It’s amazing how the four gospels came into being, isn’t it? How they dropped down from the sky with no human intervention. Unlike other books of the Bible, these four contain no human elements; all other books of Scripture must be judged by their contents.

I’m sorry… is my sarcasm showing? Let me say that I believe in the inspiration of the Bible, the whole Bible. What I’m trying to say is that we mustn’t make the gospels into what they’re not. When my friend posted, “I take Jesus much more seriously than I take Paul,” I responded, “Don’t you mean that you take Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John way more seriously than you do Paul?”

Let’s remember that the gospels are church documents. They were produced by the church, for the church. They are teaching documents, every bit as much as the letters are. They are occasional documents (written for a specific need), just as much as the epistles are. They were written by inspired human authors, just as the writings of Paul were.

We can’t reject parts of the Old Testament because “they don’t fit what we know about Jesus.” (Yeah, I’ve heard that argued) We can’t reject Paul’s teachings because we think they conflict with what Jesus said. Frankly, the conflict is in our interpretation of what each said, not what they actually said. The first four books of the New Testament are not to be excepted from any scrutiny that we do of the other books. If you’re willing to reject Paul, or not take him seriously, be prepared to do the same with Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

In my last post, I emphasized the importance of the gospels. But that importance in no way takes away importance from the rest of the New Testament or the rest of the Bible. If you take the Jesus we see in the Bible seriously, you have to take Paul just as seriously. We don’t get to pick and choose.