The Four Gospels and the Four Offerings: Why God Gave Four Accounts

People have long wondered why God gave four Gospels rather than one. If the aim were a complete record, one careful account would have done it, and the overlaps would not be there.

There is an answer, and it was written down fifteen hundred years earlier, in the opening chapters of Leviticus.

God had already given four sacrificial offerings, each showing a different aspect of one death. The four Gospels present the same four.

This study will not ask you to take that on trust. There is a test near the end which anybody can run with a Bible in an afternoon.

1. The great division: sweet savour and non-sweet savour

Before the four are named, everything depends on one distinction the text itself makes.

Some offerings are described as being of a sweet savour to God.

"And the priest shall burn all on the altar, to be a burnt sacrifice, an offering made by fire, of a sweet savour unto the LORD" (Leviticus 1:9)

Others are not. The sin offering and the trespass offering deal with guilt, and the body of the sin offering was carried out of the camp and burned on the ground, not on the altar, not as a fragrance.

"And he shall carry forth the bullock without the camp, and burn him as he burned the first bullock" (Leviticus 4:21)

Here is the difference in one line: the sweet savour offerings show what Christ is to God. The others show what He was made for us.

"For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him" (2 Corinthians 5:21)

"Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate" (Hebrews 13:12)

Hold that division. It is about to explain something in the Gospels that nothing else explains.

2. John and the burnt offering: all of it went up to God

The burnt offering was the only one entirely consumed on the altar. Nobody received a portion. It was wholly for God, and it was voluntary.

"If his offering be a burnt sacrifice of the herd, let him offer a male without blemish: he shall offer it of his own voluntary will at the door of the tabernacle" (Leviticus 1:3)

That is the Gospel of John from the first sentence. It does not begin with a genealogy or a manger but before the world existed, and its subject throughout is the Son doing the Father’s will and returning to Him.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1)

In John He is never a victim of circumstance. He lays down His life; nobody takes it. He knows all things that shall come upon Him. When they come to arrest Him they fall backward on the ground.

And the New Testament describes His death in precisely the language of this offering:

"And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour" (Ephesians 5:2)

To God. Not for us in that clause — to God. That is the burnt offering, and that is John.

3. Luke and the peace offering: the Gospel where He eats with people

The peace offering was the offering of communion, and the one the worshipper ate.

"And if his oblation be a sacrifice of peace offering, if he offer it of the herd; whether it be a male or female, he shall offer it without blemish before the LORD" (Leviticus 3:1)

Now think about Luke. It is the Gospel of meals. He eats with a Pharisee, with tax gatherers, with sinners; He is accused of it repeatedly. It gives the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the son received home, and that story ends with a feast. It is the Gospel of the road to Emmaus, where He is known in the breaking of bread.

It is also the Gospel with the widest reach: to the poor, to Samaritans, to women, to Gentiles, to a dying thief.

"For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost" (Luke 19:10)

Peace made, and people brought to a table. That is Luke.

4. Mark and the sin offering, Matthew and the trespass offering

The two remaining offerings both deal with guilt, and they differ in a way most readers have never noticed.

The sin offering treats sin as sin: the nature of the thing, what it is before a holy God.

The trespass offering treats sin as injury — damage done, to God or to a man, requiring repair. And it has a feature the sin offering lacks: restitution, with a fifth part added.

"He shall even restore it in the principal, and shall add the fifth part more thereto, and give it unto him to whom it appertaineth" (Leviticus 6:5)

Mark answers to the sin offering. It is the shortest and most abrupt Gospel, all action, the Servant working. It has no genealogy and no birth account: you do not trace the pedigree of a servant. And its account of the cross is the barest and darkest of the four.

"For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many" (Mark 10:45)

Matthew answers to the trespass offering. It is written to Israel, opening with the line of the King, and its burden throughout is a specific wrong done to a specific party: the promised King came to His own people and they rejected Him. It is the Gospel that records their own words taking the injury upon themselves, and the Gospel most occupied with what is owed and what will be required.

"The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham" (Matthew 1:1)

Injury done, and restitution to come, for the King rejected will yet reign, and the nation that refused Him will yet receive Him.

5. The test: what He said as He died

Here is the part that turns this from an elegant idea into something you can check.

Each Gospel records His death. Each records a different final utterance. And each matches its offering exactly.

Luke: the peace offering. Communion, unbroken, at the last moment.

"And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit: and having said thus, he gave up the ghost" (Luke 23:46)

Father. The word of relationship and fellowship, spoken in the act of dying. Only Luke has it.

John: the burnt offering. The work perfect and complete to God.

"When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost" (John 19:30)

It is finished. Not a cry of exhaustion: the verdict on a completed work. Only John has it.

And Matthew and Mark: the two offerings that are not of a sweet savour. Neither records a word of communion or completion at the end. Both record something else, and only these two record it:

"And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46)

"And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which is, being interpreted, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Mark 15:34)

Look at what has happened. In the two sweet savour Gospels He says Father and It is finished. In the two guilt Gospels He says My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me, and He does not say Father.

