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Course 7 · Lesson 3.5

Four portraits of Jesus: the distinct emphasis of each gospel

11 minute read

Lessons in this course

Course 7 outline

Module 1: The World of the New Testament

  1. Second Temple Judaism in the time of Jesus
  2. Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes and other movements
  3. Rome, the Herods and the province of Judea
  4. Hopes, protest and revolt in Jewish political life

Module 2: Jesus in History

  1. Sources for Jesus: Christian, Jewish and Roman
  2. The quests for the historical Jesus and their methods
  3. Criteria of authenticity and their limits
  4. Historical results and Christian confession

Module 3: The Gospels as Books

  1. The gospels and ancient biography
  2. Traditions of authorship and the arguments about them
  3. The synoptic problem: the evidence of agreement and difference
  4. Solutions: Markan priority, Q, Matthean priority and others
  5. Four portraits of Jesus: the distinct emphasis of each gospel

Module 4: Acts and the Spread of the Church

  1. Pentecost and the Jerusalem church
  2. The mission to the Gentiles and the council at Jerusalem
  3. Paul in Acts and in his own letters
  4. Acts as history and as theology

Module 5: Pauline Theology

  1. Paul and his letters: occasion, authorship and order
  2. Gospel, faith and righteousness in Romans and Galatians
  3. Christ, the Spirit and the body of Christ
  4. Reading Paul: traditional, new perspective and other approaches

Module 6: Johannine Theology

  1. The Gospel, the three letters and Revelation: authorship questions
  2. Word, light, life and love in the Gospel of John
  3. The signs and the I am sayings
  4. The Spirit, the community and the Johannine letters

Module 7: Hope, Authority and Church Order

  1. The kingdom of God and last things in Jesus and the apostles
  2. Ways of reading New Testament eschatology
  3. What an apostle was and how apostolic authority worked
  4. Offices and order in the first churches
  5. How Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant churches read the evidence

Module 8: The Testaments Together

  1. Fulfilment and continuity: how the New Testament uses the Old
  2. Law and covenant across the Testaments
  3. Comparing Paul and John: a method
  4. Shared convictions and meaningful differences

All courses

Program / Course 7: New Testament Theology and History / Lesson 3.5

What you will learn

  • Describe the central emphasis of Mark, Matthew, Luke and John.
  • Identify typical features of each gospel, such as structure, favorite themes and audience.
  • Explain why the church kept four gospels and did not merge them into one.
  • Compare the portraits fairly without treating differences as contradictions.

The big idea

Each gospel tells the story of Jesus with its own emphasis. Mark presents the suffering Son of God and calls readers to follow him. Matthew presents the Messiah of Israel and the teacher of a new community. Luke presents the Savior who reaches the poor, the outcast and the Gentile. John presents the eternal Word made flesh, who reveals the Father. The early church kept all four, and held that together they give a fuller picture than any one could alone.

Key terms

Messianic secret
A name given to Mark’s theme that Jesus often tells people not to reveal who he is. Scholars debate its origin and purpose.
Fulfilment citation
A quotation from the Old Testament that Matthew introduces with a phrase such as ‘that it might be fulfilled,’ to show that events in Jesus’ life accord with Scripture.
Discourse
A long block of teaching. Matthew has five major discourses, and John has the long farewell discourse.
Christology
Teaching about the person and work of Christ.
Diatessaron
A single gospel harmony made from the four, compiled by Tatian in the second century. It was used for a time in Syria and later set aside in favor of the four.
Signs
The word John uses for Jesus’ miracles, which point beyond themselves to who he is.
Tetramorph
The image of four living creatures (man, lion, ox, eagle) from Ezekiel 1 and Revelation 4, which the church used as symbols of the four evangelists.

Background

In the second century, some Christians wanted to use only one gospel, as Marcion did with an edited Luke. Others, like Tatian, wove the four into one story. The mainstream church decided to keep all four as they were. Irenaeus argued that there are four gospels as there are four winds and four regions of the world, an argument from fitness and not from history, but it shows how strongly the church valued the plural witness.

