There is a God — He is the creator of our universe, world and life.
Is there a God, or isn't there? Atheists, claiming to be scientific, insist that the evidence proves there is no god. Believers, on the other hand, declare that the evidence demonstrates that there is one. Who is right? In a strict sense, neither camp. The existence or nonexistence of God is not something that can be strictly proven deductively. It is an assumption or postulate with which one starts.
Everyone starts with certain assumptions in their lives. This is true even in math or the sciences. To prove a thing deductively, you must have a starting place, something that you know to be true or assume to be true. What one begins with are intuitive truths, axioms or postulates. These are things one assumes as true without proof. Even inductive science rests heavily upon a foundation of assumed truth. The issue of whether or not there is a God, who is the creator of our universe, world and life, is one such assumption regardless of what is claimed by evolutionists and atheists.
If you believe there is no God, then all there is, our world and universe, life itself, is a simple product of time and chance. You accept this not because the evidence points to this conclusion; you accept this as a beginning assumption. If you believe there is a God, you do so as an assumption and work from there.
One's assumptions, however, may be weighed and evaluated in the light of the data we observe in life. While one cannot PROVE these postulates true or false, it is possible to determine if they are LIKELY or REASONABLE. For example, in math, we assume that one real number added to a second real number is equal in value to the second real number added to the first (The Commutative Property: a + b = b + a). We cannot prove that, but it seems reasonable, and all experience has confirmed that it is likely true.
A person, then, has essentially two choices, possibly three. You can assume there is no God, or you can assume there is one. Therefore, you are either an atheist, a person who believes there is no God, or a theist, a person who believes there is a God. Realize that you choose to believe one of these, not because the evidence indicates one or the other is true, but because you choose it as a fundamental axiom or postulate in your life. A third possible choice might be to assume that there might be a God but that you do not know or cannot know. In this case, you would be an agnostic, a person who does not know if there is a God or not. However, most people who claim to be agnostics indicate by their lives that deep down, they either believe there truly is a God, or they believe that there is no God. Few people are true agnostics.
While atheists often take great pride in being more “scientific” than theists, they blindly fail to realize that their position is no more or less scientific than the theist or the agnostic. Both have simply made some basic unproven assumptions in life.
While it cannot be proven that the existence of God is true, I am convinced that it is a more reasonable view than the other views. The data found in our physical world is more consistent with the theistic view than any other view. I have a grapefruit-size piece of obsidian that my oldest son found in the Kansas River while we were out walking on a sandbar one day. I believe that it was brought down here to Kansas by Indians who used it for trade. I cannot prove this; I assume it to be true. But it is much more reasonable to think that than to believe it just occurred naturally or was washed down the river from somewhere upstream. The fact that there are few igneous deposits in Kansas from which this may have washed down, the fact that Indians historically were known to have met and traded not far upstream, and that obsidian was an object of barter make it more reasonable to assume that is how it ended up here than that it naturally just occurred.
When looking at all the data found in our natural world, it is much more reasonable to assume that it was created and ordered by an intelligent being who exists apart from our universe than to believe that it all occurred by chance. When one examines all the data from geology, it is more reasonable to assume that there was a Creator and that the formations and fossils were formed by a worldwide cataclysmic flood than through the slow process of evolution.
Our creator has communicated with us in a written record, the Bible.
If there is a God, it only follows that He would communicate to us. It is reasonable to believe that if we were created and placed here on earth, the Creator would have communicated to us in some manner. To believe that He created and then abandoned His creation to the vagaries of time and chance, never again to communicate with us, would mean that the God whose existence we postulate has little interest or purpose for what He has brought about. It would make Him a most terrible and heartless tyrant to thus place us here and then abandon us to our own selfish and uncaring nature.
Yet if we examine the world he has created to be our home, it seems clear that not only is He a mighty God, but one who is also characterized by beauty and grace. He has provided a wonderful and marvelous home for humanity. What we do with it is another issue entirely. Therefore, it seems reasonable that this God, powerful, good and gracious, would have communicated to us.
