What Are the Gospels?
The Gospels of the New Testament are stories about the life of Jesus, or as Mark says, “the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (1:1). In the Bible, there are actually four Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Each of these Gospels tells the story of Jesus in a different way. Have you ever wondered why they are different? Matthew and Luke both include genealogies of Jesus’ family at the beginning of their stories, but Mark starts his story talking about John the Baptist and Jesus’ baptism, and John begins by taking about the beginning of creation. Matthew and Luke both mention the Lord’s Prayer, but Mark and John say nothing about it. Did Mark and John not know about Jesus’ genealogy or the Lord’s Prayer? I am sure they did, but for Mark and John these details were apparently not important, not relevant for the audience they were writing to or for the purposes of their story.
If you really think about it, it does make sense that we have four versions of the same story. Think of it this way: If four people went on the same ten-day trip and then afterwards each one of them was asked separately to write a story about their experience for the ten days, there would be great similarity in their stories, but there would also be a large amount of different information in each story. Each writer had a slightly different experience and each one would have different points of emphasis. From the perspective of the Bible, we are blessed that the early Church recognized the need to retain different stories so that later generations would have a greater opportunity to know God’s story. At the end of John’s Gospel, the writer notes, “Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name” (20:30-31). In other words, the writer of John’s Gospel didn’t tell us everything about Jesus; he only wrote about the things he felt were the most important. We have to remember that each Gospel writer wrote what he wrote because each of them was writing for a different community that had different needs and different understandings of God’s mission in the world. For example, Matthew was writing to a predominately Jewish community that had become followers of Jesus, while Luke was writing to a predominately Gentile community.
As you read through the Gospels, you will note that there are many differences and many similarities. This does not mean that Scriptures is inaccurate; it just means that those that were inspired to write the story focused on different critical points.
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