Note: From Reading the Gospels as Christian Scripture (Baker 2024). Reprinted by permission of the publisher. Citations have been omitted.
The Gospels are the revelatory Word of God that show us who God is and how he has acted through the Son and the Holy Spirit to accomplish salvation and to form a holy people for himself. We read them well not by holding them at arm’s length, pretending that we can give an “objective” account about what they say; rather, we recognize as we read God’s Word that the Gospels were written and are used by God for theological transformation. That is, they call us to enter into a certain way of life.
As I argued in the preceding chapter, the very self-involving nature of narrative means that when we read a Gospel, we are involved in reflecting on the relationship between its story and our own lives. “We as readers become part of the story we are reading, and thereby the world of the story and our world merge.” [William Placher, “How the Gospels Mean,” in Seeking the Identity of Jesus, p. 29] Will we accept or reject the claims that Jesus is the Son of God (Matthew 3:16-17), God’s very salvation (Luke 2:28-30) and the Word who was with and is God (John 1:1-2)? We are forced to choose whether we will align ourselves with the characters we are confronted with or reject their behavior and beliefs. Will we agree with the Pharisees and scribes that Jesus’s indiscriminate table fellowship with sinners reveals that he is a drunkard and a glutton, or will we see Jesus as the great shepherd-king who searches for and rescues the lost among God’s people (Luke 7:34; 15:1-32)? Will we agree with Jesus that one can confess him to be the Messiah but have no true understanding of what this means unless we understand the cross (Mark 8:27-33)? A community of believers who read these Gospels should find themselves communally reflecting on what they believe, how they behave and the entirety of their lives as they encounter God’s word in these writings. In what follows I make four brief calls for how we should approach the Gospels as the Word of God that aims to transform us into faithful disciples of the living Christ.
A Call to Humility, Prayer and Worship
The subject matter of the Gospels is God as revealed in the person of Jesus Christ. The goal of reading is fellowship with God and transformation into the image of Jesus Christ. Therefore, to rightly read these texts requires an appropriate posture as we read. Jesus Christ is the teacher, and we are the disciple-learners. We do not read the Gospels with the hope of mastering the texts or pridefully using them in the service of our theological agendas; rather, we read them with a posture of humility, knowing that they critique, convict and challenge us to repent – that is, to change our lives in humble obedience to the Christ of the Gospels. Techniques, methods and skills for reading the Gospels are important. But they cannot replace the necessity of coming to the Gospels with attention, humility, trust and openness to receive God’s revelation.
Here I will highlight one disposition and one practice in particular that are necessary for rightly reading the Gospels. First is the disposition of humility. Jesus repeatedly holds up humility as a central characteristic of his followers….Second is the practice of prayer. If the goal of reading the Gospels is communion with God, then prayer is a divine gift that enables God’s people to rightly read and respond to the Gospels….
There are many Gospel passages where our primary response is not one of imitation of Jesus or character transformation but rather one of worship of the living Christ….When we read the Gospels, we are brought face-to-face in a personal encounter with the living and risen Jesus Christ. While these texts have untold transformative potential, our first response should be one of worship. In other words, “We must first receive Jesus as gift before we can have him as example….We must first read and receive the Gospels as a revelatory act of God on our behalf in which we are given Jesus himself.” [Jonathan Pennington, Reading the Gospels Wisely, p. 159]
A Call to Faithful Discipleship
In an earlier chapter we saw that one of the main reasons for writing a biography is the desire to hold up a character who is worthy of admiration and emulation. And, in fact, in all four Gospels, Jesus consistently calls his disciples and all who listen to his message to follow his teaching and his manner of life. Jesus is a wise teacher who rightly interprets God’s will for his people. Jesus is emphatic that his words are of the utmost seriousness and must be followed (Matthew 7:21-29). In his words are “spirit and life” (John 6:63). And so, Jesus’s disciples will pursue peace, reconciliation, marital fidelity, honesty and love of their enemies (Matthew 5:21-48). As they attempt to follow Jesus’s teachings, they have Jesus’s very life as the pattern to follow. Jesus himself embodies humility and meekness (Matthew 11:28-30); he dispenses mercy to the needy and afflicted (Matthew 9:27; 15:22); he suffers as the innocent and righteous one (Luke 23:1-5, 39-47); when persecuted, he doesn’t retaliate (Matthew 26:67; 27:30); he prays privately (Mark 1:35-37) and he sacrificially serves and loves his disciples and those around him (Luke 22:24-27; John 13:1-20).
The Gospels repeatedly make it clear that Jesus’s life is the very pattern of God’s intended shape for human life and behavior. One of the ways the Gospels do this is through showing how the disciples, albeit very imperfectly, emulate the teaching and behavior of Jesus. This is seen clearly in those accounts where Jesus commissions the disciples for ministry in Matthew 10 and Luke 10. The disciples share in Jesus’s authority in order to continue his mission (Matthew 10:1). Thus, like Jesus, they proclaim the gospel to the lost sheep of Israel (Matthew 10:5-6; cf. 15:24), proclaim the good news of the kingdom of heaven (10:7; cf. 4:17), perform merciful healings and exorcisms (10:8; cf. 9:32-33; 12:15), raise the dead (10:8; cf. 9:18-19, 23-26), appear before the Sanhedrin (10:17; cf. 26:57-68) and are dragged before governors (10:18; cf. 27:1-2, 11-26). Jesus’s very life provides the pattern, then, that his disciples are called on to emulate.