And notice their accounts of the moment itself, stripped of any word:

"Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost" (Matthew 27:50)

"And Jesus cried with a loud voice, and gave up the ghost" (Mark 15:37)

A cry with no words recorded. That is the sin offering and the trespass offering: outside the camp, in the dark, where there is no fragrance and no fellowship, because He was there as sin.

Four Gospels. Four deaths described. Four offerings. And the words match the altar.

No conspiracy of writers produced that. Go and check it; it takes twenty minutes, and it will do more for your confidence in Scripture than any argument on this page.

6. The fifth offering, which is in all four

One offering has been left out, and deliberately.

The meal offering — called the meat offering in our Bible, in the older sense of the word meaning food — involved no death and no blood. Fine flour, oil, frankincense, and salt.

"And when any will offer a meat offering unto the LORD, his offering shall be of fine flour; and he shall pour oil upon it, and put frankincense thereon" (Leviticus 2:1)

Two things were absolutely forbidden in it:

"No meat offering, which ye shall bring unto the LORD, shall be made with leaven: for ye shall burn no leaven, nor any honey, in any offering of the LORD made by fire" (Leviticus 2:11)

No leaven, which in Scripture pictures corruption spreading. And no honey — natural sweetness, pleasant and merely human, which sours under heat.

"And every oblation of thy meat offering shalt thou season with salt" (Leviticus 2:13)

But salt, which preserves and does not decay.

Fine flour is evenly ground, no coarse grain, no lump higher than another. It is a picture of a humanity in perfect balance, no quality out of proportion to the rest, and it is the reason this offering has no blood: it shows what He was, not what He suffered.

Which is why it does not belong to one Gospel. It is in all four. Every one of them shows a perfect Man, and none of them shows a flaw, and their combined portrait is the fine flour.

And it is the offering the Psalms put in His own mouth as He came into the world:

"Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire; mine ears hast thou opened: burnt offering and sin offering hast thou not required. Then said I, Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me, I delight to do thy will, O my God" (Psalm 40:6-8)

7. Four faces around a throne

Before the offerings, there is an older fourfold pattern, and it appears twice in Scripture — once in a vision by a river in Babylon and once in heaven.

"And the first beast was like a lion, and the second beast like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle" (Revelation 4:7)

The same four appear in Ezekiel, in the same order: a lion, an ox, a man, an eagle.

We will not claim more than Scripture states, and Scripture does not assign these to the Gospels. But hold them beside what the four Gospels actually present and see whether the correspondence is accidental.

The lion is royalty. Matthew opens with a genealogy establishing a legal claim to a throne, and the first men to arrive ask where the King is.

"Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him" (Matthew 2:2)

The ox is the labouring servant, and Mark has no genealogy at all, because nobody asks a servant for his ancestry. It opens at work and never slows down.

"For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many" (Mark 10:45)

The man is humanity, and Luke gives the genealogy that runs backwards past Abraham to Adam, records His age, and is the only Gospel with an account of His boyhood.

The eagle is heaven, and John begins before Genesis does.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1)

King, Servant, Man, God. Four portraits, and the offerings answer to the same four.

8. Four prophecies that say Behold

Here is a detail that is not widely noticed and is difficult to explain by coincidence. The Old Testament has four prophecies of the coming One that each begin with the same word, and each names a different aspect.

"Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper" (Jeremiah 23:5)

Behold, the King. Which is Matthew.

"Hear now, O Joshua the high priest, thou, and thy fellows that sit before thee; for they are men wondered at: for, behold, I will bring forth my servant the BRANCH" (Zechariah 3:8)

Behold, my servant. Which is Mark.

"And speak unto him, saying, Thus speaketh the LORD of hosts, saying, Behold the man whose name is The BRANCH; and he shall grow up out of his place, and he shall build the temple of the LORD" (Zechariah 6:12)

Behold the man. Which is Luke.

"In that day shall the branch of the LORD be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the earth shall be excellent and comely for them that are escaped of Israel" (Isaiah 4:2)

Behold, the branch of the LORD: the divine side, which is John.

Notice that all four use the same figure — the Branch, and that the four qualifiers are King, servant, man, and of the LORD. Four prophets, writing across centuries, and between them they announce exactly the four portraits that four Gospel writers would later paint.

9. How each Gospel ends

The endings confirm the beginnings, and this is the easiest test for a reader to run personally.

Matthew ends with authority. A King issuing orders:

"And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth" (Matthew 28:18)

Mark ends with work continuing. No throne, no long farewell: the servants go out and the Lord keeps working with them:

"And they went forth, and preached every where, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs following" (Mark 16:20)

Luke ends with blessing and ascension: the perfect Man leaving with His hands raised over people:

"And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven" (Luke 24:51)

And John ends with belief. No commission, no ascension: a stated purpose:

"But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name" (John 20:31)

Authority, service, blessing, faith. Each Gospel closes on the note it opened with, and no two close alike.

10. Why the trespass offering is different from the sin offering

Section four named these two together. They deserve separating, because the distinction is exact and it explains why Matthew and Mark are not the same book.

The sin offering deals with what a man is. Sin as nature and condition — guilt before God, requiring death.

