Editing Acts of the Apostles (section)

===Audience and authorial intent===
Luke was written to be read aloud to a group of Jesus-followers gathered in a house to share the Lord's supper.{{sfn|Balch|2003|p=1104}} The author assumes an educated Greek-speaking audience, but directs his attention to specifically Christian concerns rather than to the Greco-Roman world at large.{{sfn|Green|1995|pp=16–17}} He begins his gospel with a preface addressed to [[Theophilus (biblical)|Theophilus]] ([[Luke 1:3]]; cf. [[Acts 1:1]]), informing him of his intention to provide an "ordered account" of events which will lead his reader to "certainty".{{sfn|Green|1997|p=35}} He did not write in order to provide Theophilus with historical justification—"did it happen?"—but to encourage faith—"what happened, and what does it all mean?"{{sfn|Green|1997|p=36}}

Acts (or Luke–Acts) is intended as a work of "edification", meaning "the empirical demonstration that virtue is superior to vice."{{sfn|Fitzmyer|1998|pp=55–65}}{{sfn|Aune|1988|p=80}} The work also engages with the question of a Christian's proper relationship with the Roman Empire, the civil power of the day: could a Christian obey God and also Caesar? The answer is ambiguous.{{sfn|Pickett|2011|pp=6–7}} The Romans never move against Jesus or his followers unless provoked by the Jews, in the trial scenes the Christian missionaries are always cleared of charges of violating Roman laws, and Acts ends with Paul in Rome proclaiming the Christian message under Roman protection; at the same time, Luke makes clear that the Romans, like all earthly rulers, receive their authority from Satan, while Christ is ruler of the [[kingdom of God]].{{sfn|Boring|2012|p=562}}