VICTORIAN VILLAGE Life Style
a mournful fact that ordained men have continually exalted themselves and their office to a most unscriptural position. It is no less a mournful fact that people have continually encouraged this evil through a lazy acceptance of the demands of priestcraft and by contenting themselves with a merely vicarious religion. There have been faults on both sides. Let us remember this and be on our guard. In the third place, Luke describes his own qualifications for the work of writing a Gospel. He says that he “had perfect understanding of all things from the very first.” It would be a waste of time to inquire from what source Luke obtained the information he has given us in his Gospel. We have no good reason to suppose that he saw our Lord work miracles or heard Him teach. It is enough for us to know that Luke wrote by the inspiration of God. Unquestionably, he did not neglect the ordinary means of obtaining knowledge. But the Holy Spirit guided him, no less than all the other writers of the Bible, in his choice of material. The Holy Spirit supplied him with thoughts, arrangement, sentences, and even words. The result is that what Luke wrote is not to be read as “the word of men” but, “as it is in truth, the word of God” (1 Thessalonians 2:13, KJV). Finally, Luke informs us of one main object he had in view when writing his Gospel. It was that Theophilus “might know the certainty of those things, wherein [he had] been instructed.”
In the second place, Luke draws a beautiful picture of the true position of the apostles in the early church. He calls them “eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word.” There is an instructive humility in this expression. There is an utter absence of the man-exalting tone that has so often crept into the church. Luke gives the apostles no flattering titles. He does not afford the slightest excuse to those who speak of them with idolatrous veneration because of their office and nearness to our Lord. He describes them as “eyewitnesses.” They told people what they had seen with their own eyes and heard with their own ears (1 John 1:1). He describes them as “ministers of the word.” They were ministers of the word of the Gospel. They were men who counted it their highest privilege to carry, as messengers, the tidings of God's love to a sinful world and to tell the story of the cross. It would have been well for the church and the world if Christian ministers had never laid claim to greater dignity and honor than the apostles claimed for themselves. It is
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