Before we arrive at the last chapter we read this short paragraph which could be easily taken as the summary of this glorious book. Chapter 21 is to be regarded as an appendix, but it is so good that we have it, as we will see over the next few days.
What do we learn from these two verses?
1. The Gospels clearly did not set out to give a fully comprehensive account of the life of Jesus. There are obvious gaps in the retelling of His early life, we have no idea what He did between 12 and 30! The written events are there to demonstrate what king of character Jesus was.
2. So, if the Gospels were never intended to be exhaustive biographies, even of Jesus' three years of ministry, what were their aims? As John states here, the purpose in writing them was to encourage the reader to take Jesus as the Messiah, their Saviour and Lord. They sought to bring life and they have been extremely effective at doing this. I may have told you before about my father's time in the army during his two year's National Service where there was another young man who saw him kneeling by his bed every night to say his prayers and asked him how he could find God too. My father went through lots of theology as he discussed with him, but nothing brought the light of understanding until, in a kind of desperation my father quoted John 3 v 16: 'God so loved the world that He sent His only Son so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.' When the young man heard this, he jumped up and run round and round between the beds exclaiming, ''I've got it!''
Luke opens his account by encouraging the reader to read his Gospel diligently, because in it is life (Luke 1 v 1-4).
And once we have become a child of God, we continue to read the Gospels to remind ourselves of why we believe and to draw ourselves deeper into the Truth.