The Coming Savior

Scripture Reading: Luke 1:1-80, 1 Samuel 2:1-10

As someone who has spent a lot of time in hospitals with loved ones over the years, I’m convinced that the field of medicine is as much art as it is science. There are volumes of facts and formulas involved, to be sure, but there is more than a little intuition and creativity as well. This is what I’ve come to love most about my favorite doctors and nurses: They approach their work with a nuance that cannot be taught in a text book, a respect for the well-studied yet ever mysterious creation that is the human body.  

I’m reminded of my medical friends when I read the Gospel of Luke, whose author and namesake was a Gentile physician and first-century follower of Jesus. While all four Gospel accounts offer a perspective on the life and ministry of Jesus, one of the unique elements of Luke’s is that he focused heavily on Jesus’s humanity. From the very first chapter, with both conviction and awe, the physician presented the tangible reality and glorious mystery that the eternal Son of God became incarnate in the person of Jesus. 

In Jesus Christ, God took on our humanity so that we could be reconciled to Him, adopted by Him, and welcomed into His presence forever.  

As Bible readers, we have the privilege of witnessing this inbreaking of God’s kingdom on earth through Luke’s detail-oriented account of Jesus’s life, from His birth all the way to His ascension. It’s Luke who described how John the Baptist leapt in Elizabeth’s womb in the presence of Mary and the yet-to-be born baby Jesus. It’s Luke who gave us the most extensive and beloved narrative of Jesus’s humble birth and who described Christ’s agony in Gethsemane with the gut-wrenching descriptor that His sweat “was like drops of blood” (Luke 22:44). It’s Luke who described the risen Jesus being carried into heaven—not in theory but in actual physical reality (Luke 24:51). 

Did you know that Luke also gave us more than fifteen parables not recorded elsewhere? As the longest book in the New Testament, more than one-third of the content in Luke’s Gospel is not found in the other three. All along the way, Luke highlighted Jesus’s intentional pursuit of those marginalized by society, not shrinking away from humanity but embracing and redeeming it. 

As we approach this unique book of the Bible together, I pray we’ll read Luke with soft hearts and open minds, allowing the physician to direct our gaze to the incarnate Christ. May the Holy Spirit help us hear the drumbeat that echoes through each of these twenty-four chapters: “The Son of Man has come to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10). Praise God for this good news!