The most reliable way to communicate would be through a written/recorded message. While this creator could have communicated in any number of ways and no doubt did, it seems likely that He would communicate in a written form. This is reasonable since written communication is least likely to be corrupted over time. The transmission of a verbal message from one person to the next depends heavily upon the memories of those involved. Such a message is soon altered, as seen in the children's game gossip. I believe the Bible is this written communication from God for many different reasons.
The way we should interpret the Bible is in a normal literal method.
The question often is raised, how can we know what the Bible means when there are so many different ways to take it? The simple and most logical answer is that we should take it at face value, that is, in a literal method of interpretation. This is the normal way we communicate in daily life.
If someone shouted “Duck!” We would not stop to consider all the symbolic and allegorical meanings involved in this short verb. We would take it at face value and duck! In everyday conversation, we interpret what people say in a normal literal way. We can reasonably expect that if God communicated to us in a written form, He would usually intend for us to understand what He said in a literal way.
It is the least subjective and most objective way to proceed. The more symbolically one interprets a passage, the more open it is to a person’s own ideas and views. Take, for example, the statement, “I saw a black cat cross my path.” If we take that statement in its ordinary literal sense, it means simply that the speaker visually perceived a small mammal of the feline family, black in coloration, move across the route the speaker was traveling. Almost anyone would understand that if they take the usual literal understanding. It can mean little else. If, however, we were not to take it at its face value but insist that the speaker was speaking figuratively, the number of possible meanings increases directly with the number of people who attempt to interpret it. Does it mean an evil presence has entered the speaker’s awareness? Does the speaker foresee bad luck? Does it mean that a beautiful raven-haired girl is about to come into the speaker’s life? Who knows when we begin to assign symbolic meanings what this might mean? A literal interpretation is usually the best and least open to subjectivity.
This method does not ignore the use of figurative language. Figures of speech are normal and common. They are recognized grammatical and literary forms. A standard literal approach recognizes these legitimate figures as they are ordinarily used by the people who wrote them and the people to whom they were written. If the literature being read is poetry about love and betrayal and the writer mentions a black cat, a more symbolic meaning may indeed be called for.
This approach also recognizes the literal and historical context in which the statements were made. Two critical questions anyone must ask when interpreting a passage are, “What is the context,” and “What did this mean to those to whom it was written?” A word used in one context might have another meaning in another. “Duck” in a passage about wildlife probably is a noun referring to an animal. A figure of speech or a phrase used in a bygone day might have had a different meaning than the same phrase used today. A phase in one culture may not mean the same in another.
God's Word is the final authority of what is right-wrong, true-false, real-unreal.
If there is a God, He, not we, is the final authority. If God speaks directly to an issue, that is that. Ultimately our determination of what is right or wrong derives from Him. He is the source and definition of what is moral and what is not. Indeed if there is no God, then, in the final analysis, there is no right or wrong. They are meaningless concepts in a universe governed by random chance.
Without a God to define good and evil, moral and immoral, they become cultural concepts subject to the whims and fickleness of culture, if they exist at all. They depend only upon one's opinion, and who is to say that your opinion is better than mine or that the majority opinion is better than the minority.
If survival of the fittest and strongest has been the guiding principle of evolution in the development of life on our planet, as they so claim who deny the existence of God, then it would only be “natural” and “right” for those who are the strongest to seize power and eliminate the weak and feeble. Who then could claim that would be wrong; it is the natural order of the universe?
But there is a God. And because there is a God, we know that the qualities of love, kindness, mercy and such are good and right. He defines them. Our society does not define morality; God does. When He speaks, it is authoritative!
We must not, however, confuse our traditions and opinions with God's Word. All too often, we have taken our own ideas, values and traditions and have elevated them by declaring them to be God's will. For example, today, most Christians firmly believe that a democratic form of government is Christian, and, therefore, God's will. The truth of the matter is that God has not declared one form of government to be Christian and another pagan. God has not spoken to this issue. While it may be the best form of government based on a particular set of human criteria, it has not been declared God's will by the Bible. Much, if not most, of what believers do today is determined not by God's Word but by our traditions. While these may be good and honorable traditions (sometimes not so good and honorable), they are just traditions, not God's Word. God's Word alone is authoritative.
In many areas, God does not speak. In many areas, what He has declared may not be clear in every instance. He does not address every issue we face in life. There are many questions that we may ask to which God has not given us answers.
