This comprehensive study delves into the life and teachings of Jesus Christ through an in-depth analysis of the four Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Each Gospel offers a unique perspective on Jesus' ministry, providing a multifaceted portrayal of his character, message, and impact. The book employs a synoptic approach, carefully comparing and contrasting the accounts in the four Gospels. This meticulous examination reveals the harmonious threads that weave through each narrative, while also highlighting the distinctive emphases and nuances that enrich our understanding of Jesus' life. The book's multi-faceted structure presents Jesus' journey in four distinct voices. The first voice captures the majestic proclamation of Matthew, emphasizing Jesus' role as the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy and the king of God's kingdom. The second voice, Mark's succinct and fast-paced account, portrays Jesus as the servant of God, tirelessly ministering to the crowds and ultimately sacrificing himself on the cross. Luke's gentle and compassionate voice offers a third perspective, highlighting Jesus' concern for the marginalized and his unwavering love for all. Finally, John's profound and mystical voice presents Jesus as the divine Son of God, revealing his pre-existence and his eternal glory. Through this multi-vocal approach, the book invites readers to engage with Jesus' life from multiple angles, deepening their appreciation of his multifaceted nature and the transformative power of his message. Whether exploring the theological depths of his teachings or witnessing the compassion and miracles that marked his ministry, readers will gain a profound understanding of Jesus Christ, the central figure of Christianity.

Understand God’s Word in its Original Cultural Context The NIV First-Century Study Bible introduces you to an ancient world vastly different from your own, but rich in valuable life lessons. This Bible includes great tools to help answer your questions about life in Bible times and see how the ancient past holds applicable truths for life today. Including fascinating articles from Pastor Kent Dobson, unpacking the culture of Bible times, illuminating Scripture passages, and asking thoughtful questions along the way, this study Bible is a wonderful way to explore God’s Word in its original Christian context and better understand the historical meaning of Scripture. Kent Dobson is the teaching pastor at Mars Hill Bible Church in Grandville, Michigan, where he initially served as the worship director. He has been featured on Biblical programs for the History Channel and the Discovery Channel. Kent fell in love with Biblical studies in Israel and had the privilege of learning from both Jewish and Christian scholars. After his time in Israel, he returned to the States to teach high school religion and Bible before responding to God's call to the pastorate. Today, he keeps his connection to the Holy Land strong, leading tours to Israel that combine study and prayer, inspired by the ancient discipline of spiritual pilgrimage. Features: Complete text of the accurate, readable, and clear New International Version Day in the Life articles, describing daily life in Bible times and Addressing the Text articles to help you dive deeper Word Studies expound upon original Hebrew words Study notes with writings from early church writers, rabbis, and extra-biblical sources Supplemental information on topics such as: Abomination that Causes Desolation, Antiochus IV Epiphanies, Conversion, Covenant, Dead Sea Scrolls, Essenes, Desert Law, Diviners in the Ancient World, Intertestamental Times, The Ethics of War, The Shema, Life in the Diaspora, The Greek Lions, The Biblical View on Slavery, Did Moses write the Torah, The Spirit of YHWH, Zealots, Wine Making Full-color photographs, maps, and diagrams Book introductions and outlines

Noted evangelical scholars present the best contemporary insights into the three dominant views on the origins of the Synoptic Gospels.

New Testament Study Guide, Pt. 1: The Life & Ministry of Jesus Christ. This volume is the first of three on the New Testament. It covers the life of Christ from his premortal selection as the Lamb of God through His birth and childhood. Then we follow the Master during the first year of His ministry as He is tempted, baptized, performs miracles, selects Twelve Apostles, and then teaches with parables and in the Sermon on the Mount. During the second year of His ministry, He teaches the Bread of Life sermon, is transfigured, and bestows priesthood keys to the Twelve. He finishes the second year of His ministry at Jerusalem, where He declares Himself to be the Light of the World, the Son of God, and the Messiah. The cover features the classic image of ?The Sermon on the Mount? painted by Carl Heinrich Bloch in 1890.

This in-depth inductive Bible study examines Mark?s record of events in Christ?s life and ministry and considers the same events as presented in the other Gospels. The twenty-two-week study looks for eternal principles to lead Christ?s followers to a life of obedience and commitment. It includes many questions to bring personal application from Christ?s teaching through Mark?s historical and biographical narrative. The lessons also offer reflections in Scripture in the study of the classical spiritual disciplines to challenge students to grow in their faith as mature disciples of Christ.The study provides a number of options for completing the lessons. When a group is meeting weekly, each student will benefit from the review discussion suggested in the accompanying leader?s guide.

