Tracing God's Story: New TestamentSample

The Gospels

The first section of the New Testament is called the Gospels and consists of four books: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. This section is unique because each book tells the same story. They describe and detail the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, which would cover approximately the years 4 BC to 30 AD.

You might be wondering why we need four different books to tell us the same story. Imagine you are a detective trying to solve a crime. You are not going to ask one witness what he saw, and then assume the other people who witnessed it agree. You're going to question all of them, and all of them might give you different information, not conflicting information, but information from a different viewpoint or different perspective. You can then take all the evidence you gather, put it together, and gain a clear picture of what happened. This is why we have four Gospels. God wants us to gather information from each of them, put it all together, and gain a clear picture of what happened.

The word gospel means the teaching or revelation of Christ. It is a record of what happened. Each of these writers was a man with a different background, upbringing, and opinions. Each one is going to record the events with their focus. But together, they bring harmony to the story of Christ. I want to give you an overview of who the authors are and the main theme in each book. Just a reminder, God is the ultimate author of these books, but they were written down with His divine revelation by human men.

Matthew is the first book in the Gospels, although there is some controversy on whether it was written first. It is the perfect bridge from the Old Testament to the New Testament as it links them together with the genealogy that brings us from Abraham to Jesus. Matthew, also called Levi, was a Jewish tax collector before becoming an apostle. He was likely hated by his peers because tax collectors worked for the Romans, so they were considered traitors. Also, many of them were dishonest and took money for themselves.

Matthew wrote his book primarily for other Jews. He wants to demonstrate to them that Jesus is the Messiah, as spoken throughout the Old Testament. He wants them to see all of the prophecies that were fulfilled. Twelve times, he uses the phrase "This took place to fulfill what the Lord said through the prophet". His emphasis is on the teachings of Jesus. He quotes a lot of words from the law. And just like the Torah has five sections, the Book of Matthew can also be divided into five major sections.

Next comes the Book of Mark. Mark, whose full name was John Mark, was not an apostle. He was the son of a wealthy woman whose home believers used to gather and pray. It is not believed he was an actual eyewitness to the events of Jesus, but he was very close with people who were. Most of his book was based on the account of an apostle named Peter. Mark did not focus on writing to the Jews or even people familiar with the Old Testament. Instead, he focused on those who were not. Because of this, he did not start with genealogy and used very little reference to prophecy. His focus was that Jesus was a servant with a job given to him by God. His book was filled with stories of the work He did and the authority He held, so he recorded more miracles than any other gospel writer.

After Mark, we have the gospel of Luke. Luke was also not an apostle. In fact, Luke was probably not even a Jew. He was a well-educated physician who interviewed over 100 people to get all the details right. He, of course, wrote this book for all people, but it was primarily for the Greeks. His focus included the forgiveness of sins offered through Jesus Christ that was available for all people and all nations, the gifts given to believers by the Holy Spirit, and the humanity of Christ who lived a perfect life. To highlight the humanity of Christ, he showed Jesus as living a life of prayer and includes 11 separate accounts of Jesus praying to his Father. (There are only 15 total in all the Gospels.) His book is the only one to describe the story of Jesus's birth, and he seems more concerned with telling everything chronologically.

These three Gospels are often called synoptic Gospels. The word synoptic comes from a Greek word that means to see together. It means these three books share very similar stories. They basically all relay the story of Christ's life, death, and resurrection through many of the same reports and events.

The last gospel, the gospel of John, is unique. While the synoptic Gospels focus on Jesus's human relationships, His ministry in Galilee, and His works, the gospel of John is more spiritual-focused. It covers His ministry in Judea and stresses the importance of Jesus's words. John was not only an apostle but was considered one of Jesus's closest friends. He was a fisherman before meeting Jesus and was one of the first men called to follow Him. His purpose for writing his book is easy to know because he tells us about it in his book. He says, "These are written so that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. Jesus, who was God, came to Earth as a man and died so that you can have eternal life." John wants to inspire belief in anyone who reads his book.

Fun fact: John wrote five books in the Bible, and Luke only wrote two. However, Luke wrote significantly more words. He is the third-highest contributor to the entire Bible, just behind Moses and Ezra, with almost 38,000 words.

Jesus did a lot of things during his short, earthly ministry. These men could not give accounts for every act He performed or word He spoke. John said that if everything Jesus did was written down, the world would not have enough room for all the books that were written. Therefore, each gospel writer was intentional about the details he shared as they gave their accounts from different angles for different purposes. While each man shared a different aspect of Jesus's character, God gave us all four accounts so we could put them together and grasp the overall picture of who Jesus is, the Messiah who was sent to Earth to bring salvation to the world and fulfill the promises of God.

I hope the information shared today helps you grasp how interesting the Bible is so that you develop a passion for reading it. And I pray that as you dig into scripture, God speaks to you in exciting new ways, and your spirit begins coming to life.