“for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.” – Acts 20:27

“Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ.” Colossians 1:28

IT IS OFTEN heard, regarding the Scriptures, that all we need are the four Gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, to live the Christian life, and that the words of Jesus are sufficient pertaining to all that we need to follow Him.

We can no more isolate the four Gospels to be sufficient in and of themselves any more than we can exclude the Old Testament from the New Testament. Both Testaments are organically inseparable; their unity functions as one complete whole; minus either one and we put ourselves on a pedestal of determining what is and isn’t the active living Word of God; we become the arbiters and the authorities in declaring what is the word of God from a suppositional and subjective viewpoint that inevitably paves the way for heresy.

The Gospels are expounded and expanded throughout the New Testament epistles, just as Jesus expounded the Ten Commandments in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5). Many of us disregard the Old Testament insisting we now live under the New – the New Covenant, and looking at the Ten Commandments contained within Exodus 20 (with all the other laws; essentially the Ten Commandments is kind of like an abbreviation of those other laws; these ten commandments are a synopsis, a conclusion of those laws taken into consideration; they are the very heart of all such laws) there is almost a disdain at the law of God in our era – and should we really have such a mindset, as if to uphold the law as being bad? We only have to look at what Paul states, “So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good” (Romans 7:12). Indeed Paul goes onto say that the fault doesn’t lay in the law but in us (v 13); the seat of the problem lies in our heart, and the work of the law is to bring us to a knowledge of sin within us.

Let us dive a little deeper and recall what Jesus said in Matthew 5:20 “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” When taking the Pharisees into consideration we cannot leave the apostle Paul out of the equation. Prior to knowledge of sin, Paul was blameless according to the law (Philippians 3:5-7). No doubt Paul was more zealous that the majority of the Pharisees that confronted Jesus, and let us not forget that such were highly regarded by society; they were deemed holy according to the eyes of man and woman, but so exactly the opposite in God’s eyes. When sin was highlighted in Paul’s life it was as if he died; Paul’s life came to an end; everything he had lived for proved to be an utter waste of time; he had got it all wrong.

That’s quite a hefty statement to make, that our righteousness must far surpass that of the Pharisees, and, indeed, we shall never enter the kingdom of God unless we do. That’s the first blow. The second comes in like-fashion where Jesus recalls the seventh commandment, “you shall not commit adultery”, and as much as society was quite content to believe they were innocent for not committing the physical sin of adultery, Jesus drives the point home, that to even look upon a woman and lust after her is equated as committing the physical sin in God’s eyes. Although not in order, the third blow comes from Matthew 5:21-22 where Jesus again quotes the sixth commandment, “You shall not murder” and expounds it in stating that to have anger and vehemence in one’s heart toward our neighbour is the very root of murder! Jesus is drawing attention to the heart where sin lays dormant ready to strike and overcome us in a split second. It’s not mere adherence to the law of God which is only the outward performance. This is where God’s chosen people (compared to surrounding nations) had got it all wrong. They did not pursue via faith; they missed the heart of the law by not pursuing God by faith. They outwardly adhered to the law written on stone and parchments while such laws were not engrained in their hearts. It was mere lip service while their hearts were far from God.

Another aspect of God expecting, even demanding, that our righteousness excels that of the Pharisees – which comes as another blow – is in verses 43-48 of the fifth chapter of Matthew where Jesus states to love our enemies. Even Jesus acknowledged the tax collectors loving others, but it was reciprocated unto those who loved them. We can all with effort love those who we like and feel compassion for, and as Jesus states that the Gentiles (unconverted) do the same, but when it comes to loving those who berate us, lie about us, slander and hate us, it’s far from easy to do so. How do we love those who hate us? Who is our enemy? Think about it, because that’s exactly who Jesus was commanding us to love. How is our so-called Christianity doing? It’s a challenge isn’t it that cuts right to the heart? Christianity isn’t always a smooth transaction; it can be messy at times that requires we roll up our sleeves, dirty our hands and sacrifice our time, efforts and energy – it’s going to cost us, and dearly.

Now to leave it there within the confines of the Sermon on the Mount is far from sufficient; it’s incomplete, and we must consult the whole counsel of God with other passages in the New Testament, and particularly with the letter of Paul to the Romans. We will observe that in the first few chapters – mainly from chapters one to four – that Paul is laying down the very foundations in bringing awareness that all of humanity is entrapped in sin – of both Jews and Gentiles; no one escapes. Every mouth is silenced before God. This is the law of God at work in bringing every man and woman guilty before Him outside of Christ; condemnation is no longer applicable to those who are united to Christ.

We will observe echoes of this in Galatians from chapters three to four where Paul drives home that we are justified by faith and not the law. The law renders us powerless to fulfil its demands; the law cannot save but expose the depravity of our hearts in sin. If the Spirit is applying the measures of the law to our hearts He will inevitably lead to us to Christ wherein lies our only hope of salvation. Linking in this with Matthew chapter five we read the third verse, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”. These are such who have come to the end of themselves, knowing they have no hope in themselves, just like the sinner and Pharisee account where the religious leader thanked God he was not like the surrounding heathen, while one sinner could only beat his chest and say, “God be merciful to me a sinner.” This is the essence of being poor in spirit “Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” Mourning for what? Conviction of sin highlighted by the law of God; they recognise they are under the deserved judgement of God and nothing they do could ever merit or deserve the goodness of God. They are rendered totally helpless in their state as being enemies of God, but in that mourning comes the realisation that while we were weak Christ died for such, such that are ungodly (Romans 5:6). Furthermore, while we were enemies of God, Christ died for us that brought our reconciliation with God – here we see as to why Jesus commanded us to love our enemies; he loved us first, we ought now to do so to our enemies.

