Luke tells a story
Luke 1:1-80 Read it here
Luke devotes his first chapter largely to the pre-birth life of John the Baptist and Jesus. Zechariah and Mary both receive their angelic visits telling them of the events about to unfold, and Elizabeth conceives in her old age.
While those events are familiar to us through many years of hearing the Christmas story, I would like to call your attention to the opening four verses that introduce Luke and its companion book, Acts.
The author of Luke is never actually named within the text, but has long been known by that name and associated with a physician mentioned in the letters of Paul.
While his identity is not universally accepted, I will continue to call him “Luke” for simplicity.
Luke, by his own account, was not an eyewitness to the life of Jesus, but rather has “undertaken to draw up an account” based on having “carefully investigated everything from the beginning.”
Luke addresses the result of his research to the unidentified Theophilus, a rather common name at the time. Despite their separation by the gospel of John in our Bibles, Luke and Acts were written as a single two-volume work intended to explain the origins of the Christian faith.
This is significant in that Luke’s account, being based on research, is orderly but less personal than the other gospels. It is clear he had access to at least Mark from the number of exact parallels, but also used other sources, including material Mark does not.
Both history and theology are important to Luke. His account is more comprehensive than either Matthew or Mark, and less philosophical than John. Despite being written long after Jesus’s death, it is an excellent source for understanding the life and impact of Jesus, as well as getting a sense of what the early church believed and prioritized.