The Gospel That Disagrees

Added: 2026-05-13

[00:00:00]There are 27 books in the New Testament and the authors of those 27 books are nearly unanimous in what they think Jesus's death meant. If those authors ever address the issue of salvation or what Christ's crucifixion and resurrection actually meant, they will say pretty directly that it was basically to pay for sins. Now there has been a lot of disagreement all throughout like Christian history. Very different theologies evolving into how exactly that works. Penal substitution theory, the fish hook theory, satisfaction theory. Christians have debated that for like hundreds of years.

[00:00:37]But there is one author in the New Testament who really doesn't buy into that. There is one author, one author in the New Testament who if you were to propose to them that Jesus Christ died as some sort of payment for the sins of humanity, that author, an author who happened to write 27% of the New Testament would say to you, "No, that is not why Jesus died." This one author in the New Testament proposes such a different idea of how salvation is supposed to work in Christianity that it almost I would say just flies in the face of everything that Paul had to say and all the other gospel authors had to say when it comes to achieving salvation in Christianity. Something that I I really think just like rejects what we think of as the core ideas of how you achieve salvation in Christianity. what Christianity even is. But somehow this author got into the biblical cannon. And that author is Luke. I say Luke, the the author of the Gospel of Luke, who also authored the Acts of the Apostles, the Longest Gospel, and then basically a follow-up sequel work detailing what the apostles did after the death of Jesus.

[00:01:56]That author, we don't actually know his name. He doesn't identify himself at any point in his works, but he does use the first person when talking about things done in the Acts of the Apostles. So, it's been assumed by Christians that he was a traveling companion of Paul. But we can't actually discern what his identity is. It's just that over time people have assumed that the author being a traveling companion of Paul probably a gentile probably well educated and people have just assumed that that is Luke the physician someone that Paul mentions in a few of his letters. Now, the two-part work of Luke and Acts is a very interesting gospel and sequel inside of the New Testament.

[00:02:38]Because whereas most people will interpret the Gospel of Mark, the Gospel of Matthew, and the Gospel of John as being for like general use and understanding that people will come to this and look at it, uh Mark for a general audience in the Roman world, uh John sort of just general universalist gospel and Matthew for the Jewish world.

[00:02:58]But Luke was written, Luke and Acts were written for an audience of literally one. In Luke 1:3, it reads, "It seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent uh Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things that you have been taught." So Luke Acts is essentially a private letter to some highranking early Christian most likely in the first century that Luke or whatever his name really was is writing to summarize clearly in his opinion the view of historically what Jesus did and then what the apostles did right after he died. Now, the first thing that will stand out to a lot of scholars when they get their hands on the Gospel of Luke is that it is written in incredibly sophisticated Greek, at least in comparison to the rest of the New Testament. The letter to the Hebrews is commonly regarded as like the most sophisticated and like most developed and advanced Greek in the New Testament.

[00:03:58]But I would say that Luke Acts is a very close second, at least in comparison to like the Gospel of Mark. It is night and day in terms of how much more advanced the author of Luke Acts was in understanding Greek and in understanding pros than someone like the author of Mark's gospel was. This is part of what makes Luke's gospel so fascinating is that in a movement that at the point at which we assume it was written in the first century that was dominated by people that were primarily slaves, uneducated or extremely poor. abruptly.

[00:04:32]There is a man in this movement writing a gospel and then an account of what the apostles did with a level of literary understanding that is rare even today, let alone in the first century. You have to understand you you couldn't just grab someone off the street today, even if they had like a full formal education up to and including university and expect them to write something to the degree of pros and just sophistication for lack of a better word that we see in the Gospel of Luke and in the Acts of the Apostles.

[00:05:08]The fact that the early Christian movement was able to find a man, assuming it was a man, with that degree of understanding of literary Greek, of pros, and of Jewish scripture, for lack of a better term, was kind of a miracle.

[00:05:23]The reason I'm hopping on about Luke and his understanding of writing and scripture, or whatever his name actually was, is because I need to make it clear, this man is not an idiot who is misunderstanding Christianity. This is a man who when it comes to the Christian faith outright rejects how just about every other Christian at the time understood Christ's sacrifice. And that thing that Luke rejects flat out that he just removes any instance that he has to come across it.

[00:05:55]The thing that he removes in terms of core theology is the entire idea of atonement. Now, that's not a new idea or something that scholars aren't aware of.

[00:06:06]I'm sure Bartman alone will have like 15 videos on the fact that Luke lacks a theology of atonement. But it only really hit me how monumentally like groundbreaking it is that one of the authors in the New Testament, one of the most prolific authors who wrote more than a quarter of the New Testament, seemingly completely rejects atonement in Christianity. The simplest way to explain it is that a vast majority of writers in the New Testament and Christians to this day will say some variation of the reason that Jesus died was because that had to happen to make humanity right with God. That was a payment for lack of a better term for humanity's sins. Since that has now been paid, humanity can be at one with God.

[00:06:55]Jesus paid the price. The debt is settled. We we are good with God. Luke outright rejects that understanding of what Christianity is about. Luke's theology by comparison is focused entirely just on repentance.

[00:07:11]Not this idea that Jesus has to come and die and therefore some bargain is made or Jesus is like killed as a ransom for everything that humanity has done wrong.

[00:07:21]But rather just God will forgive you.

