The Four Gospels: One Jesus, Four Angles

When the Old Testament closed, the people were still waiting. The first four books of the New Testament are about the One they were waiting for.

The New Testament opens with four books about the life of Jesus, called ‘the Gospels’. Why four? The four books do not explain one another; each begins from its own starting point. So we take them at their own word and see where each one begins.

The first line of Matthew’s Gospel is: “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham” (Matt 1:1). It begins with a family tree, placing Jesus in the line of Abraham and David; again and again the book says that something happened “that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet” (Matt 1:22).

Mark’s Gospel has no family tree and no birth story; its first line is simply: “The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mark 1:1). The gospel is good news, and Mark announces right at the start: the good news has begun. A few verses later, Jesus is already preaching in Galilee.

Luke’s Gospel opens like a letter, written to a man named Theophilus. Luke says these things were handed down “even as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word delivered them to us” (Luke 1:1–2); he himself, “having traced the course of all things accurately from the first,” decided “to write to you in order, most excellent Theophilus; that you might know the certainty concerning the things in which you were instructed” (Luke 1:3–4).

John’s Gospel begins even earlier: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). This Word “became flesh and lived among us.” (John 1:14) Near the end, John explains why he wrote the book: “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” (John 20:31).

Together the four books tell what Jesus did. When he was baptized, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matt 3:17). He was tempted in the wilderness and answered with the words of Scripture. He called fishermen: “Come after me, and I will make you into fishers for men” (Mark 1:17). He preached that “God’s Kingdom is at hand,” (Mark 1:15) and taught on the mountain: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven” (Matt 5:3); he often used parables to speak about the Kingdom. He fed five thousand people with five loaves and two fish, and then said, “I am the bread of life” (John 6:35). John says that if everything Jesus did were written down, “I suppose that even the world itself wouldn’t have room for the books that would be written” (John 21:25).

More and more, the people who followed him were asking the same question. After the storm was stilled, the disciples said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” (Mark 4:41) In the next lesson, Jesus puts this question to his disciples himself, and then turns toward Jerusalem.