The New Testament tells us the story of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and the spread of Christianity. This overview of its message will help you understand the New Testament.
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The New Testament tells us the story of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. It then describes the spread of Christianity. It ends looking forward to Jesus’ return and his future reign. In order to help you understand the New Testament, we've put together this overview of its message, and how the message relates to the books of the New Testament.
As we learned in the last episode, in the Old Testament, God had made a promise to a man named Abraham: the promise that God would save the entire world from sin and its bitter effects. Sin alienates people from God and calls for his just condemnation. Sin brings death and trouble into the world. Yet when the Old Testament ended, God had not finished this part of the promise. He hadn’t yet rescued and redeemed the world. That’s what Jesus’ coming was all about. He came as the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham, as well as many other promises in the Old Testament.
The very first verse in the New Testament is rooted in the fact that Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s promise.
The coming of Jesus fulfills the story of the Old Testament. That’s why, as Christians, it is so important to read the Old Testament, because it tells us everything God was doing until the coming of Jesus. It also provides a context to understand the death of Jesus and his resurrection.
Jesus came to this earth to die on the cross for our sins. He did a lot of other important things, but Jesus’ most important action was to die in our place, on the cross, for our sins, so that we could be rescued.
This is the emphasis of the Gospels, the four books that appear first in the New Testament. The Gospels are accounts of Jesus’ life. The first, Matthew, was written to tell Jewish people how Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah. Matthew presents Jesus as an authoritative teacher, including five large blocks of Jesus’ messages. The second, Mark, provides a vivid, dramatic overview of Jesus’ life. He emphasizes what Jesus did more than what he said, pointing to his identity as the suffering Son of God who offers himself as a sacrifice for sins. Luke traveled with the apostle Paul. His gospel stresses that Jesus is the Savior for all people, including the lowly and marginalized. Jesus brings the promise of rescue to all ethnic groups. Like Matthew, John was an eyewitness of Jesus’ ministry. His is the most...
