Although the Gospels and Acts have traditionally been read as a historical account of life of Jesus and the mission of the early church, only in the last century have they been approached as theology. The evangelists are certainly recording history, but their presentation is controlled by a theological agenda. Luke, especially, is no detached observer; he writes as a participant in the mission of the exalted Lord.
What is the gospel according to Luke-Acts? Luke’s history announces that God has worked and is working in history through the agency of Jesus, chosen as Messiah and exalted as Lord, to establish his kingdom and bring salvation to Israel and the nations. As Justo Gonzalez points out, the word “salvation” (σωτηρία) occurs only once in John (4:22) and is completely absent from Matthew and Mark.¹ Luke, on the other hand, thrills with the coming of God who brings salvation to his people. He has not created this idea from whole cloth; the infancy narratives in particular root salvation deeply in the Old Testament.
Salvation for Israel was rooted in its archetypal experience of redemption in the Exodus. That story, rehearsed every year at Passover, celebrated a God who remembered his covenant, heard the groans of his suffering people, and intervened in power to liberate them from slavery, destroy their enemies, and bring them into the land flowing with milk and honey where they are called to be his holy people.
But as the Old Testament records, Israel was repeatedly unfaithful to her God, and suffered increasing judgment until she was sent into Exile. Then salvation began to take on a more spiritual and ethical dimension, as Israel realized her deepest problem was not the Assyrians or Babylonians, but her inability to keep the covenant. The salvation the prophets proclaim involves forgiveness of sin, restoration to God’s favour, and a change of heart so Israel will be empowered to keep the covenant.
Salvation in the Infancy Material
Luke’s account of salvation conforms to this ancient pattern — even as it extends it in fresh directions. Let us begin with the infancy material at the beginning of Luke’s Gospel, for it introduces the major themes of his work.
Mary burst forth in the first of three songs celebrating God’s deliverance. Mary celebrates the good news that God will bring about social justice. The judge of all the earth will reverse the current, broken, order and set things to rights once and for all.
He has brought down rulers from their thrones
but has lifted up the humble.
He has filled the hungry with good things
but has sent the rich away empty. (1:51–53)
In Luke, the coming of Jesus is good news for all lack human resources and who look to God (cf 6:20). As Kodell observes, “To be ‘mighty’ here means to be self-sufficient, in no need of salvation. God raises the lowly, but the mighty do not recognize their lowliness; they desire to raise themselves up.”² But there is no salvation for those who insist they need nothing from God.
Filled with the Spirit, Zechariah praises the Lord who has “raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David (as he said through his holy prophets of long ago), salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us … to enable us to serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all our days … to give his people the knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins” (Lk 1:67–79). Here salvation is both physical deliverance from external threats (“enemies”) and forgiveness of sins and restoration to God’s service.
The final song in the infancy material comes from the lips of Simeon, a “righteous and devout” man who was “waiting for the consolation (paraklēsis) of Israel” (2:25). Pao and Schnabel point out that “the word paraklēsis appears most often in Isaiah, where it becomes a symbol for the arrival of the eschatological era when God fulfills his promises to Israel (Isa. 28:29; 30:7; 57:18; 66:11).”³ After centuries of waiting, God has roused himself to redeem his people.
Moved by the Spirit, Simeon takes the infant Jesus in his arms, and proclaims,
My eyes have seen your salvation,
which you have prepared in the sight of all nations:
a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
and the glory of your people Israel.” (2:30–32)
Simeon’s languages echoes texts in Isaiah that speak of the coming revelation of the glory of God to Israel (Isa 60:1,2) and, through her, to the nations (42:6). Here we see salvation in its positive aspect: Israel is not only rescued from Egypt, but led up the holy mountain where the glory of God will pass before her. And although this salvation is rooted in the soil of God’s covenant with Abraham, it is good news for all peoples.