[00:07:25]Just repent. I think it's fair to say that Luke's understanding of Jesus is way more simple than the rest of Christianity than what the New Testament teaches in every other book where the subject comes up because there are some questions like, okay, why did God have to kill his own son to make things right with us? Why couldn't he just make things right? And the point of Luke's gospel and Acts when explaining Jesus and his message and what the whole thing was about is that you just have to repent. If you apologize to God for everything that you've done wrong, things will be solved. God will forgive you for anything if you genuinely repent and try to make things right with him.

[00:08:05]When Jesus comes back from the dead in Luke's gospel and says to the disciples what the whole thing was about, he says uh this right here, quote, "Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, thus it is written that the Messiah is to suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem."

[00:08:32]unquote. When Jesus comes back from the dead in Luke's gospel, it's not about getting people simply to believe in him and understand that their sins have been paid for. Rather, it is very direct in saying that the whole point of this movement is to go out there and tell people to repent and they will be forgiven by God. Not for any payment that I've made, but just because God loves them. And that theology continues into Acts when people are giving speeches. The apostles are giving speeches to people trying to explain to them what to do. The emphasis is not this man died for your sins. Therefore, the bill has been paid. The message is always just repent. When Peter confronts a group of people and like condemns them for their unjust act of like supporting the crucifixion of Jesus and they ask him, okay, we're shattered. We're terrible. What do we do? Peter says in the Acts of the Apostles, uh, quote, "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit."

[00:09:33]Unquote. Even Paul seemingly in Acts has a completely different theology to his own letters when he's discussing what Jesus's death means. In I think it's uh chapter 13 later on in Acts uh Paul is giving a speech and he says here quote let it be known to you therefore my brothers that through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you by this Jesus everyone who believes is set free from all of those sins. And here's the thing this isn't Luke making a mistake. We know that Luke had access to Mark's gospel. He would have read the entire thing, completely understood it with his competence in Greek and his understanding of literary pros. He would have seen Mark's gospel, completely understood it. There are some times where he verbatim quotes it in his gospel. He had access to it, but he willingly removed every reference to Christ's death being some form of atonement. Now some people will try to point to Luke 22, the last supper uh in Luke's gospel where Jesus is of course like talking to his disciples and he says this cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. And that points to oh okay then there was some exchange like this new agreement is being formed in Christ's blood. It is a sacrifice. But here's the thing I love about owning a Catholic Bible is that Catholics are not so hung up on the idea of like scripture being perfect and inherent. So, there are some pretty good footnotes in here, including the footnote that says that that verse there where Jesus mentions like a new covenant in his own blood is not actually in all of the oldest manuscripts. And that most scholars think that is actually an addition to Luke's work to make it seem more consistent with the rest of the gospels. Some people will also try to refute this by looking at Acts 8:23 where it's quoting uh from the prophet Isaiah. uh quote like a sheep he was led to the slaughter and like a lamb silent before its sheer so he does not open his mouth in his humiliation justice was denied him who can describe his generation for his life is taken away from the earth unquote and people will look at that and say look see that's a direct parallel saying that Jesus is like a sacrificial lamb but the point of that passage is the humiliation and injustice in Luke's gospel the entire point of the death and resurrection of Jesus is that he was subject to a complete lack of justice. The world failed him and unjustly tortured him to death. And that is an example that the entire world is going to look at and say, "Oh my god, we're awful. We need to start repenting." It's just so fascinating that Luke made the decision willingly to remove any mention of atonement, which he definitely knew about. he would have read Mark which is chalk full of the idea that Jesus is an atonement for sin. I mean he literally says in Mark's gospel something to the effect of uh my life is going to be offered as a ransom for many like I this is a financial exchange almost me paying for your sins. Luke saw that was incredibly aware of it and said that is not going in my summation of what Christianity is. And here's the thing, Luke in his gospel and in Acts is trying to present himself as a reliable historian, somebody who gets the facts right. That is pretty much what he's constantly saying. Like, I've done the research. I've gone into this. And what's super interesting is that his gospel is the only one that seemingly preserves the historical Jesus's actual message. Here's the thing. The historical Jesus, the academic consensus around him is that he was an apocalyptic prophet who was massively emphasizing to the people of Judea when he was preaching that the end times were coming. God was going to interact with the world that he was going to come and save them from the Romans and that it was the responsibility of the people to repent and get on good terms with God before that happened. He was not preaching about the idea of him dying and paying for their wrongdoing. His message was try to make things right with God. And he being your loving father will forgive you. God does not need a payment. He does not need a sacrifice. If you admit what you've done wrong, he will just forgive you for free. We know from Paul's letters that when he first interacted with Christianity in the first 15 years of its existence very very early days that it was pretty simply summarized to him as believing that Jesus died for your sins. So this is something that was with Christianity since even before Paul's time. He developed the theology and expanded on it definitely. But the core idea there that Jesus died for your sins as some sort of atonement or payment is something that comes from his core first followers, the followers of Jesus that were there for his ministry. And you really can't blame Jesus's actual followers during his lifetime for coming to that conclusion. If you were convinced that this man was the Messiah and that he was going to save the world from sin and his whole message was about repentance from sin, it's not that much of a theological jump to make the assumption that his death maybe that was some way of him defeating sin and then you kind of end up with the space where oh okay then he must have died for our sins for the sake of us. And this is why Luke is so interesting because the man who is one of if not the most welleducated and most competent writers in the New Testament, the one who in their two book structure is presenting it as if he has done massive historical investigation to try and present things as accurately as he possibly can. That is the one writer in the New Testament who actually preserves what historians and scholars believe was Jesus's actual message when he was alive.