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Introduction to Jesus Christ through the New Testament
"The New Testament properly begins with a small collection of books known as the Gospels, because they contain the essence of the Good News (that is the meaning of the word gospel)the life of Jesus Christ. These books are not lives of Jesus or biographies in the ordinary sense because Jesus was no ordinary person. What they are designed to give us is the essence of what we need to know about Jesus as the Son of God and Savior of the world. This means that their primary focus is upon the disclosure of what his saving mission was and the facts surrounding the accomplishment of that mission, namely, his death and resurrection. The earliest form of the gospel message was that Christ died for our sins, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day, and that he appeared to his followers (1 Cor. 15:38). The Gospels fill that out by adding the events surrounding his birth and early life, his teachings, his ministry of healing, his trip to Jerusalem, and the events of his last days.
From the very beginning people had a good deal of interest in Jesus life and soon they wrote many small volumes to explain who he was. Some volumes contained authentic material; others, no doubt, were written to prove some point or other. In order to preserve the truth of what was remembered about Jesus, and under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the four books we now have were written, gathered together by the church, and given a special place in its corporate life. There is no special reason why four were chosen; it is just that these particular books commended themselves to the earliest believers as being of supreme value and were retained as different and indispensable pictures of Jesus as Gods Son and our Savior.
The shortest and earliest is Mark. It emphasizes the last week of Jesus life, devoting six of its sixteen chapters to that. Here we see Jesus as the divine servant of God who does his will, even unto death. Luke was probably written next. In it Jesus is presented as the ideal man, son of Adam, and the fullest embodiment of Gods will for us as human beings. Matthew appeared about the same time and depicts Jesus as the new Moses, fulfiller of Israels hopes, the true Messiah, and the light of the world. Johns Gospel came last, probably in the last decade of the first century, and is a theologically oriented treatise designed to show Jesus true nature as deity through his humanity. These four points of view combine to give us a composite picture of Jesus as God and man, Servant of God and Savior of all."
Elwell, W. A. (. (1989). Evangelical Commentary on the Bible. (Mt 1:1). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House Company. |
