Luke, The Universal Gospel
As you may know, The Gospel of Luke is the third of four gospels in the Bible. The book is known by numerous adjectives---the gospel for the Gentiles, the gospel for women, the gospel of prayer, the gospel of praise, the universal gospel, the beautiful gospel, the gospel for the poor. Any one of those descriptive titles would be fitting. I choose to call this column Luke – The Universal Gospel because it is so inclusive.
Each of the four gospel writers had a target group they wished to reach or an agenda to get across. Luke’s gospel is directed to an important friend, His Majesty Theophilus, a high official in the Roman government. In the process of giving his friend Theo an accurate account of Jesus, Luke pens a very readable story of who Jesus was and what He did.
Luke writes from the perspective of a layman. He was a physician. He accompanied the Apostle Paul (who wrote two-thirds of the New Testament) on many of Paul’s journeys. Luke is a Gentile, the only Gentile author in the New Testament. Luke seldom quotes the Old Testament. His readers would not be familiar with it. There is nothing in Luke’s gospel that Gentiles could not understand. For example, Luke never uses the Jewish term, “Rabbi.” Instead, he refers to Jesus with the Greek equivalent, “Master.”
William Barclay, the noted theologian and author, said, “It is as if Luke said to himself, ‘I am writing the greatest story in the world; and nothing but the best and most accurate is good enough.’”
All the gospels teach us about Jesus, but Luke was impressed with events still important to us today---events the other gospel writers did not deem important for their audience.
If you are planning to begin a Bible reading discipline, reading Luke is a good place to begin. If you read one chapter a day, you could finish the book in less than a month. Meanwhile, you will get a beautiful and accurate picture of Jesus.
