Timeline Tuesday: Looking at Luke!

Today we begin the fourth gospel in our Bible reading schedule. I chose to leave Luke's for the last because his is the first of a two-volume narrative. It seems appropriate to read this life-of-Christ account before we segue into his other book, the Acts of the Apostles. They were both probably written about AD 60.

Luke's gospel is one of my favorite because it includes material not found in the others. His inclusion of Mary's genealogy, which would be the literal descent from David to Jesus, as opposed to the kingly line back to David through Joseph albeit not a biological claim since Joseph was not Jesus' earthly father (He had none), shows the fulfilling of prophecies made hundreds of years before. He tells certain parables not recorded elsewhere. He briefly tells of Jesus' visit to the temple when he was an infant and of his boyhood experience there at the age of twelve.

Luke did not claim to be an eyewitness of the events he recounted but he did claim to have made a thorough investigation of them. Since his gospel goes as far as to tell about the Angel Gabriel's visit to Mary one can assume that he was acquainted with individuals very close to the event, if not the aged Mary herself perhaps her children at least. Two of them, James and Jude, were well-known in early church circles. He seems to have a detailed knowledge of the extended family, which would include the parents of John the Baptist, Zacharias and Elisabeth.

Each gospel writer had an audience in mind and a certain attribute of Christ that they wished to highlight. When we read John we saw that his presentation of Jesus as the Son of God was written to unbelievers. Matthew presented Jesus as the Messiah-King and wrote his gospel as a treatise to Jewish readers. Mark presented Jesus as a servant and wrote his message to Gentiles. Luke presents Jesus as the Son of man, and his intended audience was specifically the named Theophilus, and perhaps a broader Roman audience as well.

Between the four gospels accounts we see that Jesus is fully God but also fully man. We see that He is the King but He is also the servant. There is no contradiction when applied to the Christ.

As was true of the other gospel accounts, the timeline of the events is the life of Jesus. The likely timeframe is 4 BC - AD 29.