The Luke Experiment by Andrew Page

Luke's Gospel is many people's favourite: they love the unfolding of the Christmas story; they are moved by the parable of the lost son and they enjoy the account of the two disciples meeting the risen Jesus on the road to Emmaus. And in his introduction, Luke tells us that he has written an orderly account.

So after writing books about Matthew's Gospel, Mark's Gospel and John's Gospel, Andrew Page has now turned his attention to the Gospel of Luke.

The Luke Experiment is two things. First, it's a basic commentary: Andrew unpacks the message of Luke by teaching through the Gospel from beginning to end. And second, it's an invitation: the book explains how readers can learn the order of the incidents in Luke, and so try the experiment of using what they have learnt to help them meditate their way through the Gospel. This stems from Andrew's conviction that Luke wrote not only to give us information about Jesus, but also to help us to meet him.

Title

The Luke Experiment
Author(s)

Andrew Page
Series

The Mark Experiment
ISBN

9783957761460
Publisher

VTR
Topic

Bible Reading
Pages

210
Published

01/02/2022

Overall rating

5.0 based on 2 reviews

The Luke Experiment

Andrew does (at least) 2 things brilliantly in this book. First he emphasises reading Luke in such a way as to meet and get to know Jesus. And secondly – and perhaps uniquely – he opens up the structure of the gospel. He makes the strong argument that when Luke says he is writing an orderly account, he means it has a structure to help his readers (or often listeners) to remember it. He divides the whole gospel into 25 parts, such that each part has 5 chunks. And he encourages us to learn the structure and offers many tips to help us do it. I’ve very much enjoyed reading my review copy, and would recommend it both for individuals and for small group study.

RICHARD VENABLE

The Luke Experiment is a great introduction to Luke’s Gospel. It is a helpful and clear exposition of this lovely Gospel. Andrew Page writes from a conviction, for which he provides plenty of evidence, that the Gospel writers like Luke structured their material in such a way as to make their content easily memorable when written copies would be so rare. If we can find the clues they will not only lead us deeper into the Gospel writer’s meaning and intention at every point, but also help us to retain their spiritual and practical insights for our day to day living. What emerges is a clear, compelling tool for getting us into and guiding us along Luke’s carefully structured “orderly account” (Luke 1:3) so that the Gospel makes sense and (Andrew earnestly longs) the Jesus of the Gospel to come alive to us. The distinctive approach of this, and the companion volumes on Mark, Matthew and John, is not to give us the Gospel on a plate but to encourage us to do much of the work for ourselves, and to take the challenge (as individuals or better in pairs or in a whole group) of learning by heart the outline of the Gospel. This, Andrew suggests, is helpfully broken down by the evangelist into groups of five incidents or groups of teaching. These groups come in three distinct overall parts of the Gospel which follow Luke’s Introduction (1:1–2:52): Part One, The King (3:1–9:50); Part Two, The Kingdom (9:51–19:27); Part Three, The Climax; all of which are broken down in turn to appropriate numbers of Sections and then the groups of five, following Luke’s own clues and markers. I would highly recommend the book to any individual or group wanting to get into Luke. It includes group material for a ten week course. Those new to Gospel study will find it gives them all they need; those who think they know the Gospel will be surprised at how often they may have missed some of Luke’s main thrust by thinking understood it already because of how another Gospel portrayed the same incident! (Brief note to Anglicans and other churches which use the Common Lectionary. With readings from Luke weekly from June to November this year 2022, it is a great time to get congregation members into Luke, and there is no better tool than this!) Buy it, read it and use it to introduce friends to Jesus!