Religion occupies one of the essential places in every person’s life. The study of the postulates and the gospel of Christianity can give an extraordinary insight into what is happening in people’s lives. In addition, stories about Jesus can further strengthen people’s faith and give them hope for the best in the world. The four Gospels of the New Testament can help in fulfilling this function, as they are precious in Christian denominations. Therefore, this work aims to consider what the gospel is, why there are four of them, and their importance for religion.
The gospel is a book of the New Testament, which consists of several parts. Gundry (2012) highlights Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, all of whom talk about Jesus. Interestingly, everyone has their own narrative features and different perspectives on the events taking place in them. The existence of the four gospels gives people a more profound and precise understanding of who Jesus is and how he and his work are valuable to humanity.
Thus, each gospel has a unique narrative that distinguishes it from the others. For example, in Matthew, Jesus is shown as the Jewish Messiah, the embodiment of the hopes and faith of the Old Testament (Blog, 2017). In Luke, Jesus is presented as a great savior for all nations, and in the gospel of Mark, he is depicted as the Son of God, going through multiple sufferings and sacrificing himself for human sins. In the fourth gospel of John, Jesus is an eternal reflection of his father, God. Hence, such a distinctive view of what is happening to the son of God can give detailed information about the life of Jesus and what lesson can be learned from those events.
At the moment, there are many other gospels, but there are only four main ones. All of them also talk about the life of Jesus, describing his entire history from infancy to death. However, only the four gospels that were considered earlier are included in the Bible. One of the reasons is the uncertainty that many of these stories can be characterized by the authenticity of the narrative. Even though some of them still retain accurate data, there are some other justifications for their absence in the Bible. One of them is too long a time interval; they were written too late to attract trust.
Moreover, many authors preferred to hide and write the gospels under an assumed name, which also reduced the level of reliability of the stories. Although the gospels that are not included in the list of the four main ones may have some value, they have not been approved by the Christian church. Several reasons influenced this decision at once, but the most important of them was the lack of compliance with the spiritual power and perseverance that concerns the Sacred Spirit and the life of the son of God.
The existence of the gospels is a necessary aspect of this faith. People need them because they help to gain even greater spiritual strength in faith. This is due to the fact that the gospels show the hardships that Jesus went through, and this is what motivates people to make their lives and those around them better so that all the sufferings of Jesus do not go unnoticed. So, it is wrong to say that people could do with only one or two Gospels. As already mentioned, each of the four stories provides its own unique and valuable perspective about Jesus. Moreover, they are all aimed at solving a certain problem, around which the choice of writing a certain story is tied.
References
Blog, Z.A. (2017). What are the gospels, and why are there four of them? Zondervan Academic. Web.
Gundry, R.H. (2012). A survey of the New Testament. Zondervan.