Exalting Jesus in Luke

Thabiti Anyabwile

• Publisher: Holman Reference
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780805497465
• eBook ISBN: 9781462740826
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Commentary

Exalting Jesus in Luke is part of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series. Edited by David Platt, Daniel L. Akin, and Tony Merida, this new commentary series, projected to be 48 volumes, takes a Christ-centered approach to expositing each book of the Bible. Rather than a verse-by-verse approach, the authors have crafted chapters that explain and apply key passages in their assigned Bible books.

Readers will learn to see Christ in all aspects of Scripture, and they will be encouraged by the devotional nature of each exposition presented as sermons and divided into chapters that conclude with a “Reflect & Discuss” section, making this series ideal for small group study, personal devotion, and even sermon preparation. It’s not academic but rather presents an easy reading, practical and friendly commentary.

The author of Exalting Jesus in Luke is Thabiti M. Anyabwile

Luke

Introduction

A Certain Faith

Luke 1:1-4

Main Idea: A belief isn’t worth having if you can’t be certain it is true. Christianity is the only certain and therefore trustworthy faith.

I. Why Does Luke Write His Gospel?

A. A biblical faith

B. A historical faith

C. A verifiable faith

II. How Does Luke Order His Gospel?

A. Chronological order

B. Geographic order

C. Dramatic order

D. Theological order

The powerful and penetrating writing of Ta-Nehisi Coates challenges me. I think Coates captivates so many readers because of his plain and sometimes painful statement of things. As a writer, he strikes me as someone attempting to be honest—bald and bare honesty, no sheltering hats or pretty clothes, just the full truth as he sees it.

Coates writes with a rare certainty—even about religious things. In his book Between the World and Me Coates retells the story of a young man in Baltimore pulling a gun on him when he was a child. He then offers these words:

I could not retreat, as did so many, into the church and its mysteries. My parents rejected all dogmas. We spurned the holidays marketed by the people who wanted to be white. We would not stand for their anthems. We would not kneel before their God. And so I had no sense that any just God was on my side. “The meek shall inherit the earth” meant nothing to me. The meek were battered in West Baltimore, stomped out at Walbrook Junction, bashed up on Park Heights, and raped in the showers of the city jail. My understanding of the universe was physical, and its moral arc bent toward chaos then concluded in a box. (Coates, Between the World and Me, 28)

Later in the book Coates writes, “You must resist the common urge toward the comforting narrative of divine law, toward fairy tales that imply some irrepressible justice” (Between the World and Me, 70). It’s not merely that faith claims were no comfort to Coates; rather, those claims must be resisted. He continues:

Raised conscious, in rejection of a Christian God, I could see no higher purpose in Prince’s death. I believed, and still do, that our bodies are our selves, that my soul is the voltage conducted through neurons and nerves, and that my spirit is my flesh. (Ibid., 79)

What strikes me about Coates’s writing on religious matters isn’t his atheism. I am not surprised by unbelief. I have lived in unbelief enough years to understand something of its grip. What surprises me is how certain he is in his unbelief. Ironically, while rejecting Christian faith, he cannot help but make faith claims of his own—even if they are non-religious claims. He writes, “I believed, and still do.”

Here’s the truth: We cannot live without belief of some sort. We may believe in God, or we may believe, as Coates, in our bodies and a material universe that has no meaning. In either case we are believers. There are no unbelievers in the world, just people who believe in different things.

In such a world certainty becomes a rare and precious gift. The quest for certainty poses real dangers. We can give up on the quest prematurely, concluding that certainty itself is a hoax. Or we can be certain about things that are wrong or false. We all face that danger. So we’re left with a question: Can we be sure that what we believe is true?

Why Does Luke Write His Gospel?

The Gospel of Luke belongs to what we call “the Synoptic Gospels”—Matthew, Mark, and Luke. They “see” (optic) “together” (syn-). They tell the same basic story about the Lord Jesus Christ. There are places where one of the Gospel writers includes stories or teachings that the others do not, but by and large they relay the truth about Jesus’s life and ministry from the same vantage point.