The portraits differ in what they include. Mark and John have no birth stories. Matthew and Luke have them, with different details. Only Luke has the road to Emmaus, only John has the raising of Lazarus and the washing of the disciples’ feet, and only Matthew has the visit of the magi. These differences point to the aims of each writer, which this lesson summarizes. Such summaries are generalizations, and scholars debate each of them.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: Mark, the suffering Son of God

Mark is the shortest and fastest gospel. It moves from Jesus’ baptism through a ministry of healing and conflict to a long passion story. Mark uses the word ‘straightway’ (immediately) repeatedly. He gives the title Son of God at the start (Mark 1:1) and has it confessed by the Roman centurion at the cross (Mark 15:39). The center of the book is Peter’s confession at Caesarea Philippi and the first prediction of the passion (Mark 8:27 to 33).

Mark stresses that Jesus’ power is bound with suffering and that following him means taking up the cross (Mark 8:34). Jesus often commands silence about who he is, and the disciples are shown as slow to understand. The oldest manuscripts end at 16:8 with the women frightened at the empty tomb, and later endings were added. Scholars debate whether Mark meant to end there.

Step 2: Matthew, the Messiah of Israel and teacher of the church

Matthew opens with a genealogy that connects Jesus with Abraham and David. He repeats the formula that events happened ‘that it might be fulfilled’ and uses such formulas about a dozen times. He presents Jesus as a new Moses who gives teaching on a mountain, and organizes the teaching into five large discourses, each ending with a similar formula (for example Matthew 7:28). Matthew alone uses the word church (Matthew 16:18 and 18:17).

The gospel is deeply Jewish in character, with concern for the law (Matthew 5:17 to 20), and yet it ends with a command to make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19). Many scholars see it as written for a community of Jewish Christians in tension with other Jewish groups, perhaps in Syria. This is an inference from the text and not certain.

Step 3: Luke, the Savior of the poor and the nations

Luke writes in the best Greek of the four and opens with a formal preface. He gives a long journey section as Jesus moves toward Jerusalem (Luke 9:51 to 19:27) and shares stories not found elsewhere, including the good Samaritan, the prodigal son and Zacchaeus. He pays attention to women, the poor, outcasts and Gentiles, and to prayer and the Holy Spirit.

Luke continues his story in Acts, where the gospel goes out from Jerusalem ‘unto the uttermost part of the earth’ (Acts 1:8). Together the two volumes make up about a quarter of the New Testament. Luke presents Jesus as the one in whom God’s salvation is for all people (Luke 2:30 to 32).

Step 4: John, the Word made flesh

John begins not with a birth or a baptism but with the eternal Word who was with God and was God (John 1:1). Its structure is different: a book of seven signs, followed by the farewell discourse and the passion. Jesus speaks in long discourses and in ‘I am’ sayings. He travels to Jerusalem several times and the ministry seems to last about three Passovers.

The purpose is given in John 20:30 and 31: that readers may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and have life in his name. The gospel is the most explicit of the four in its claim that Jesus shares in God’s divine identity. Later lessons look at John in more detail. Some scholars find real history in John’s details, and others see the book as primarily a theological work.

  1. What does Mark’s emphasis on the cross suggest about the kind of readers he hoped to reach?
  2. How does Matthew show that Jesus belongs to the story of Israel?
  3. What does Luke’s inclusion of the poor, women and Gentiles suggest about his message?
  4. Why might John have chosen to begin with the Word and not with a birth story?
  5. How do the four portraits differ in the way they describe Jesus’ identity?
  6. What is gained and what is lost when one tries to merge the four into a single story?

Examples

The same Jesus teaching about greatness

In Mark 9:35, Jesus says that anyone who wants to be first must be last and servant of all. In Matthew 18:1 to 4, the same teaching is linked to the child as an example and to entry into the kingdom. In Luke 9:46 to 48 it appears with the child and with the one who is least. In John 13, Jesus shows the lesson by washing feet.

The cry from the cross

Mark and Matthew record the cry ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ Luke instead gives ‘Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit’ (Luke 23:46), and John gives ‘It is finished’ (John 19:30). Each stresses a different aspect of Jesus’ death, and church tradition holds that all were spoken.

