Which Gospel for first time readers of the Bible?

General Christian Theology

Which Gospel would you first recommend for someone just opening the Bible for the first time?

 
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Josh
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Re: Which Gospel for first time readers of the Bible?

Post by Josh »

Wade wrote:Almost everyone kept telling me John first. But as an unchurched person it was the most confusing place to start for me. I never knew Jesus was the Word so it sounded strange that a word was with God. But then when it says it was Jesus I wondered why He would be called a word... Then those same people would refer to the Bible as the word... So I would say that I thought Jesus was the word. And they would say he was/is. So why do you call the Bible the word? Did the Bible fall out of the sky on John when he was alone in the wilderness?

I cringe when I hear about John first...

Matthew first and then carry on through. By the time they get to John it might make a bit more sense.
John is an excellent gospel, but it's not the only one. It talks a lot about belief, especially in the first few chapters, and it doesn't talk too much about nonviolence, so people who want to make Christianity entirely about a "belief" (defined as merely mental assent) and want to avoid talking about nonviolence tend to steer people to John to the exclusion of the other gospels.

I think we do best when we get the whole witness of scripture. Read a bit of Matthew, read a bit of John.
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KingdomBuilder
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Re: Which Gospel for first time readers of the Bible?

Post by KingdomBuilder »

So far the votes are equally cast for Matthew, Luke, and John; no votes for Mark.

Here's what I like about-
Matthew: Sermon the Mount, instruction, crucifixion depiction
Luke: overall comprehensiveness, very approachable
John: the focus on the divinity of Jesus

If I had to have some dislikes (in respect to first-time readers)-
Matthew: Some tricky areas regarding the Law that are difficult for new believers to understand
Luke: nothing too outstanding
John: the same focus on divinity can be confusing at times, lots to process
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Valerie
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Re: Which Gospel for first time readers of the Bible?

Post by Valerie »

Josh wrote:
Valerie wrote:
Bootstrap wrote:Nobody picked Mark (including me).

Why?
It's not a Pentecost forum:

Mark 16:17-18King James Version (KJV)

17 And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues;

18 They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.
Do Pentecostals still believe in snake-handling, or have they cut back to just speaking in tongues?
Mainline Pentecostals never practiced this- it's horrid, it's 'testing God' and I never had a Pentecost Pastor even talk about this at all. I am sure someone reading through Mark, would come up on these passages and ask about them- without having read Acts, or the Corinthians chapters that teach about gifts of the Spirit, they would be clueless what these passages would mean. I think this snake handling strangeness is done by Appalachian fringe groups-
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Valerie
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Re: Which Gospel for first time readers of the Bible?

Post by Valerie »

KingdomBuilder wrote:So far the votes are equally cast for Matthew, Luke, and John; no votes for Mark.

Here's what I like about-
Matthew: Sermon the Mount, instruction, crucifixion depiction
Luke: overall comprehensiveness, very approachable
John: the focus on the divinity of Jesus

If I had to have some dislikes (in respect to first-time readers)-
Matthew: Some tricky areas regarding the Law that are difficult for new believers to understand
Luke: nothing too outstanding
John: the same focus on divinity can be confusing at times, lots to process
Generally speaking, until one's eyes have been opened for understanding by the Holy Spirit, it would be difficult in various ways. I have had numerous people tell me they have tried reading the Bible and they just don't understand. Think about it- people didn't own a copy of the Bible for most of this 2000 year church age- so how did they learn Christ? When people claim to be Christians and want to start reading, I always encourage them to pray before they read for understanding but even then, this is where a variety of interpretations come from. I've been in Bible study groups where everyone seemed to have different understandings as we would read together through a book of the Bible-
Would most people on this forum encourage anyone to just pick up the Bible and start reading one of the Gospels without some kind of mentoring or discipling through it? Probably the Lord would help a sincere seeker- it's just that most of this 2000 year church age, this was not done. Just some things I was thinking about. What part does the Holy Spirit play in our understanding?
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Wade
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Re: Which Gospel for first time readers of the Bible?

Post by Wade »

Hats Off wrote:The Sermon on the Mount is so key to understanding the New Testament. And yet the New Tribes Mission say you can't teach by jumping in at the middle - they teach chronologically through the Old Testament before getting to the birth, life, teachings, and death of Jesus. They maintain that you need to start at the beginning so that everything makes sense. That method would have to be a guided process.

The Sermon on the Mount makes more sense if you have a basic understanding of what came before. Jesus' teaching "It has been said .. but I say unto you .." only makes sense if you have an idea of what He is referring to.
:up:

I think this is partly why reading John first is scary because I think it was used to try to lead me away from things like non-resistance. And then Romans was what I was told to read next. It is like people want more obscurity, so they can understand or justify there belief in Christ through the lens of what they want to believe.

We need to understand Christ through the Gospels and then the rest of the New Testament will build on that. When we try to understand Christ through the other books first we missed some foundation.
Christ is the express image of God, so it seems that skipping the Old Testament as you mentioned could cause the same affect. The Old Testament spoke of Him.

However the OP was directed at which of the four gospels without mention of anything else. Again Matthew would be my highest recommended point of start between the four gospels for an unchurched person.
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Josh
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Re: Which Gospel for first time readers of the Bible?

Post by Josh »

Valerie, those are good questions, and the idea of telling someone to go read the Bible by themselves is a modern phenomenon. For most of the history of the church, mass-produced Bibles plus widespread literacy were not the norm.

Instead of telling people to read the Bible by themselves and handing them an inexpensive abridged New Testament plus Psalms, when one found a sincere seeker, one would offer to continue to read the scriptures with them as a group.
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Josh
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Re: Which Gospel for first time readers of the Bible?

Post by Josh »

(By the way I like Mark and may consider it for a future Bible study. My only concern is being careful not to build doctrines in Mark, which often leaves out things that Matthew or Luke have more details about.)
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Aaron
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Re: Which Gospel for first time readers of the Bible?

Post by Aaron »

I might someday hope and choose to start perhaps the same place Jesus did on the road to Emmaus.

Most all the listeners , in the first 30 years of the first century, if they knew any Scripture,
knew Torah, Prophets, Psalms (Tanakh) ,
and that is what Jesus and the Apostles heard all of their lives whenever they went to Temple on Shabbat every week.
Same for any righteous gentiles they met - they also would be hearing Torah every week.

As I remember, (and someone else too, quoted here) >>The events on the road to Emmaus are discussed in Luke 24. In this final chapter of Luke’s Gospel, we read of two disciples (Cleopas and one unnamed) of Jesus who were walking from Jerusalem to Emmaus on the day that Jesus rose from the dead. As they traveled, a man joined them—the resurrected Jesus, although they did not recognize Him. The man asked, “What is this conversation that you are holding with each other as you walk?” (Luke 24:17).

The two disciples were surprised that the man had not heard of the recent events that had Jerusalem in turmoil. They proceeded to tell the stranger of Jesus’ crucifixion and the report of His empty tomb. Jesus responded, “‘How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?’ And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.” (Luke 24:25-27).

So, as they walked, Jesus taught what the Old Testament had predicted about Himself. When they arrived in Emmaus that evening, the two disciples stopped to eat, and they asked Jesus to join them. He did, and as He broke the bread and blessed the meal, “their eyes were opened” (verse 31), and they recognized Him. Jesus then vanished.
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