It is true that my biblical view has questions I cannot answer. There are problems with which I am wrestling. However, they are far fewer than the naturalist view raises. We, in this life, will never fully understand this Book. Although we are to interpret the Word of God in a normal literal way, this does not mean we will fully understand this divine book in our lifetime here on earth. Some passages are enigmatic. There are those which raise more questions than they answer. Yet, the more we study it, the more we will come to comprehend it.
The Gospels
The Gospels are four different accounts of the life of Christ, each written with a different goal to a specific person or people.
There are four Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. They are traditionally arranged in our Bibles in this order, and this is the order in which, according to tradition, they were written. The writers did not record when they wrote; we can only date them from references in the texts and other external data. There is, however, much debate today about this traditional order. Many now accept that Mark was written first and subsequently used as a source by Matthew and Luke.
Sometimes the question will be asked, why four, why not more, or one comprehensive account? There were more accounts than just these written, but in His wisdom, God chose to include these four in the Scriptures. How did the early church recognize some accounts as inspired and part of the canon of Scripture and not others?
While we do not know with certainty how God worked, we do know that one of the criteria was apostolic authority. The work must have been written by an apostle or someone closely connected with an apostle. Two of the four Gospels were written by apostles, Matthew and John, and the other two, Mark and Luke, by men closely associated with an apostle. Mark was a close associate of Peter and an eyewitness of many events recorded in his Gospel. Some lines of tradition suggest that Peter worked closely with Mark on writing this Gospel before his death. Luke was a close associate and traveling companion of Paul. While most authorities do not think he was an eyewitness to most of the events in the Gospel bearing his name, most agree that he did much research in the process of writing.
Most of the material concerning our Lord’s life comes from these four Gospels. A little may be found in some of the other New Testament books. The Gospels themselves were not written as biographies. Each of the writers had a specific purpose in mind in writing, selected material appropriate for that theme and arranged it to best communicate that truth. While most of the material is generally in chronological order, the writers were not following modern ideas of literature and were not constrained to include things necessarily in the order in which they happened.
Both tradition and the internal evidence from the first Gospel support the assertion that the Apostle Matthew (Levi), the tax collector, is the author. Almost no conservative scholars doubt this identification. The possible dates for its composition vary depending upon a person's view of the synoptic issue. Dates as early as AD 37 to as late as the years following AD 70 have been suggested. A good guess would be between these extremes somewhere near the middle of the first century AD.
Tradition also says that Matthew wrote his Gospel in Aramaic for his Jewish readers first, then later translated it into Greek. This might well be the case, but we do not have any existing manuscripts of this early Aramaic edition. Matthew's purpose seems very clear if one examines his Gospel. He wrote to convince his own people, the Jews, that our Lord is none other than the promised one, the Messiah. The material he includes and its arrangement all serve that purpose.
Mark is traditionally considered the author of the Gospel bearing his name, although it is nowhere so stated in the text. Again the evidence in the text itself supports this idea. The evidence seems to be somewhat divided as to when it was written. Some early authorities suggest it was written soon after Peter's death; others suggest it was written with Peter's help before his martyrdom. Again a date near the middle of the first century is likely.
Almost all traditions place Mark in Rome when he penned this Gospel. The evidence from the Gospel suggests that it was written to a Gentile audience rather than a Jewish one. Mark's purpose is to convince those to whom he wrote that Jesus was the Messiah and that He came to die. Although He was the King of kings, He came as a servant.
The third Gospel was written by Luke. Luke was a Gentile who traveled and ministered with the Apostle Paul. Tradition also tells us he was a doctor, and references in his Gospel seem to validate that idea. His Gospel is addressed to an individual rather than a group of people. We know very little about this individual, Theophilus.
Luke states that he is aware of several accounts of our Lord's life. It may be reasonably assumed that he had access to Mark's and Matthew's Gospels and others, of which we have no record today. His purpose was to provide for Theophilus a firm historical basis for his faith. In doing so, he presents our Lord as the perfect man, achieving all that God intended man to be.
