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We learn portions of the Gospels when children; we read large parts of them until we know them by heart; but often as we grow old the Spirit of God gives us new views of Christ as revealed in them. The sending of His Son to live here as a Man among men was God's great Gift to mankind. He was always perfectly doing the things that pleased the Father. But even this was not enough. That wonderful life must be recorded, and one record would not meet the need, nor would two or even three. There had to be four records of this God-Man, four views of His life and work on earth. One of the wonders of the four Gospel records is that they always present Christ. Men and women are there in every variety of character, people with whom Christ had to do, but always, and in every part, and in every circumstance, Christ stands out by Himself as unique.

Everywhere He is Creator; they, His creatures. He is God; they are men. The attacks of His enemies are like the slinging of pebbles against a mighty mountain. The mask of hypocrisy is torn off; the evil heart in man is brought into the light; men and women are pictured as they really are. None other ever knew them perfectly; none other ever dared speak out the whole truth. You can see sinners cringing, as they are lashed by those piercing words.

Had they accepted His judgment of themselves, had they followed in the steps of the prodigal son, of the woman of Samaria, or of Nicodemus, what eternal blessing would have come to them. He offered them eternal life, eternal salvation, but in how many cases was it rejected. Yet we have always to remember that Christ was sowing, and that the great multitude of hundredfold fruit-bearers did not appear until after Pentecost. It was not until then that thousands believed; that a "great company of the priests were obedient to the faith" (Acts 6:7). There were also thousands of the Jews who believed (Acts 21:20). The most of these were forced out of Jerusalem by the persecution that arose about Stephen.

But while Christ was teaching, preaching, and healing, of the great crowds gathering to Him. only a few truly believed on Him, His words were written down for all after-time; they will never pass away, they are for us to read and learn the messages which Christ brought to man. He was speaking the words of God, doing the works of God. Christ was always making God known to man. Not to the Jews in Palestine alone, but to all the world, for all time, Christ was bringing to mankind the revelation of the goodness and the severity of God.

Hence the four Gospels are four narratives of God dealing in grace and love with man. Yet Scripture is almost silent about thirty years of that life which to His neighbors was only the life of a carpenter (Mark 6:3), and His life there for thirty years seemed only to hinder their believing on Him (Mark 6:5, 6). But how different is God's view from man's. "This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." The thirty years at Nazareth pleased the Father. A few words at the end of Luke 2 give all that mankind needed to know of those thirty years. The wisdom shown in the selection of what to write of that marvelous life is not of man but of God. Each of the four narratives is a Gospel according to the Holy Spirit, given through the four actual writers. Thus all shadow of doubt as to whether the Gospels are accounts of what Christ really said and did are gone for faith. Satan has no more effective way of spoiling the record than the insinuation that its words are not really the words of Christ. It is the blindness of unbelief that fails to see that no four men ever lived who could write four such Gospels unless they were led, as the four writers were, by the Spirit of God.

How else could four such men write the four greatest books in the world? Two narrow-minded, uneducated Jewish fishermen, a Jewish business man (probably), one of the best educated Greek physicians, and a custom house official of note, were the men back of the Gospels. For Peter was, according to the best evidence, Mark's informant in writing. Peter was a man of action, and Mark's Gospel records Christ's doings, the word "straightway" being found in it about 40 times. "Who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him," is Peter's summary of Christ's ministry (Acts 10:38).

The more faith studies the Gospels, the more the fact that they are the words of God impresses one. Unbelief tangles itself up in imaginary objections to keep out the precious truth. How rash, how futile are the puny objections of unbelief to God's wonderful words. You see Christ all through the whole, the one great Center. You see the great multitudes with their sick, infirm, and demon-possessed. You hear the Voice making God's truth known to man; records which have brought salvation and life to millions of souls. None but God could speak words which would bring joy, peace, and deliverance from the power and guilt of sin to myriads of hearers and readers. All over the world multitudes are living by these precious words. It may be a single Gospel, perhaps only a leaf, or it may be a Testament, or a Bible, but souls are feeding upon this Word, the words of the living God.

It is the bread that cometh down from heaven and giveth life to all who receive it. "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." It was the Man Christ Jesus who spoke God's living words, words that live and that bring life to dead souls. Christ's wonderful words of life brought healing, deliverance, salvation, as He went about for the years of His public ministry, pleasing the Father. He was a perfect revelation of God in a Man. They saw His form, heard Him speak the words which brought life to dead souls; the men of that generation saw wonders wrought which only the power of God could bring to pass, yet with all this, all His miracles of healing, they delivered Him to the Romans to be crucified. No part of Scripture brings out the wickedness in the hearts of men like the crucifixion chapters. No wonder Pilate asked, "Why what evil hath He done?" Christ was guiltless in the eyes of the idolater; again and again Pilate declared Christ's innocence, but His own people would have Him crucified.

The hearts of men were never revealed as at the trial of Christ. There they were allowed to show out their enmity to God without restraint. Throughout His public ministry up to His arrest, they were restrained by the power of God from their desire to destroy Christ. The leaders hated Him and plotted against Him, but the multitudes in Galilee who were benefitted by His miracles were for Him. Even in Jerusalem a very great multitude welcomed Him and shouted His praise (Matt. 21:1-10). But when He rebuked sin in the temple, spoke against the sins of the leaders, and made God's hatred of sin known to them by parables and acts (Matt. 21:12,13, 45), then the leaders succeeded in turning the multitude against Him, or at least enough to impress Pilate with the strength of the demand for His death. God was permitting man to fully manifest his hatred of God. In Christ they had the Son of God in the guise of a man so that they could show their hatred of God and His beloved Son. Striking at Christ they could strike against God, and for once man could fully manifest his hatred.
Isaiah fifty-three was fulfilled; men were given free rein; afterwards their sin was brought home to their consciences by men speaking by the power of the Holy Spirit. Hear those accusing words of Stephen:

"Ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Spirit; as your fathers did, so do ye. Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? and they have slain them which showed before of the coming of the Just One; of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers; who have received the law by the disposition of angels, and have not kept it" (Acts 7:51-53). J. W. Newton

(Concluded in next number, D.V.) p. 155