Why Do the New Testament Letters Sound Different from the Gospels?

Should we build our theology off the teaching of the apostles or the teaching of Jesus? Probably, to most of the people reading a post like this, such a question sounds absurd. Why would we need to choose? Jesus and the apostles were both inspired writers of Scripture, so everything they say agrees and it is equally authoritative. No need to pit the two against each other. But not everyone is convinced that this is true.

For example, a favorite argument of the pro-LGBTQ crowd is the technically accurate statement that Jesus never directly condemned homosexuality. They’ll occasionally hold up signs at rallies that say things like, “Everything that Jesus said about homosexuality,” and the rest of the sign is blank. Get it? Because Jesus never said you can’t be gay. Now, the apostles do specifically condemn this sin (Romans 1; 1 Corinthians 6:9; 1 Timothy 1:10), although the pro-LGBTQ crowd will try to explain these passages away, too. But what about the charge that Jesus never addressed homosexuality?

And it’s not just those trying to normalize homosexuality. Many people attempt to draw a distinction between Jesus and His apostles. Skeptics of the Bible are especially fond of this division. They will argue things like, “Jesus came preaching a religion of kindness and love of neighbor, and then people like Paul came along and made it into something much more elaborate and technical. The peace-loving Galilean hanging out with fishermen somehow was transformed into the Son of God, leader of a highly structured, primarily Gentile religion that He would never have recognized, or so it is argued.

This argument strikes some people as plausible. After all, the gospels do sound quite different from the New Testament letters. The simple parables and catchy teaching of Jesus give way to long doctrinal treatises on justification by faith, a theology of the body of Christ with its many members, or instructions for how households and churches should be governed. So how do we explain the difference? How did we go from stories about lost sheep, people planting seeds, or runaway sons to exalted discourses on theology?

This doesn’t need to be a concern, however, and there are good reasons for this shift. I want to give a few reasons why the difference in tone and content from the gospels to the letters makes sense and should be expected. My hope is that in doing this, we will get a better understanding of the integrity of the New Testament and won’t be concerned when those who doubt Scripture try to pit Jesus against Paul.

The Apostles Were Writing Letters, not Gospels

The first and most obvious reason for the shift in tone is the shift in form. The gospels are biographies of the life of Jesus, with His teaching scattered throughout. The letters were occasional, in other words there was an occasion that called for a specific letter at a specific time. The letters are kind of like sermons, designed to address particular needs with Christian truth. People would get confused if you asked why a book of poetry and a newspaper article sounded different. “Because they are not the same kind of writing” would likely be the puzzled reply. In the same way, when people wonder why the letters sound different from the gospels, the first answer is that they are not the same kind of writing.

The Apostles Were Commissioned to Finish What Jesus Started

It’s important to realize that when the apostles speak, they speak on behalf of Christ. That’s what an apostle was – an officially designated spokesman on behalf of Jesus. There is no daylight between what Jesus wanted and what the apostles taught, because the disciples represented Jesus. How do we know this? Because Jesus Himself predicted it would happen! In fact, in John 16:12-15, Jesus specifically says that He hasn’t been able to tell His apostles everything, but when the Spirit comes, the Spirit will guide them into all truth. Therefore, we would expect that some of what we find in the letters would be an advance on what Jesus taught. Jesus Himself told us this would be the case.

The Apostles Were in a New Era

Everything changed when Jesus rose from the dead. The night before His crucifixion, Jesus had predicted that He would inaugurate the New Covenant with His blood. His death was the sacrifice that did just that (Hebrews 9:15-22), and the resurrection was proof that His work had been accepted by the Father (Romans 4:25; 8:33-34; Acts 2:23-24, 32). Then Jesus left abruptly. Luke tells us that Jesus spent 40 days teaching His apostles about the kingdom (Acts 1:3), but we have almost none of that teaching.

