Was Luke a Disciple of Jesus? (No, and Here's Why)

Short answer: no. Luke was not one of the twelve disciples, and he most likely never met Jesus during His earthly ministry. He was a physician and a close companion of the apostle Paul, and he wrote his Gospel by gathering the accounts of people who had been there.

He was a disciple in the wider sense that every Christian is: a follower of Jesus. But he wasn't one of the men Jesus called to walk with Him in Galilee.

Luke isn't on the list of the Twelve

Luke himself records the names of the twelve apostles, and his own name isn't among them:

And when it was day, he called unto him his disciples: and of them he chose twelve, whom also he named apostles; Simon, (whom he also named Peter,) and Andrew his brother, James and John, Philip and Bartholomew, Matthew and Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon called Zelotes, And Judas the brother of James, and Judas Iscariot, which also was the traitor.

— Luke 6:13-16 (KJV)

Matthew 10:2-4, Mark 3:16-19 and Acts 1:13 give the same names.

Luke says he relied on eyewitnesses

The opening of his Gospel is the strongest clue. Luke tells his reader, Theophilus, how he went about writing it:

Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us, Even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word; It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus,

— Luke 1:1-3 (KJV)

He separates himself ("me also") from the people who "from the beginning were eyewitnesses". He's writing as a careful researcher, not as someone who saw it all firsthand. That's not a weakness. It's exactly what you'd want from a historian: he went back to the sources and put the story "in order".

Who Luke actually was

Everything Scripture tells us about Luke comes from Paul's letters and from the book of Acts, which Luke also wrote (Acts 1:1 refers back to "the former treatise", his Gospel).

A doctor. Paul calls him "Luke, the beloved physician" (Colossians 4:14).

Paul's travelling companion. He's with Paul when Paul writes to the Colossians and to Philemon (Philemon 1:24), and he stays with Paul to the end. In Paul's last letter, written from prison in Rome:

Only Luke is with me.

— 2 Timothy 4:11 (KJV)

An eyewitness of the early church, if not of Jesus. In parts of Acts, the story suddenly switches from "they" to "we":

And after he had seen the vision, immediately we endeavoured to go into Macedonia, assuredly gathering that the Lord had called us for to preach the gospel unto them.

— Acts 16:10 (KJV)

These "we" passages (Acts 16:10-17, 20:5–21:18 and 27:1–28:16) are where Luke was travelling with Paul himself, including the shipwreck on the way to Rome.

Probably a Gentile. In Colossians 4:10-11, Paul lists the co-workers who are "of the circumcision", meaning Jewish believers. He names Luke a few verses later, in a separate group. Most scholars take this to mean Luke wasn't Jewish, which would make him the only Gentile author in the New Testament.

What about the traditions?

Two later traditions try to place Luke closer to Jesus:

• One of the Seventy. Some early writers counted Luke among the seventy disciples Jesus sent out in Luke 10:1.
• The traveller to Emmaus. Others suggested he was the unnamed companion of Cleopas, who met the risen Jesus on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35).

Neither idea has any support in Scripture, and both sit awkwardly with Luke's own words about relying on eyewitnesses. The most common early tradition, recorded by the church historian Eusebius, is simpler: Luke came from Antioch in Syria and became a Christian through the church there.

Why it matters

Luke wrote more of the New Testament than any other single author: his Gospel and Acts together make up more than a quarter of it. Some of the best-loved passages in the Bible are found only in his Gospel, including the Christmas story with the shepherds, the parable of the Good Samaritan and the parable of the Prodigal Son.

He shows that you don't have to have walked with Jesus in Galilee to know Him truly. Luke met Jesus the same way we do: through the testimony of people who were there, and through faith.

For more on his life, read When was St. Luke born and when did he die?