The Gospels

Four portraits of one Lord

The New Testament tells the story of Jesus four times. The four Gospels portray the same person, but each begins differently and has its own purpose. Mark plunges straight in with one line: "This is the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God" (Mark 1:1). Matthew opens with a genealogy presenting Jesus as "the son of David, the son of Abraham" (Matthew 1:1), and says again and again that the promises to Israel were fulfilled in him. Luke tells us that he wrote an orderly account after carefully investigating what the eyewitnesses handed down (Luke 1:1-4). John, near the end of his book, says why he wrote:

But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name.

John 20:31

All four lead to the cross and the resurrection. Mark gives six of his sixteen chapters, from chapter 11, to Jesus' last week in Jerusalem. Jesus "began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things" and "after three days rise again" (Mark 8:31), and he told them so again before they reached the city. The Gospels are not the biography of a great man; they are written so that we may believe in the one who was crucified and is risen.

So read each Gospel as a whole book. Lift one scene out and you can easily miss where that Gospel places it and what it means to show by it. Mark is short enough to read at one sitting. How each Gospel is built, what it stresses, and why there are four, are in the Bible Overview lessons on Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Side by side, without forcing

Often the four tell the same event in their own ways. Read a scene in one Gospel, follow the Cross-refs to the same scene in another, and you will notice what each includes and leaves out, and where each places a saying. Asking what each evangelist wants to show by these differences is what reading side by side means.

At Caesarea Philippi Jesus asked his disciples who they said he was. Peter's answer in Mark is "You are the Christ" (Mark 8:29); in Luke, "The Christ of God" (Luke 9:20); in Matthew, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God" (Matthew 16:16), and Jesus' words to Peter follow (Matthew 16:17-19). The confession is one, but in each Gospel it finds its own place and weight.

The church took these differences seriously from early on. Around 400, Augustine, bishop of Hippo in North Africa, wrote The Harmony of the Gospels, an early systematic treatment of the differences among the four Augustine, The Harmony of the Gospels. But reading side by side does not mean forcing every detail into one storyline, nor deciding, the moment a difference appears, that one Gospel is wrong. How the church has understood differing accounts is the subject of Does the Bible contradict itself?

The kingdom of God and the parables

At the centre of the Gospels is the kingdom of God. Mark gives it as Jesus' first words:

“The time is fulfilled,” He said, “and the kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe in the gospel!”

Mark 1:15

Jesus' miracles and teaching show that the kingdom, God's own reign, has come in him, and the parables are the way he most often pictures it. A parable is a story with a point, and the point is often shown by the setting in which it was told. Luke 15 gives the setting first:

Now all the tax collectors and sinners were gathering around to listen to Jesus. So the Pharisees and scribes began to grumble: “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

Luke 15:1-2

Jesus answers the grumbling with three parables: the lost sheep, the lost coin and the two sons. When the younger son comes home, his father sees him in the distance, runs to him, embraces him and kisses him (Luke 15:20). The story ends with the older son refusing to go in to the feast and the father coming out to plead with him (Luke 15:28-32), and we are not told whether he went in. The parable shows God's joy over sinners who come home, and it asks the grumblers: will you come in too?

Does every detail of a parable carry its own meaning, then? A parable is best read not as an allegory in which each detail stands for something, but as a whole story making one or two points. Yet Jesus himself explains the details of the sower: "The farmer sows the word" (Mark 4:14). And the church has long read details too. On the Good Samaritan, Augustine wrote, "For that man is taken for Adam himself, representing the race of man" Augustine. The Fathers had cautious voices as well: John Chrysostom, archbishop of Constantinople, said of a reading of the two sons as angels and men, "This interpretation seems indeed a lenient one, but I know not if it be true" Chrysostom. The Catholic Church still teaches the spiritual senses of Scripture, which rest on the literal Catechism of the Catholic Church 115–119; the Orthodox church of the East reads Scripture with the Fathers in its worship. The Reformers were wary of giving each detail a meaning of its own, and the Westminster Confession of the Presbyterian churches says that the true and full sense of a scripture is ‘not manifold, but one’ ch. 1.9. Why Jesus spoke in parables is the subject of Why did Jesus speak in parables?, and how the church has read them, of Interpreting Scripture in the theology course.

Try it

Open Luke 15 on the map. In the map under the Jesus tab, open Luke and tap chapter 15: it has a ‘One-line summary’ and ‘Notes’.

Write down the setting first, from verses 1 and 2. Note who came near and who grumbled, for instance ‘vv. 1-2: three parables for the grumblers’; then look for what the three parables repeat: ‘lost, found, rejoice together’.

Stop at the older son. Notice that the story ends with the father's words to the older son (verses 31 and 32), and write down as a question what that ending asks the grumblers of verses 1 and 2. Then put the whole chapter into a one-line summary.

Practice