Salvation in the Rest of Luke
“Salvation” occurs only twice more in the Gospel of Luke (3:6 and 19:9). Luke employs the verb sōzō, on the other hand, 18 times in Luke and 13 times in Acts, where it is often translated “heal” or “cure” (8:36, 48, 50; 17:9; 18:42; Acts 4:9, 14:9). It would therefore be a mistake to limit salvation to the “spiritual” realm; in Luke’s holistic vision the good news encompasses the entire created order. As Conzelmann puts it, “Jesus’ deeds are for Luke the evidence of the time of salvation, which has ‘arrived’ with Christ.”⁴
When John the Baptist sends messengers to ask Jesus for assurance he really is the Messiah, Jesus tells them, “Go back and report to John what you have seen and heard: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor.” (Lk 7:22). The proofs offered to John all involve physical and social restoration. Thus Twelftree argues that “from Luke’s perspective it is not possible to say that the miracles illustrate or demonstrate the good news of Jesus; they are, with the teaching, themselves the good news of Jesus.”⁵
Exorcisms are closely linked to healing in Luke.⁶ When these are challenged, Jesus spells out the underlying spiritual warfare. “When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are safe. But when someone stronger attacks and overpowers him, he takes away the armor in which the man trusted and divides up his plunder” (11:21,22). Humanity is captive to hostile spiritual forces. Jesus has come, armed with “the finger of God” (20) to plunder Satan and his kingdom. This dimension of the good news pictures salvation as an act of liberating power — even violence — on behalf of the weak and helpless.
So far we have focussed on Luke’s description of salvation as deliverance from harmful outside forces: physical, social and supernatural. But gospel in Luke and Acts is nothing less than complete restoration to God. The “good news that will cause great joy for all the people” involves “peace to those on whom his favor rests” (2:10, 14). But if humanity is to experience this shalom, sin must be decisively dealt with. Salvation involves healing, but this would be superficial without forgiveness.
An instructive illustration of this principle occurs in Luke 5:17–26. A paralyzed man is lowered through the roof to the feet of Jesus. When he sees the faith of the man’s friends, Jesus tells him, “Friend, your sins are forgiven” (20). Although Western minds might be confused by this non sequitur, the Jews saw an intimate link between spiritual and physical health. As one rabbi insisted, several hundred years later, “A sick man does not recover from his sickness until all his sins are forgiven him.”⁷ Jesus perceives and provides for the humanity’s deepest need, which is spiritual — but he does not on that basis ignore his physical condition. Indeed, that healing is needed to demonstrate that “the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” (24). Such forgiveness is an integral part of Jesus’ mission, for he comes on behalf of the God “who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases” (Ps 103:3).
Salvation in Acts
Acts is the story of how “this message of salvation” (Acts 13:26) in the name of the risen Lord Jesus goes from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. The gospel in Acts is variously “the good news that Jesus is the Messiah” (5:42), “the good news of the kingdom of God” (8:12), “the good news of peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all” (10:36), “the good news about Jesus and the resurrection” (17:18) and “the good news of God’s grace” (20:24). This is the message that the apostolic band is commissioned to bring to Israel and the nations.
In sum, the gospel is the announcement that Jesus is God’s chosen Saviour, whom he has raised from the dead and seated at his right hand. All who believe in him will be saved, that is, will receive forgiveness of sins (2:38, 10:43), justification apart from the law (13:38,39), the gift of the Holy Spirit (2:38), physical healing (3:16), acceptance by God (15:8), and inclusion into his family (26:18).
The Gospel of the Kingdom
This wholistic salvation is linked closely with “the good news of the kingdom of God” (Lk 4:43, 8:1, 16:16; Acts 8:12). Luke refers to the “kingdom” (basileia) 44 times in his Gospel and 8 times in Acts. As Bock outlines, this kingdom is both present (Lk 10:9, 17:21) and future (21:31); it has both political (1:32–33) and spiritual (1:78–79) dimensions.⁸ For Luke, the good news of the kingdom is that God has appointed Jesus to exercise divine rule (1:32–33) in order to bring freedom to all who are suffering and oppressed (10:8–9). Salvation, in Green’s words, is “the coming of God’s reign of justice, to deconstruct the worldly systems and values at odds with the purpose of God.”⁹
Although entering the kingdom demands strenuous effort (12:31), it always remains the gift of the Father (12:32) and must be received as such. “Truly I tell you,” Jesus says, “anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it” (18:17). Reception into the kingdom is the gracious act of God to those who are both too weak and too sinful to win it by their own merits.
