Review of The Gospel According to Jesus by MacArthur
MacArthur’s Gospel According to Jesus is an interpretation that emphasizes the need for one to have authentic faith. It focuses on the fact that Jesus calls everyone to be born again in Him, meaning that it is not enough to try to address one or two shortcomings in one’s own life; rather, one must actually work to become new in Christ—a new person who is entirely Christ-centered, so that Christ can shine out through one’s own actions and expressions.
Some of the points that MacArthur makes are that God wants true worship—nothing half-hearted or that is as much man-centered and self-worshiping as it is God-centered and Christ-worshiping. One cannot be vainglorious or self-righteous and expect to be saved. Christ came to save sinners, and unless one sees how one is a sinner and wants to be made whole in Christ, filled with grace, there is no point to calling oneself a Christian.
Throughout, MacArthur emphasizes the need for Christians to repent, because that is the call that Christ makes throughout His earthly life. Repentance and sorrow for one’s sins in the eyes of God are what allow the grace of God to get through to one so that one can begin to come to God.
Overall, it is a book that is well worth reading and should be recommended to anyone interested in learning what it means to be a Christian. One can understand easily with this book what the message of Christ is throughout the Gospels. What MacArthur does is he brings out Christ in Scripture and presents Him as is, without any apology or attempt to dress Him up as something other than what He is.
Bibliography
MacArthur, John. The Gospel According to Jesus: What Does Jesus Mean when He Says" follow Me"?. Zondervan, 1994.
Gospel of Luke According to early church traditions, Luke was a Jewish, Greek-speaking physician who accompanied Paul on his three journeys, and was chosen to write the third Gospel because his knowledge of Greek was better than most of the other writers in the church at that time. Even his use of language gives a hint about his social and cultural origins since it was composed in the same style as
There are seven letters by Paul and it is accepted that they were written by Paul, but no one knows clearly who wrote the rest. A critical enquiry into all this started only in the 18th century as there was no critical study of the matter. The accepted authorship of Paul is regarding the Epistles to Romans, First to Corinthians, Second to Corinthians, to Philippians, to Galatians, to Thessalonians
Gospel of John was written already after the disciple's death in the first century CE. It was time when there was coming a vivid schism in Christianity teaching, as Christian philosophy was influencing changes caused by the impact of Gnosticism of Greeks, and it was time when some Christian religious leaders rejected the Devine mission of Christ. In gospel, John comes to the original language used by Jesus Christ,
" (Kysar 27) Scholars at times forget that the bible is not only a work of theology but also a work of literature. Barnes also believes in this interpretation and its New Testament expression of the Trinity, "I am thinking, in particular, of the pivotal appeal to John 1:1-3 at de Trinitate 2.2.9, which resembles Tertullian's (and Hippolytus's) use of the Johannine prologue as the paradigmatic expression of the economy of
As for a summary of the document, this has already been covered but no quotes from the text have been provided up to this point. Of course, one of the most widely known verses in the Gospel of John is John 3:16 which does not need to be repeated here because any Christian would know it. Other notable passages include chapter 18 when Jesus is arrested, the raising of Lazarus
Also, according to Luke, the "poor" may fall under a spiritual category, referring to individuals who are committed and humble and depend solely on God (Bartholomew, Green and Thiselton). Because Jesus ministry had no boundaries, Luke wrote that the church should also have no boundaries and should include the rich and the poor. One of Luke's greatest desires may have been for the church to include the rich and the