Only Luke is With Me

No theologian has ever adequately explained to me, in such a convincing way, the unconditional forgiveness of God – except Luke. And he wasn’t a theologian. His Prodigal Son story perfectly does this for me. When a thousand theologians tell me that I must first beg and grovel and bring countless penitential offerings and do good works for the rest of my life in order to merit forgiveness and not lose it, Luke’s parable of the Prodigal Son completely destroys these arguments. And I can cling to this rock and know beyond a reasonable doubt that God forgives me unconditionally forever, thanks to Luke.

Luke is one of the most important men of the New Testament era that you have never heard about. In terms of output, his Gospel and his Acts of the Apostles make up nearly 30% of the New Testament. But his literary effort goes far beyond this. During the course of my research, in which I methodically mapped the linguistic signature of all the authors of the New Testament, one of the most shocking things that I found was that Luke’s editorial hand is very definitely present in every one of Paul’s epistles. Even when Paul says that he has written something “in my own hand” Luke’s editorial presence is unmistakenly there.

And there is even more. The Epistle of Hebrews also bears Luke’s editorial presence. Unmistakably. When I set out to discover who the author of Hebrews was, I was not prepared to discover this. But when you are examining every single word in a composition and comparing it to the other authors of the New Testament, Luke’s presence is unmistakable.

But it is also clear that he is writing as an editor and not as a co-author. I’m very sure about this. Because I examined every unmistakable Lukan word that I found in the Hebrews and Pauline compositions and I asked myself: “does this Lukan vocabulary drive these compositions in any particular theological direction? And the answer is – no they don’t.

This is different than Timothy and Silas, mentioned in the prologue of the Thessalonian letters and Timothy in Colossians, Philippians, in Paul’s second letter to the Corinthian church and in Philemon and perhaps Sosthenes in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians Church. I believe that this really is a matter of composite authorship. Although Paul gives the impression of being very forceful, he was very willing to share power and solicit ideas from others.

And there is another reason that I respect Luke – as a professional. Though I can demonstrate that when he borrows material from Matthew in writing his Gospel, he very freely paraphrases it – using his own expressions. And I can only assume that this is for clarity, not because he is shaping the content. Because when it comes to recording speeches in Acts, he does not do this. He does not paraphrase speeches, he keeps the speeches in linguistic character of the speaker.

I found this out accidently when I was trying to determine the linguistic signature of Peter. And this was for good reason. Because there are so many style and theological differences between 1st and 2nd Peter that many scholars think that they were written by two different people. But when I did the linguistic analysis, I found that 1st and 2nd Peter were identical.

But I wanted a larger sample, to make my other calculations more reliable. And so I asked myself: “I wonder if Peter’s linguistic signature is preserved in the speeches that he makes, recorded in Acts (by Luke). It was. So while Luke paraphrases Matthew, he very strictly does not when recording Peter’s speeches. This helped me to figure out that Luke is not a theologian grinding some parochial ax. He is a true servant, providing expert editorial services to help tell the greatest story ever told.

There is more to brag about concerning Luke. He is a scholar and a gentleman. How do I know that? It is now well known that Luke was Paul’s loyal minister – not only as editor, but as physician, probably providing some his own wealth to finance Paul’s extensive missionary journeys. And he stood beside Paul in all of Paul’s perils – persecution, prosecution, shipwreck. Luke was there, which explains his firsthand accounts of so much that happened to Paul.
As Paul is being held in prison in Rome, Luke continues to stand beside Paul as he goes before Caesar for the final time. “No one stood with me. Only Luke is with me.”

How is Luke a gentleman? In politics, your chief of staff is also a kind of attack dog for your reputation. If your political enemy lobs harmful, hateful, defamatory rhetoric your way, you sic your attack dog on him in revenge to counter his character smear attempt. When he had the opportunity and the motive, Luke didn’t do that. I speak not of what he said, but of what he didn’t say.

Luke could have made a forceful political argument in his Acts of the Apostles in order to bring discredit upon the Judaizers, the enemies of Paul, yet he rigorously avoids this. Thus he does not record the embarrassing episode of Peter’s betrayal of the Christians at Antioch, which could have been part of a powerful argument to discredit Peter and the Judaizers and promote the reputation of Paul.

The only reason that we know about this tawdry affair, is because Paul tells us about it in Galatians: But when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed. For before that certain came from James, he did eat with the Gentiles: but when they were come, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing them which were of the circumcision. And the other Jews dissembled likewise with him; insomuch that Barnabas also was carried away with their dissimulation. But Luke is completely silent about this in Acts.

It is clear that Peter has problems. It is not just Peter’s denial of Christ many years ago. Peter continues to fail God and the church, by arguing with God about taking the Gospel to the Gentiles, by ceding authority to the physical brother of Christ, a non-Apostle, by a shameless denial of the Antiochian Gentile Christians, because he was afraid of James, and by his relative lack of leadership in the Church for almost thirty years, finally breaking his silence in his first general epistle that says nothing more than James does in his epistle.
And the historical reality that you see in Acts is very clear. In Acts, Peter is mentioned 56 times. And that’s because the first part of Acts is all about Peter and his ministry. But suddenly, at the beginning of the 15th chapter of 26 chapters, there is no more mention of Peter. Only Paul, first mentioned in the 13th chapter.

As history unfolds, like Israel herself, the first apostle eventually tumbles to a position of silence and powerlessness; but the last apostle, Paul, ascends to primacy through humiliation, suffering, and faithfulness. It is a messianic drama that begins in Matthew and continues until the Revelation of John. And yet this transition is almost invisible to the normal reader. And that’s because Luke was a scholar and a gentleman.

At the end of Paul’s life, in the last letter that he writes – to Timothy, only Luke stands with Paul. Many in Paul’s missionary diocese have deserted him. Paul says: Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world, and is departed unto Thessalonica; Crescens to Galatia, Titus unto Dalmatia. Only Luke is with me. Only Timothy and Mark, who will probably stand with Peter in the same loyal way until the end. These are the men who worked almost invisibly to serve the Lord Jesus Christ. But they were not invisible to Jesus Christ. And at the resurrection, they will be honored to the fullest as we did recently in our own simple and humble way on St. Luke’s day. Amen.