The Gospels Don’t Match — And That’s Exactly the Point

Photo by Tim Wildsmith on Unsplash

“Why would God give us four Gospels that don’t even agree?”

It’s the kind of question that unsettles new Christians and delights skeptical TikTokers. The Gospels — Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John — tell the same broad story but often differ on the details. One has shepherds, one has wise men. One says two angels at the tomb, another says one. Jesus flips a table at the start in John, but near the end in the others.

For some, these variations are proof of error. For others, they’re an embarrassment to be explained away.

But what if they’re the very feature we should be paying attention to?

The beauty of difference

We’ve been trained to want a single, authoritative camera angle. We want one feed. One voice. One perfect version of events.

But God gives us four.

Four voices. Four angles. Four portraits of Jesus, all telling the truth, but none pretending to tell the whole truth. They overlap, diverge, harmonize, and occasionally jar — not because they’re flawed, but because they’re faithful.

Like a set of eyewitness testimonies in court, it’s their very difference that makes them trustworthy.

If four people described a public event in exactly the same words, we’d suspect collusion.

But if they highlight different moments, different emotions, different meanings — we lean in. That’s how memory works. That’s how life works.

And that’s how God chose to reveal his Son.

Not a documentary — a declaration

The Gospels aren’t security-camera footage. They’re not 21st-century journalism. They’re more like banners, declarations, personal portraits of Jesus for different hearts and histories.

• Matthew speaks to the Jewish longing for a Messiah, the one who fulfills the law and prophets.

• Mark writes with breathless urgency, dragging us into a Jesus who disrupts and demands.

• Luke tells it with compassion and order — a historian’s heart for the poor and outcast.

• John writes like a poet, pulling back the curtain to show us glory in the flesh.

  
  

Do they sometimes place the furniture differently? Yes. Do they sometimes rearrange the order of events to make a point? Absolutely. That’s not trickery — it’s theology.

Each Gospel is telling the truth on purpose — not flattening it into sameness, but deepening it into multidimensional glory.

What if you’re the one who needs all four?

Let’s be honest: we don’t read the Gospels that way. We skim. We search for our favorite verse. We memorize the Christmas story from Luke and quote John when we’re evangelizing. But maybe the very differences that bother us are the ones we need most.

Because we’re not one-dimensional either.

There are days you need the Jesus who weeps. Other days, the Jesus who warns. Some days you’ll identify with the confused disciples. Other days, the bold woman who just touches the edge of his cloak. Each Gospel has a different path into his presence.

And taken together, they help us not just know about Jesus — but know him.

And what if God wanted it this way?

We assume a perfect Bible would be uniform. Seamless. Linear. But maybe God values something else.

Maybe truth — the kind that grips the heart and changes a life — needs room to breathe.

Maybe God wanted the Gospel to feel less like a script and more like a song: the kind you can’t stop playing because every time you listen, you hear something new.

Jesus is not a brand. He’s not a soundbite. He’s not a curated persona.

He is the truth made flesh. And the Gospels don’t just describe him — they reveal him. In different voices, different rhythms, different textures — but the same Jesus.

This is where devotion begins

Devotion isn’t about finding a perfect answer. It’s about lingering in the presence of a perfect Saviour.

It’s about returning again and again to the same Gospel stories, not to master them, but to be mastered by the One they reveal.

That’s why the Gospels are different. Not to confuse us — but to draw us deeper. Not to test our precision — but to soften our hearts.

If you’ve only ever read one Gospel, maybe it’s time to open another. Read them all. Slowly. Side by side. Let them clash a little. Let them correct and complement. You might just see Jesus more clearly than ever.

Want help seeing Jesus more clearly, one day at a time?

Download a free 3-day sample of Identity in Christ, a devotional designed to help you sit with Scripture and let it speak into your heart.

© Nathan Cole