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.7Obviously 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.8They wrote to convince their readers of something, and they used history to do that. Notwithstanding historical accuracy was important to them.9We 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