Since this dominion is opposed by the kingdoms of Satan and this world, it must be established by divine power (11:20). Malevolent forces must be overcome. At the broadest level, according to Joel Green, “God’s kingdom in Luke’s Gospel is the presence of divine power to liberate people from diabolic bondage.”¹⁰ The consummation of the kingdom awaits Christ’s return in power and glory, but since his exaltation to God’s right hand, he exercises dominion in the present by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Luke’s Christology
Both volumes of Luke’s story are about Jesus. For him, the good news of the kingdom and the message of salvation are indistinguishable from “the word of the Lord” (Acts 8:25). The rejoicing at the beginning of his Gospel are caused by the arrival of Jesus. When Simeon holds the holy child in his arms, he exclaims, “my eyes have seen your salvation” (Lk 2:30). As Basil the Great comments, salvation “is not some mere active force, which provides us with a certain grace for deliverance from weakness and for the good health of our body”.¹¹ For Simeon, as for Luke, God’s salvation is Jesus of Nazareth himself. “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). Luke’s christology is thus the foundation of his soteriology.
In Luke 2:11, the angel announces, “Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord.” Luke’s Christology could be encapsulated in this triple title. Jesus is called the Savior, even though that title has been used of God himself in 1:47. Jesus is in no way independent of the Father. For Luke, Jesus is God’s chosen agent of salvation, such that he shares in divine titles. As the apostles declare before the Sanhedrin, “God exalted him to his own right hand as Prince and Savior that he might bring Israel to repentance and forgive their sins” (Acts 5:31).
Jesus is called “Christ” or “Messiah” 13 times in Luke and 23 times in Acts. This title speaks to Jesus as the agent of God’s promised deliverance for Israel. Although in his earthly ministry first the demons (Lk 4:41) and then the disciples (9:20) recognize that Jesus is the Messiah, for Luke it is at the ascension that Jesus fully enters into this regal office. “God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah” (Acts 2:36).
A key problem for Luke is that, contrary to all expectation, Jesus of Nazareth was crucified in weakness and shame. How could God abandon his chosen one to death? Luke’s apologetic task is to demonstrate the Old Testament foretold that the Anointed One would fulfill his Messianic office by first suffering and then rising from the dead (Lk 9:20–22, 24:26; Acts 3:18, 17:3, 26:3).
When Jesus emerges from the tomb, he wins for himself the title and status of “Lord”. Although the title is significant in the Gospel of Luke, its primary function is to assert the unity between the Jesus of history and the exalted Christ.¹² When Jesus is raised from the dead and installed at the Father’s right hand, he takes on the title and status of “lord of all” (Acts 10:36). Bock observes that “the essence of his lordship is his authority over salvation and the right to distribute its benefits”.¹³
To confess Jesus as Lord involves total submission to his dominion. As Franklin remarks,
The overridingly dominant significance of kurios in Luke-Acts is this expression of the community’s witness, devotion, and allegiance to Jesus. It is an affirmation of a common belief where Christians see themselves as standing under obligation to Jesus. But it is more than a term of devotion. It is also the expression of the finality of God’s redemptive act in him and of the conviction that, as the victor over all that denies the power of God, he is installed at the Father’s right hand, sharing in his authority and supremacy.¹⁴
Luke’s Gospel and Paul’s Gospel
According to Acts, Luke spent time with Paul on his missionary journeys. But do they share the same gospel? How does Luke’s account of salvation compare with Paul’s? Michael Gorman itemizes the key points in Paul’s telling of the Jesus story. Most of them overlap with Luke’s account: Jesus fulfilling God’s promises issued through the prophets, his status as son of David and Son of God, his death on the cross, resurrection from the dead, his exaltation as Lord, and his return in salvation and judgment. His list of the subjective effects of Jesus’ death and resurrection for believers is also echoed in Luke: “the outpouring of the Spirit, forgiveness of sins, liberation from sin and from the present evil age, justification, redemption, deliverance from the coming wrath”.¹⁵
What is nearly absent from Luke and Acts is what Paul considered “of first importance: that Christ died for our sins” (1 Cor 15:13). Luke, of course, tells the story of the suffering and death of the Messiah. His portrayal of the cross is focussed on Jesus as the innocent victim, the Jewish people as the guilty murderers, and God as the one whose “deliberate plan and foreknowledge” (Acts 2:23) led Jesus through death to resurrection. “What is lacking,” as Marshall points out, “is … a full understanding of the significance of the cross as the means of salvation”.¹⁶ The forgiveness of sins is a vital aspect of salvation for Luke (Lk 1:77, 3:3, 7:47–49, 11:4), yet nowhere does he link it to the death of Christ.¹⁷
It is not as though Luke has no concept of atonement. In his account of the Last Supper, he records Jesus saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you” (Lk 22:20). He also registers Paul’s exhortation to the Ephesians elders: “Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood” (Acts 20:28). Yet clearly Luke’s soteriological centre lies elsewhere. He seems to deliberately sidestep opportunities to interpret the cross as a saving event. Significantly, Luke omits Jesus’ statement that “the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mk 10:45).
