There is no doubt that the Lord Jesus is the key to the scriptures. The Bible is clearly the written word, and the Lord Jesus is referred to as the Word, the living Word, the Word made flesh. He fulfils the written word and all its promises. He is in Himself both God and man, and so He can be the reconciler, the one who alone brings about the full level of relationship between God and man. It has been well said that the Bible in a nutshell is as follows: 1) The Old Testament - Christ is coming. 2) The Gospels - Christ has come. 3) The rest of the New Testament - Christ is coming again.
If asked to introduce people who are not familiar with its message to the Bible, I would use these thoughts to begin the exploration of its contents. The four gospels are at the crossroads and are of crucial importance - not a random choice of words. The fact that there are four gospels is itself of great interest. Detractors seek to tease out contradictions and discrepancies, but have relatively little success. The compass and the map have the four directions we are all familiar with. The gospels fill out the scope and direction of the meaning of the life, death and resurrection of Christ.
Each of the four gospels has a particular theme and approach, although of course they also overlap and blend perfectly. The wonderful thing is that the four themes are boldly announced in certain verses in the Old Testament. We will look at these in turn and trust we shall see that they do indeed serve as keys to the Bible and the person of Jesus Christ. They are just staring points for much larger exploration of major themes of scripture.
MATTHEW - Christ as King. "Behold your King...." - Zechariah 9:9
From the start, Matthew's Gospel is concerned with the kingship of Christ. The genealogy traces His kingly line through David, establishing His right to the throne of Israel. It traces his presentation as King and the rejection of the people. Of necessity a King has a kingdom, that is, an area where he rules with power, authority and a display of strength where necessary. Such a concept of Kingdom is a central theme of Matthew in a way not seen in the other Gospels. It closely identifies with Jesus in His relation to the Jewish people. Because a Kingdom signifies rule and authority, it is not particularly a term associated with the church, where the relationship is much closer and based on love. The bride may be the bride of a King, but her relationship with the King is far different from that of the subjects and citizens. The "Kingdom of Heaven" is not speaking so much of heaven itself, but the rule from heaven over the earth and how it is worked out at different times. It is clear that Jesus had rights as an earthly King, particularly in relation to the people of Israel. However, Matthew clearly presents the rejection of the people for Him to take up that role. Rather than being crowned King, He was crowned with thorns and put to death on a cross. Does this mean that His right will never be exercised? Absolutely not. His earthly kingdom is postponed as other great purposes concerning Gentile nations and the gospel to all the world are worked out. One day the true King of Israel who is great David's greater Son will indeed rule over His people Israel and through them over the earth, as prophesied in so many Old Testament scriptures and confirmed in Romans and Revelation amongst other New Testament books.
Much of the practical teaching of Matthew is in the context of behaviour under the authority of a Kingdom. It is the Lord's manifesto for the His kingdom which was not accepted at the time, but will most certainly be in force in the Millennium. There are of course many principles which are right for all times and circumstances. However it is right to note certain differences of emphasis between, for example, the Sermon on the Mount and the epistles. The epistles are pure Church teaching. The church did not exist when Jesus was alive - He prophesied its formation no earlier than Matthew 16. He was living amongst His Jewish people and teaching them principles of His kingly rule and their life as subjects to that rule. There are many valid lessons for the church, but it is important to see the different contexts.
This is already opening up a wide topic of debate and disagreement amongst Christians, but I believe it is necessary to present this as fundamental to a proper understanding of the Gospels and their place within the context of the whole word of God and the glories of the Person of Christ.
MARK - Christ as Servant. "Behold, My servant...." - Isaiah 42:1 and 52:13
In Mark there is no genealogy. Who cares about the ancestry of a servant? Most commentators highlight a key verse of the Gospel as being 10:45, "For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many". Mark has an almost breathless brevity and compactness - miniature portraits in words of Jesus in action. This fits in with the regular use of words such as immediately, a key word of the Gospel. Just read the first couple of chapters to get the picture. Jesus was on a mission of active service. He lived a humble life in humble circumstances. He had nowhere to lay His head, and had to ask someone to show Him a penny.
And yet we have only just been thinking of Christ as King.... And yet, both King and Servant are clearly presented in the Old Testament prophecies.... How can both be true in one person? It requires the unfolding life of the Lord Jesus as recorded in the Gospels to show how both aspects are true of Him yet without contradiction to either. He was of proven kingly line, but was not born in a palace and refused all trappings of wealth and ostentation, and was yet no less of kingly bearing and authority for all that. He used the intrinsic authority of His person to serve, help and draw alongside people in all sorts of need and trouble. Above all, Jesus was serving His heavenly Father, living out a life of such devotion that had never remotely been seen before. Mankind should have been serving God faithfully and humbly, but failed in every case. Jesus should have been hailed as King and served, but the powerful testimony of truth and grace only highlighted the rest of mankind's shortcomings and so resulted in a large measure of hatred and rejection.
