The Four Gospels
As we move from the Old Testament to the New, everything feels different. Think back to Unit 3 and picture the world we’re entering: Israel under Roman rule, influenced by Greek culture, filled with lively debates among Jewish groups, and full of hope for a promised savior, as we saw in Unit 11.
It’s into this setting that the four Gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – arrive, starting the New Testament with a bold message: the long-awaited one has come, and his name is Jesus.
Before we look at each book, let’s answer an important question: what kind of writing is a Gospel? Remember from Unit 1 how we ask what kind of book we’re reading before we try to understand it. Gospels are somewhat unique.
The word gospel means good news, which is a big clue. A Gospel isn’t a modern, neutral biography or just a list of facts. It’s an announcement, written by people who truly believed they were sharing the most important news ever.
Still, the Gospels are similar to ancient biographies, called bios or lives, which told the stories of important people to show their character and meaning. But the Gospels mix this style with a message and a deeper purpose.
Each Gospel is part biography, sharing Jesus’ life, teachings, death, and resurrection; part announcement, declaring that Jesus is the promised one; and part theology, explaining who he was and what his coming meant. Each writer, called an evangelist (a word linked to good news), chose and arranged their stories to highlight what they wanted readers to understand.
That’s why it’s helpful to think of the Gospels as four portraits instead of four photographs, as we discussed in Unit 4. Imagine four artists painting the same person; each picture is true, but each one highlights different features and uses different styles to show something unique.
The Gospels do the same. They give us four real and different views of Jesus, each written for a different audience and each focusing on different parts of his identity and message. Knowing this helps us see that the differences between the Gospels aren’t mistakes. They’re the result of four writers telling the same story in their own ways, giving us a richer picture than any one could alone.
As we start the New Testament, keep this in mind: a Gospel is a unique type of writing: part ancient biography, part announcement of good news, and part theology. The four Gospels are four real portraits of Jesus, each created for a different audience, and together they give us a more complete picture than any single one could. Now, let’s take a closer look at these portraits and how they connect.
Now let’s dive deeper into the four Gospels and revisit something from Unit 4: the interesting way they relate to each other.
Three of them – Matthew, Mark, and Luke – are very similar. They share a lot of the same stories, often in the same order and with similar wording. That’s why they’re called the Synoptic Gospels, which means to see together. The fourth Gospel, John, is quite different, with its own unique style and content. Let’s look at each portrait with this in mind.
Let’s begin with Mark. As we mentioned in Unit 4, most scholars think Mark was written first and used as a source by Matthew and Luke.
Mark is the shortest Gospel and moves quickly, with events happening one after another, often connected by the word immediately. Mark shows Jesus as powerful and full of authority – healing, casting out evil, and controlling nature – but also as someone who moves purposefully toward suffering and the cross.
Mark’s style feels urgent and raw, making the story feel real and immediate, and it doesn’t hide the fear and confusion of those around Jesus.
Matthew takes up much of Mark’s material and shapes it for a largely Jewish-Christian audience. Matthew is deeply concerned to show that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Hebrew Scriptures and the hopes of Israel, quoting the Old Testament again and again with the refrain that this happened to fulfill what was spoken.
Matthew presents Jesus as a new teacher of the law, gathering his teaching into great blocks, most famously the Sermon on the Mount, and portraying him as the promised king from David’s line, connecting directly to the Davidic covenant and the messianic hope we traced in Units 9 and 11. If you want to see how the New Testament reaches back and claims the Old, Matthew is your guide.
Luke, as we saw in Unit 4, also uses Mark and shares material with Matthew. Luke’s portrait of Jesus is full of compassion and has a wide reach. He pays special attention to people on the margins: the poor, the sick, sinners, outsiders, and women, who have an important role in his story.
Luke’s Jesus reaches out to those who are excluded and lifts up the lowly. Only Luke gives us famous parables like the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son. Luke also has a strong sense of history and places the story in its broader context. And, as we’ll see, Luke wrote a sequel.
John is different from the others. While it covers the main events of Jesus’ life, John tells the story uniquely. Instead of short sayings and parables like the Synoptics, John gives us long, thoughtful talks where Jesus reflects on who he is.
