EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/10/2026
8:29 PM
My
Worship Time “Focus: “Luke
the Physician and Historian”
Bible
Reading & Meditation Reference: Luke
1:1-3a
Message of the verses: “1 ¶ Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a
narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, 2 just as those who from the beginning were
eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, 3 it seemed good to me also, having followed all
things closely for some time past,” (ESV)
I mentioned in the last SD that Luke did not really
want to be noticed in the two books that he wrote. It seemed good to me also, is the only
thing that contains a reference to Luke being the author, but still his name
was not mentioned. It has been mentioned
that there was little problem knowing that it was Luke who wrote this gospel,
as there was never any other suggestion concerning its authorship.
The Bible does not tell us much
about Luke’s life before he became one of Paul’s partners in the spreading of
the Gospel. In the last SD it was
mentioned that Paul mentions Luke’s name in Colossian 4:14: “14 Luke the beloved physician greets you, as does
Demas.” Now as one goes through the
reading of the book of Acts they will see that there were many times that Paul
would need a physician, and so the Lord provided Luke to travel with him
beginning at the second missionary trip.
Let me just say that Luke is a Gentile as when Paul wrote in the later
part of his letters he mentions those who were of the circumcision (Jewish) and
it is reasonable to conclude that the people Paul refers to in verses 12-17,
including Luke (v. 14), were Gentiles.
MacArthur adds “For further evidence that Luke was a Gentile, see the
introduction to Luke in this volume.) I
did quote most of the introduction to this volume in the first SD I wrote on
Luke.
John MacArthur quotes Howard C. Kee
as he gives a helpful historical perspective on the lives of physicians during
this time period:
“An
obvious question is: did most of the Roman populace share the exalted view of
the medical art propounded by its chief practitioners, and particularly by
Galen [a second-century A.D. Roman doctor]?
Galen is caustic in his denunciation of the money-seeking, routine bound
quacks who ‘enter the sickroom, bleed the patient, lay on a plaster, and give
an enema.’ Both from the epigrams and
from non-medical writers of the second century [A.D.] it is evident that the medical
profession was regarded as being characteristically greedy and fond of public
display. Plutarch, in The Flatters, mocks
the smooth bedside manner of the day.
Dio Chrysostom describes the efforts of physicians to drum up trade by
public lecture-presentations, intended to dazzle hearers and attract patients:
“This
short recitation…is kind of a spectacle or parade…like the exhibition of
so-called physicians, who seat themselves conspicuously before us and give us a
detailed account of the union of joints, the combination and juxtaposition of
bones, and other topics of that sort, such as pores and respirations, and
excretions. And the crowd is all agape
with admiration and more enchanted than a swarm of children.”
“In his
fine survey, Roman Medicine John Scarborough notes that there were two
different classes of physicians serving
two different groups of patients.
The aristocrats had physicians as servants or as private employees in
their own establishments, or had access to them despite their high fees and
lofty reputations. There were also many
illiterate doctors, quacks, charlatans; exploiters of a gullible and needy
public. He remarks that, ‘The
intellectuality of Galen fails to pierce the growing gloom of an age gradually
turning from rational answers posed by the Greek heritage of questioning to the
mystical, all-encompassing solutions of religion.’ By the second half of the second century,
there were many wonder-workers and rhetoricians, of whom Lucian draws satirical
sketches in Alexander the False Prophet and The Passing of Peregrinus…Although
we cannot generalize from Lucian’s satirical remarks about the healing
profession—in both its medical and its mystical aspects—we can safely conclude
that [it] was [not] beyond criticism or universally esteemed in the later
second century.
“In the
New Testament there are only seven occurrences of the word hiatros, and
in only one of these is there a positive estimate of the physician. In Mt. 9:12 (=Mk. 2:17; Lk. 5:31) there is a
proverbial expression about the physician’s role being to care for the ailing,
rather than the well. This is offered in
the synoptics as justification for Jesus attention to the sick, the unclean and
the outcasts. In Mk. 5:26 (=Lk. 8:43),…the
physicians have taken money from the woman with the menstrual flow but have not
cured her ailment. Another proverbial
expression in Lk. 4:23, ‘Physician, heal yourself!’, is a
challenge to the one who points out problems that he must cure them. In Col. 4:14, Luke is identified as ‘the
beloved physician,’ with no indication of the nature of the medical role he
may have performed. (Medicine, Miracle and Magic in New Testament Times [London:
Cambridge, 1986], 63-65)”
2/10/2026
9:19 PM
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