Nevertheless, there is a particular greatness about a faithful and true servant of a truly great master. God could at last look upon a life lived in this world and say "Behold, My servant", with the utmost delight and satisfaction. As a nation, corporately, Israel had failed as His servant. No individual prophet, priest or king had truly lived up to their calling. Now, in one person, every role and title was being taken on and lived out in full perfection.
One of our modern hymns delights in tracing the thoughts of Matthew and Mark in "The Servant King". Jesus, and only He, fills out these titles as presented in the Gospels. He is the fulfilment of the Old Testament prophecies, and they all coalesce in the one Person.
In the Old Testament, Isaiah writes vividly of the Servant Who Suffers in chapter 52 and 53. All the Gospels lead towards detailed accounts of the last days of Jesus, and His death and resurrection. A remarkable proportion of these already brief documents are concerned with those days and hours. It should be impossible to read them without the impression that they are intended to be at the heart of the message.
It was at the cross that the Servant undertook His greatest task. It was there He showed the fullest extent of His devotion to the will of His Father. It was there that He displayed His great act of service to sinners in need, by becoming their Saviour through His death as the only truly acceptable sacrifice for sin to a Holy God.
LUKE - Christ as Man. "Behold, the Man...." - Zechariah 6:12
Luke was a doctor, the "beloved physician" and deeply interested in all aspects of the human condition. His genealogy, unlike Matthew's, traces the line right back to Adam and his unique place in creation as the "Son of God". It is Luke who lingers over particular human details in His account. He is also painstaking in his historical records, and expressly seeks to present an "orderly account" of "those things which have been fulfilled (or, which are most surely believed) among us".
The Lord's own term in referring to Himself was "the Son of Man". The humanity of Christ is central to the message of the Gospels. He was not of some foreign distant material, unable to really appreciate what life as a human being is really like. He truly took part of humanity, in all its wondrous combinations of robustness and weakness. Scripture is at great pains only to emphasise that He remained apart from sin, unlike every other single human in history. Jesus knew what it was to be tired, to be thirsty, to be amazed, to be sorrowful, to feel compassion, to feel rejection, to have friends and enemies. He also knew in a deep way the motives and needs of the human heart, and Luke focuses on these in a special way throughout his Gospel.
There is much overlap with all the other Gospels, and Luke in some ways is perhaps the most rounded, and yet most approachable of all the Gospels. We get the little touches and details that we like so much, but that are often missing from Mark. We get a connectedness with other people that is not there in quite the same way in Matthew. Many have advocated Luke as the first Gospel for new Christians to read, or for those considering the claims of the Gospel message. Readers sense they are meeting with the real Jesus, in the context of His life in towns, villages and countryside, and in a social setting that are all brought to life in a vivid way.
Luke reveals more than this. He reveals that, as a man, Jesus had a unique insight into the heart of the individual. He could ascertain motives and reality hidden behind any mask or facade. We can find it so difficult to read other people, and even ourselves at times, with all the conflicting pulls and emotions that make life both so rich and so complicated. We are so defiled by sin that our understanding and appreciation is blurred. Jesus, being without sin, was painfully and starkly confronted with its reality and impact on human life, both individually and socially. And yet He was prepared to interact with people involved in every kind of problem and failure, and bring comfort whilst fully upholding the truth. Nothing was swept under the carpet.
The real Jesus was compassionate, loving, and approachable. The real Jesus was also scary, especially to those who were proud and would not acknowledge their own weakness and failings. Readers today should allow the full sweep of the real Jesus to shine through the record of the Gospels, and not rely entirely on the image of "gentle Jesus" or the "good teacher". We must get to the heart of the Gospels - the King, the servant and the man. This man, like so many others, faced an untimely, cruel and painful death. Unlike others, His death had a unique significance and meaning. Of this, Luke writes with passion and clarity. The account of the risen Lord meeting despondent disciples on the road to Emmaus is powerful. The Lord spoke from all the Old Testament scriptures "things concerning Himself". "Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things?" He asked, probing their understanding of the scriptures and their appreciation of who He really was. These are the really important questions that continue to face the readers of Luke's Gospel.
Anyone who has grasped the truths of Luke's Gospel can identify with the language of this hymn writer:
Behold the Man upon a cross,
My sin upon His shoulders;
Ashamed, I hear my mocking voice
Call out among the scoffers.
It was my sin that held Him there
Until it was accomplished;
His dying breath has brought me life -
I know that it is finished.
JOHN - Christ as God. "Behold your God...." - Isaiah 40:9
If we had an interesting tension yet unity between the thoughts of King and Servant in Matthew and Mark, here in Luke and John we have the ultimate in such a case. Yet both are clearly there in the unique fourfold Old Testament cry of "Behold" in the books of Isaiah and Zechariah. A four fold cry answered in the four Gospels. And John it is who most emphatically and clearly answers to the cry of "Behold your God" in Isaiah 40. No human genealogy in John. Not this time because a servant is in view. No, John opens with majestic language, and we can do no better and ought to do no less than simply repeat it.
