The faithful Servant, the promised Redeemer, and now the perfect Man — the third of four answers to the Advent question: who exactly is this Man, our Lord who is coming?
My Jesus is the perfect Son of Man and the Deliverer of all the outcast. I even wrote a book about Him. Actually I even wrote two.
An author of sophistication
I am a Christian of the first century AD, and I am something of an academic. My Greek is sophisticated and stylistically diverse. I write like an historian, relying on eyewitness accounts as the most dependable sources there can be, and I order the events into world history: “in the days of Herod”, “a decree went out from Caesar Augustus”, or “in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar”.
Nevertheless, I am not writing about world history, but rather salvation history—divided into three different ages. I start with the people of Israel, represented in my work by the opening account concerning John the Baptist, then move on to the turning point in salvation history, which is comprised by the activity of Jesus Christ, and then conclude with the period of the church. That is also the subject of the other half of my twofold opus, namely the “Acts of the Apostles”.
Disappointed expectations
I wrote my book for the “most excellent Theophilus” (meaning “he who loves God”), in order to acquaint him with the foundations of the doctrine in which he had been instructed. He is a more or less accurate representation of my readership.
My readers are highly educated, upper-class individuals of the Greek cultural domain—who also happen to be Christians of the second or third generations. They now find themselves confronted by the fact that the expected return of Christ has not yet transpired, and they are thus asking themselves “when the kingdom of God [will] come”.
Man as he was intended to be
My Jesus is the Man that human beings were meant to be. In my works, His family tree not only goes back to Abraham, but all the way back to Adam—the very archetype of humanity. The phrase “Son of Man” is thus a key term in my book. It appears there around 20 times.
My Jesus is the perfect human being, just as the first Man ought to have been. This is because—in contrast to version 1.0, He glorifies God in all matters. And so the response to my readers’ question is: “For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you.”
No one is excluded
My Jesus is the Redeemer of an imperfect humanity. He delivers all—no matter whether they are Jews or Gentiles—and He is most fond of coming to the aid of sinners and the poor—from the adulteress to the tax collector to the thief on the cross. He excludes no one from salvation.
Indeed, my Jesus is the perfect Man and the Saviour of all imperfect human beings. I even wrote a book about Him. They call me Luke, the evangelist.