That We Might KNOW!

Luke 1:1-4 Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us, (2) Even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word; (3) It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, (4) That thou mightest know the certainty of those things, wherein thou hast been instructed. 

Luke opens the his account of the gospel of Christ by stating his thesis:  That we might know with certainty!

An important characteristic of being a follower of God is confidence!  The Bible does not teach of having a suspicion about whether there is a God.  It does not speak of an optimism that there is a Messiah and savior, but rather that we can have an absolute security of that which we believe.

So how can we have this kind of confidence with what Luke has to write?  Luke states that he had a perfect or complete understanding of these things...”from the very first”.  Luke does not give us detail about that statement but but there are several conclusions that we can make.  

First, it appears that some of what he writes he was a personal witness to.  This was a small world, and it would seem logical that his path would have crossed with Jesus’ somewhere along the line.  If he was just an investigative reporter after the fact, it would not have made sense that he use the phrase “from the first”.  The Bible speaks often of people that heard about Jesus, heard that he was coming nearby and decided to see him and learn about him first hand.

Luke 19:1-4 And Jesus entered and passed through Jericho. (2) And, behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus, which was the chief among the publicans, and he was rich. (3) And he sought to see Jesus who he was; and could not for the press, because he was little of stature. (4) And he ran before, and climbed up into a sycomore tree to see him: for he was to pass that way. 

It just seems obvious that an intellectual and inquisitive person like Luke would have behaved similar to Zaccaeus and went to see Jesus when he was nearby.  I would even conclude there were times that Luke might have even followed Jesus around witnessing  many of these things first hand

Secondly, several other versions interpret verse 3 as

Luke 1:3  ....since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning

Not only did Luke see many things for himself, he also had enough interest Jesus to investigate him as well.  Luke was a physician so he was an educated and intellectual individual.  In the same way that we could trust the investigation of Walter Cronkite many years later, we can trust the work of Luke.  

But "knowing" is not the end result.  We should not just know about God for the sake of knowing.  The knowledge of who God is, ought to inspire and motivate us to act in a prescribed manner.  Once we have certainty of what we believe, due to the work of men like Luke, we must put that belief into action and BECOME the people that God wants us to be.