The testimony of the Gospels and the entire New Testament is that Jesus is the living, risen Christ. As such, we do not approach him simply as a great historical figure whose teaching holds historical interest; rather, we approach him as the living resurrected Christ, whom we are called to follow, obey and learn from. Luke Timothy Johnson states this well: “If Jesus lives, then it must be as life-giver. Jesus is not simply a figure of the past in that case, but a person in the present; not merely a memory that we can analyze and manipulate, but an agent who can confront and instruct us. What we learn about him must therefore include what we continue to learn from him.” [Luke Timothy Johnson, Living Jesus, p. 4-5] Thus, as we read the Gospels, we should consistently be asking the question of what “faithful discipleship” looks like in our context based on Jesus’s teachings and pattern of life. We live in another time and location than that of Jesus and the first disciples. Thus, faithful discipleship and learning from Jesus will not be a simple matter of rote repetition; rather, knowing how to follow the Jesus of our Gospels will require communal discernment together as God’s people, a commitment to prayer and expectation of Spirit-illumination and a constant and close attentiveness to the person of Jesus in the Gospels. Our fourth call, which we will explore next, can also stimulate our imaginations as we seek to learn from others the way of discipleship.
A Call to Learn about Jesus from World Christianity
Churches in many different places, speaking in different languages and throughout the centuries have read the Gospels to learn what it means to follow Jesus. The impact that the Gospels, and those communities that have read them, have had on history, culture and church life is immeasurable. Paying close attention to how the Gospels have been read in other cultures, time periods and theological traditions can allow us to see the important relationship between the reading of the Gospel writings and the communities that seek to live out their meaning. Prior readings of the Gospels can broaden “our horizon by mediating a great treasury of experiences which other Christians have found.” [Ulrich Luz, Matthew 1-7: A Commentary, p. 99] Often the sources for these readings of the Gospels include hymns, liturgies, sermons, art and books. While we can never know even a fraction of the many ways in which the Jesus of the Gospels has transformed societies, cultures and individuals, our own reading of the Gospel writings can be sharpened and challenged when we have the curiosity to learn from other Christian communities.
We can learn from the early church fathers, for example, the role the Gospels play in articulating orthodox Christology. The church fathers provide significant help in clarifying the importance of Jesus’s real humanity and divinity, the relationship between the Spirit and the Son and the saving necessity of the incarnation of the Son of God. The church fathers are often involved in clarifying the grammar of the Christian faith as found in the four Gospels. Cyril of Alexandria (ca. 376-444), for example, provides a wealth of exegetical and theological knowledge for readers in his commentaries on the Gospel of John. Let’s look briefly at one of his important theological conclusions. Many readers of the Gospels may find themselves perplexed – just as John the Baptist was! – when Jesus is baptized. If Jesus is sinless and divine, why would he need to undergo a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins (Matthew 3:6)? Cyril notes that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and this indicates that he is humanity’s representative. Cyril observes that in John 1:32-34, when Jesus receives the Holy Spirit at his baptism, the Spirit remains on Jesus. The Son of God receives the Spirit and preserves the Spirit to human nature. In this way, the Son becomes both the giver of the Spirit and its representative recipient. Jesus’s baptism is thus emphasized by Cyril as the decisive event within salvation history, for it is here that the image of God is restored, and the Spirit returns to transform and sanctify human nature. But human nature is not completely transformed, Cyril argues, until the resurrected Jesus anoints his disciples with the Spirit (John 20:22-23).
We can learn from African American readings of the Gospels how Jesus’s teaching in the Sermon on the Mount and his consistent call to love “the other” provided fuel for the philosophy of nonviolence found in many of the leaders of the civil rights movement (Matthew 5:38-48; Luke 10:25-37). We can see how Black theologians found in Jesus the revelation of God’s purposes to bring about justice and equity, and how Jesus called forth a movement in which people would join Christ in bringing about freedom and liberation.
From Latino/a theologians we can learn more fully about how Jesus’s consistent identification with the poor and oppressed challenges the political and structural oppression of the weak and marginalized. We see how Jesus’s vocation to bring good news to the poor, provide release for the captive and oppressed and restore sight to the blind is part and parcel of the gospel of Jesus Christ (Luke 4:16-18). This Jesus is one who does not simply speak of an otherworldly future but rather calls forth economic justice, an end to racism and judgment on the wealthy and powerful upholders of the status quo. For many of us, a Jesus who focuses on our praxis – behavior and lifestyle – as opposed to merely wanting us to believe certain facts about God is a Jesus who will challenge some of our most deeply held convictions and ways of seeing the world.
Pentecostal groups show us the central role the Holy Spirit plays in Jesus’s ministry as well as how the same Spirit who anointed Jesus now empowers the church to continue to live out the story of Jesus in the Gospels. Anabaptists (and other peace traditions) hold up for us a Jesus who creates an alternative society that values peace, justice and sacrificial love at all costs.
We could continue to add to our list as well as flesh out the ways in which we can learn about the Jesus of the Gospels from different peoples and from different time periods. But here my purpose is simply to suggest that our reading of the Gospels will be even richer when we listen to and learn together about Jesus from our fellow brothers and sisters in the faith. We do not necessarily need to adopt or agree with every interpretation and image of Jesus that is set forth, but often we will find some of our blind spots overcome as we learn from the global church, from ancient interpreters and from other Christian traditions.
Joshua W. Jipp, Reading the Gospels as Christian Scripture, “Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group,” copyright 2024, used by permission.
Joshua Jipp, professor of New Testament, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