So when the apostles begin teaching they use clearer, more concrete terms about things like regeneration, justification, or salvation from sin through the death of Jesus. Of course they do, and of course Jesus didn’t. He hadn’t died yet! Of course there were no detailed instructions on how life in the church should be handled like we have in 1 Timothy, there was no church yet! The disciples found themselves in a new stage in the history of God’s dealing with His people, a new stage that was begun by Jesus, but which had radically changed after His death and resurrection. Jesus had taught some about what life would look like after His death and resurrection, but He left most of the working out of these changes to the men He handpicked to carry on His mission.

The Apostles Were in a Gentile Context

To go back to the example used earlier, why did Jesus never directly address homosexuality? The answer is quite simple. Jesus was preaching to Jews who had already accepted God’s standard for marriage. That doesn’t mean the Jews were perfect. Jesus calls out the men in particular for their lust (Matthew 5:27-30) and their casual attitude toward marriage (Matthew 19:1-12). But when it came to homosexuality, that was not something that was seriously defended as acceptable behavior inside Galilee or Judea.

The Gentiles, on the other hand, did not have such scruples. The Gentiles did engage in various forms of homosexuality, and although some of their philosophers railed against it, overall the practice was acceptable. That is why when Paul writes to the Corinthians he reminds them, after telling them homosexuality will prevent them from inheriting the kingdom, “such were some of you” (1 Corinthians 6:11).

Idolatry and immorality in particular were two areas where the apostles had to fight to help young Gentile converts change their way of thinking so that it matched Jesus’ thinking and not the world’s thinking. This does not mean that Jewish Christians had no problems, only that their problems looked more like favoritism, hypocrisy, and slanderous speech (see the letter of James) than immorality and idolatry (see 1 Corinthians and Romans). New needs called for new teaching.1

The Apostles Often Summarized Rather than Quoting

One of the most popular definitions of preaching is that preaching is “truth poured through personality.” In other words, godly and careful preachers who preach the Word of God with conviction will not sound like one another. Some will be visibly excited in the pulpit, while others will be more reserved. Some will use lots of illustrations and personal anecdotes, while others will excel in carefully explaining each word of each line of each verse. God doesn’t expect all preachers to be the same. He gave them a distinctive personality for a reason, and He wants them to be a unique conduit for the truth, so that their preaching is the truth of God’s Word poured through their unique personality.

In a similar way, the disciples were not simply quoting Jesus. There are instances of direct quotation in the New Testament, but most of the time the apostles are taking the truths of the gospel and the teachings of Jesus and exhorting a specific community of believers. The only clear example we have in the New Testament of an apostle writing both a gospel and a letter is John. When we compare John to the letters of John, we find remarkably similar themes, but 1, 2, and 3 John aren’t simply retelling the gospel story, that’s what the gospel of John is for! Rather, they are taking the teachings of Jesus and applying them to the church and to the friends of John in specific, tangible situations. James almost never quotes Jesus (James 5:12 appears to be the only exception), but it is increasingly clear that his letter is permeated by the themes and thinking of Jesus as applied to specific situations by James.

 

Jesus did not teach everything that needed to be taught, and He never claimed to. His words were definitive, but they were not exhaustive. He set the trajectory of a movement, and then handed the reins to those He trained to finish what He started. His teaching ministry was a seed that when planted, grew and blossomed into the apostolic faith.

So would Jesus the Galilean have recognized first-century Christianity of Peter, James, and Paul? Of course, it was His people, under His authority, empowered by the Spirit He sent, who had, humanly speaking, built that church.

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1 A great example of this is when Paul clarifies the teaching of Jesus about divorce. Paul encounters a situation Jesus didn’t address: when a Gentile converts and is now married to an unbeliever. His statement in 1 Corinthians 7:12 “I, not the Lord,” doesn’t mean that Paul is merely giving a suggestion. He will do that later in the chapter (7:25-26), but here he means there is no direct teaching from Jesus. Since this is a new issue, he is now speaking as an apostle to this situation with his apostolic authority.

 

 

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Ben Hicks is the Associate Pastor at Colonial Hills Baptist Church in Indianapolis. This article originally appeared on his Substack.

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Photo by Jannis Nöbauer on Unsplash