The Gospel of Luke

Luke. The Holy Bible. New King James Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982.

The Gospel of Luke is one of the four brief biographies of Jesus’ earthly ministry found in the Bible. Each gospel has a different tone and focus, though Luke and the other Synoptic Gospels cover many of the same events. Luke takes on the tone of a journalist or biographer, setting out to write an “orderly account” of the life and ministry of Jesus. Luke doesn’t claim to have been a follow of Christ during the time covered in this book (unlike other gospel writers Matthew and John). He does indicate (in his other book, Acts) that he was a member of the early church and at different times a companion of Peter and Paul. He based his gospel on the eyewitness accounts of the Apostles and other early disciples he knew.

It’s hard to give Luke or other Biblical books a fair treatment in a few hundred words. Some characteristics of book distinguish it from the other accounts that are noteworthy to me.

Jesus as a person. More than the other gospels, I think Luke brings out the personality and character of Jesus. Luke shows Jesus to be wise, kind, patient, loving, generous, faithful and humble. Jesus is also strong, direct, determined, forceful, bold, tough and uncompromising. These may seem like incongruent sets of characteristic today, but Luke was presenting Jesus as the perfect man. The soft side of Jesus is attractive, but it would have done little good if he lacked the hardness to do what he did and demand what he demanded.

The place of women. All the gospels acknowledge that women were the first to witness the resurrected Jesus. Luke seems to give special attention to recognizing women among Jesus’ disciples both during his ministry and in the early church (in Acts).


Comprehensiveness and modernity. Luke set out to give a careful and reasonably full account of Jesus’ life. As you might expect, it covers Jesus’ teachings, but it also give a lot of attention his early childhood and throughout foreshadows, through Jesus’ own prediction, his death and resurrection. In these regards, it is more reads more like a modern biography than the other gospels.