Yesterday, I posted about the way Luke and James use their words to drive their audience towards becoming whole people, people who are like Jesus.

I want to highlight one more distinctive connection between Luke and James: an emphasis on hearing and doing.

James

If anyone knows anything about the Letter of James it is this: James emphasizes acting on what one hears.

Be doers of the word and not just hearers, deceiving yourselves. (James 1:22)

This verse is the beginning of a broader theme that runs throughout James, emphasizing the necessity of good works. Ok, with that in place, take a look at Luke.

Luke

There is one little pericope in Luke where he too emphasizes hearing and doing, and it’s unique to Luke, among the Gospels. The passage below is the one about who Jesus’s true family is. Jesus is teaching, and his mother and brothers approach wanting to talk to him. Each Gospel author words Jesus’s response a little differently:

Matthew (yellow): for whoever does the will of my father in heaven …

Mark (blue): for whoever does the will of God …

Luke (green): these are the ones who hear the word of God and do it …

Luke alone words Jesus response in terms “hearing and doing.” Mark’s statement is straightforward, but Matthew’s wording reflects a theme unique to him, the theme of “heaven and earth.”¹

Conclusion

I find Luke’s emphasis on “hearing and doing” striing in light of yesterday’s post. Combining the connections of both posts, we can say that Luke and James overlap in at least these ways:

• Both explicitly frame obedience in terms of τέλειος.
• Both understand the τέλειος-goal of their instruction to be imitation of Jesus.
• Both emphasize “hearing and doing.”
  

Footnote

1. See Jonathan T. Pennington, Heaven and Earth in the Gospel of Matthew, Supplements to Novum Testamentum 126 (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2007). ↩