“What’s your favorite Gospel?”
As a New Testament scholar, I get this question all the time. Sometimes people are just curious about what I think. Sometimes they are wanting to study a Gospel themselves and don’t know where to start. And sometimes they are trying to reach a non-Christian friend and want to know which Gospel is most effective.
Before I answer, we should begin by acknowledging all four Gospels are wonderful. They all tell the same overall story of redemption through Christ, they all are fully inspired by God, and they all have been loved by the church for generations.
The Gospels are Different
At the same time, we should acknowledge that all four Gospels are different. If they were exactly the same, we wouldn’t need four. If they were exactly the same, the question of which Gospel is your favorite would never even come up.
But they are different, and in so many ways. They are penned by four different authors with different backgrounds and different perspectives. Two were apostles, two were companions of apostles. Three were Jews, one was a Gentile. Moreover, they are different lengths. Luke is by far the longest, and Mark is by far the shortest. And they were written at different times. Mark seems likely to be written first (maybe as early as the 50’s), and John is certainly last (likely in the 90’s).
Beyond this, they have different theological emphases. Matthew is a teaching-heavy Gospel with a very Jewish flavor. Mark is the action-oriented Gospel, geared toward Gentiles. Luke has a Greco-Roman feel with an eye to the marginalized and outcast. And John is what we might call a “heavenly” Gospel, with a focus on eternal life (or, in the words of Clement of Alexandria, it is a “spiritual Gospel”).
While these differences can be troubling to some, they should actually be reassuring and encouraging. They remind us that God has delivered his Gospel message through four different channels precisely because the goal is to reach as many different people as possible. Yes, the four authors are giving us the same Gospel story. But they shape and fashion it in such a way that it more effectively reaches the distinctive audience in front of each of them.
In other words, the fourfold Gospel shows that God is a missionary God. He is not just interested in telling people about the good news, but reaching people with the good news. And there’s a difference. Telling people is message-centric. Reaching people is audience-centric. The latter requires that consideration be given to the kind of audience you are trying to convince and removing as many obstacles as possible for that particular audience.
To be clear, the four Gospels are both message-centric and audience-centric. They care very much about getting the message right. But they don’t only care about that. They also care about getting the message out.
So, for God to give his Gospel message from four different perspectives is essentially a stroke of missionary genius.
It’s OK to Have a Favorite
If so, then the fourfold Gospel reminds us that it is perfectly OK to have a “favorite” Gospel. Since God gave four different versions of the Gospel to reach different kinds of people, it should not surprise us if we feel more “connected” to one Gospel than another.
Now, that’s not an excuse to disregard or ignore the other three. We need all four Gospels to have a full and balanced picture of Jesus. At the same time, however, it is perfectly natural if we find ourselves particularly drawn to one of them.
In the early church, it is pretty clear that the most dominant Gospel—and arguably the “favorite” Gospel—was the Gospel of John. Even though it was written last, it quickly rose to a place of preeminence among the four. We have more manuscripts of the Gospel of John from the second and third centuries than from any other Gospel.
And things have not changed much in 2000 years. If one were to do a straw poll of average church-goers today, asking them which Gospel is their “favorite,” chances are they would say the Gospel of John.
It is precisely here that I will have to part company with most Christians in both the modern and ancient church. While I love the Gospel of John (indeed, I wrote the chapter on John in my book A Biblical-Theological Introduction to the New Testament), there is another Gospels that is my favorite: the Gospel of Mark.
Why Mark is My Favorite
I imagine that’s probably a bit of a surprise for most people. Mark is arguably the least popular Gospel among the masses, so why is it my favorite? Here are a few quick reasons:
1. Straight to the point. While the brevity of Mark might be a negative for some, I see it as the main positive. Mark has the same skeletal structure of the other Gospels but its streamlined content allows the reader to get to the point more quickly. Thus, it is beautifully simple (which, by the way, makes it a great Gospel to study with a non-Christian).
2. Easy to teach. Mark is not only short overall (just 16 chapters), but also the individual stories tend to be tight little nuggets, rather than extended discourses. This allows for a sermon series or Bible study of more reasonable length, with each individual message covering similarly sized chunks of text. You won’t need a 5-year sermon series to finish Mark.
3. Action-oriented. If Mark were a movie, it would definitely be an action movie. Yes, Jesus delivers profound teaching, but it tends to be in more digestible bite-sized chunks, rather than the long teaching sections found in both Matthew and John. The pace of the story moves along quickly, keeping the reader/listener engaged. Proportionally, therefore, Mark tends to accentuate the remarkable deeds of Jesus.
4. Gentile focus. While Mark was likely not a Gentile, he is clearly writing for Gentiles—particularly those in a Roman context. Thus, he is keen to make sure the reader understands Jewish customs and the broader OT context in ways that Matthew and John just take for granted. This is a great help for modern readers who are often unaware themselves about these issues. Moreover, Mark’s Roman context is quite similar to the context of our modern western world where Christianity competes in a marketplace of pagan/polytheistic systems. If I were teaching a Bible study in ancient Rome, I would use Mark.
5. Unique and Intriguing Details. Since Mark is the shortest Gospel, people often assume his stories include less detail than the other Gospels. But this is one of the paradoxes of Mark’s Gospel. Mark is the shortest Gospel because he includes fewer stories overall, but the stories that Mark does include often contain details that appear in no other Gospel. Only Mark tells us the name of the blind man outside of Jericho (Bartimaeus). Only Mark tells us that the Simon of Cyrene had sons named Alexander and Rufus. Such unique details make for fun Bible studies.
6. Connections to Peter. Since Mark himself was a rather obscure figure in the early Christian movement (popping up a few times in Acts and Paul’s letters), this may explain his Gospel’s lack of popularity. Wouldn’t you rather read from an apostle like Matthew or John? But there are good historical reasons to think that Mark’s Gospel is essentially the reminiscences of the apostle Peter. Time and again in our historical sources, we are told that Mark basically got his material from Peter, and that essentially Mark’s Gospel is Peter’s Gospel. This sheds a whole new light on what you are reading when you read Mark. You’re seeing Jesus from the perspective of the preeminent apostle of early Christianity and the one who betrayed Jesus.
7. Routinely Underestimated. One of the joys of teaching the Bible is taking books that people generally underestimate or neglect, and showing why they are more important than they think. That always creates a fun “reversal” in a teaching context as the audience moves from a posture of shrugging their shoulders to a posture of wide-eyed amazement. You can do that with the Gospel of Mark.
Go Study Mark
In sum, I love all four Gospels. And we need all four Gospels. But I hope I have convinced you that John is not the only option on the table for a Bible study, even a Bible study with a non-Christian.
If you want to dive deeper into the Gospel of Mark, check out my 34-week video series on Mark which I taught here on the RTS campus for my women’s Bible study. We spent two years in Mark, carefully working through every passage. The whole series can be found here, but the first installment is below. Enjoy!