CHAPTER FOUR
Jesus’s Life and Teaching
Jesus the Christ—Founder and Focus of Christianity
Whatever else Christianity was or is—in its best versions and at the church’s worst moments—there is no Christianity without the person of Jesus. And by the “person of Jesus” we mean two things simultaneously: (1) the historical Jewish man who lived in Palestine for a few decades around 6 BC–AD 30; (2) the incarnate Second Person of the Triune God of Christianity, who is worshiped and obeyed by millions of people throughout the world.
Judaism has had countless rabbis and leaders, some of whom are especially important (Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah), as has Christianity (Peter, Paul, Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Edwards, Barth). But Judaism can continue apart from any individual leader or teacher because it is codified primarily in a history, a tradition, and books of instructions. Christianity, by contrast, has always been and will forever be focused on a singular person who ultimately defines and incarnates the faith. The book of Christianity, the Bible, is crucial to Christianity’s existence, but the essence of Christianity is God revealed to the world through the person of Jesus. Taken as a whole, the New Testament paints a rich and complex picture of how Christianity understands the world. But whatever picture we perceive from our study of the New Testament, it must primarily depict Jesus the person before it outlines a set of doctrines or moral instructions (as important as those are).
This chapter is split into two parts, corresponding to the dual reality of who Jesus is. First, we will examine Jesus’s life and activities while he lived (and died) on the earth. Second, we will explore the theological content of his message and the message about him according to the apostles. This harmonized sketch will provide a guiding trajectory to be traced in more detail throughout the rest of the book.
Jesus’s Life and Death
Jesus’s Life, Death, and New Life
During Jesus’s own day, and even throughout the first century AD, few people outside the Christian community wrote anything substantive about Jesus. We have only occasional references from other historians at the time such as Josephus, Tacitus, and Suetonius, as well as some critical remarks in the Jewish literature. This lack of literature is understandable, however, because while Christianity did spread rapidly among a wide variety of people, it was not until the second and third centuries that it had become so extensive and influential that rulers, philosophers, and other literate people had to take notice. Therefore, our primary resource for understanding Jesus’s life comes from the New Testament itself.
Jesus’s Beginnings
Nearly all modern biographies of famous individuals begin with their background and childhood. This was generally true of biographies in the ancient world as well. Of our four canonical Gospels, two of them provide this kind of background information (Matthew and Luke), while the other two begin Jesus’s story with his adult actions (Mark and John). In fact, on the assumption that Mark was written first, it probably was this lack of information about Jesus’s origins that in part inspired Matthew and Luke to write their own, fuller Gospel accounts, which include several stories about the events surrounding Jesus’s birth.
The first thing to note about Jesus’s early life is that, even though it is his birth that would later become the way that Western civilization divides human history into BC and AD, Jesus almost certainly was born in what we would call 6 BC, not AD 1. On the surface this seems like an impossibility (like dry water), that Jesus was born six years “before Christ.” The problem is simply that when people in the Middle Ages created the calendar system that we now use, they did not have as much information as we now do about how to calculate these ancient dates. They were close, but we have now been able to discern—based on aspects of Jewish and Roman history—that Jesus was born somewhere around 6 BC and died around AD 30.
What Was the Star of Bethlehem?
Figure 4.1. View of Bethlehem from the Shepherds’ Field [Shutterstock / John Theodor]
Melding pieces from Matthew and Luke together with general historical information, we can offer a rough sketch of Jesus’s birth and childhood. Herod the Great ruled over the Jewish people from Jerusalem as a vassal of the Roman Empire during the years 37–4 BC. Somewhere around 7 BC the angel Gabriel appeared to Zechariah, an old Jewish priest who was performing his duties in the Jerusalem temple (Luke 1:8–12). Gabriel told Zechariah that he and his wife would have a son who would grow up to be a great prophet (Luke 1:13–17). Gabriel then appeared to a young woman named Mary and informed her that, although she was a virgin, she would have a child who would be God’s own Son (Luke 1:26–33). Mary was engaged to a good and gracious man named Joseph, and when he found out that Mary was pregnant, and knowing that the child was not his, he planned to end their engagement privately (Matt. 1:18–19). But an angel appeared to Joseph and told him that he should stay with Mary, that this was God’s work, and that their son’s name would be Jesus (Matt. 1:20–25).
