An Ironic Gospel

Have you ever considered the irony of Luke’s Gospel? First, Luke is a doctor. Second, Luke is a Gentile. Third, Luke is writing to Theophilus, possibly a Roman governor. So we have a doctor, who used natural means to heal people writing about a carpenter who used supernatural means to heal people. We have a Gentile, whom the Jews shunned, writing about a Jew and his Jewish disciples. We have a Gospel that was written for a possible Roman official, whom the Jews also despised. The setting surrounding Luke could not be more ironic. In addition, Luke was not a physical disciple of Jesus and for all we know probably never met Jesus. Yet he writes the two longest books in the New Testament: Luke and Acts. The latter becomes our only account of how the gospel spread from eleven men in one region to thousands of men and women all across the known world. I wonder when Luke sat down to write these two accounts to Theophilus, if he realized they would still be read, studied, and followed two thousand years later.