In the past the passions were regarded as sicknesses of the soul due to Adam’s sin. As the Redeemer, Christ shares in our humanity and experiences the passions, but given his divine status he quickly overcomes the passions by his superior reason as the Word. In effect, Christ is displayed as a Stoic sage who is unperturbed by the passions. The book is critical of this traditional perspective for its inability to think of the Incarnation as the Word’s real participation in our humanity. Christ is not a Stoic sage who displays an uninvolved holiness, but the Word become flesh who displays an astonishing breadth and intensity of emotional life, which reveals what it means for the fullness of divinity to dwell bodily in him. Reformed theology moved beyond the traditional perspective in affirming the strong emotions of Christ as proof of his humanity, but Christ’s divinity was given insufficient attention. The book proposes a complex view of Christ’s emotions, which are regarded not merely as proof of his humanity, but reveal the personal attributes of divinity communicated to his humanity. To observe Christ’s emotions is to witness the mutual interaction of humanity and divinity in his person, which accomplishes our salvation (deification). To imitate Christ, then, means that Christ’s emotions become the emotions of his followers, so that by seeing as God sees and feeling as God feels, they go forth in obedience to Christ’s commandment to love one another as he has loved us, which is to live the way of the cross for the sake of the ongoing embodiment of God in the world.

Have you ever been puzzled by contradictions in the Bible? Or wondered why there are four Gospels, three sets of Ten Commandments, or two creation stories at the beginning of Genesis? Beginning with the first pages of Genesis, the Bible tells most of its stories through multiple versions, which contain both similarities and disagreements. The inherent arguments in Scripture did not seem to bother the Jewish faith. A practice called midrash developed in Judaism sometime before the days of Jesus. Rabbis and scholars sparred over opposing passages, developed theological arguments, and filled gaps in biblical stories with their own understandings. This book will use the threefold prayer of St. John of the Cross to allow the divergent voices in Scripture to speak and practice midrash with each other, enabling the reader to join the conversation. The contradictions and arguments have a divine purpose. Not only did they prompt the Bible's evolution over hundreds of years, but have enabled it to remain a living word for thousands of years. This pluralism in the Bible is good news for the faithful living in a multi-cultural, pluralistic age.

This volume addresses the Synoptic Problem and how it emerged in a historical context closely connected with challenges to the historical reliability of the gospels; questions the ability of scholarship arriving at a compelling reconstruction of the historical Jesus; the limits of the canon; and an examination of the relationship between the historical reliability of gospel material and ecclesial dogma that was presumed to flow from the gospels. The contributors, all experts in the Synoptic Problem, probe various sites and issues in the 19th and 20th century to elaborate how the Synoptic Problem and scholarship on the synoptic gospels was seen to complement, undergird, or complicate theological views. By exploring topics ranging from the Q hypothesis to the Markan priority and the Two Document hypothesis, this volume supplies extensive theological context to the beginnings of synoptic scholarship from an entirely new perspective.

The four Gospels are the only books in the Bible to tell the same story from four different angles. Together, they show us not only what Jesus was like and how he lived, but how his life can become the model for our own. Four Gospels, One Christ offers an overview of the three years of Jesus' public ministry--what he did and how he did it--as seen through the eyes of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And by exploring the themes that run through the four Gospels, it invites us to reflect on what it really means to "follow Jesus."

The author of a much-loved two volume Matthew commentary (1990) that he greatly revised and expanded fourteen years later, Frederick Dale Bruner now offers The Gospel of John: A Commentary -- more rich fruit of his lifetime of study and teaching. Rather than relying primarily on recent scholarship, Bruner honors and draws from the church's major John commentators throughout history, including Augustine, Chrysostom, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Bultmann, Barrett, and many more. Alongside this "historical interpretation" is Bruner's own contemporary interpretation, which incorporates a lucid translation of the text, references to recent scholarship, and his pastoral application of the Gospel to present-day experience. Like Bruner's other work, this commentary is rich in biblical insights, broadly historical, and deeply theological. Here is what Eugene Peterson said about Bruner's earlier work on Matthew: "This is the kind of commentary I most want -- a theological wrestling with Scripture. Frederick Dale Bruner grapples with the text not only as a technical exegete (although he does that very well) but as a church theologian, caring passionately about what these words tell us about God and ourselves. His Matthew commentary is in the grand traditions of Augustine, Calvin, and Luther -- expansive and leisurely, loving the text, the people in it, and the Christians who read it." The same could well be said about the present John commentary, which promises to be another invaluable resource for pastors, teachers, and laypeople alike.