Christ in Luke

Luke 1 is the threshold of the gospel, and its announcements are themselves the Christ Connection. To a young woman in Nazareth the angel says the highest words ever spoken over an unborn child: thou shalt… bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: and he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there sha…

Luke 2 is the Nativity, and the Gospel text is itself the Christ Connection - the long-awaited one is named in the field by an angel: Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord (vv. 10-11). Saviour, Christ, and Lord, all in a breath, and born in David’s own city as the prophet said the ruler of Israel would be - thou Bethlehem Ephratah&hel…

Luke 3 is built around a forerunner whose whole work is to get a road ready for Someone else. Luke fixes the moment in hard history - Tiberius, Pilate, Herod, the high priests - and then says the word of God came not to the palace but to John in the wilderness, who comes preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins (v. 3) and is named by the prophet’s own words: The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths strai…

Luke 4 sets two scenes side by side and lets them interpret each other. First the wilderness: Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost… was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, being forty days tempted of the devil (vv. 1-2). Where the first man reached for the forbidden fruit and where Israel murmured forty years in the desert, this one is tried at the same points - bread for His hunger, the kingdoms of the world, a leap from the pinnacle - and meets each with the same…

Luke 5 is a chain of encounters in which the holy Christ comes near to the unworthy and makes them His own - and the whole chapter is the Christ Connection. By the lake of Gennesaret He teaches the pressing crowd from Simon’s boat, then turns the fisherman’s empty night into a miracle: Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a draught (v. 4); the net breaks under a great multitude of fishes (v. 6), and Simon, undone, falls at His knees - Depart from me; for I…

Luke 6 is the chapter where the shape of Christ’s kingdom comes fully into view, and at every turn the teaching is also a self-portrait. He calls Himself Lord also of the sabbath (v. 5) and asks, over the withered hand, Is it lawful on the sabbath days to do good, or to do evil? to save life, or to destroy it? (v. 9) - the One whose whole work is to save life answering His accusers. After a night in prayer He chooses twelve (vv. 12-13), and then, on the level place, He pre…

Luke 7 gathers four scenes that together show who Jesus is by what He does. A Gentile centurion, sure that a word from Jesus is enough, draws from Him a verdict no Israelite had: I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel (v. 9) - the first light of a gospel that will reach the nations, faith honored wherever it is found (Matt. 8:11). At the gate of Nain the Lord meets a widow burying her only son, and when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her (v. 13); He tou…

Luke 8 gathers the teaching and the power of Jesus around a single question He finally puts into words on a sinking boat: Where is your faith? (v. 25). It opens with the company that followed Him - the twelve, and certain women, Mary called Magdalene… Joanna… Susanna, and many others, which ministered unto him of their substance (vv. 2-3). Then comes the sower, and Jesus names the seed Himself: The seed is the word of God (v. 11). The same word meets four soi…

Luke 9 is the turning point of the whole Gospel, and the question that drives it is asked twice. Herod hears of all that is done and is perplexed: who is this, of whom I hear such things? (v. 9). Then Jesus, praying alone, puts the same question to His own: But whom say ye that I am? (v. 20). Peter answers, The Christ of God - the long-awaited Anointed One - and from that confession everything bends toward a cross. Immediately Jesus tells what this Christ must do: The Son…

Luke 10 sets four scenes side by side, and Christ stands at the centre of each. He sends other seventy before His face and joins them to Himself so closely that to receive them is to receive Him: He that heareth you heareth me; and he that despiseth you despiseth me; and he that despiseth me despiseth him that sent me (v. 16). When they return glad that even the devils are subject unto us through thy name (v. 17), He turns their joy from power to belonging: in this rejoice…

Luke 11 begins with the disciples asking, Lord, teach us to pray (v. 1), and the answer Jesus gives opens the whole chapter onto Himself. He teaches them to say Our Father which art in heaven (v. 2) - the very access to God as Father that He has come to open, for it is through the Son that we are brought to cry Abba, Father (Gal. 4:6; John 14:6). He widens prayer into Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you (v. 9), an…

Luke 12 is one long stretch of plain teaching, and at almost every turn it presses the disciples back onto the care of the Father and the coming of the Son. Jesus warns of the fear that orders all fear - Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell (v. 5) - and then, in the same breath, shows how tenderly the same God watches over His own: the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows (v. 7).…

