So there are four distinct purposes for writing these Gospels. The hope of the Church and the intimacy of the fellowship of communion between the Lord and his own, the Holy Spirit's ministry, are all emphasized in the Gospel of John. There you have the teaching of the rapture of the Church first brought out. There you have the deity of Christ emphasized. But John writes for the Christian, and therefore, the Gospel of John is dearest to Christian hearts. His discourses are here, his philosophical utterances, the representation of his thoughts and wisdom as a man. Here you have our Lord's table talk, as he sat with his disciples in intimate fellowship - the Greeks loved this. Luke writes for the Greek mind, the philosophical mind. This is the Gospel that has the most Latin words in it - the Gospel of haste and action, characteristics of Rome. But Mark writes his Gospel for the Roman mind. There you have the fulfillment of the sacrificial feast with which the Jews were so familiar. Matthew wrote his Gospel primarily for the Jews, and it is filled with references and quotations from the Old Testament. It is also noteworthy that the recipients of these Gospels were quite different. Yet within that human tent, the glory of God shone forth. The fact that on the Mount of Transfiguration it became a shining garment is a mark of his Godhood - his deity - the Glory of God enshrined in a human temple, so that John could write of him, "we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father," (John 1:14 RSV). The fact that his robe was seamless is a mark of his humanity - perfect, without flaw, without seams - not the joining together of two things, but a perfect, unbroken humanity. The towel that he girded about himself as he washed the disciples' feet at the Lord's supper is the mark of a servant. His robe is the mark of a king, because in those days the king wore a robe, as kings do even today. Someone has pointed out that the very clothes our Lord wore indicate this.
The Gospel of John presents him as the Son of God, that is, his deity, and there you find the greatest claims for his deity. The Gospel of Luke presents him as the Son of man - as man in his essential humanity.
The Gospel of Mark presents his character as a servant. The Gospel of Matthew is written to present Christ as the King. Therefore, they constitute four distinct views of our Lord and of his work. They are not biographies at all, they are character sketches, intended to be different, intended to present different points of view. We make a mistake if we think these four Gospels are four biographies of the Lord. There is a reason for this, designed deliberately by the Holy Spirit. If you go on to read Luke and John, you will see that they are still different from Matthew and Mark, Matthew, Mark and Luke are more similar to each other than any of these three are to the Gospel of John. This Gospel has a completely different atmosphere from the Gospel of Matthew. The Wycliffe translators, I understand, almost invariably begin their translation work with the Gospel of Mark because it is so short and gives the whole story in one brief compass. Its brevity is probably the reason it is the most often translated book of the New Testament. The Gospel of Mark, the second book in the New Testament, is 16 short chapters long, the briefest of all the Gospels, and therefore easy to read in one sitting.
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