A man named Luke wrote what we call the Gospel of Luke and its sequel, the book of Acts. In Colossians 4:10-14 the apostle Paul lists people who were partners with him in the ministry. He first lists Aristarchus, Mark, and Justus, and says of them, “These alone of the circumcised are my coworkers for the kingdom of God, and they have been a comfort to me” (v. 11). These were Paul’s Jewish partners. Then Paul lists Epaphras and describes him as “one of you” (v. 12)—a Colossian. And finally Paul refers to “Luke, the dearly loved physician” (v. 14), letting us know that Luke was (a) a companion of Paul’s, (b) a physician, and (c) a Gentile.

Luke opens his Gospel by telling us his purpose in verses 3-4. “Theophilus” (v. 3), the name of the addressee, literally means “lover of God.” It could be a name for an actual person; Luke addresses him in Acts 1:1 as well. Or it could be a code name for the entire church. In either case Luke intends his Gospel to provide believers “certainty” (v. 1) in the things they have been taught about Jesus Christ and the Christian faith.

Can we be certain of the teachings of a faith? Is not faith something you just believe without certainty? Is not faith a leap into nothingness? And is it not proud and arrogant to think your faith is certain and others are wrong?

The Christian claim is that the things the Bible teaches about Jesus are true and certain. We take this position for three reasons.

A Biblical Faith

First, we may be certain because Christianity is a biblical faith. That’s what Luke means when he says in verse 1 that certain events “have been fulfilled among us.” The word “fulfilled” has the sense of something being “accomplished” (ESV). Why that word choice? Why “fulfilled” or “accomplished” rather than merely “happened”?

Luke is referring to the promises of the Old Testament, the Jewish Scriptures. One simple way of understanding the Bible’s organization is to think of the Old Testament as “promises made” and the New Testament as “promises kept.” The Old Testament looks forward to God keeping promises that he made to men like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and King David. The New Testament books, like Luke’s Gospel, record for us how God kept or fulfilled those promises.

Now, if Christianity is “certain,” then we should expect it to finish or fulfill all the promises made in the Old Testament. We should expect the Christian claims to be thoroughly rooted in previous biblical promises. We should expect the New Testament to be more than current events. These are not things that “just happened.” These are foreseen and fore-promised events that have now come to pass. One of the major themes of Luke’s Gospel is his emphasis on the plan of God and its fulfillment in Jesus Christ.

In fact, when Luke sets out to give us certainty by showing us how Jesus fulfills the promises of God, he reads and studies the Old Testament exactly the way Jesus himself did while on earth with his disciples. Luke 24:44-48 forms a bookend with 1:1-4, emphasizing the same idea that biblical promises are being fulfilled.

He told them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms [the entire Old Testament] must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. He also said to them, “This is what is written: The Messiah would suffer and rise from the dead the third day, and repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in his name to all the nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.”

Two of the same key words are in Luke 24 as in Luke 1: “fulfilled” (v. 44) and “witnesses” (v. 48). The entire Gospel is about God accomplishing his plan and humans seeing him do it.

What is God’s plan? The heart of biblical faith is the person and work of Jesus Christ—it is the gospel message.

We may be certain of the Christian faith because Christianity is a biblical faith.

You may object, “Wait a minute! That’s circular reasoning. You can’t say Christianity is certain by saying, ‘The Bible says so.’” You are correct. I mean, people could make up religious ideas and stories, right? Or they could just be mistaken about what they saw since that was a prescientific era, right?

If all we had were circular references to the Bible, we would not have much. But the fulfillment of the Bible’s promises and prophecies is not the only reason we believe in the certainty of the faith.

A Historical Faith

Second, we may be certain because the Christian fai...

Table of contents

• Series Introduction
• Luke
• Works Cited
• Scripture Index