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If you go to the library to get a book or a particular piece of information, you
have to know where to look. If you don't, you probably won't find what you're
after. The Bible is the same way. It is a library of sixty-six books, and each book
has a different purpose and gives different information. The Bible becomes a lot
easier to understand once we realize this point.
You probably know that the first four books of the New Testament -- Matthew, Mark, Luke and John -- are called the "Gospels." Each book has a different purpose. Matthew shows that Jesus was the promised Messiah of the Old Testament who came to establish his kingdom. Mark is a shorter work, tailored for the Roman mind of the first century. It presents Jesus as the ultimate servant, something citizens of Rome understood. Mark is straightforward and gets to the point quickly. Luke, on the other hand, goes into more detail. Luke was probably Greek by birth, and he seems to write for the Greek mind. He presents Jesus as the ultimate man -- perfect in ethics and morals, perfect in temperament, perfect in knowledge, and perfect in serving God. The first three Gospel accounts give biographical information about Jesus and examples of His practical teaching. John is different. John states the purpose of his book in John 20:30-31 -- to show by Jesus' miracles that He is both the Saviour and the Son of God. The miracles, the teaching, and the claims of Jesus which John writes about demonstrate that Jesus is not just a man, but God in the flesh. The Gospels present Jesus of Nazareth as the Saviour. He fulfilled prophecy, taught extraordinary things, performed miraculous signs that no mortal could do, and He claimed to bring salvation. For all of this He was killed, but He arose from the grave and ascended back to heaven. The primary purpose of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John is to produce faith in Jesus as the Saviour, the Son of God. But those books don't tell us specifically how to respond to that information to be saved. So which book of the New Testament is designed to show lost people what to do to be saved? The book of Acts. This is where Jesus is preached for the first time as the Saviour Who died for our sins. This is where Jesus is first preached as having been raised from the dead, sitting at God's right hand, reigning over His spiritual kingdom. If you want to know what to do to be saved today, you just have to look in the book of Acts. It is the book of conversions. It is the only book in the New Testament that gives examples of inspired apostles telling lost people what to do to become Christians and have their sins forgiven. The Gospels tell us about God's Son who died for us, but it's in Acts that we find out how we are supposed to respond to what Jesus did so we can benefit from His death. Not only that, but Acts also gives us a history of the early church. We learn how the Gospel message spread from Jerusalem into Samaria, then to Asia Minor, and ultimately into Europe. Acts shows the transformation from Judaism to Christianity. It also shows how Gentiles -- those who weren't Jews -- heard and obeyed the Gospel and became Christians. Unlike Judaism, Christianity is a worldwide religion meant for all people everywhere. If Acts tells us how to become Christians, how do we live as Christians? That is the very purpose of the final 22 books of the New Testament -- the epistles. Romans through Revelation tell us how to behave as God's children and how to act towards those not yet saved. More confusion arises when honest, sincere people appeal to the epistles for information about how to be saved. They weren't written for that purpose. In fact, they were written to people who were already saved to tell them how to stay saved. God's library is packed with wonderful information, but we won't benefit much from these books if we don't know how to use them. First, figure out what it is you're after. Then go to the specific book or section of books that deals with the question at hand. That is the New Testament in a nutshell. By realizing the purpose of the various books, we can better apply the information they contain. And it will help us avoid common mistakes in trying to understand the Bible. |