The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

Mark 1:1

Our New Testament begins with the books Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, which are sometimes called “the Gospels.” However, it would be more appropriate to call them “The gospel according to Matthew, Mark…” etc. because there is only one gospel message (Gal. 1:6-9). The word “gospel” (= “good news”) is used to describe the message of God’s saving act in his Son (Mk. 1:1, 14-15; Rom. 1:16; 1 Cor. 15:1). Not until Justin in the second century were these accounts referred to as “the Gospels,” their own literary genre.

Though they lack some key features of traditional histories and biographies (for example, there is not much said about Jesus’ childhood and they do not always adhere to strict chronology), they best fit within these categories and give us a helpful framework to understand them. Though each account is unique, they all start, in some way, with the beginning of Jesus’ work on earth and end with his crucifixion and resurrection. This separates them from second and third century documents like the so-called “gospels” of Thomas or Peter which were written later and ascribed to the apostles.

If there is only one gospel message, why then do we have four similar but unique accounts of the same story? Over the years, Christians have attempted to answer this by “harmonizing” the four books in order to reconstruct the life of Jesus into a more complete picture. While this approach can be very helpful, we should also learn to view and appreciate each book on its own merit. 

In our quest to understand them, we must remember that each book functions on its own as a piece of literature. These four authors were as much theologians as they were historians. They did not merely “cut and paste” other sources together nor did they mechanically transcribe golden tablets that fell from the sky. God’s message is heard through four unique voices that reflect their own individual personality, writing style, experience, purpose and unique audience.

Therefore, we must approach each one as (1) historically reliable, (2) theologically charged, and (3) God-breathed (inspired). Each author put in a great deal of effort to write their account (Lk. 1:1-4). Those efforts, however, were superintended by God’s Spirit so that the final product was exactly what God wanted to communicate to his people (2 Pet. 1:21). God’s involvement and oversight of the writing process is what makes these texts “sacred” and “God-breathed” (1 Cor. 2:6-16; 2 Tim. 3:16-17). Scripture, then, is the result of the collaborative efforts of God’s Spirit and human authors.

One helpful way to appreciate each book is given below:

How deep: Matthew — Matthew was a Jew writing to Jews to show the depth of the gospel. He quotes extensively from the Old Testament to demonstrate how Jesus fulfills Jewish prophecy.

How wide: Luke — Luke was a Gentile writing to Gentiles to show the width of the gospel. He emphasizes the universal scope of God’s plan in welcoming Gentiles and outcasts into the kingdom.

How high: John — John shows the cosmic height of the gospel. His unique introduction, followed by a series of miraculous signs and accompanying discourses, emphasizes Jesus as the divine Son of God.

How low: Mark — Mark shows the lowliness of the gospel. He challenges Greek misconceptions about the Messiah by emphasizing Jesus’ authority in the first half of the book and then his suffering in the last half leading to his crucifixion.

“What is truth?” said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer. — Francis Bacon

Truth is commonly believed to be subjective, a matter of perspective that depends on one’s culture, society, ethnic group, gender and other contingent factors. Many believe no one worldview can rightly claim to be true because there are many truths. Things are only “true” if they are meaningful to the individual. This post-modern view of truth is detached from objective and knowable reality.

The difficulty for us who follow Christ is two-fold. First, our culture is increasingly pressuring us to adopt its diminished and warped view of truth when our Christian faith cannot coexist with such a view. If the gospel is news at all, let alone good news, it must be true. This means it must report facts and correspond with objective and knowable reality. The apostle Paul makes this point concerning Christ’s resurrection from the dead. If Christ has not been raised then our faith is empty and we are the most miserable creatures on earth (1 Cor. 15:14-19). He stakes everything on the objective truth that Jesus’ resurrection is an historical fact. If this is not objectively true then the entire Christian faith is irrelevant.

Second, it is challenging to communicate a faith based on objective truth to an audience who doesn’t believe in objective truth. But we can’t effectively persuade our post-modern neighbors to see the truth of the gospel if we do not have a firm handle on it ourselves. So we ask, as Pilate once did, “What is truth?”

For a statement to either be true or false, it must first be meaningful and intelligible. For example, the statement “Rocks explode” is neither true nor false, because it is nonsensical even though it is grammatically correct. The statements “There is one God,” “There are many gods,” and “There is no God” are all meaningful but they cannot all be true. Each statement is making a meaningful claim but they may or may not correspond to reality.

Second, for a statement to be true it must correspond to reality, it must be factual. Facts determine the truth of a statement. We may be entitled to our own opinions but we are not entitled to our own facts. Believing a statement is one thing but that statement being true requires some proof to back it up. The statement “Al Gore won the 2000 U.S. presidential election” is false because it does not correspond to reality.

The statement “Jesus lived in ancient Palestine” is true because it corresponds with objective history. But what about statements made in the future tense like “Jesus will come again”? This statement is more difficult to prove because it is an assertion about a future event. It is certainly meaningful and it is either true or false; Jesus will either return or not, the two statements are antithetical.