Around 6 BC, when Mary was close to delivering this mysterious son, she and Joseph were forced to travel south to Bethlehem to register for the Roman census (Luke 2:1–5). While there, in this crowded and chaotic time, Mary gave birth to Jesus in a stable (Luke 2:6–7). Angels appeared to some shepherds in the fields and announced this miraculous birth, and the shepherds came in amazement to find the child (Luke 2:8–20). On the same night, some fifteen hundred miles away, some sages in Babylon witnessed something in the heavens that made them realize that a king had been born (Matt. 2:2). Seven days later, Joseph and Mary took Jesus to Jerusalem for the required circumcision and other temple rituals, where they met two elderly saints who blessed them and prophesied over the child (Luke 2:21–38).
Some months later, the foreign sages from Babylon arrived in Jerusalem and inquired at Herod’s court regarding the king who had been born, assuming from their research that this child would be king of the Jewish people. The paranoid despot Herod was greatly disturbed and sent the sages to find the child, under the pretense that he wanted to honor this newborn king as well (Matt. 2:1–8), though in fact he planned to murder him. Through consulting the Jewish Scriptures and by the reappearance of a star in the heavens (probably an angelic appearance again) the sages found Joseph, Mary, and the young Jesus in their house, and they bowed down in reverence, giving the young family royal gifts. An angel then warned them in a dream not to return to Herod (Matt. 2:9–12). When Herod learned of this, he sent troops to kill all the young boys in Bethlehem to make sure he would destroy any claimant to the throne. On the night before this massacre the angel appeared once again and warned Mary and Joseph to flee. They escaped to Egypt and lived among the Jewish community there (Matt. 2:13–15).
Figure 4.2. View of Nazareth [Shutterstock / JekLi]
Eventually Mary and Joseph heard that Herod the Great had died (4 BC) and were told by an angel to return to Israel. They decided not to return to Bethlehem, because one of Herod’s sons was now reigning in that area. So they went as far away as they could within Palestine—Nazareth in Galilee in the north. Therefore, although he was in the line of David and born in Bethlehem near Jerusalem, Jesus grew up as a Galilean (Matt. 2:19–23).
We know little about Jesus’s childhood and young adulthood. The only story the Gospels tell us comes from when Jesus was twelve years old, on a trip with his parents to Jerusalem. As their group of travelers began the journey home, Jesus, unbeknown to his parents, stayed behind in Jerusalem, conversing with the rabbis in the temple, proving to be a young man of wisdom and piety beyond his years (Luke 2:41–52).
This brief sketch of Jesus’s birth and early years shows him to be something more than a typical human. His conception was a unique miracle (“by the Holy Spirit”), and his birth was foretold as the harbinger of great change in the world. But then there is silence for a long time. We know almost nothing about what happened between these events and Jesus’s sudden appearance as a prophet and preacher, at around the age of thirty to thirty-three.
Other Infancy and Childhood Stories about Jesus
Figure 4.3. The Adoration of the Shepherds by Bartolo di Fredi [The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Cloisters Collection, 1925.]
Jesus’s Ministry
Apart from the brief birth narratives and the one Lukan story about Jesus as a twelve-year-old, the Gospels focus almost all their attention on Jesus’s ministry as an adult, starting when he was somewhere around thirty to thirty-three years old. Just as we don’t have precise dates for his age, we also don’t know the exact length of Jesus’s ministry. But using references to various Jewish festivals in the Gospel of John, we can reasonably calculate that Jesus taught and preached for about three or three and a half years before he was arrested, tried, and crucified in Jerusalem, around AD 30.
Did Jesus Have Emotions?
