How does God want us to live in a way that enables us to fulfil our potential and purpose as individuals and a human race?

This way of life is a major theme investigated by Luke. He refers to it as the ‘Kingdom of God’. This is an old phrase that will need some explanation to understand its meaning.

Luke opens up issues about how humanity had lost its way and doesn’t live as God intends, how we should live and how this can be achieved.

Much has been written, studied and preached about the how it can be restored but possibly not so much on the what it should look like. The thoughts in these studies aim to address this. What should humanity ideally look like? How should we live and interact? It is easy to come up with some ‘spiritual’ sounding phrases, other worldly stuff, but what about a bit of reality.

Many do not even consider this important, thinking God is going to wrap it all up at some point and essentially start again. The basis of these thoughts differ, believing that God is actually going to complete something he has started. He thinks humanity is great and wants us to get on board with this transformation.

Luke has crafted his book carefully, setting it out in a structured way. After the passages about his birth and some glimpses into his early life we encounter Jesus starting his public period at his baptism. The foundation laid by John the Baptist is mentioned by Luke.  He explains that there was something new happening and people should see it and take note.

You can then split the public period of Jesus’ life into two aims. The first starts in Luke chapter 4 where Jesus states his aim in verse 43, to ‘preach the Kingdom of God’. This is a radical agenda to explain and demonstrate how humanity should live as God intends.

He starts addressing the second aim in Luke chapter 9 where he explains the means by which he was going to bring this about. In verse 22 he states ‘The Son of Man must suffer … be rejected…, be killed and be raised up…’.

Having provided this explanation, the end of Luke records these events.

These studies mainly look at the first aim and hope to stimulate thinking around the theme of what humanity should be like.