Luke 13 is shot through with Christ from beginning to end, for in this chapter He is at once the One who calls every hearer to repentance, the patient Lord seeking fruit, the deliverer who looses the bound, the sower of a kingdom that grows past all expectation, and the rejected Saviour who weeps over the city that will kill Him. Word comes of Galilaeans whom Pilate slew at their sacrifices, and Jesus refuses the comfortable theology that reads calamity as a scoreboard of…

Luke 14 is a chapter set entirely around a table, and at every turn the table belongs to Jesus. He heals the man with the dropsy on the sabbath and silences His critics with a question they cannot answer (vv. 3-6); He overturns the seating of the proud - whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted (v. 11) - the same reversal He embodies, the One who humbled himself… wherefore God also hath highly exalted him (Phil. 2:8-9…

Luke 15 is the great chapter of seeking grace, and it begins with an accusation: This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them (v. 2). In answer Jesus tells three parables, and in all three the One who seeks is God Himself. He is the shepherd who doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it (v. 4), then lays it on his shoulders rejoicing (v. 5) - for the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost…

Luke 16 turns entirely on what a person serves, and Jesus says it cannot be two things: No servant can serve two masters… Ye cannot serve God and mammon (v. 13). He is the One who asks for the undivided heart this verse names - Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart (Matt. 22:37) - and who warns that where your treasure is, there will your heart be also (Matt. 6:21). The shrewd steward, who used his master’s wealth to secure a future welcome, becomes th…

Luke 17 sets a string of hard, plain sayings beside one unforgettable scene, and in both the Person of Christ stands at the center. He warns that offences will come , that it would be better to be cast into the sea with a millstone than to make one of these little ones stumble (vv. 1-2), and then He presses His own to a forgiveness without ceiling - a brother who turns seven times in a day saying I repent is to be forgiven every time (vv. 3-4). When the apostles plead, Lor…

Luke 18 gathers a string of scenes around one question: who is received when they come to God? It opens with a widow who keeps coming to an unjust judge until he relents, and Jesus presses the lesson home - men ought always to pray, and not to faint (v. 1); shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him? (v. 7) - and then lets a searching word hang over the whole chapter: when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth? (v. 8). The faith…

Luke 19 sets the mission of Jesus in a single sentence and then acts it out four times over. In Jericho He stops beneath a sycomore tree, looks up at a hated chief publican, and invites Himself in - Zacchaeus, make haste, and come down; for to day I must abide at thy house (v. 5) - and over the crowd’s murmur that he was gone to be guest with a man that is a sinner (v. 7) He pronounces the whole reason He came: This day is salvation come to this house… For the Son o…

Luke 20 is the great temple showdown of Holy Week, and from start to finish it is Jesus describing Himself. In the parable of the wicked husbandmen He tells, to their faces, what the tenants will do: after the beaten servants the lord of the vineyard sends his beloved son - It may be they will reverence him - and the tenants say, This is the heir: come, let us kill him, that the inheritance may be ours (vv. 13-14), and so they cast him out of the vineyard, and killed him (…

Luke 21 begins with the Lord seated where He can see the offerings, and the one gift He praises is the one the crowd would never have noticed - this poor widow hath cast in more than they all… she of her penury hath cast in all the living that she had (vv. 3-4). It is a portrait of the Christ who looketh on the heart (1 Sam. 16:7), who weighs the whole-hearted gift of the poor above the surplus of the rich, and who Himself though he was rich, yet… became poor…

Luke 22 is the chapter where the cross arrives at a supper table. Jesus takes the Passover bread and the cup - the feast Israel had kept for centuries in memory of the lamb’s blood that turned away death - and speaks words that draw the whole sacrifice onto Himself: This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me… This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you (vv. 19-20). The body given, the blood shed, the new covenant promis…

Luke 23 is the crucifixion, and the chapter’s whole frame is a verdict the world keeps reaching and then ignoring: this Man is innocent. Pilate examines Him and says, I find no fault in this man (v. 4); after Herod he repeats it - nothing worthy of death is done unto him (v. 15); a third time he protests, I have found no cause of death in him (v. 22); and a Roman centurion, watching Him die, says, Certainly this was a righteous man (v. 47). Three rulers and an executioner…

Luke 24 is the joyful close of the Gospel, and Christ is not merely in it - He fills it from the empty tomb to the Ascension. The women come for a body and meet two men in shining garments with the question that overturns the world: Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen (vv. 5-6) - and these women, disbelieved as telling idle tales (v. 11), are the first witnesses of the resurrection. On the Emmaus road two heartbroken disciples confess, we tr…