Can we rationally believe this statement with the same degree of conviction as those concerning the past? We can and should  believe it because God has given us sufficient reason by keeping his many prophetic promises in the Old Testament. God’s faithfulness in keeping past promises should give us confidence to trust him to keep his future promises. God is consistent and is a God of truth and not falsehood. He does not contradict himself and cannot deny himself or lie. His word is truth (Psa. 119:160; Jn. 17:17) and his word always corresponds to reality.

In the same way, moral statements in Scripture are true because they match reality. The statement “Adultery is wrong” is true because it corresponds with the objective moral law of God which is grounded in his own perfect moral character. This statement is not verified by appealing to historical fact but rather moral fact.

Whatever postmodern wind of doctrine blows against us, Christians must hold to the anchor of God's truth.

For our appeal does not spring from error or impurity or any attempt to deceive, but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts. For we never came with words of flattery, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed—God is witness.

1 Thessalonians 2:3-5

The defense of Christianity as objectively true, rationally compelling, and subjectively engaging plays an important role in evangelism. When engaging in apologetics, we are to persuade people of the truth of the gospel with rationally sound arguments. God calls us to love him with all our “mind,” as well as with our “heart” and “soul,” which necessitates an intellectual dimension to our devotion to God (Mt. 22:37). The Christian faith is a thinking, rational faith.

Since this is so, part of our approach to evangelism must be to help remove the intellectual obstacles that hinder others from coming to Christ. Therefore, apologetics is always in service to evangelism.

But we must be cautious. Our persuasion must not, as Paul puts it, “spring from error or impurity or any attempt to deceive.” The weapons we employ “are not of the flesh” but are spiritual in nature and have “divine power to destroy strongholds” of faulty “arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God” (2 Cor. 10:3-5). Therefore, we do not use personal threats, power plays, coercion or deception to achieve the goal of conversion. The means of evangelism must agree with the ends (conversion).

Instead, the methods we use to convince others flow from the Scriptures themselves. We speak the truth in love (Eph. 4:15) with “wisdom from God” (1 Cor. 1:18-31) so that others may hear the gospel, believe it, and follow it. We tell the truth and leave the results to God who will judge the world in righteousness.

Jesus engaged in apologetics with his sharpest critics (for a series of good examples see Matthew 22). If he is our example in all things, we must follow his lead. Let us, as Jude says, “contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints” (Jd. 1:3). But let us do so honestly and with the utmost integrity. “The bad man with a good argument is only half-clothed. One may have a sword (arguments) but lack a shield (godly character), and thus become vulnerable and ineffective.” (Groothuis, Christian Apologetics p. 37).

Paul told the young evangelist Timothy to keep a close watch on his life as well as his teaching (1 Tim. 4:16). Therefore, humility is also essential in evangelism. Humility is not, however, intellectual timidity or uncertainty. One can be humble and convicted of the truth at the same time. If we grow in our ability to persuade others without growing in the grace of humility, we will become arrogant which will undermine all our evangelistic efforts. Paul was well aware of this when he said, “we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.” (2 Cor. 4:7)

Another aspect of our humility in evangelism is our dependence on God through prayer. We cannot engage in anything for God without asking for his blessing and support first. Paul asked the Colossians to pray for his efforts to reach the lost (Col. 4:2-4). The church in Antioch prepared with prayer and fasting before sending Paul and Barnabas on their mission to preach the gospel throughout the Mediterranean world (Acts 13:1-3). We too must pray for wisdom when preparing to evangelize the lost.

Honesty and humility are indispensable to successful (i.e. biblical) evangelism. Success is not determined by the number of people converted but by whether or not we spoke the truth in love. We have been “entrusted with the gospel, so we speak not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts” (1 Thess. 2:4).

And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

Genesis 2:25

Why don’t animals have to wear clothes? That was the question posed by my daughter, who was three years old at the time. We may turn her question over and ask why humans shouldn’t go around naked because open nakedness was not always shameful.

In the beginning, Adam and Eve “were both naked and were not ashamed.” And why would they be? They didn’t know what nakedness was, let alone shame. They were, much like little children, ignorant and innocent of evil (1 Cor. 14:20). But after they had rebelled against God in the garden, they became aware of their nakedness for the first time and sought to hide their bodies from each other and from God in shame (Gen. 3:7-11). They bought their new knowledge with great pain (Gen. 3:16-18, 22-24).

From that point on, open nakedness became shameful. To see someone exposed is to witness their open shame (Gen. 9:22-23; Ex. 20:26; Lev. 18:6-18; Rev. 3:17-18; 16:15). To publicly expose a person’s nakedness was considered a form of punishment (Isa. 47:3; Hos. 2:3; Nah. 3:5). Idolatry was illustrated as “uncovering one’s nakedness” to strange gods (Ezek. 16; 23:18), whereas, covering another’s nakedness was an act of mercy (Ezek. 16:8; 18:7, 16; Hos. 2:9; Mt. 25:36).

After God’s pronouncements on the Serpent, Eve, and Adam, there are two rays of hope. First, Adam names his wife “Eve, because she was the mother of all living” (Gen. 3:20). “Eve” means ‘life-giver,’ which is especially hopeful in light of God’s earlier promise that the “seed of woman” would conquer the serpent (Gen. 3:15). Death slithered its way into God’s world but Life would crush it.

