The Gospels

There were four hundred years of silence after God spoke through the prophet Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament. Four hundred years! Can you imagine that period of waiting, doubting, hoping? But this week we don’t have to wait for the rest of the story. We get to keep reading and discover the good news as we begin the New Testament.

The very first book of the New Testament, Matthew, opens with a genealogy. As subjects go, reading through a catalog of names that go back some four thousand years hardly seems appealing. Who wants to trudge through a list of hard-to-pronounce names? The genealogies trace God’s hand in the lives of his people, they demonstrate how he uses ordinary people to be a part of his extraordinary story, and they ground the story in history. These were real people—real moms and dads and sons and nephews—many of them familiar to the original audience. Once we understand how the different parts of the New Testament play a role in God’s story of redemption, we can come to appreciate every part of the Scriptures.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John make up what are known as the Gospels. The word “gospel” means “good news,” and that’s exactly what we find in these books—the good news that God has initiated his kingdom through the coming of his son, Jesus. Each Gospel bears the name of its author. Matthew, Mark, and Luke’s Gospels tell Jesus’s story from the bottom up, focusing on Jesus’s humanity and slowly revealing he is the Son of God. The Gospel of John tells the story of Jesus from the top down, beginning with the Word of God coming down from heaven to become a man (John 1:1, 14).

Each Gospel points to Jesus by narrating the most significant aspects of his life and ministry on Earth in its own way. Some Gospels recount the same events, but each is expertly crafted to reveal a particular aspect of the good news of Jesus.

Matthew’s gospel is written with a Jewish audience in mind. When we read it, we find it replete with references to Jewish customs. The particular truth this Gospel emphasizes about Jesus is summed up in Matthew 5:17: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but fulfill them.”

The Gospel of Mark is the “action-packed” Gospel. Mark moves his story along quickly in order to teach us that “the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (10:45).

Luke’s Gospel is the only Gospel written by a non-Jewish man. It emphasizes that the good news of Jesus is for all—Jews and Gentiles. It is addressed to Theophilus, that he “may have certainty concerning the things [he has] been taught” (Luke 1:3-4). What Luke wants to show us through his gospel is that Jesus “came to seek and to save the lost” (19:10).

Lastly, we might think of John’s Gospel as the Gospel of love. Love is such an important part of John’s understanding of Jesus that he can’t help but use the word a total of fifty-seven times! It is here that we find the often-quoted verse that begins, “For God so loved the world . . .” (3:16). John tells us his purpose in writing: “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; 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” (20:30–31).

Whether we’re studying Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, it will help us to remember that each book is ultimately about Jesus. He is the main character, and we can be sure we’ve understood the Gospels correctly only when they’ve led us to him.