The basic shape of the adult Jesus’s ministry is consistent across all four Gospel accounts. First, we meet a wilderness dweller nicknamed John the Baptizer. John was sent by God as a prophetic herald before Jesus came, calling people to repent in light of the coming kingdom of God (Matt. 3:1–3; John 1:6–8). Amid John’s widespread popularity and influence, preaching and baptizing people on the banks of the famous Jordan River, Jesus himself showed up and submitted himself to John’s ritual baptism (Matt. 3:13–15). But unlike any other person baptized, when Jesus emerged from the water, a voice from heaven declared his sonship, while a dove descended and alighted on him as a sign of God’s favor (Matt. 3:16–17; Luke 3:21–22; John 1:32). These momentous events set the stage for Jesus’s own ministry, which would soon eclipse and supersede John’s preparatory work. But there was one more important experience that Jesus needed to undergo before he began teaching and preaching: he had to be tested and tried. Led by God’s Spirit, Jesus spent forty days and nights in the Judean desert, fasting and praying. At the end of this time God’s ancient enemy, Satan, attempted to thwart Jesus’s ministry by tempting him to not completely obey God the Father (Matt. 4:1–11; Mark 1:12–13; Luke 4:1–13). Having successfully resisted these temptations, Jesus then began his public ministry of preaching, teaching, healing, and calling people to become his disciples.
It is these central activities—preaching, teaching, healing, and discipling—that mark Jesus’s ministry. All of these activities are performed under the banner of “the kingdom of God.” Jesus’s preaching and teaching explain what the kingdom is; Jesus’s healing of multitudes of people foreshadows the restoration and redemption of humanity in God’s coming kingdom; and the calling of disciples reshapes people’s values, sensibilities, habits, and hearts in ways that accord with the imminent coming of God’s reign.
While calling people such as fishermen, tax collectors, and others to be his followers, Jesus miraculously healed masses of Jews and gentiles. He became known as compassionate and loving, welcoming the broken, the outcasts, and the moral, physical, and economic “lessers” of society. Jesus, empowered by the Holy Spirit, performed other miracles, which were signs of God’s favor on him. These included walking on water, calming a storm at sea, multiplying bread and fish, and raising people from the dead (Matt. 14:22–33; Mark 4:35–41; 5:21–43; Luke 7:11–17; John 6:1–15; 11:1–44). These miracles, often performed only in the presence of his closest disciples, were done not to draw large crowds but to meet the needs of people and to testify to Jesus’s unique and authoritative role as God’s Son on the earth. In the midst of this regular ministry of miraculous healings, Jesus continually taught what the kingdom of God is like. He regularly insisted that his main purpose in coming was not simply to heal people but to call people into a life of discipleship based on his teaching about God’s soon-to-be-here reign. Thus, his preaching, teaching, healing, and discipling were all rooted in the great reality of the kingdom of God.
What Did Jesus Look Like?
Jesus’s Death and New Life
The preceding description of Jesus’s loving and compassionate ministry is very positive, and we would assume it was received happily by everyone. However, from nearly the very beginning of Jesus’s public life he was questioned, opposed, maligned, and ultimately entrapped by the Jewish religious leaders of his day. Both the political and theological leaders smelled trouble with this extremely popular Jesus. Not only were crowds flocking to him, following him, and openly turning their confident hopes to a future time when he would become their king, but also Jesus himself stirred up dissent by openly criticizing the Jewish leaders and many of their most cherished traditions. In this, Jesus showed up as more than a wisdom teacher and miraculous healer; he was also a God-sent prophet. And just like the fate of many of the prophets of the Old Testament, Jesus the prophet faced great opposition and resistance from the very people he was sent to help.
This opposition came to a boiling point in the spring of AD 30, around the time of the Feast of Passover. For some weeks Jesus and his disciples had been heading south to Jerusalem to celebrate this important festival. Along the way he repeatedly predicted that this was going to be their last trip to Jerusalem because there he would be betrayed, captured, tried, and killed (Matt. 16:21–23; Mark 8:31–33; cf. John 13:18–30). And so it came to pass.
