Great Commission

Mark portrays a definitively more dynamic Jesus in his Gospel than the familiar teacher Matthew presented to us.The Gospel of Matthew was structured around his big sermons. The Gospel of Mark is structured as to make an action hero of Him. This Gospel uses the word “immediately” an astounding 42 times, especially near the beginning (1:10, 12, 18, 20, 21, 23, 28, 29, 30, 42, 43; 2:8, 12; 3:6; 4:5, 15, 16, 17, 29; 5:2, 29, 30, 42; 6:25, 27, 45, 50, 54; 7:25; 8:10; 9:15, 20, 24; 10:52;…

Savior, counselor, friend, redeemer, shepherd, and I Am, are only some of the names brought to mind when confronted with who Jesus is, with a key one being Immanuel, or God with us. The exhaustive list should speak for itself in that Jesus encompasses every plausible Godly characteristic fathomable to man. While the human race assigns numerous titles to describe Jesus, personal introspection of who Jesus is might differ from that of a worldly viewpoint. Thus, deliberating on Jesus in a biblical…

In the Gospels of Mark and Matthew the reader receives two distinct viewpoints of similar stories. Of course, the Gospel of Mark is much abbreviated compared to the Gospel of Matthew, being that Mark was written first and used as a source for Matthew; some of Mark’s writings are replicated in Matthew. In the Gospels of both Mark and Matthew the disciples are portrayed in two different lights. Matthew is kinder with his portrayals of the disciples than Mark. Within the text of both Gospels…

The book of Acts has always been a favourite to read. It gives a detailed picture of the origin of the early church, the spread of the gospel into the world which in turn was the beginning of the Christian faith. The authorship of the book of Acts has always been debated and tested, but it is generally agreed that the author of Acts is the same person who wrote the third gospel. It is commonly known that Acts is a sequel to the third gospel, referred to as the ‘first book’. The author is…

Why So Many Gospels? Sara Driediger Writing, GEN 101 Oct. 18, 2016 1 Why So Many Gospels? Why are there so many gospels? Why are there four different re-tellings of the same story? One might think they could be simplified, condensed, edited into one concise book, instead of overlapping. The three gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke are the first books of the New Testament, and make up the synoptic gospel. These books give three different accounts of the same story, showing that the story of Jesus’…

The book Discipleship was written by Dietrich Bonhoeffer and was published in 1937. It was his fourth volume of sixteen and has also been published under the title The Cost of Discipleship. Bonhoeffer was a pastor in Germany that was later arrested, imprisoned and executed by the Nazis. Discsipleship is based on the belief that being a Christian and follower of Jesus comes at a cost, which is why he literally differentiates between costly grace and cheap grace. Costly grace is what is required.…

Discipleship has tried to be explained for many years and in many ways. It seems a new book on the topic comes out almost every year. Some books try to give new approaches and ways to disciple while others focus on what it means to be a disciple. Every book that I have read on discipleship, no matter what angle they are writing from, is centered on Jesus and how he discipled. The same is true for Bonhoeffer’s book, The Cost of Discipleship, and Eims’ book, The Lost Art of Disciple Making. Even…

In chapter 18 of How to Read Literature Like a Professor the main idea is how drowning is symbolic of baptism. In Morrison’s Song of Solomon, Milkman gets wet three times, an allusion to the form of Christian baptism in which the person is submerged three times in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. But it is not always baptism, it can mean something different like in Africa, drowning is associated with the Middle Passage. The Middle Passage is the mysterious, treacherous, and a…

The best way to begin the book called Paul the Missionary is to define the term “mission.” According to the book, the word “mission” as “intentionality and movement” (22). Moreover, Schnabel uses Jesus and Paul’s ministry as the examples of missions. Paul describes Jesus’ mission as “movement from God into the world and in terms of the intentionality of Jesus’ mission in Galatians 4:4-5” (26). Furthermore, in Galatians 1:1 and 15-16 describes Paul’s mission as movement and intentionality.…

about the contents in the Gospels. The most compelling reason why we have to believe that the Gospels are authentic is because the apostles in this time, “behave[d] like the scribes of Judaism, whose teaching was devoted to the recitation of Judaism’s great traditions” (p. 120). So the function of Jesus’ apostles could have been to write down or remember the specific teachings of Jesus and then share them with others. This lines up quite nicely with what we find in Mark chapter 6. Here, Jesus is…