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made."
John reveals that this Word "became flesh and dwelt among us". Jesus is, and ever was, and ever will be, eternal God. And yet, as we have seen in Luke, he was most certainly complete also in His humanity when here on earth. There are mysteries we cannot fathom. And yet the truth shines out through the Bible - Jesus, as the "God man", was a rounded individual without conflict or division in His personality. It is John who focuses so wonderfully on the divine nature of the Person of Christ. He lingers close to Jesus, not afraid or turned aside by a lack of welcome or approachability, but comfortable and at home. At yet it is also John who inspires in the reader the greatest sense of awe and worship and "differentness" of Jesus in His deity. The wonder is that human kind was created by God in such a way that he is in God's image, and therefore close to God. And yet, as a creature of creation, he is at the same time distant and removed from God the creator. And then there is the question of sin, which has brought in an incalculably greater gulf and distance between man and a Holy God.
It is Jesus, the "God man" who has bridged the gap for us. John had an express reason for penning his Gospel. In 20:31 he writes "these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name".
Although we have seen how Luke dignifies Adam with the title "Son of God", we know only too well how clearly humanity has defaced that image so that it is utterly untenable and unrecognisable. God is utterly separate from sin, and an unforgiven sinner can never be allowed in His presence.
It is through God the Son, come in flesh to this world, and primarily through the work of the cross, that sinners can be reconciled to God. In a series of radiantly spiritual insights and messages, John traces through certain events and teachings of Christ to show how the relationship between God and man was being restored in love and grace by God, the offended party. We are given special insights into who Jesus really is through the "I am" statements found alone in John's Gospel. One of the most powerful of these can be overlooked, where in John 8, Jesus says "... before Abraham was, I am". John uses the simplest of language to express the deepest thoughts ever to be conveyed or considered. Jesus is The Way, The Truth, and The Life. He is the true bread, the true vine, the door, the Good Shepherd, the Resurrection and the Life.
And John spends longer even than any other Gospel writer to explain that such a One, the Son of God, was the one who suffered at Calvary. Because of what he undertook there, He proved His ability and willingness to fill out another part of the message of Isaiah 40 - to gather, lead, feed and guide us, the ones who like sheep have all gone astray.
Jesus is the only provider in the universe for the deepest and desperately urgent needs of mankind. These are not physical - the physical are symptoms of the disease, not the cause. The real needs are spiritual, all the want and degradation and sickness of mind and body flows from the reality of sin and the broken relationship with God. Jesus has come, full of grace and truth, to reveal that God somehow still loves us, and is prepared at great cost to Himself, a way back for us. The offended party takes up our helpless case.
This is a brief overview of the Jesus of the Bible and his relationship to God and to us. The message of the Bible is unified and deep and wide in its scope. It deals with one nation, Israel, and also the Gentile nations of the world. It deals with individuals and their spiritual need. In Jesus, the whole of history has its crux, and the purposes of God are unfolded and revealed in Him. There are purposes still to unfold, but those who have the privilege of the closest and most precious involvement and relationship are those who "believe in the Lord Jesus Christ" and can say that He is the One "who loved me, and gave Himself for me".
John, Luke, Mark and Matthew are among that number. Paul was one who followed. In God's estimation, time can be stretched in two directions - a thousand years as a day, and a day as a thousand years. Just one of those allows us to consider the events of Calvary, 2,000 years ago, as happening the day before yesterday in the mind of God. The Gospels keep the record of Jesus alive for us. They are the Word of God, and when illuminated for us by the Holy Spirit, they bring the real Jesus, the Jesus we really need, to life for us. May this serve as a helpful pointer and introduction to others who are prepared to meet and know and appreciate the real Jesus, our Saviour and Lord.
[Personal note. I must have been in my early or mid twenties when I first heard a talk in which the outline of the gospels as above was unfolded, ie King / servant / man / God for the gospels in turn, plus the link with the "Behold" passages from the Old Testament. I take no credit, but they made a powerful impact, and I am convinced of their validity and truth. Thanks and appreciation in memory of John Flett of Bradford (originally a fisherman from the Moray Firth), and to whoever may have before him been impressed by this insight into the Gospels].
[Personal note. I must have been in my early or mid twenties when I first heard a talk in which the outline of the gospels as above was unfolded, ie King / servant / man / God for the gospels in turn, plus the link with the "Behold" passages from the Old Testament. I take no credit, but they made a powerful impact, and I am convinced of their validity and truth. Thanks and appreciation in memory of John Flett of Bradford (originally a fisherman from the Moray Firth), and to whoever may have before him been impressed by this insight into the Gospels].
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