Jesus arrived in Jerusalem a week before the Passover amid great fanfare and consternation. The fanfare came from the multitudes of Galileans and other disciples who were following Jesus. They believed Jesus to be the long-awaited Son of David, who would restore God’s reign on the earth. As Jesus approached Jerusalem, the city of David, they were inspired to give him the royal welcome they believed he deserved. This event is still celebrated today as Palm Sunday, because Jesus’s disciples ripped down palm fronds and laid them on the road in front of the donkey-riding Jesus as they sang and shouted their celebration. But not all shared their enthusiasm. The Jerusalemites in general, and the Jewish leadership in particular, saw Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem as a threat to their stability and likely to bring punishment from the Roman rulers and soldiers. Moreover, they believed Jesus to be an impostor at best and demonically possessed at worst.
What Jesus did next only amplified the opposition, frustration, and anger against him. More than a passive recipient of all this praise, commotion, and hope, Jesus once again donned his prophetic mantle and proceeded to disrupt the everyday temple activities. Shockingly, he turned over money tables and broke open the containers holding the sacrificial animals, all while criticizing the Jewish leaders for their hypocrisy and failed leadership of God’s people and temple. The leaders would have gladly arrested and killed Jesus on the spot, but his popularity prevented such bold force. The leaders needed to scheme a way to dispose of Jesus quietly. They found it in Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve disciples, who chose to betray Jesus. For the price of thirty pieces of silver Judas arranged for the Jewish leaders and their soldiers to capture Jesus while he was praying at night in an enclosed, private garden called Gethsemane.
Jesus knew that his time was limited, so he gathered his twelve closest disciples for a final celebration of the Jewish Passover meal together. This Last Supper night was very important, with Jesus teaching about his impending death and giving instructions for the future of his disciples to be people of love and service to one another.
After their meal was over, Jesus led his disciples to the garden to pray. The Jewish leaders arrived with armed soldiers. After Judas identified Jesus by greeting him with a kiss, the soldiers proceeded to arrest him. Jesus’s lead disciple, Peter, attempted to prevent the arrest by employing his sword and cutting off the ear of the high priest’s servant. Jesus rebuked Peter and prevented his disciples from trying to stop the events. Jesus was then bound and taken away while all his disciples fled in fear for their lives, abandoning Jesus as he predicted they would (Matt. 26:31–56; Mark 14:50; John 16:32).
After Jesus was betrayed and abandoned, he spent a long night being shuffled among various leaders, all the while being questioned, mocked, and beaten. First he was interrogated by the former high priest Annas, while the Jewish leadership council (the Sanhedrin) gathered. The Sanhedrin and the ruling high priest, Caiaphas, questioned him all night until he was handed over to the Roman governor, Pilate, in hope of a treason charge. Pilate assessed him and then sent him to the Jewish governor, Herod, who questioned him and then returned him to Pilate. Pilate somewhat reluctantly presented Jesus to the Jewish masses as a candidate to be released. The crowds, however, at the instigation of the Jewish leaders, demanded Jesus’s crucifixion. Pilate ordered Jesus to be whipped—a torture that included Roman soldiers mocking and beating him.
During these painful hours, which continued into the dawn, Jesus’s disciples were terrified of being arrested themselves. Judas regretted his betrayal of Jesus and hanged himself, while Peter tried to follow Jesus’s movements. But when Peter was identified as a follower of Jesus, he three times denied it, thus failing to be a faithful witness. The rest of the disciples fled, with the exception of several women who stayed nearby.
Figure 4.4. The Tower of David in the Old City of Jerusalem [Shutterstock / RPBaiao]
Jesus was taken outside the city walls to a place called Golgotha, where he was nailed to a wooden cross and hung until he suffocated or bled out. At noon the sky went dark and remained so until about three in the afternoon, when Jesus cried out and died, at which time an earthquake occurred and the temple curtain was torn in two. A soldier pierced Jesus’s side with a spear to make sure he was dead, and then Jesus was removed from the cross and buried in a garden tomb provided by Joseph of Arimathea, a wealthy disciple.