The church’s symbols

By the fifth century, Christian art used the four living creatures of Ezekiel and Revelation to stand for the evangelists: a man for Matthew, a lion for Mark, an ox for Luke, an eagle for John. Early writers assigned the creatures in various ways, and the one now common became standard later.

Different perspectives

Catholic view

The Church teaches that the four gospels are the principal witness to the life and teaching of the Word incarnate, and that each presents Jesus truthfully from a particular standpoint (Dei Verbum, 18 and 19). The fourfold gospel is understood as one gospel in four forms.

Orthodox view

The Orthodox Church reads all four gospels in the liturgy through the year and speaks of the Gospel as a single revelation in four accounts. The icons of the four evangelists stand beside the Gospel book as signs of this unity.

Protestant view

Protestants hold the four gospels to be Scripture, each with its own testimony. Reformed and Lutheran traditions have often read John as a guide to the others, and evangelical traditions often use harmonies to bring them together. Calvin wrote a commentary on the harmony of the first three gospels, treating them as complementary.

Critical scholarly view

Scholars who study each gospel’s editing stress that each writer shaped the story to speak to a community. They debate how far such shaping affected the historical content, and whether the differences point to different Christologies or to different emphases on one faith.

Why it matters

Reading the gospels one at a time, in their own voice, brings out the richness of each and avoids flattening them into one story. Knowing each emphasis also helps a reader see why a detail is present in one and absent in another, and use all four together without anxiety about difference.

Common misunderstandings

Misunderstanding: The four gospels tell the same story in the same way.

Correction: They overlap but have different structures, details and emphases. Reading them as if they were one text hides what each writer is saying.

Misunderstanding: The differences between gospels are contradictions that prove they are unreliable.

Correction: Some differences are harder to reconcile than others, and scholars discuss them openly. Many are differences of selection and emphasis, which ancient readers would have expected in several accounts of one life.

Misunderstanding: Mark is only a rough draft that Matthew and Luke improved.

Correction: Mark is a carefully shaped work with its own theology. Whether or not later writers used it, it has its own voice and purpose.

Misunderstanding: John teaches that Jesus is God and the synoptics do not teach anything about his identity.

Correction: The synoptics present Jesus as Son of God, Son of Man and Lord, with authority to forgive sins and to command nature. John states the identity more openly, but the question of how the portraits relate is debated among scholars.

Knowledge check

Summarize the emphasis of Mark.

Mark presents Jesus as the Son of God whose power is joined with suffering. It moves quickly, centers on Peter’s confession and the passion predictions, shows the disciples as slow to understand, and calls readers to take up the cross and follow.

What are two marks of Matthew’s gospel?

Fulfilment citations that show Jesus fulfilling the Old Testament, and five great discourses, including the Sermon on the Mount, that present Jesus as teacher like Moses. Matthew also alone uses the word church, and ends with the commission to all nations.

What is distinctive about Luke?

Luke has a formal preface, a long journey narrative, and special parables such as the good Samaritan and prodigal son. He stresses the poor, women, outcasts, prayer and the Spirit, and continues his story in Acts, where the gospel reaches the Gentiles.

What is distinctive about John?

John begins with the eternal Word, presents seven signs and long discourses, uses I am sayings, and states its purpose that readers may believe Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. Its structure and many stories differ from the synoptics.

Why did the church keep four gospels?

Early Christians such as Irenaeus held that the four were the ones received from the apostolic churches and used in worship, and that together they bore fuller witness than any one. Attempts to use only one, or to merge them, were set aside.

Think it through

  1. Which gospel’s portrait do you find yourself drawn to, and why?
  2. How do the different cries from the cross shape your picture of the death of Jesus?
  3. Is it a strength or a weakness that the church kept four accounts?
  4. What would you miss if one gospel were taken away?

Independent assignment

One scene, four voices

In your own notebook, write 350 to 500 words. Choose the stilling of the storm (Mark 4, Matthew 8, Luke 8) or the feeding of the five thousand (Mark 6, Matthew 14, Luke 9, John 6). Compare how the gospels tell it. Note what each emphasizes, and tie it to the emphasis of that gospel described in this lesson. Do not send this to anyone.

Further study