The trespass offering deals with what a man has done — specific damage, and it is the only offering with restitution attached:

"If a soul commit a trespass, and sin through ignorance, in the holy things of the LORD; then he shall bring for his trespass unto the LORD a ram without blemish out of the flocks" (Leviticus 5:15)

And the law required the wrong to be repaired, with a fifth part added on top.

Now see why that suits Matthew. Matthew is the Gospel of a nation that had a covenant and broke it. Israel had been given the law, the promises, the temple and the King, and had defaulted on all of it. That is not a general condition; it is a specific debt.

Which is why Matthew is full of the law, the prophets, the kingdom, and the phrase that it might be fulfilled, and why it ends with the King commanding what the nation had failed to do.

Mark, by contrast, is not addressed to a covenant people. There is no genealogy, few Old Testament citations, and constant action. It is the Gospel for those who need to know what was done, not what was promised, and the sin offering answers what a man is rather than what he owes.

11. Two things this is not

A caution, because this kind of study can be misused in two directions.

It is not a key that unlocks hidden meanings. Scripture nowhere says Matthew is the trespass offering. What we have shown is a correspondence between two things God gave, and a correspondence is an aid to worship, not a secret. Anybody who tells you the Bible cannot be understood without a scheme like this is selling something.

And it is not licence to prefer one Gospel. The four are not four opinions to choose among; they are four sides of one Person, and a Christian who reads only John has three quarters of a Saviour in view.

What the pattern is for is stated plainly about all such things:

"For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope" (Romans 15:4)

Learning, patience, comfort, hope. Not cleverness.

And if you take one thing from this page, take this: a God who arranged five offerings in Leviticus, four faces in Ezekiel, four Beholds in the prophets, and four Gospels in the New Testament — all to display one Person from every side — is not a God who was improvising.

12. Why God gave four

Three conclusions, and the third is the one that matters.

The differences are not errors. Sceptics have made a career of the fact that the Gospels do not read alike. But a portrait painter and a surveyor produce different documents of the same house, and neither is lying. Each Gospel selects, and the selection is the point. What looks like discrepancy is design.

No single account could have held it. One death carries all of this: wholly acceptable to God, perfect in manhood, the ground of communion, made sin, and repairing an injury. Put it into one narrative and the aspects blur into each other. Give four, and each stands out clean.

And the pattern was laid down before any of it happened. This is the weight of the study. The offerings were given at Sinai. The Gospels were written by four men, in different places, over decades, most of whom never read one another’s work.

They did not arrange this. One mind planned both ends of it, and set the pattern out in a book of ritual law more than a millennium before the events it describes.

"For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning" (Romans 15:4)

One last word, and it is the reason any of this is worth an evening.

You cannot exhaust Him. Four books were needed and five offerings were needed, and the sum of them is still a portrait rather than a full account. Whichever way you approach Him, there is more on the other side.

And every one of those angles was, in the end, one Man on one afternoon, doing one thing.

"Then said I, Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me, I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart" (Psalm 40:7-8)

Let us Pray:

Our Father, we come before Your throne of grace through the precious name and perfect merit of our Lord Jesus Christ, who alone has opened the way into Your presence.

We thank You for Your beloved Son, and for Him who told the most religious man of his day that he must be born again. We praise You for Your preserved Word, which declares "Ye must be born again" (John 3:7), and which cannot be broken.

We confess before You that we have trusted forms and ceremonies to do what only the new birth can do. Forgive us, we pray, and cleanse us, for You are faithful and just to forgive us our sins.

We beseech You for every soul reading these words who is yet without Christ. Send forth Your Holy Ghost to convince them of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment; open their understanding; and draw them to Your Son before this day is done.

Strengthen Your people who read it. Comfort the discouraged, establish the wavering, and let none go away empty. And use this message to bring every religious soul who reads it from ceremony to Christ Himself, for Your glory and not for ours.

We pray all of this to You, O God, our Holy and Heavenly Father, in the precious name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, by the power and anointing of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

The Most Important Prayer You Will Ever Pray

Before you close this page, one question matters more than everything you have just read: if you died tonight, do you know where you would be?

You cannot be saved by joining a church, by being baptized, by giving money, or by living a decent life. Salvation is not a wage that is earned; it is a gift that is received. Every one of us has sinned, the wages of sin is death, and there is a real hell prepared for sin, but the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died on the cross in the sinner's place, was buried, and rose again the third day.

If you know yourself to be a sinner, and you are willing to turn from your sin and trust Him alone, then speak to God now. There are no magic words, but if these words are the cry of your heart, pray them and mean them:

After You Have Prayed

1. Tell somebody today. "That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved" (Romans 10:9).

2. Begin reading the Bible. Start with the Gospel of John, then Acts, then Romans. Read a little every day. "As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby" (1 Peter 2:2).

3. Talk to your Father every day. You may now come boldly, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. No appointment is needed and no man's permission.

4. Find a Bible-believing church and be baptized. Not to be saved: you already are, but in obedience, and as the public confession of what has happened to you.

5. Rest in this, and do not be shaken by your feelings. "He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life" (John 5:24). You will still sin; when you do, confess it and go on — "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9).