Jesus’s disciples were shocked and devastated and went into hiding. On the Sunday morning after these events, some of the women disciples went to Jesus’s tomb and found it opened and Jesus’s body gone. They thought that his body had been stolen, until an angel appeared to them and announced that Jesus had been raised from the dead by God. Jesus himself then appeared to Mary Magdalene and a small group of other women. The women ran back to the eleven disciples to tell them of Jesus’s resurrection. The disciples too found the grave empty, but then Jesus appeared to them several times in various places over a forty-day period, proving that he was alive with a resurrected physical body. He proceeded to appear to a variety of disciples, including the instance in which he restored the failed Peter to his place of leadership among the disciples (Luke 24:13–43; John 20:24–29; 21:15–17; 1 Cor. 15:7). Jesus commissioned his disciples to go throughout the world and make disciples in his name, teaching what he had taught them. After this, Jesus ascended to heaven in the sight of the disciples. About a week later the Holy Spirit came upon Jesus’s disciples at the Feast of Pentecost, beginning the ministry of the church.
Figure 4.5. Golgotha in Jerusalem [Shutterstock / Dennis Diatel]
Jesus’s Message and the Message about Jesus
In the previous section we offered a historical sketch of Jesus’s life from the perspective of the Gospels—that is, an outline of Jesus’s life, death, resurrection, and ascension, focusing on what Jesus did and what happened as a result.
In this section we can now offer another sketch, this time focusing on what Jesus taught, along with what the Gospel writers teach about Jesus. Jesus had a message that the Gospel writers have recorded for us. But beyond merely recording what Jesus taught, the Gospel writers also teach readers how to understand what Jesus said and who Jesus was. Thus, we can speak about both Jesus’s message and the message about Jesus.
Jesus’s Message—The Themes of Jesus’s Teaching
Over the course of his three-year ministry Jesus traversed many miles all over Palestine, always teaching and preaching along the way. Often he taught in the Jewish synagogues, and when the crowds and opposition grew too large, he preached from hillsides and harbor boats so that the multitudes could hear him. He also privately taught certain things only to his closest disciples, such as the meaning of his parables and the instructions he gave at their final supper.
The one consistent response to Jesus was amazement at his words, both for their immediately apparent authority and for their shocking content. Additionally, Jesus’s teaching was regularly accompanied by miraculous healings, adding to his credibility. Moreover, when the obviously more-learned religious leaders and teachers tried to refute this son of a tradesman, Jesus consistently showed himself to be wise, bold, and steeped in the wisdom of God. All of this meant that people hung on Jesus’s every word, memorizing what he said and then eventually writing down his sayings and teachings. From the Gospel records we can discern several main themes.
1. The kingdom of God / kingdom of heaven
Central to Jesus’s teaching was the kingdom of God (which Matthew usually calls the kingdom of heaven). The kingdom refers to the space and time of God’s absolute, just, and good rule over the whole world, where he is present as king, where justice and peace rule, and where evil, pain, and death are vanquished. This biblical description of the kingdom of God makes it immediately apparent that this reality is at the same time true now and not yet fully realized. God does rule over all the world, and at the same time, mysteriously, he has not yet chosen to completely vanquish death and evil; his presence is not fully known in the world. The difference between the now and the yet to come of the kingdom is most easily summarized in the heart of the Lord’s Prayer, which is central to the Christian’s life during this time of waiting.
Jesus’s teaching about the kingdom of God consisted of two elements. First, during his earthly ministry Jesus was constantly preaching that this kingdom is “at hand,” meaning that it is about to come from heaven to earth through his own actions. The incarnation, life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus brought the kingdom into its “at hand” / “already but not fully yet” state.
Second, Jesus’s kingdom teaching continually described what life in God’s kingdom should and will look like. Jesus taught many parables and portrayed vivid images of what God will do to heal the world when his kingdom comes (exalt the humble, humble the proud, destroy evil and death) and what the citizens of the kingdom will be like (loving, forgiving, peacemaking, joyful). Thus, Jesus’s repeated emphasis on the kingdom of God is central to Christianity’s hope for the future and shape of life now.
