The Bible Book by Book: A Manual for the Outline Study of the Bible by BooksTidwell, Josiah Blake
Religion
The Bible Book by Book: A Manual for the Outline Study of the Bible by Books
Tidwell, Josiah Blake
Bible -- Introductions; Bible -- Study and teaching
5. It Is a Gentile Gospel. The book is everywhere filled with a world
wide purpose not so fully expressed in the other evangelists. Here we
have the angels, announcement of great joy which shall be to all
people (2:10) and the song about Jesus as "a light for revelation to
the Gentiles" (2:32). The genealogy traces Christ's lineage back to
Adam (2:38) and thus connects him not with Abraham as a representative
of humanity. The fuller account of the sending out of the seventy
(10:1-24). the very number of whom signified the supposed number of
the heathen nations, who were to go, not as the twelve to the lost
sheep of the house of Israel, but to all those cities whither Jesus
himself would come, is suggestive of this broader purpose of Luke. The
good Samaritan (10:25-37) is Christ's illustration of a true neighbor
and in some way also intends to show the nature of Christ's work which
was to be without nationality. Of the ten lepers healed (17:11-19)
only one, a Samaritan, returned to render him praise, thus showing how
others than the Jews would not only be blessed by him but would do
worthy service for him. The Perean ministry, across the Jordan (9:51-
18:4, probably 9:51-19:28). is a ministry to the Gentiles and shows
how large a place Luke would give the Gentiles in the work and
blessings of Jesus.
6. It Is a Gospel for the Greeks. If Matthew wrote for Jews and Mark
for Romans, it is but natural that some one should write in such a way
as to appeal, specially, to the Greeks as the other representative
race. And, such the Christian writers of the first centuries thought
to be Luke's purpose. The Greek was the representative of reason and
humanity and felt that his mission was to perfect humanity. "The full
grown Greek would be a perfect world man", able to meet all men on the
common plane of the race. All the Greek gods were, therefore, images
of some form of perfect humanity. The Hindu might worship an emblem of
physical force, the Roman deify the Emperor and the Egyptian any and
all forms of life, but the Greek adored man with his thought and
beauty and speech, and, in this, had most nearly approached the true
conception of God. The Jew would value men as the descendants of
Abraham; the Roman according as they wielded empires, but the Greek on
the basis of man as such.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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