Faithful on Fridays Blog

Scene Six

I’m getting more attuned to watching for the Gentile/doctor connection in Luke’s gospel, especially in Chapters 8 and 9 as he learned about Jesus’ ministry from those he interviewed. I immediately noticed that he, and no one else, named some of the women who not only followed the Savior, but also served Him from their own, private resources. Did the eyewitness relate to Luke how revolutionary that was? Both Jewish and Roman culture were male-dominated, perceived women as inferior, and yet the Son of God treated them with respect, compassion, and care. 

Take the raising of Jairus’ daughter (8:40-56), for example. This Jewish leader of the synagogue fell at Jesus’ feet begging Him to come and heal his young daughter, to which He responded by heading directly to his house. Here’s the revolutionary event; a woman who’d spent all her money on doctors to stop her vaginal hemorrhaging interrupted His trip by crawling through the crowd to simply touch the hem of His robe. That faith released power to be healed (unique to Luke) which Jesus publicly declared. Interestingly, only Luke included her clinical history, why she came and how it happened. This miraculous healing by our Great Physician was this woman’s only hope and must’ve intrigued Dr. Luke as he recounted the event. 

In Judaism monthly menstrual bleeding made women ‘unclean’, but Jesus stopped His trip to Jairus’ home to heal not only an unidentified, unclean woman, but one who’d been bleeding for 12 years. That’s revolutionary! 

Luke was undoubtedly coming to terms with the fact that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah, a miracle-worker, healer, and deliverer who’d come to earth to welcome both Jew and Gentile, male and female, into the family of faith. 

When we hear a good message we tend to focus on certain parts that touch our hearts and interest our minds not remembering the whole message but only parts. Luke’s eyewitnesses were people still alive some 60 years after Jesus’ ascension back into heaven, probably pretty old, but how many were actually left? God made sure Luke found them or they found Luke.

With his medical training and knowledge of our physical bodies, Luke tended to hear and write about the physical nature of Jesus as the stories unfolded; that’s what interested him. He was learning that Jesus was fully human and yet fully God; how could he process the divine and physical nature of God? Someone must’ve given him, as a Gentile, the Old Testament promises of Messiah who would accomplish this feat and for what purpose. Remember, only Luke gave a detailed account of Jesus’ miraculous conception and birth, proving He was a physical person and yet remained divine. The religious leaders simply could not accept that truth; but we do.

For in Christ lives all the fullness of God in a human body. So you also are complete through your union with Christ, who is the Head over every ruler and authority. Colossians 2:9-10 NLT