Jesus, Teacher of Parables
2. Eternal life
Jesus also regularly taught about inheriting, receiving, and entering into eternal life. To modern Christians this may sound like Jesus is talking about an angelic existence in heaven. But “eternal life” in the Bible is simply another way of describing life in the kingdom of God, a flourishing life that never ends (“eternal”). Both the “kingdom” and “eternal life” refer to the new age when God will return to the world to be present and to rule fully. In the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) Jesus primarily talks about the kingdom, but he does also refer to eternal life. The Gospel of John does the reverse: John refers to the kingdom a few times but prefers instead to talk about eternal life. In both cases the descriptions and point are the same: there is an era coming through Jesus that will permanently change the whole world. Therefore, those who believe and trust in Jesus must align themselves with him, and his way of being in the world, so that they might enter into this everlasting good life in the kingdom when Jesus returns from the Father at the end of this current age.
3. The true and greater righteousness
Closely related to Jesus’s teachings about the kingdom and eternal life is the theme of true and greater righteousness. The true form of godliness or righteousness that Jesus taught is another way of describing the picture of life together in God’s kingdom. According to Jesus, the righteous or godly life can be summed up most comprehensively with one word, “love.” According to the two greatest commandments from God (Matt. 22:36–40), this love has two necessary directions: vertical toward God and horizontal toward others. Together, love for God and love for others form the summary of all God’s will and law in the world. Love for God looks like piety that is honest, authentic, directed toward God as a good Father, and comes from the heart, the whole person, not just being exterior in form. Love for others looks like compassion toward all, mercy for those in need, and forgiveness for those who have wronged and even persecuted you. Jesus constantly called people to this way of eternal kingdom life or true righteousness, not in a mechanistic or legalistic way, but as an invitation for people to experience fullness of life through God, both now and in the age to come.
4. Salvation coming for all who respond in faith
One of the most shocking aspects of (the Jewish) Jesus’s teaching was that the kingdom, eternal life, and true righteousness are available to all people of the world regardless of ethnicity, moral background, gender, education, or status. Salvation is for anyone and everyone who has ears to hear Jesus’s call and for whoever responds to him in faith and faithfulness. This theme in Jesus’s teaching was the cause of much of the conflict and opposition he faced, and it becomes foundational to Christians’ self-understanding in distinction from Judaism. The Jewish leadership resented and rejected this idea in Jesus’s teaching, both because it made gentiles equal to Jews and because it offered forgiveness to notoriously sinful people who do not meet the Jewish standards of righteousness. The implications of this teaching reverberate throughout the rest of the New Testament and became the focus of a heated debate in the first century: the relationship between Jews (and the Mosaic law) and gentiles in the new covenant.
5. The call to a life of discipleship
Perhaps the most comprehensive way to describe Jesus’s teaching is his call to a life of discipleship. This call to discipleship is the invitation to follow Jesus’s own ultimate example of humility, righteous suffering, and love. Jesus both teaches and models God’s nature and values: favoring the poor over the rich, the meek over the powerful, the humble over the proud, the wholehearted over the superficial. No servant is greater than his or her master (Matt. 10:24–25; John 13:16; 15:20), and thus, as Jesus was obedient to God’s will, even amid suffering, so too must his disciples be. Understanding Jesus’s teachings means learning a way of seeing the world, and a way of being in the world, that accords with God’s nature, will, and coming kingdom, all revealed through Jesus Christ.
The Message about Jesus—The Gospels’ Interpretation of Jesus
As we have noted above, there are two levels of teaching detected in the Gospels: the things Jesus himself taught and the lessons the Gospel writers are teaching about Jesus. These are not in contradiction with each other, but rather, taken together, they provide multilayered instruction. The Gospels not only record what Jesus said but also provide the church’s understanding of who he was and what he accomplished. (See more about the Gospels in chap. 5.)
The primary question that the Gospel writers seek to answer is the biggest one of all—Who is this man Jesus? Their answer to this central question is multiform.
