{"id":16337,"date":"2026-10-22T08:45:06","date_gmt":"2026-10-22T13:45:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/?p=16337"},"modified":"2026-10-23T08:46:34","modified_gmt":"2026-10-23T13:46:34","slug":"theophilus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/16337\/theophilus\/","title":{"rendered":"Theophilus"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Hi,<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Do we know who Theophilus is?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Luke writes to him in Luke 1:3-4, calling him \u201cmost excellent\u201d and says he\u2019s writing so he \u201cmight know the trustworthiness of the things you have been taught.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Again, in Acts 1:1, Luke is addressing Theophilus.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Thanks,<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Danielle<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">==========<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>No Danielle, we do not know.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>There are two possibilities.\u00a0 First, Theophilus might have been a person.\u00a0 And since Luke calls him &#8220;most excellent&#8221;, that seems to have been the case.\u00a0 There is a second possibility, however.\u00a0 The Greek word &#8220;theophilus&#8221; means &#8220;friend of God&#8221;, and so, Luke could have been writing to whoever was a friend of God.\u00a0 But I think the first option is the better one.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>That is all the information I have to give you.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Thank you for asking.\u00a0 It is exciting to discover new questions as we read the Bible.\u00a0 I am glad to see you\u00a0doing it.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Pastor John\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hi, Do we know who Theophilus is?\u00a0 Luke writes to him in Luke 1:3-4, calling him \u201cmost excellent\u201d and says he\u2019s writing so he \u201cmight know the trustworthiness of the things you have been taught.\u201d Again, in Acts 1:1, Luke is addressing Theophilus. Thanks, Danielle ========== No Danielle, we do not know. There are two [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-qa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16337"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16337"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16338,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16337\/revisions\/16338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}