Scripture Passage
Scripture Focus
No one has ever seen God. But the unique One, who is himself God, is near to the Father’s heart. He has revealed God to us. (John 1:18 NLT)
Observation
I’m sure I heard a collective sigh of relief this morning as we arrived together at New Testament readings. Still, aren’t you glad you’ve read through the Old Testament this year? Didn’t you learn some things—think some things—find yourself challenged by some things you hadn’t learned/thought/been challenged by before? Bottom line, without the Old Testament, the New has no history—no roots. Absent what we learn in the Old Testament, the New would make no sense. Jesus, I suppose, could simply appear and announce, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me” (as he does in Luke 4:18) but what significance would it have without all the history that surrounded Isaiah’s utterance of those words centuries earlier? Thank God for the whole of Scripture!
On a slightly different note I must give my opinion that the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) are perhaps the worst books of Scripture to read chronologically. Don’t misunderstand me—I value highly the chronological reading of Scripture. It really helps me put things in perspective. The gospels, however, are literature of a unique kind. We sometimes describe them as the story (the history) of the life of Christ, but they’re not history the way we usually think of it. The specifics of dates and sequence are not nearly as important to the gospel writers as they might be to a Western-mindset, 21st century American. No one followed Jesus around journaling his life into a logbook or twittering His activities in real-time. Rather, after the fact—specifically, years after the fact—it occurred to people that they should put in writing the stories they’d been re-telling (oral history) about the life of Jesus of Nazareth who (as it turns out) was “the Christ, the Son of the Living God” (Matthew 16:16 NIV).
Each gospel reflects, then, that it was compiled from those kinds of sources—*and* reflects each gospel writer’s unique perspective on Jesus. That’s why there are four gospels in Scripture instead of just one—each gives us a different glimpse of Christ and His unique mission in the world. To chop ‘em up and then put ‘em back together as one long chronological account risks losing the uniqueness of each particular gospel.
Knowing that going in, however, gives us the opportunity to look for the differences in the gospel accounts and discover in those differences clues about the specific interests and purpose of each gospel writer. The gospels (someone once said) are something like the facets on a diamond—each revealing the beauty of the remarkable stone in a different light. Mark, for example, begins directly and succinctly with the appearance of John the Baptist. Matthew begins directly with a stylized genealogy from Abraham to Christ, while Luke begins with a formal prologue and doesn’t introduce a genealogy until chapter 3. John doesn’t include a genealogy at all, but rather employs the language of Greek philosophy to express the wonder of the pre-existent Christ! Noting those differences as we read a chronological account will point us towards a better understanding of each gospel as unique and necessary in its own right.
So that’s my verbose and lengthy encouragements as we begin the New Testament. Specifically as we read the gospels chronologically, don’t neglect what’s unique about each gospel to itself. Rather, look in those differences for what each uniquely brings to the table about our Savior. He has revealed God to us. (John 1:18 NLT)
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