One item that should be noted at this point is that Luke and Acts were both written by Luke to Theophilus and are essentially one work divided into two volumes. The primary reason seems to be the size of the manuscripts. Books in Luke's day were not what we are accustomed to today. They were scrolls. The amount of material that could be included in a scroll was limited. Luke/Acts would not fit on a single scroll; they were too large together. It is theorized, therefore, Luke first wrote the Gospel and sent it to Theophilus, then followed up with Acts, which picks up and continues the account. Because Luke was written before Acts and because Acts does not include the death of the Apostle Paul, which it indeed would have if Paul had been executed before its completion, we know Luke was written before AD 64, the likely date for Paul's martyrdom.
The fourth Gospel traditional is ascribed to the Apostle John. As is the case with the other three Gospels, no author is stated in the text. The text itself strongly supports John being the author. Tradition states that John wrote this Gospel from the city of Ephesus, where he had gone after Paul had founded the church there. It was probably written sometime between AD 85 and AD 95.
John’s Gospel is quite different from the other three. Matthew, Mark and Luke made extensive use of the oral traditions which were in existence in those days. They are very similar in content and structure. John, however, differs. He did not use this early oral tradition to the extent they did but drew upon his own memories of the events. John was undoubtedly familiar with the other three Gospels, and it seems to be his aim not to restate what they had done but to give material that would complement their works. His purpose in writing his Gospel is clear, as stated in John 20:3. He sets forth the signs our Lord performed so that his readers would come to faith in Him.
Three of the Gospels are called synoptic Gospels and are very similar to each other.
As noted, the first three Gospels are very similar. Mark is the shortest, and most of the material in Mark is found in either Matthew or Luke. It has been theorized, therefore, that the traditions are in error and that Mark was written first rather than Matthew. Matthew and Luke then built upon Mark's work, adding or deleting from it as they saw necessary for their particular purpose. This theory has become very popular in recent times.
The major drawback to this theory is that it goes counter to the testimony of the early church writers. It also seems to lean on the assumption that at the time of the writing of these Gospels, there were no other accounts in circulation, written or oral. While we have little manuscript evidence of other early accounts of our Lord's life, the statement at the beginning of Luke's Gospel does seem to indicate that there were others. If he knew only of Mark's and Matthew's Gospels, the statement that MANY had undertaken to compile an account seems a bit overstated.
More study suggests a different reason why these three are similar. In those days, books were rare, and although many people could read, written books were costly. Therefore, much teaching was customarily passed on by oral tradition. The stories were memorized, often word for word, and passed from one person to another. We are confident from other sources that there was a body or “oral tradition” circulating about the person of Jesus Christ. All three writers made use of this oral tradition. They certainly knew it, and each used it in addition to what they saw themselves. There may well have been written accounts, which have been lost, that were circulated before the writing of Mark’s Gospel. These written accounts, if they existed, might have closely followed the oral tradition. There would be little reason to assume otherwise. These possibly might have been used by all three writers, thus explaining the similarities. Mark’s was the shortest because of his purpose in writing. Matthew and Luke each add to this oral tradition more than Mark.
The Gospels each treat Jesus Christ as the perfect God-man.
With the advent of the liberal movement within the church, many have asserted that the Gospel writers never claimed our Lord was divine. They point out that they never attempt to prove His deity. In this last respect, they are close to the truth, although for the wrong reason. The Gospel writers do not try to prove His divinity; they simply assume it is true. It was not as much an issue then as it is today. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John write with the understanding that Jesus is the perfect God-man. This study also begins with these postulates.
Jesus Christ
Our Lord is wholly and totally divine.
He has existed, although not in human form, for all eternity. There has never been a point in time when He did not exist. Indeed, He existed before time ever came to be. Our Lord possesses and has always possessed those divine attributes that define God as God. He will always possess these throughout all time to come and beyond that. These attributes or characteristics include omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence and holiness. Some of the divine attributes are compatible with humanity as well, and some are not.
Omnipotence briefly stated means all-powerful. It signifies that He is able to do anything His perfect character permits Him to do. It does not mean He can do anything! God is perfectly consistent; His nature is such that He will not do anything contradictory or inconsistent with His perfect nature. Omnipotence does not mean God can lie. God does not and will not lie. He cannot be unjust. He cannot be unloving. One well-known riddle often used by those who deny God's existence ignores this basic tenet of God's omnipotence. That riddle is often stated: Can God make a rock so heavy He cannot lift it? This question asks if God can, in His omnipotence, do something which would be inconsistent with this omnipotence. The answer then to the question stated this way is that God will not do anything inconsistent with His nature.
