Who are the poor in the Gospel of Luke?

Answer 1

Luke is my favorite Gospel because of his righteous notions of morality, forgiveness, loving your enemies and helping the poor. He avoids the negativity of "The poor will always be with us" that we find in Matthew, Mark and John. Luke sometimes tells us who he thinks the poor are, in phrases such as "the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind". This sets a standard of poverty that equates the poor to the seriously disabled. In other pericopes, Luke seems to set a more relaxed standard for poverty, such as the widow's mite. The Greek word used in Luke denotes any person in a state of need or affliction. Jesus' words as told in Luke give some indication of this. Here and in other places, the word can encompass all types of needs, not only the condition of lacking financially or physically. It depends on the context in which it is used. Most often, it is used to refer to those in society that are materially poor.

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised.