The Ethics of Jesus: What Do the Four Gospels Reveal?
Ethical Teaching in the Gospels
When speaking of the “ethics” of the Gospels, one need not surmise that each of the Gospels, or even the four-Gospel canon, presents a sophisticated moral system in a highly organized form of presentation. Such a systematic presentation would seem to be precluded by their narrative genre, which renders any such body of teaching more indirect and implicit in nature. Nevertheless, it is not improper to speak, in more general terms, of the Gospels’ ethical teaching, and so we will examine the broader contours of such ethics.1
Within the overall ethical teaching of the Gospels, each Evangelist focuses on a particular aspect of Jesus’s ethical instruction. Matthew espouses a “kingdom ethic” involving a “greater righteousness” that raises the bar above surface keeping of the law. While including Jesus’s teaching on the kingdom, Mark lays particular stress on Jesus’s call to cross-centered, radical discipleship. Luke, featuring both of these elements in Jesus’s ethics, displays special interest in the socioeconomic implications of Jesus’s coming and emphasizes the reversal of status and expectations brought by his ministry. Thus, while all three Synoptists feature Jesus’s ethic of the kingdom, they flesh out particular emphases within this broader ethic, each in his own distinctive way. John, for his part, bypassing Jesus’s teaching on the kingdom, espouses a “love ethic” centered on the cross.2
Biblical Theology
Andreas J. Köstenberger, Gregory Goswell
Biblical Theology provides an essential foundation for interpreting all 66 books of the Bible, identifying the central themes of each text and discussing its place in the overall storyline of Scripture.
Broadly speaking, at the heart of the ethic of each Gospel stands Jesus, with regard to both who he was and what he did and taught. At the heart of each Gospel stands the gospel, epitomized by the respective passion narratives, centered on Jesus’s crucifixion, burial, resurrection, and ascension.3 The ethical teaching and ethos of Jesus is encapsulated primarily in his call to his disciples to follow him in the way of the cross:4
If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels. (Mark 8:34–38)
This call to radical discipleship has been well captured in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s classic The Cost of Discipleship. 5 It assigns overriding priority to allegiance to Jesus and the gospel over against any demands the world places upon a person. Whatever profit might accrue by someone’s worldly associations or accumulation of wealth will in the final analysis turn out to be loss, while any loss of family relationship or material possessions will be richly rewarded in God’s kingdom. Thus, Jesus’s ethic can best be described as crucicentric (cross-centered) or cruciform (cross-shaped).6It involves self-denial, even self-sacrifice, love (esp. in John), humility, and service.7 As L. D. Hurst observes, “What Jesus requires is the unnatural act of putting others first.”8 As such, Jesus’s cross-shaped ethic expresses his own underlying disposition in living his life in the shadow of the cross (cf. Mark 8:31–38; Luke 9:51) and for the sake of others (Mark 10:45). Anyone who would follow Jesus, therefore, must likewise be willing to suffer rejection in this world and serve God and seek to advance his kingdom rather than follow the world’s agenda.
Community
This new, overriding allegiance to Jesus also involves being transferred into a new social and spiritual entity and community—the family of God, which transcends natural flesh-and-blood relationships.9 While one’s natural and spiritual family are not necessarily antithetical, whenever a conflict arises between natural and spiritual family—the family of Jesus—the latter must prevail: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household” (Matt. 10:34–36; cf. Mic. 7:6).
At the same time, Jesus is not anti-family, as he affirms God’s good original institution of marriage (Matt. 19:5–6; cf. Gen. 1:26–28; 2:24). Nevertheless, Jesus’s call to discipleship introduces a certain tension into one’s natural relationships in that it tests commitment to Jesus over against any rival claims or demands of allegiance. This presents would-be followers of Jesus with an inevitable choice (cf., e.g., Luke 9:58–62). No one can serve two masters; every person is confronted with the choice of whether to serve God or money, as it is impossible to render satisfactory service to both at the same time (Matt. 6:24). Rather than divide one’s loyalties, like someone who might work for multiple employers in order to cobble together enough money to support their family, the interests of any follower of Jesus must be undivided.10
Anyone who would follow Jesus, therefore, must likewise be willing to suffer rejection in this world and serve God . . .
What is more, Jesus’s ethic is transmitted in the context of a small group of committed followers or learners, utilizing the pattern of the first-century Palestinian rabbi-student relationship.11According to this pattern, a student is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master, but everyone, when fully trained, will be like his master or teacher (see Matt. 10:24–25a; Luke 6:40; John 13:16). Thus, Jesus led predominantly by example; he did not expect his followers to do anything he himself was unwilling to do or demonstrate. Supremely, he set an example of self-denial and sacrifice by giving his life for others on the cross (Mark 10:45; John 15:13; cf. 1 Pet. 2:21–25).
In conjunction with this underlying disposition, Jesus frequently instructed his followers about their need to cultivate humility, considering others as more important than themselves.12 The greatest among them will be the least; his followers must emulate the innocence, lowly status, and lack of self-aggrandizement seen in little children (e.g., Matt. 19:30; 23:11; Luke 9:48). Above all, Jesus summed up the entire biblical teaching in the command to love both God and others, especially other believers (Matt. 22:37–39; Mark 12:28–34; Luke 10:25–27; cf. Deut. 6:4–6), a fact encapsulated supremely in John’s love ethic.13
Cross-Shaped Life
Jesus’s overriding concern for his disciples throughout his three-and-a-half-year ministry was that they learn to trust their heavenly Father to provide for all their needs. Thus, Jesus constantly aimed to strengthen his followers’ faith and deplored their lack of trust. Such faith is expressed in a life lived in dependence on God, as well as in devoted prayer, asking God to “give us this day our daily bread” (Matt. 6:11; Luke 11:3). Jesus’s followers are often chided as those of “little faith” (oligopistoi; e.g., Matt. 8:26; 16:8). In fact, all they need is faith the size of a mustard seed, and such faith, with God’s help, will enable them to move spiritual mountains (Matt. 17:20).