Omniscience means all-knowing. This signifies that He knows everything there is to know, past, present and future, actual and possible, without ever having had to learn it. He knows the number of hairs on your head without having to count them. He knows every what-if without having to reason through the cause-effect sequences. While it may seem a strange statement, it is accurate to say that God is unteachable. He has never learned anything, nor will he learn anything. He already knows it all.
Omnipresence means that He is everywhere at once. Because He created the space-time continuum of our universe and exists independent of it, God views all moments or places in our universe as one and exists in them at once. This is a challenging concept for us to comprehend because we, as human beings, are confined to this space-time continuum. We are conscious only of the present; the past exists only as a memory and the future only as a mental construct of what might be. We are bound by time. God is not. The day of creation is just as present to Him as the instant you are reading this sentence or the day of the return of our Lord to set up the Kingdom. God does not look back at the past and see it as it was, nor does He look ahead to the future and see it as it will be. He looks at both and sees them as they are. Omnipresence means God exists everywhere and everywhen at once.
Holiness means separateness. While this attribute is usually thought of in terms of moral or ethical nature, the term has a broader meaning. He is totally different and separate from His creation. This refers not just to His moral character but to that which constitutes God's essential being. He is uncreated; we are created. We are material beings; He is immaterial. Although angels too are immaterial, not having a physical body confined to the space-time continuum as are we, they too are created beings, unlike God. We and our universe are touched and changed by sin; He is untouched and unchanging.
Humanity may participate in the aspect of holiness, which relates to moral character. We are to reflect God's moral character. Adam was created holy but lost this holiness in the fall. As His children, we are to be like Him in moral character. We are to be holy, for He is holy.
Jesus is our Lord’s human name, and Christ is His title which means Anointed One or Messiah. He was not known by this name or title in the Old Testament. Before the incarnation, John designates Him as the WORD, which signifies that He is the expression of the invisible God. The visible appearances or manifestations of God in the Old Testament were appearances or manifestations of Our Lord, the Second Person of the Trinity. Although He appears in human form in the Old Testament, this is an appearance, not true humanity. True humanity came at the incarnation.
From His birth onward, He is completely and perfectly human.
During His first advent, He voluntarily relinquished the USE (not the POSSESSION!) of specific divine attributes inconsistent with perfect humanity. These included the use of His omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence. Our Lord did not exercise His divine power during His first coming. He relied upon the power of the Father through the Holy Spirit. He did not use His omniscience, as is witnessed by the fact that He told His disciples that only God knew the Day of the Second Coming, not even He knew. Upon His resurrection and ascension, He took up again the use of these attributes.
OUR LORD WAS ABSOLUTELY SINLESS IN HIS HUMAN LIFE. Although each of us is born a sinner because we inherited a fallen human nature through Adam, our Lord was born with a sinless human nature. Our Lord had no human father and therefore did not inherit the fallen nature. He did, however, inherit all the physical limitations of fallen man through Mary, His mother. He was subject to death, weakness, exhaustion, as are we.
He had a fully human body, soul and/or spirit. He will retain these throughout all of eternity. He who was God became the God-man and will be from now onward. Unlike Adam, who also began life with a perfect human nature but fell through transgression, our Lord never once sinned in thought, attitude or deed regarding even the most minor matter. He lived a perfectly just and righteous life fulfilling what man was intended to be.
This study is a harmony of the life of Christ rather than the study of a single Gospel.
This is not the study of one of the gospels, but a rather harmony of them. It is an attempt to put them together in chronological order. The emphasis is not to understand the theme of the writer as much as it is to get a view of the historical life of our Lord and see the applications for our lives today.
This is only one harmony; there are many others that differ. Many of the events in our Lord’s life are very difficult, if not currently impossible, to pinpoint concerning the exact time or order in which they occurred. I do not doubt in the least that when I stand before Him, I will be corrected for the items that are misplaced. Finally, it must be stated that much of the work is based on the book Chronological Aspects of the Life of Christ by Harold W. Hoehner (Academie Books Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1977).