Our sermon series on 1 John speaks a lot about knowing and believing in the apostolic word. We believe that the apostolic testimony has been recorded for us in the New Testament, particularly in the Gospel accounts, where we obtain our evidence for our Lord Jesus’ earthly ministry.
In last week’s editorial, we learnt two reasons why can trust that the NT gospels are reliable (1). First, because they were written early, and second, because they were corroborated. We will read the remaining two reasons this week.
Once again, may this strengthen our confidence in the faith that we have received, and in our sharing of it.
Ps Luwin Wong
Reason #3: They Haven’t Changed Over Time
But even if the New Testament Gospels were written early, how can we be sure they weren’t altered significantly over the years? How do we know the Gospels we have today are the same as the Gospels originally written by the eyewitnesses? When an original witness is caught changing his or her story, jurors are allowed to consider this change as a sign of deception. In my criminal cases, I typically evaluate the potential alteration of evidence over time by tracing the “chain of custody”. From the first officer who reported a particular piece of evidence, to the detectives who next handled it, to the criminalists who then examined it in the lab, to the detectives who eventually delivered it into the courtroom, I want to know what each and every one of them had to say about the evidence under question. Did they write about it? Did they take a picture of it? The “chain of custody” will help me determine if the evidence was altered over time. In a similar way, there is a New Testament “chain of custody” related to the transmission of the Gospels and letters of Paul. The Gospel of John, for example, can be traced from John to his three personal students (Ignatius, Polycarp and Papias) to their personal student (Irenaeus) to his personal student (Hippolytus). These men in the chain of custody wrote their own letters and documents describing what they had been taught by their predecessors. These letters survive to this day and allow us to evaluate whether or not the New Testament narratives have been changed over the years. The evidence is clear, the foundational claims related to Jesus have not changed at all from the first record to the last.
Reason #4: They Are Not Biased
Finally, there are certainly times when witnesses lie, particularly if they are properly motivated. But what would motivate someone to tell a lie in the first place? In my experience as a homicide detective, there are only three motives behind any homicide, criminal act or lesser moral impropriety. In most cases, they are caused by one of these three motivations: (1) financial greed, (2) sexual or relational lust and (3) the pursuit of power. That’s it. That’s all. If the authors of the Gospels are lying about their claims, we should expect that they’re lying for one of these three reasons. Did they get rich from their claims? No. Did they get a bunch of girlfriends as the result of their claims? No. What about power? Couldn’t it be argued that these men became important leaders within their religious community? While this might seem a reasonable motive, apply it to the foremost leader of the early movement: Paul. Paul started off with the authority and respect of his religious community. As a devout religious Jewish leader, he was charged with hunting down members of the Christian community. Are we really to believe he would leave this position and “jump in” with the very group he was happily charged to destroy, only to suffer persecution for many years in the hope he might one day return to a position of religious authority? This seems highly unreasonable and unlikely. None of the Gospel authors gained anything from their testimony and instead suffered persecution and death for their claims. The authors lacked motive and bias.
About the author:
J. Warner Wallace is a cold-case homicide detective and serves as a Senior Fellow at the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. He is also an Adj. Professor of Christian Apologetics at Talbot School of Theology, Biola University, and a faculty member at Summit Ministries.
If you are interested in reading more from him about the reliability of the New Testament gospels and the case for Christianity, you can get a copy of Cold-Case Christianity: A Homicide Detective Investigates the Claims of the Gospels. This book teaches readers ten principles of cold-case investigations and applies these strategies to investigate the claims of the gospel authors.
1 J. Warner Wallace, (2024, February 23). Four Reasons the New Testament Gospels Are Reliable. ColdCaseChristianity. https://coldcasechristianity.com/writings/four-reasons-the-new-testament-gospels-are-reliable/
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