1. Teacher, sage, philosopher
Jesus’s primary earthly activity was instruction. Everywhere he went, he was teaching and preaching about God’s kingdom. In all his teaching, Jesus’s wisdom and authority were evident to everyone, even his enemies. His teaching style also marked him as a sage, a teacher of wisdom: Jesus used many pithy and memorable sayings and taught with mysterious parables, rich in images and stories. In all of this, the Gospel writers show that Jesus could be considered a philosopher of his day—a sage-teacher who showed people how to live, calling people to become disciples of his wisdom.
Jesus the Philosopher?
2. Apocalyptic prophet
In addition to being a sage/philosopher, inviting people to a life of wisdom, Jesus was also an apocalyptic prophet—one who announced God’s judgment on unfaithfulness and sin (prophet) and one who brought knowledge revealed only by God (apocalyptic). In this, the Gospel writers present Jesus as one sent by God in line with the many prophets of the Old Testament as well as of Second Temple Judaism (see chap. 3). Throughout the history of Israel God regularly sent prophets to call people to repent and to realign their lives with God’s will. They often performed symbolic prophetic acts that pictured God’s judgment, such as Ezekiel lying on his side next to an image of Jerusalem on a clay tablet or shaving his head and beard with a sword and dividing the hair into three piles (Ezek. 4:1–4; 5:1–2). The Gospel writers likewise recount several things Jesus did that were symbolic, especially his violent cleansing of the temple in judgment (Matt. 21:12–13; Mark 11:15–17; Luke 19:45–46; John 2:13–17).
In the Second Temple period God’s prophets often took the form of teachers who invited God’s people to lives oriented around his kingdom, based on revealed wisdom about the coming future when God would return. The Gospel writers present Jesus in a way that any first-century Jew would have understood him as such an apocalyptic prophet.
Figure 4.6. Madonna and Child (possibly 1230s) by Berlinghiero, portraying the child Jesus dressed like a philosopher and holding a scroll [The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Gift of Irma N. Straus, 1960.]
3. Healer and exorcist
Less prominent only than Jesus’s teaching and prophetic activities was his work as a healer and exorcist. The Gospel writers report that Jesus regularly healed people of various diseases and delivered them from demonic bondage (exorcism). In this, Jesus is regularly described as full of compassion for humanity’s brokenness and bondage.
We have general accounts of multitudes coming to Jesus and receiving healing (Matt. 4:23–25). We also have many specific, more detailed stories about instances of healings and exorcisms that the Gospel writers use to teach about Jesus’s authority more directly.
Jesus’s healings and exorcisms offer testimony to his power and prophetic status, but even more, they are designed as a foretaste of what the kingdom of God will be like when it comes fully upon the earth. The kingdom of God will be the realm in which God will restore his people to health and flourishing, and the dominion of evil and Satan will be destroyed forever. At the height of this real-and-symbolic meaning of Jesus’s healings are the instances in which he raised people from the dead (Mark 5:35–43; Luke 7:11–17), with Lazarus being the most striking example (John 11:1–44). The raising of these people from the dead typifies Jesus’s work in the world—to bring life where there has been death.
4. Promised messianic king
There are many important titles used of Jesus in the Gospels, one of which is Christ. This is not Jesus’s last name but rather a title that refers to his role as the one anointed by the Holy Spirit to be the king of God’s kingdom. “Christ” is the English word that comes from the Greek word for “anointed,” which itself is the translation for the Hebrew word that we translate as “Messiah.” Thus, Christ, Messiah, and Anointed One all communicate the same idea: Jesus is set apart by God to be his good king over his people.
The Gospel writers regularly describe Jesus as the Son of David (beginning with the first verse of the New Testament, Matt. 1:1), which is shorthand for Jesus’s role as the Messiah, who has come to fulfill the promises made to Israel—that God would bring a descendant of King David to rule and reign over his people and restore their lives to flourishing and peace. This was the great hope of the Jewish people, especially in the five hundred years leading up to Jesus’s day. Jesus’s announcement of the kingdom of God taps into this hope. By Jesus’s actions and words, the Gospels repeatedly show that he is the promised messianic king who is coming to bring to the whole world (not just Israel) the blessings of God, fulfilling the promise to Abraham that God would bless all nations through him (Gen. 12:1–3).
