Just Enough with Jesus
“This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and has written them, and we know that his testimony is true. But there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”
John 21:24-25
We have been slowly making our way through the book of Genesis in our Thursday morning Dad’s Bible Study. We were looking at a story in Chapter 38, which goes into a lot of strange details. One of the participants — a Genesis scholar in his own right — made an interesting point: he noticed how much space was given to this odd story about Judah. The Bible is valuable real estate and Genesis is no exception. Chapter 38 seems to be a random story that goes nowhere, so why was it included?
“On top of that, the Gospels rarely go into vivid details about Jesus. Of any person in the Bible, we’d love to hear many more stories about Jesus than what we have in the four Gospels,” he said.
He was right. There is no one else we’d love to hear more about than Jesus, and yet we are only given what Matthew, Mark, Luke and John thought we should know. Nothing more.
This discussion reminded me of how the Gospel of John ends. He essentially says, “The whole world could be filled with stories about Jesus, and yet this is what I’m giving you. This should be enough for you to believe.”
And really, even if there were 1,000 gospels written about Jesus from the first century, there would still be people who would need 1,001 books to be convinced. It would never be enough. We are given sparing details about the greatest person who has ever walked this Earth, who also happened to be God Himself. And we have to realize that there was a lot left on the table, so many stories about what He said and did, but we’ve been given enough for faith. We are always given just enough.
