Letter To Our Children

Hello friends.

Most Christians read the Bible regularly. If you do, you will eventually read the four Gospels. When you are finished, at the very least, you will be able to tell another person:

What Jesus did.

Why He did.

What Jesus taught.

Who Jesus is, and

What it means to follow Him.

But, as we have been thinking about in these recent letters, some people wonder if the Gospels are true; and how can we know?

Inspiration 

Inspiration is not simply guidance from God (and protection of the written word of God from error), but it is God supplying the very message that the inspired author writes.  God committed His word to be written through different people at different times from different places.

However, there are two things we should know. First, God did not always speak into the ear of the Bible author and word for word tell them what to write. He did on some occasions but not on every occasion. Christians do not believe, for example that all of the Bible was dictated by God in the same sense that Muslims believe the Quran was dictated to Muhammed.

Second, at the same time, it pleased God to allow the human personalities, experiences, vocabulary, and style to breakthrough in the writing of every author of the Bible. So, Moses has his style, Isaiah his, and Matthew his. Jude like to group everything into threes.

Doctor Luke

The Apostle Paul told the church in Colossae that Luke was a doctor. (Colossian 4:14) Luke’s style was that of a doctor. For example. Luke’s term, “servants of the word,” is the first clue of his medical background in the Gospel. The term he uses for servant is not deacon (1 Tim. 3:12) or slave (Jude 1) as was common practice in the Bible, but hyperetes, a term which means a physician’s assistant. Luke, as a doctor, wrote like a doctor, but was guided by God's Spirit as he wrote.

Orderly Account

Some things in the Bible; could not be known by any human, but some could, through massive research, as used by Luke. His research included eyewitnesses to confirm what he was writing about Jesus. He said he carefully investigated. The phrase in the original language of the New Testament Greek means factually precise or the highest level of accuracy.

So, when Luke wrote out his orderly account of the person and work of Jesus, he wasn’t writing what he thought but what other people saw and spoke. The idea is that they gave their eyewitness account to Luke. It was their evidence. And anytime a person tells what they saw and hear, it should be treated as trustworthy until proved otherwise.

David McCullough is a favorite author of mine, who wrote, 1776, the year America declared its independence. He began with a careful investigation by reading letters written, newspaper articles, war journals, personal journals, and war correspondence. After collecting the evidence, he wrote an orderly account, but he had no eyewitness. The book was published in 2005. However, no one doubts what he wrote was true.

Luke did have eyewitnesses. Luke’s Gospel was about 30 years after the death of Christ. Luke was able to speak with people who heard Jesus preach, saw the miracles, and saw the resurrected Christ.

Scholarship

Scholarship means learning at a high level. Luke would be considered a Bible scholar if he was alive today. God has given Christianity many high-level thinkers to do high-level work, defend the truth, investigate carefully, Luke's orderly account so that we, like Theophilus, could know the certainty of the things (we) have been taught. (Luke 1:1-4)

Maybe there are future scholars who are reading this letter. I hope so!

God bless you this week in all things great and small.

Pastor Joe