neighbourhood of Achaia and Bœotia, relating some things from the beginning, as he says himself, and describing rather what he heard than what he saw. St. Irenæus says the same, i. 20; Theodoret, on the Lives of the holy Fathers; Baronius, and others. Tertullian, also (Book iv. against Marcion, chap. 5), thinks this Gospel not so much S. Luke's as S. Paul's, because S. Luke wrote from the dictation of S. Paul, as S. Mark from that of S. Peter. For he says, "what S. Mark wrote may be ascribed to S. Peter, whose interpreter S. Mark was. And so the Gospel of S. Luke is generally given to S. Paul, for the productions of the disciples began to be ascribed to the masters."

S. Jerome also states that "S. Luke, in the Gospel and Acts, performed the duties of a physician of souls, as he had before done of bodies" (Ep. 103 to Paulinus); and again (in that to Philom). "Luke the physician left in his Gospel, and the book of the Acts of the Apostles to the Churches, how the Apostles from fishers of fish became fishers of men, and from the bodies of men became concerned with their souls, whose Gospel, as often as it is read in the churches, fails not of its medicine."

IV. Baronius thinks that S. Luke wrote in the companionship of S. Paul, anno 58, because S. Jerome says that he wrote his Gospel that year in Achaia and Bœotia, where S. Paul was. Others, however, are of opinion that S. Luke wrote earlier, as we must certainly admit, if we agree with S. Jerome ( Lib. de Scrip. Eccl. in Luc. ), Tertullian (Book iv. against Marcion, c. 5), Primasius, Anselm, and others, on 2 Cor. viii 18, that by, "the brother whose praise is in the Gospel" S. Paul meant S. Luke—as S. Ignatius, his fellow-citizen and contemporary, plainly asserts in his letter to the Ephesians: "As Luke bears witness, whose praise is in the Gospel." For the Second Epistle of S. Paul to the Corinthians was written in the year 58, so that if the praise of S. Luke was in the Gospel at that time, we must necessarily say that it (the Gospel) had been published previously. Hence Euthymius, and Theophylact in his Preface to S. Luke, say that he wrote fifteen years after the ascension of Christ, that is, about the year 49. But S. Luke had not then joined S. Paul, for he came to him in the Troad in the year 51, as Baronius rightly concludes from Acts xvi. 10. It appears, therefore, that S. Luke wrote subsequently to the year 51, but some years before 58, for, as S. Paul says, in that year he was well known and celebrated.

V.  S. Luke, after he had joined S. Paul, passed some time away from him, having been sent by him to other places (as I have shown on Acts xvi. 10), until S. Paul, when he had passed through other countries, came to Greece, thence to Syria, and so to Rome. Acts xx. 3, 4. For S. Paul, with other companions of his voyage, who are named in that verse, took S. Luke also, as S Luke himself states, verses 5, 15. From that time S. Luke became the "diligent" companion of S. Paul, even up to the time of S. Paul's first imprisonment, which was in the second year of Nero, when S. Luke finished the Acts of the Apostles, and, especially, those of S. Paul. Then, as S. Epiphanius says, S. Luke left S. Paul in prison, and went into Dalmatia, Gaul, Italy, and Macedonia, and preached the gospel everywhere till he came to Patara, a city of Achaia, where, in his eighty-fourth year, he was crowned with a glorious martyrdom in the year of Christ 61, the fifth of Nero, and the seventeenth of the session of S. Peter at Rome. So Baronius says, from S. Gregory Nazianzen, Paulinus, Gaudentius, Glyca, Nicephorus and others.

Lastly, who S. Luke was—of what rank and ability, I have described at length in the Book of Acts, where I have said that he appears to be the same as Lucius, whom S. Paul calls his kinsman, Rom xvi. 21. But he seems different to Lucius of Cyrene, mentioned in Acts xiii. 3. For S. Luke was of Antioch, not Cyrene. Again, the Roman Martyrology, on April 22, says that Lucius was among the first disciples of Christ, which cannot be said of S. Luke.

VI. The reason of S. Luke's having written a Gospel after SS. Matthew and Mark, was twofold. 1. To confute the false gospels that were then being published in Syria and Greece, as I have said before. 2. To write at length those words and acts of Christ which had been passed over by the other Evangelists, and especially His Infancy and Childhood, the Annunciation of His forerunner John the Baptist, His Conception, Nativity, Presentation in the Temple, Presence among the Doctors, the Conversion of St. Mary Magdalene, Zacchæus, the thief on the cross, the appearance to the two Disciples at Emmaus, the Parables of the Pharisee and Publican, the Good Samaritan, the Strayed Sheep, the Lost Piece of Money, the Prodigal Son, Lazarus and the Rich Glutton, and others; which show the mercy and pity of Christ to sinners and the miserable. See S. Irenæus, iii. 4, who recounts each. S. Luke also relates, more fully than the others, the Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension.

Lastly, S. Peter Damianus, in his Sermon on S. Matthew, says, "S. Luke observes the proper method and order when he describes the priestly stock of the Lord and His Person, and, with this object and intent, proceeds to describe at length every part of the Temple and the priests, to the end of the history. For, as the Mediator between God and man in His human nature, He pleased to be King and Priest in one, that through His kingly power He might rule, and, by His office of Priest, atone for us. These two "Personæ" of Christ are especially praised by the Fathers, for to Him principally and by singular prerogative God gave the seat of His Father David, that there might be no end of His Kingdom, and that He might be a Priest for ever, after the order of Melchisedek."

S. Anselm again, on Colos. iv., gives two reasons why S. Luke, more than the others, should speak of the mercy of Christ. 1. S. Luke was a physician of bodies; then, when he turned to Christ, he was made a physician of souls. Hence he speaks, more than the other Evangelists, of the mercies of the Redeemer, by which the weaknesses of sins are driven away. 2. In Christ, he describes the person of a Priest, making intercession for the sins of the whole world

Lastly, our own John de la Haye, in his Oparat. Evangel. chap. 68, recounts the twenty-five privileges granted to S. Luke, where, among other things, from S. Jerome, Bede, and Ado, he says that S. Luke never committed mortal sin, but passed a strict life of continual mortification; that he also preserved his virginity to the end, and was therefore beloved by the Blessed Virgin especially and before all others.

S. Ambrose and Titus of Bostra have commented especially on S. Luke. And Tertullian, in his whole work against Marcion (who had declared the Gospel of S. Luke, though adulterated, to be his own), treats of and explains many passages of this Gospel. Cardinal Toletus, also, wrote at length, and with exactness, on the first twelve chapters.