BACK IN THE DAY, when I was a kid, TV shows were almost entirely episodic. There were no streaming series to binge watch, and miniseries with continuing storylines were still a brand-new idea. For the most part, you’d watch your favorite show once a week for an hour, and when it was done, it was done; whatever the tension or drama was that drove the story, it was resolved before the final credits rolled. Every episode was self-contained.

It’s different now. Many movies have sequels planned even before the first film is released, and television episodes are often written as chapters in an ongoing story. Writers can’t just make the characters do whatever they want; they have to pick up the narrative thread that’s already been established and continue it in some satisfying way that helps point toward the eventual conclusion of the larger story.

Consider, then, how we should read the gospel of Luke. As we’ve seen, the third gospel is the first volume of a two-volume work called Luke-Acts. The two aren’t meant to stand alone. Trying to understand Luke’s gospel as a solo work, ignoring the book of Acts, would be like trying to appreciate a two-act play but leaving during the intermission.

That’s not to say we can’t enjoy the first act even if we don’t see the second, just as we can be inspired by a movie without seeing its sequel. But if we want to understand what Luke is up to in his account of the life and ministry of Jesus, we have to remember that he planned in advance for the gospel to be the opening act that comes before…well, the book of Acts.

Luke was probably a Gentile. He was a missionary colleague of Paul, and wrote down some of what he experienced as he accompanied Paul in his evangelistic and pastoral travels; this is the significance of the first-person “we” passages in the book of Acts. As for the rest of Acts, as well as the third gospel, Luke had to do some research, which may have involved traveling from place to place to interview eyewitnesses. This is hinted at in the opening verses of the gospel:

Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught. (Luke 1:1-4, NIV)

Who was Theophilus? We’ll come back to him in a later post. Meanwhile, in case you’re wondering why Luke didn’t just write the whole of Luke-Acts on one scroll, it’s because no one made scrolls long enough. It’s like when I wrote my doctoral dissertation using the now ancient technology of floppy disks. (Anyone remember those?) I could only fit one chapter on each disk. Still, even the floppiest of disks was far, far beyond the technology Luke had available to him.

And he made it work. The two parts of Luke-Acts divide up nicely into the story of the ministry of Jesus, and the subsequent story of the ministry of the apostles. The gospel ends with the ascension of Jesus into heaven, while the book of Acts begins with the Ascension, picking up where the first book left off.

But as it usually goes with a good story, Luke doesn’t just objectively report one thing, and the next, and the next. He writes with pastoral purpose. Go back to our question from the previous post: why four gospels? Or more specifically: what did Luke want to accomplish through his reworking of Mark’s gospel?

It would be lovely if he simply told us up front, but he doesn’t. Still, there are a couple of ways to get at this. First, we can consider Luke’s résumé. Again, he was a Gentile who traveled with the man known as the “apostle to the Gentiles.” Luke was with Paul as the apostle wrote his letter to the Colossians and to Philemon. He wrote the book of Acts to chronicle the spread of the gospel to the Gentiles, and knew well the issues the Gentile churches faced.

Second, as we will do throughout this study, we can look carefully at how the third gospel differs from Mark and Matthew. Some of the most beloved passages of the New Testament, such as the parables of the Good Samaritan or the Prodigal Son, are unique to Luke’s gospel. But he also retells some of the same stories in subtly different ways. Is there a theme to what he includes that the others leave out? Is there a pattern to how he uses and changes the stories he draws from Mark and the hypothetical Q source?

The short answer to both questions is yes, and we’ll play that answer out as our study progresses. For now, I’ll just say that I decided to call this study “God’s Plan and People” to highlight two of the major themes of Luke. First, “God’s Plan.” Luke seems at pains throughout the gospel to show that Gentile Christians are the legitimate heirs of ancient Judaism; what happened in Jesus and through the Holy Spirit was God’s plan all along.

And second, “God’s people.” What matters is not just that the church believe, but that they live in accordance with the righteousness God always wanted from his people—and in Luke, much of this has to do with how believers relate to the poor, the lost, the disenfranchised.

Both of these themes were crucial to the Gentile mission of which Luke was a part, and both are already prevalent in the opening act of Luke’s two-act play. So… before we circle back to the opening verses of the gospel, let me briefly illustrate what I mean by “plan” and “people” in the next couple of posts.