5. Unique Son of God
From beginning to end the Gospel writers’ primary answer to the question of Jesus’s identity is that he is the Son of God. This broad description “son of God” could be used in a number of ways: it could refer to a creature of God like Adam (Luke 3:38, based on Gen. 5:1), to a people group like Israel (Exod. 4:22), or to a child of God by faith (Matt. 5:9). But the claims made about Jesus are far higher and more expansive than these senses: Jesus is the unique, beloved Son of God, who is not created but who shares the divine identity, who is the final and true arbiter of God’s knowledge and wisdom in the world, the Messiah, who is the fulfillment of all the promises, hopes, and images of God’s saving work in the world, and who exists in a unique father-son relationship with the God of Israel.
At the nuclear core of Christianity is this understanding, and the Gospels provide the framework for the church’s focus on Jesus. Thus, in the Gospels we find a wide variety of titles used to describe Jesus: Christ, Son of God, Son of Man, Son of David, Lord, Emmanuel, the Word. Each of these contributes to the manifold portrait of who Jesus is, but at the core of all the Gospels’ witness is Jesus’s unique sonship to God the Father.
6. Sacrificial suffering servant
The narrative arc of all four Gospels finds its height in Jesus’s suffering and death. Each of the Gospel stories slows down considerably and spends a significant percentage of literary space on the last week of Jesus’s life and his agonizing death. This highlights a key aspect of Jesus’s identity: he came to offer his life in suffering as a sacrifice. Jesus willingly took the role of Isaiah’s promised suffering servant, who would come to bear our griefs and carry our sorrows: “He was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed” (Isa. 53:5 ESV). Jesus and the Gospel writers explicitly understand his ministry through this lens. In his opening chapter Matthew describes Jesus as coming to “save his people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21), and at the crucial moments of the Last Supper Jesus explains that through his body-and-blood sacrifice he is bringing about a new covenant for the forgiveness of sins (Matt. 26:27–29). Thus, central to the Gospel writers’ description of Jesus is his role as the sacrificial suffering servant.
7. Resurrected One
If the height of the Gospels’ narrative arc is Jesus’s suffering and death, its resolution is his resurrection from the dead. Jesus’s suffering and death serves as a model of righteous endurance and faithfulness to God in the midst of undue suffering. But according to the Gospels, it is more than just a model; it is the beginning of the new age, the kingdom of God. Jesus is not only the Crucified One, but just as importantly, he is the Resurrected One—the first person of the new age to be born again, to be resurrected from the dead as the pioneer who makes resurrection possible for all God’s children.
The Gospel writers, along with the rest of the New Testament, make it clear that it is Jesus’s resurrection that is central to the Christian understanding, because it is through his resurrection and ascension that new life enters the world. Jesus as the Resurrected One also means that he is present with his people for their mission in the world (Matt. 28:20).
In Sum
Christianity is centered on a person who is understood to be both God and human. Thus, Jesus’s life and teachings are central to what Christianity is. Jesus’s real, historical life matters to Christianity, as do the things he taught and what the disciples taught about him. This chapter has provided an overview of the historical and theological Jesus, drawn from all four Gospels. But as we will see in the following chapters, a sketch like this is not meant to replace the more important study of each of the four Gospels and the rest of the New Testament for what each of them contributes to our understanding. This overview is but the invitation to a deeper study of the New Testament.
Christian Reading Questions
- Why does it matter that we understand Jesus’s historical life?
- Read Matthew 9:36; Luke 19:45–47; John 15:11. How do the emotions expressed by Jesus in each of these stories influence the way you understand him?
- Read the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11–32). How do you think that Jesus’s use of this story, rather than moral exhortation (like in the Sermon on the Mount) or another form of teaching, served his goals in teaching people?
- Many Bibles today delineate the spoken words of Jesus with red letters. Early in the church’s life “sayings collections,” composed almost exclusively of Jesus’s sayings without any narrative scaffolding, began to circulate. Why do you think it is important that the Fourfold Gospel Book that we have received today includes both Jesus’s teachings and the narrative describing his life?