Table of Contents
Luke
Luke identifies himself nowhere in his own Gospel, but the earliest Christian tradition, and Paul’s own letters, agree: this is “Luke, the beloved physician” (Colossians 4:14), a Gentile convert and Paul’s own traveling companion on much of his missionary journeys, the only Gospel writer who was almost certainly not Jewish. He opens by naming his method — “having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first,” he writes to one Theophilus, “it seemed good to me also … to write unto thee in order” (1:3) — the closest thing to a historian’s preface anywhere in the four Gospels. It shows: Luke alone tells of the angel’s visits to Zacharias and Mary, the shepherds, and the boy Jesus in the temple; Luke alone preserves the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, Zacchaeus, and the penitent thief; and no Gospel writer returns more often to the poor, to women, to outcasts, and to prayer.
This series reads Luke chapter by chapter, immediately following this site’s own chapter-by-chapter studies of Matthew and Mark. It is the third book of the New Testament on this site, and by far the longest attempted so far — twenty-four chapters, opening not with a genealogy or a voice in the wilderness, but with an old priest struck speechless in the temple, and a young woman in Nazareth asked to believe the impossible.
List Of Articles
There Appeared Unto Him An Angel Of The Lord
an old priest is struck speechless in the temple for doubting an angel's word, and doesn't speak again for nine months; a teenage girl in Nazareth is asked to believe something no woman has ever been asked to believe before, and answers with four words that have echoed through the church ever since; an unborn child leaps for joy at the sound of another pregnant woman's voice
Luke 1There Was No Room For Them In The Inn
a roman emperor orders a census for his own reasons, and unknowingly delivers a pregnant woman to the exact town a prophet said her son must be born in; the first people on earth ever told this news are shepherds, not priests; an old man who has waited a lifetime for one particular sight finally holds what he's been waiting for in his own two arms
Luke 2Now In The Fifteenth Year Of The Reign Of Tiberius Caesar
the story's start is pinned to six named rulers at once, the kind of precision a courtroom would demand; a preacher in the wilderness is asked the same blunt question by ordinary people, tax collectors, and soldiers alike — 'what shall we do?' — and gives each of them an answer suited exactly to their own temptation
Luke 3Get Thee Behind Me, Satan
forty days without food, and the first thing the devil tempts him with is exactly what his body is starving for; he stands up in his own hometown synagogue and reads a prophecy about himself, and by the end of the same sermon the same congregation is dragging him to a cliff to throw him off it
Luke 4Launch Out Into The Deep
a fisherman who has caught nothing all night is told to try again in broad daylight, and obeys anyway — and the catch is so large it nearly sinks two boats; a leper forbidden by law from coming near another human being kneels in front of him anyway and is touched, not just spoken to; a tax collector drops his ledger mid-transaction the moment he's called by name
Luke 5Blessed Be Ye Poor
before picking the twelve men who would carry his message after he was gone, he stays up all night, alone, praying about exactly who to choose; then he stands in front of a crowd that came hoping to trade poverty for riches, and instead pronounces four blessings on the poor and four warnings on the rich — a version of this sermon no other Gospel records
Luke 6Young Man, I Say Unto Thee, Arise
a Roman officer sends word that Jesus doesn't even need to show up in person — just say the word, from wherever he's standing; a funeral procession runs straight into Jesus on the road, and a widow gets her only son back alive before the burial ever happens; a woman with a reputation the whole town knows crashes a dinner party and washes Jesus's feet with her own tears
Luke 7Certain Women, Which Ministered Unto Him
the traveling ministry of Jesus and the twelve was, in practical terms, funded by a group of women — one of them delivered from seven demons, another married into Herod's own court — a detail no other Gospel bothers to record; a man who couldn't be held even by chains is found minutes later sitting quietly at Jesus's feet, fully dressed, fully sane
Luke 8He Steadfastly Set His Face To Go To Jerusalem
twelve ordinary men are sent out with nothing and come back able to do things they'd never done before; on a mountain of glory, Moses and Elijah talk with Jesus about the cross still waiting for him at the bottom of it; a village refuses him a night's lodging, and the single verse marking his turn toward Jerusalem becomes the hinge the rest of this Gospel turns on
Luke 9Who Is My Neighbour
seventy ordinary disciples are sent out with nothing and come back stunned by what they could do in his name; a lawyer asks a question meant to narrow down exactly how few people he's obligated to love, and gets back a story that makes the very people his own nation despised the hero of it; one sister runs herself ragged serving a meal while the other just sits on the floor and listens, and Jesus takes the side nobody expected
Luke 10Lord, Teach Us To Pray