In addition to Jesus’s call to discipleship, Jesus’s ethic also involved a strong missional thrust.14 In at least three of the four Gospels, the narrative climaxes in the commissioning of the twelve apostles (minus the betrayer), who, in turn, served as representatives of the new messianic community. Matthew’s Gospel culminates in the risen Jesus’s words, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations . . .” (Matt. 28:18–19). Luke, similarly, shows Jesus envisioning “that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations” (Luke 24:47). John, finally, records Jesus’s commission, “As the Father sent me, so I am sending you. . . . Receive the Holy Spirit . . .” (John 20:21–22 NIV; cf. John 17:18).
What is more, while Jesus espoused a cross-shaped ethic and called his disciples to follow him, learn from him, and bear witness to him, this does not mean that he preached a strictly otherworldly kingdom with no relevance to life in the present world. This active social concern, which continues the legacy of the Old Testament prophets, is given expression especially in Luke’s Gospel (and is continued in the book of Acts). Luke shows that Jesus’s coming aimed to bring about a reversal of status already in the here and now, especially with regard to the poor, as well as women, Gentiles, and others of low status in society.
The above reflections on the ethics of Jesus as set forth in the Gospels underscore how following Christ today, or in any age, is deeply countercultural and poses a marked challenge to living as part of the world system as controlled by Satan, the “ruler of this world” (e.g., John 12:31).
Notes:
- On the ethical teaching of all four Gospels, see esp. Hays, Moral Vision, chapters 3–6. Hays discusses the topic in the order Mark (“Taking up the Cross”), Matthew (“Training for the Kingdom of Heaven”), Luke-Acts (“Liberation through the Power of the Spirit”), and John and his epistles (“Loving One Another”). See also the excursus on the role of the “historical Jesus” in New Testament ethics (ch. 7). Hays emphasizes the importance of narrative expressions of the ethical teaching beyond explicit didactic passages (74). On the ethics of the kingdom, see Ladd, Theology of the New Testament, ch. 9, who sums up, “Jesus’ ethics can be best interpreted in terms of the dynamic concept of God’s rule, which has already manifested itself in his person but will come to consummation only in the eschatological hour” (122).
- For details, see the discussions of the ethics of the individual Evangelists above.
- Matthew 26–28; Mark 14–16; Luke 22–24; John 18–21; cf. 1 Cor. 15:3–4.
- See the discussion of Mark 8 within the Markan narrative as a whole in Hays, Moral Vision, 75–79. Hays contends that “the cross becomes the controlling symbol for interpreting Jesus’ identity”; what is more, “the cross is not only integral to Jesus’ identity but is also . . . necessary for the sake of others” (80; cf. Mark 10:45; 14:22–24).
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (London: SCM, 1948; orig. ed. Munich: Kaiser, 1937). More recently, see Richard N. Longenecker, ed., The Pattern of Discipleship in the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996); and John K. Goodrich and Mark L. Strauss, eds., Following Jesus Christ: The New Testament Message of Discipleship for Today (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 2019), esp. chapters 1–4 (though there is no synthesis of the ethics of the Gospels).
- The same principle is enunciated by the apostle Paul in Phil. 3:7–11. On participation with Christ and cruciformity in Paul, see the discussion at 10.4.6.1.
- Regarding love, note Hays’s observation that, “Strikingly, the concept of love, a common theme of early Christian teaching, receives very little attention in Mark.” The sole exception is Mark 12:28–34; nowhere else “does the Markan Jesus promulgate love as a distinctive mark of discipleship,” and nowhere else does Mark “explicitly interpret[s] Jesus’ death as an act of ‘love’” (Moral Vision, 84).
- L. D. Hurst, “Ethics of Jesus,” in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, 1st ed., 217.
- See Andreas J. Köstenberger with David W. Jones, God, Marriage, and Family: Rebuilding the Biblical Foundation, 2nd ed. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010), 99–102; see also ch. 13: “God, Marriage, Family, and the Church: Learning to Be the Family of God.”
- Paul comments on this in the context of his teaching on the advantages of singleness (1 Cor. 7:32–35). See also his advocacy of single-mindedness when writing to Timothy (2 Tim. 2:4); James’s warning against doublemindedness (James 1:8); and Jude’s denunciation of the aimlessness and lack of proper grounding of false teachers (Jude 12–13).
- See Andreas J. Köstenberger, “Jesus as Rabbi in the Fourth Gospel,” BBR 8 (1998): 97–128; idem, “Jesus as Rabbi” and “The Jewish Disciples in the Gospels,” in Handbook on the Jewish Roots of the Christian Faith, ed. Craig A. Evans and David Mishkin (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2019), 178–84, 203–206.
- See Paul’s comments in Phil. 2:1–11.
- See esp. John 3:16; 13:1, 34–35; 15:13; cf. 1 John 4:8, 16, 19. See Köstenberger, Theology of John’s Gospel and Letters, ch. 13.
- On John’s trinitarian mission theology, see Köstenberger and Swain, Father, Son, and Spirit, ch. 9; see also Köstenberger, Missions of Jesus and the Disciples. On the mission theme throughout Scripture, including in each of the Gospels, see esp. Köstenberger with Alexander, Salvation to the Ends of the Earth, who organize their entire account around the four Gospels (see chapters 2–5).
This article is adapted from Biblical Theology: A Canonical, Thematic, and Ethical Approach by Andreas J. Köstenberger and Gregory Goswell.
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