Discover The Word

IDEA: We don’t have a great deal of information about the birth of Christ. What we have is given to us by the design of the authors.

PURPOSE: To help listeners realize that the Gospel writers were theologians and not historians.

Do you like to read biographies? What is it about biographies that attracts you?

Sometimes we think of the Gospel writers (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) as historians, but they are really theologians.

I. What difference does it make in thinking about the biblical writers as theologians and not as historians?

Historians write an account of a person’s life and usually it is chronological. Do you think that is true of the Gospel writers?

Theologians want to tell you about the meaning of the coming of Jesus. His purpose is not primarily to give you a record of Jesus’ life from birth to death but to tell you about who Jesus was and why His coming was important to the world.

II. This explains why no one writer of the Gospels gives you all of the events of Jesus’ birth.

The early church picked up an image of a creature with four faces–a lion, an ox, a man, and an eagle–from Ezekiel 1:10 and used that image to show that each gospel had its own contribution.

What does Matthew (the lion of the tribe of Judah) contribute?

What does Mark (the ox) contribute?

What does Luke (the man) contribute?

What does John (the eagle) contribute?

III. When we recognize that the biblical writers are theologians and not historians, that explains several things.

It explains why events in the different Gospels don’t all coincide. For example, John puts the cleansing of the temple earlier in his Gospel (ch. 2) and the other Gospel writers put it at the end of Jesus’ life.

The focus in Luke is on the manger scene in Bethlehem while the focus in Matthew is on a house in Bethlehem 1-1/2 or 2 years later. All of the Gospel writers arrange their material to get across great truths about Jesus.