a disciple asks for the one thing no rabbi had ever taught well — not a theory about prayer, but the words themselves — and gets back something short enough to memorize in one sitting and deep enough to fill libraries; a religious class so careful about the outside of a cup that they never once cleaned the inside gets told, to their faces, exactly what that carefulness has cost them
Luke 11Thou Fool, This Night Thy Soul Shall Be Required Of Thee
a man asks jesus to settle a family inheritance dispute and instead gets a parable about a man who dies the very night he finally has enough; a flock small enough to be called ‘little’ is promised the whole kingdom, no qualification attached; and the man famous for calming storms says he did not come to bring peace, but division
Luke 12Except Ye Repent, Ye Shall All Likewise Perish
news arrives of galileans murdered mid-worship, and jesus turns the question of whose fault it was back on everyone listening; a woman bent double for eighteen years is healed on the sabbath, and the synagogue ruler is angrier about the day than glad for her; the pharisees warn jesus that herod wants him dead, expecting him to run — he doesn't
Luke 13A Certain Man Made A Great Supper
a man with dropsy shows up in front of jesus at a sabbath dinner, and everyone in the room goes quiet; a guest watches other people grab the best seats at a wedding feast and gets a lesson about self-promotion he never asked for; a host whose invited guests all send back excuses doesn't cancel the party — he fills the seats with people who were never expected to be there at all
Luke 14This My Son Was Dead, And Is Alive Again
tax collectors and sinners keep showing up wherever jesus is, and the religious leaders can't understand why he lets them get close; his answer is three stories — a shepherd who won't accept losing one sheep out of a hundred, a woman who tears her house apart for a single coin, and a father who sees his son from a great way off and runs to him before a word of apology is spoken — and the story ends with a second son refusing to go in to his own father's party
Luke 15Between Us And You There Is A Great Gulf Fixed
a manager caught wasting his master's money spends his last hours on the job slashing what other people owe — and gets praised for it, not punished; a rich man steps over a starving beggar at his own gate every day without ever really seeing him; and when the beggar dies first, everything reverses so completely that the rich man ends up begging him for a single drop of water
Luke 16Where Are The Nine
the disciples ask for more faith, and jesus tells them even a seed-sized amount would be enough to uproot a tree by the word alone; ten men with leprosy call out to jesus from a distance, and all ten are healed on the same road at the same moment — only one of them turns around
Luke 17God Be Merciful To Me A Sinner
a widow with no power keeps showing up at a corrupt judge's door until he finally gives in; two men go up to the temple to pray — one lists his own virtues out loud, the other won't even lift his eyes off the ground; and a rich, respected ruler asks what he still lacks, and the honest answer costs him more than he's willing to pay
Luke 18This Day Is Salvation Come To This House
a wealthy tax collector too short to see over the crowd climbs a tree for a glimpse of jesus, and jesus invites himself to dinner at his house before the man says a word; a king leaves money with his servants and tells them to put it to work while he's gone; and coming down from the mount of olives with a crowd shouting his praise, jesus looks at the city ahead of him and starts to cry
Luke 19Render Unto Caesar The Things Which Be Caesar’s
the religious leaders come at jesus one question at a time, each one designed to trap him in front of the crowd — where his authority comes from, whether to pay taxes to rome, whose wife a seven-times-widowed woman will be in heaven — every question is a trap, and every answer closes it on the very people who set it
Luke 20Flee To The Mountains
a poor widow drops two worthless coins into the temple treasury, and jesus says she's given more than every wealthy donor before her; his disciples admire the temple's massive stones, and he tells them none of it will be left standing; and when he describes how people would know the end was near, he doesn't speak in riddles — he tells them, plainly, to run
Luke 21Being In An Agony He Prayed More Earnestly
judas quietly strikes a deal with the chief priests while the rest of the twelve prepare a holiday meal; around the same table where jesus institutes the bread and cup, the disciples argue about which of them is the greatest; and in a garden a stone's throw from his sleeping friends, jesus prays so hard that his sweat falls to the ground like drops of blood
Luke 22To Day Shalt Thou Be With Me In Paradise
a king who's wanted nothing more than to see jesus perform a trick finally gets his wish, and gets only silence back; a crowd of women weep for jesus on the way to his death, and he turns and tells them to weep for themselves instead; and a dying criminal with nothing left to offer but a last breath asks only to be remembered, and receives the most direct promise of paradise in any of the four gospels
Luke 23Did Not Our Heart Burn Within Us
women go to anoint a dead body and find an empty tomb instead; two grieving disciples walk seven miles with the risen jesus beside them the whole way, not recognizing him until he breaks bread at their table and vanishes; and jesus leads his followers out to bethany, lifts his hands to bless them, and is carried up into heaven while they watch
Luke 24