Yet, how are we to have such a disposition to love our enemies that is completely unnatural to us? It would be pure madness to do according to the worlds standards; we would be labelled as fools for doing so. The ways of this world is to get back at those who cause us harm, whether directly or indirectly. Fallen human nature is predisposed to being vindictive.

You will recall in Ezekiel’s thirty-sixth chapter where God stated unto Israel that He would remove their heart of stone and replace it with a heart of flesh, put His Spirit within them and cause them to walk in His ways. This is none other than what it means to be born again. Coupled with that is Ezekiel’s thirty-seventh chapter; each of these two chapters are inseparable when considering these matters. Unless a profound work of the Holy Spirit not only enlightens us but transforms us, moving us from the kingdom of darkness into God’s kingdom of light, we shall never be enabled to love our enemies. This is not implying that we shall find this easy to do even as children of God; such times will require every ounce of our energy as we are empowered of the Spirit of God to do so. We still battle against sin remaining within us, and the very antidote in not giving in to the sway of sin and the flesh is to walk in the Spirit as noted in Galatians 5:16, and indeed we notice that one of the fruits of the Spirit is love. We find in the first epistle of John chapter four and verse 7-8, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” Born of God – there we have it, and this is what makes it possible to even love; to love apart from the Spirit’s empowerment and transformation holds as much hope in enabling ourselves to be spiritually reborn. Yes, indeed, with man it is impossible no matter how much moral reform we may go undergo. It is also imperative to know what love is not; seeing the use of the negative highlights what love is: “It does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing”; in the positive we read, “Love is patient and kind… rejoices with the truth… bear all things, believes all things [not implying naivety], hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Corinthians 13:4-7). We also have Paul’s exhortation in stating, “Let love be genuine” (Romans 12:9), and the aforementioned verses expound what genuine love really means. Furthermore – and this really is one of the strongest evidences of the New Testament’s inseparable unity – in the thirteenth chapter of Romans verses 8-10, “Owe no one anything except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, [and here we see a refutation in throwing overboard the commandments] ‘You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet’ and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbour; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.” See the importance of how inextricably linked every word of the New Testament is. God has overseen the complete canon of His Word – sixty-six books – despite all the other versions appearing over the course of time, and particularly with the latest craze regarding The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church Bible (perhaps a review in due course).

So, there is just one example – and I’ll leave it there to suffice in and of itself – in refuting that we can live by the four gospels of Jesus Christ alone; no, we need the entirety of the New Testament. No book stands higher than the other; they are all of equal status. “Yes, but” someone may argue, “The words of Jesus are the all-important instructions and way of the Christian life; I just want the example and life of Jesus Christ; everything else is secondary.” Dear reader, if that is your perspective then you have nullified the rest of the New Testament; you have rendered the remaining of the New Testament as being the mere words of man and not inspired and authored by the Spirit of God. ALL Scripture is God-breathed; it is ALL the very Word of God. Our attitude and approach to the Scriptures is determined by what we do and don’t consider to be the word of God, and oftentimes such a mindset is revealed in our quiet words and passing comments which can so easily go unnoticed.

Recall what John stated at the end of his gospel in chapter 21:25, “Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.” Carry that same principle pertaining to the entirety of the New Testament; the remaining books are not merely filling the lack of such recordings of Jesus’ life; they are making up the whole as an all-round balanced sufficiency – determined by God – to instruct us in the ways of God. If God is the Author, and if God in His wisdom has preserved His Word through the last two millennium, despite some mistranslations – just as error crept into the New Testament church, and was dealt with – God has still given us His Word as He intends us to understand and as He opens our minds to rightly understand.

When we come to consider that after Christ ascended back to heaven, the Holy Spirit was poured out in a measure never witnessed in all of humanity’s history. The apostles therefore learned more through the acute presence of the Spirit of God in bringing to remembrance of what Christ said and opening their understanding to grasp the purpose of Christ coming among us. The rest of the New Testament at least expounds on what Jesus said, equally as much as Jesus expounded the Ten Commandments in The Sermon on the Mount.

I have purposefully not dealt at large with the importance of the Old Testament being on equal par with the New Testament, nevertheless the same principle applies; we cannot divorce the Old from the New; it is all one book. To exclude one or the other is to make ourselves arbiters of what is and what isn’t applicable to us. One only has to consider how many times the Old Testament is quoted in the New, and how many times Jesus referred to the Old Testament writings. It remains very the Word of God as in the New. I go so far as stating that we can never understand and grasp the New Testament aright without the Old; we shall never explore the riches and treasures of New Testament revelation without the Old Testament, just as Saint Augustine said, “The new is in the old concealed; the old is in the new revealed.”, and it is a lamentable pity that so many within modern evangelicalism have adopted the strong mindset of regarding the Old Testament as irrelevant. It therefore comes as no wonder as to why the Gospel is so misunderstood, misrepresented, and mishandled as costly pearls thrown before swine.

Reading the four Gospels in exclusion to all other Scriptures is as futile as using the Beatitudes of Jesus as a moral basis for right living; we cannot even begin to live through those steps unless the Holy Spirit performs His regenerating work in our hearts. Other than that we do no better than the Pharisees’ standard of righteousness, but worse – we fall far behind their pitiable standards in God’s eyes.

It is essential to always remember that as the epistles were written they were also divinely inspired by the Holy Spirit Himself. “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17), not the four gospels alone that I hear more of people assenting to. It is imbalanced, warped and such a stand is no different to where the socialists of today stand, or well-known atheists who admire the cultural values of Christianity while denying the power of true godliness.

“for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.” – Acts 20:27