The Teachings of Jesus Christ in the Gospels of Matthew and John

Essay by mdohertyCollege, Undergraduate September 2008

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Che Guevara. Karl Marx. Mahatma Ghandi. Nelson Mandela. Jesus Christ? Surely, it does look odd to place a religious figure among a field of famous revolutionaries. But, in fact, Jesus Christ should be at the head of this list. Jesus Christ is the ultimate revolutionary, a divine human who offered a complete lifestyle change that was 180 degrees away from the current state of affairs of his time period. While he was a revolutionary, however, Jesus was unique in the way that he linked the past and the present. He fulfilled the prophecies of the Old Testament and Jewish law, and brought about a change in society that ended up laying the foundation for modern Christianity.

"And the Word became flesh and lived among us."� This verse, found in the first chapter of the Gospel of John, sums up perfectly the connection between Jesus Christ, the new regime, and the establishment of the Hebrew hierarchy, the old guard.

Jesus Christ was the fulfillment of all the prophecies of the Old Testament prophets.

He says this himself in verse 15, chapter five of the gospel of Matthew: "Do not think I have come to abolish…I have come to fulfill."� The four gospel writers, especially John, drew on this parallel to illustrate Jesus' importance in the coordination between older Hebrew teaching and tradition and His own newer, more introspective teachings.

In some ways, Jesus Christ was a revolutionary, tearing up the conventions of thousands of years of Hebrew tradition and teaching. In other ways, he built on these same teachings by continuing them and interpreting them. Through the connections he makes between the Old Testament and his new philosophy, which was written down in the New Testament, he established that Christianity and Judaism will forever be connected. Christianity is...