Luke begins, “A scholar of the law stood up to test Jesus, and said….” A scholar of the law in the New Testament is more commonly known as a scribe. The “law” is not civil law or canon law but the Torah, the laws of Moses and everything else contained in the first five books of the Bible.

Mark, Matthew, and Luke all include in their Gospel a sending out (mission) of the twelve apostles. Luke’s Gospel has an additional mission of seventy-two (or seventy) disciples. He uses an unusual Greek verb here translated as “appointed.”

People always seem to be harping at us about relationships, and we have so many of them. We have spouses, close friends, children, grandchildren, lots of relatives and even colleagues at work with whom we spend an inordinate amount of time.