In his two quotations of Isaiah 53, Luke avoids references to vicarious atonement. In Luke 22:37, Jesus says, “It is written: ‘And he was numbered with the transgressors’; and I tell you that this must be fulfilled in me.” But Luke does not include the sentence immediately following in Isaiah 53:12: “For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.” The second reference to Isaiah 53 occurs in Acts 8:32, where the Ethiopian eunuch struggles, alone, with its meaning. Luke elects to quote, not verse 3 (“he was pierced for our transgressions”) but verses 7 and 8 (“he was led like a sheep to the slaughter”).
Not only is Luke disinterested in atonement theology, he seems to go out of his way to avoid it. Why might this be? Franklin observes that Luke “does not look back to any event in the life of Jesus to give a guarantee of salvation but finds it in the contemporary activity of the Lord whose name brings salvation”.¹⁸
Luke’s two-volume history is a drama of how God has broken into human history in the person of Jesus. The Messiah-Saviour-Lord is the agent of salvation; he wields God’s liberating power for human beings trapped in physical, social, and spiritual slavery. Jesus has conquered death and evil; he offers forgiveness of sins and fellowship with God to all who believe in his name and submit to him as Lord. For Luke this is, supremely, good news.
Citations
[1] Justo L. González, The Story Luke Tells: Luke’s Unique Witness to the Gospel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015), 61.
[2] Jerome Kodell, “Luke’s Theology of the Death of Jesus,” in Sin, Salvation, and the Spirit (ed. D. Durkin; Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 1979), 226.
[3] David W. Pao and Eckhard J. Schnabel, “Luke,” in Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament. ed. G. K. Beale and D. A. Carson (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), 271.
[4] Hans Conzelmann, The Theology of St. Luke, trans. Geoffrey Buswell (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982), 192
[5] Graham H. Twelftree, Jesus the Miracle Worker (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1999), 188.
[6] R. H. Bell, “Demon, Devil, Satan” in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, ed. Joel B. Green, Jeannine K. Brown and Nicholas Perrin, 2nd ed. (Downers Grove: InterVaristy Press, 2013), 196.
[7] b. Ned. 41a, quoted in David E. Garland, Luke, Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011), 242.
[8] Darrell L Bock, A Theology of Luke and Acts, Biblical Theology of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2012), 141–143.
[9] Joel B. Green, The Theology of the Gospel of Luke, New Testament Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 94.
[10] Green, “Kingdom of God/Heaven” in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, 477.
[11] Arthur A. Just and Thomas C. Oden, eds. Luke. vol. 3 of Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 49.
[12] C. Kavin Rowe, Early Narrative Christology: The Lord in the Gospel of Luke, BZNW (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2006), 27
[13] Bock, 198.
[14] Eric Franklin, Christ the Lord: A Study in the Purpose and Theology of Luke-Acts (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1975), 53
[15] Michael J. Gorman, Apostle of the Crucified Lord: A Theological Introduction to Paul and His Letters, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017), 122–23.
[16] I. H. Marshall, Luke: Historian and Theologian (Grand Rapids: Zondervan 1970), 175
[17] Conzelmann, 201.
[18] Franklin, 66.