The next ray of hope comes through clothing. Though Adam and Eve had made clothes for themselves out of “fig leaves” these were evidently insufficient. In an act of mercy which foreshadowed greater acts to come, God made Adam and Eve “garments of skins and clothed them” (Gen. 3:21). Perhaps he did this because things “made with human hands” (Heb. 9:11) are inherently flawed. Also, notice the different material: animal hide instead of leaves. This more substantial covering indicates that the alienation of humanity from God was greater than they had realized. We are not told how God came by this skin, but it is not unreasonable to think that it required the death of the animal. If this is so, it would only be the first of many casualties to come in the war against sin.

This story teaches us at least two things. First, like Adam and Eve, we can never hide our nakedness and shame from God (Heb. 4:13). Second, God can cover our shame through the atoning sacrifice of Christ. The word translated as “atonement” has many nuances of meaning including “to cover.” In the Law, God allowed the blood of animals to make “atonement for your souls” (Lev. 17:11). The Israelites needed to know that sin invites death into the world and life was the only payment. Animal blood may have been better than “fig leaves” but it could never fully cleanse the conscience of the sinner and atone for sin.

John explains that “the blood of Jesus… cleanses us from all sin…” and “he will forgive us our sins…” because "he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 Jn. 1:7, 9; 2:2). John could see how Jesus fulfilled the entire sacrificial system of the Law. The Jewish Day of Atonement (Lev. 17) pointed to Jesus, a fact made plain by the Hebrew writer (Heb. 10). Therefore, what the blood of bulls and goats could never do, Jesus did by offering himself as a once-for-all atoning sacrifice to cover us. In Christ, we are “clothed” with him in baptism (Gal. 3:27) as we “put on” the new self (Col. 1:3-10) and wait to be “further clothed” in our resurrection bodies (2 Cor. 5:4).

1 I waited patiently for the Lord;

he inclined to me and heard my cry.

2 He drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog,

and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure.

3 He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God.

Many will see and fear, and put their trust in the Lord.

Psalm 40:1-3

Where do we turn when we’re down? To all who sense their deep need for help, Psalm 40 speaks volumes of relief. In this Psalm, David expresses his gratitude for God’s rescue; he had waited on the Lord (1) and had been helped by him. He describes his desperate situation as being in a “miry bog” (2a), an image sufficiently vague enough to have a wide application. The metaphor of being stuck in a slimy swamp suggests disgust and helplessness. Whatever his actual situation was, David had not just escaped the miry bog, but found himself on solid ground (2b).

Secure once again, David immediately finds occasion to praise God (3a) which flows outward from him to others (3b). What is this “new song” of “praise” which God had given him?

“New song” language is especially common in the Psalms (see Psa. 33:3; 40:3; 96:1; 98:1; 144:9; 149:1). When David says, “He put a new song in my mouth,” it is as if he is saying, “God, you have done something so wonderful for me that none of the songs I know can adequately express this new blessing!” When Scripture speaks of a “new song,” it marks the beginning of some fresh blessing. God has done something new and unexpected, something that breaks our notions of what we thought was possible. With the new blessing, comes a new song expressing our wonder and praise.

There is a “new song” which stands above the rest. In Revelation 4-5, God is depicted in colorful metaphor as the sovereign Creator. All the spiritual beings bow in his presence and cast their crowns before him acknowledging their utter dependence on him. They come together and sing that God is worthy of all glory because he created all things and by his will all things exist (Rev. 4:11).

Once the stage has been set with God’s glory at the center, the drama unfolds in chapter 5. In God’s right hand is a scroll sealed with seven seals which contain all of his plans for redemption and judgment. But his plans can’t be enacted until the seals are broken (Rev. 5:1). For example, the last will and testament of Emperor Vespasian was sealed with seven seals as well. And because no one had the authority to open them, his will had to go into probate court so the seals could be broken and his will put into effect.

In Revelation, a mighty angel challenges the entire universe, asking who is worthy to approach God to take the scroll and break the seals so that his will can be done (Rev. 5:2). But no one is found who is worthy. And John weeps because God’s justice and blessing can’t go forth (Rev. 5:3-4). But then one of the elders tells John to stop crying. “Look, the Lion of tribe of Judah has prevailed!”  (Rev. 5:5)

John looked and saw a Lamb (apocalyptic literature loves to mix its metaphors; the Lion is the Lamb — Lion: majestic/royal/powerful; Lamb: sacrificial/innocent, yet having seven horns, embodying complete kingly power). Because the Lamb-Lion takes the scroll, he prevails to bring about all of God’s purposes for judgment and blessing. Therefore, everyone present sings a “new song.” But it is no longer the song from chapter 4, praising God for creation. Instead, it is a song addressed to Christ (see Rev. 5:9-14).

We have all tasted and seen that the Lord is good (Psa. 34). And we have songs to express our praise. But when we go through some new agonizing situation and God pours out his grace in a fresh, unexpected way, he gives us a “new song” to sing. But all our new songs will have the same focus: Jesus, the Lamb who was slain to ransom us and make us a kingdom of priests to reign with him forever!