John is the most theological, starting not with Jesus’ birth or family tree, but with a poetic introduction that connects Jesus to the eternal Word of God at creation.
The book is full of symbols – light and darkness, bread and water, life and death – and includes the famous I am statements, where Jesus calls himself the bread of life, the light of the world, the good shepherd, and the resurrection and the life. John’s portrait focuses on Jesus’ divine identity and invites readers to reflect deeply.
Together, these four portraits show us Jesus as powerful and suffering in Mark, the fulfillment of Israel’s hope and a great teacher in Matthew, a compassionate friend to outsiders in Luke, and the divine Word made flesh in John.
As we learned in Unit 4, the Synoptics are closely connected, while John stands apart. Try to keep these portraits separate in your mind: each one is unique for a reason and reveals something the others don’t.
Now that we know what the Gospels are and how they’re different, let’s look at the main story they all share. Then we’ll see how that story continues in the book of Acts, which shows how the movement spread to the wider world.
All four Gospels share the same basic story. They tell about Jesus’ arrival, his public teaching and healing, his gathering of disciples, and his growing conflict with religious and political leaders. Mark especially highlights Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem and the cross.
Each Gospel focuses on Jesus’ final days: his last meal with his disciples, his arrest, his trials before Jewish and Roman leaders, and his crucifixion. Every Gospel ends with the central claim of Christianity: Jesus rose from the dead, the tomb was empty, and he appeared to his followers.
As we saw in Unit 6, Mark’s abrupt ending at the empty tomb and the later added ending are key examples of textual criticism. No matter how each Gospel ends, the resurrection is the high point of the story.
Two big themes in Jesus’ teaching show up in all the Gospels. The first is the kingdom of God (or kingdom of heaven), which is the main focus of his preaching, especially in the Synoptics.
Jesus says God’s reign is arriving and uses many parables, short, everyday stories that surprise people and show what God’s kingdom is like.
The second theme is his radical message of love, mercy, and welcome. He calls people to love even their enemies, to forgive, to care for those in need, and he often befriends those whom society rejects. These teachings have had a lasting impact, reaching far beyond Christianity.
Now let’s turn our attention to the book of Acts, which connects the Gospels to the rest of the New Testament.
Acts was written by the same person who wrote Luke, as a planned sequel. Luke tells Jesus’ story, and Acts tells what happened after: how a small group of followers in Jerusalem became a movement that spread throughout the Roman world in just one generation. If the Gospels are about Jesus, Acts is about the birth and rapid growth of the early church.
Acts begins with Jesus’ followers receiving the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, which the book describes as the start of the church. From there, Acts follows the movement as it grows in Jerusalem and then spreads outward, breaking through major barriers.
One of the main stories in Acts is how the message moved from the Jewish community to non-Jews, or Gentiles. This was a huge and controversial change that reshaped everything. It also brought up tough questions about who could join and what was required; questions we’ll see again when we read the letters in the next unit.
The second half of Acts focuses on one main person: the apostle Paul, who we’ll learn more about in Unit 13. Acts tells the dramatic story of how Paul changed from someone who opposed the movement to its greatest missionary. It follows his travels across the Roman world as he starts and supports new communities of believers, all the way to Rome.
This is important for what’s next, because it leads directly to the letters. When we read Paul’s letters in the next unit, they’re addressed to the same cities and communities that Acts describes him visiting. Acts gives us the story, and the letters show us the conversations that went with it.
So, to sum up Unit 12: The Gospels are a special kind of writing; part biography, part announcement of good news, and part theology.
They give us four real portraits of Jesus: Mark’s powerful and suffering figure, Matthew’s fulfillment of Israel’s hope, Luke’s compassionate friend to outsiders, and John’s divine Word made flesh. The Synoptics are closely connected, while John stands apart. Together, they tell the story of Jesus’ ministry, his teachings about God’s kingdom, his death, and his resurrection.
The book of Acts, which follows Luke, continues the story with the rapid growth of the early church, the arrival of the Spirit, the spread to Gentiles, and Paul’s journeys, setting us up for the letters we’ll read next.
That’s how the New Testament begins.
