Who is Jesus of Nazareth as depicted in both the Gospels of Matthew and John

Question

Trying to asses who Jesus is in the gospel of Matthew, in the gospel of John

trying to explain who he is overall

Answer 1

Linda, I am not exactly sure what you are asking and I wish I could ask you some follow-up questions, but here is an answer for you.

Both Matthew's Gospel and John's Gospel are trying to get a message across about who Jesus is, but what you would need to know is who the message is targeting.

Matthew's Gospel comes from the standpoint of A jew sharing the Gospel with Jews. Matthew's Gospel, then, has a focus on Jesus as the fulfillment of Jewish Prophecy and even starts out with a genealogy because lineage was critical to Jews in general at the time, let alone for identifying the Messiah. Jesus is connected all the way back to Abraham (forefather of the Israelite people group) and to King David as descendants of both, important checkpoints for being the messiah.

John's Gospel has a different audience. The Apostle John lived the longest of the Apostles (Jesus' original close group of disciples). He had been working with churches in Macedonia, been sentenced to death but didn't die, thus sent into exile on an Island (where he receives his vision the we read in the book of Revelation), is eventually let off the Island where he continues to work with churches like the one in Ephesus. As usually happens with any story, differences through embellishments or detractions tend to change the story. John, however, was there in the beginning with Jesus and knew what happened directly so he set out to write a Gospel account to correct some Heresies (false beliefs about Jesus). Context is everything, John was living among Greeks for quite a while and Greeks saw knowledge as divine so much so that anything real or tangible (especially our fleshly bodies) was seen as mundane/not sacred/even dirty. This means that for God to come down and put on flesh would be to diminish God. Some Greeks could not accept this idea and so spread a teaching that Jesus was never really human. Yet others went to the other extreme and said that because Jesus was flesh, he wasn't really God. John starts his Gospel account attacking both heresies by establishing that Jesus was involved in creation (and so Jesus not created by God) that means Jesus really is God. He also states in verse 14 that "the word became flesh" so God really did come down and put on flesh. John's Gospel focuses on establishing Jesus' identity as truly God and truly man so that he can truly save people who believe in him. In fact, the premise of writing the gospel is clearly stated in John 20:31 ... I have written these things so that... (i'll let you look up the rest, I can't give you everything =)

Matthew: Jesus is the Messiah, and there is a new WAY to live by faith in Jesus (Matt 5-7 sermon on the mount is key, and the great commission Matthew 28:18-20 is key as well)

John: Jesus is the God-Man who loved us enough to do these things for us... so that we can live with him forever