Part 02 of 5

Why Did Anybody Write This Down?

Before you read a single word of this book - one question. Why does it even exist? Like - why did anybody go to the trouble. To write this down. And keep it. For two thousand years. So it could land in your hands.

Here's the cool part. You don't have to guess. Because the writers actually tell you. Out loud. In their own words. Let me show you three of them.

First guy. John. Listen to how he opens one of his letters. "That which we have heard. Which we have seen with our eyes. Which we have looked at - and our hands have touched" (1 John 1:1). Slow down on that. Heard. Seen. Touched.

This is not a guy handing you a theory. Not a philosophy professor. This is a guy grabbing you by the shoulders going - no. I was there. I heard his voice. I watched him with my own eyes. I put my hand on him. He was real. And I have to tell you.

And then he says why he's telling you. So that - his words - "your joy may be complete" (1 John 1:4). That's the energy. He's not writing to win an argument. He's writing like somebody who saw the best thing that ever happened - and physically cannot keep it to himself.

You've felt that. A movie wrecks you, you finish a book at 2 a.m. - first thing you do is text somebody, "you have to see this." That. But about a person he watched come back from the dead.

Same John. End of his big book - the Gospel. He straight-up stops and tells you why he wrote the whole thing. He says - look, Jesus did a ton of stuff. Couldn't fit it all. So I picked. On purpose. And here's my reason: "These are written so that you may believe... and that by believing you may have life" (John 20:31).

That's a thesis statement. Right there in the text. He's not pretending to be a neutral camera. He wants something for you. He picked what he picked hoping it does something to you. Which is honest, actually. And useful to know going in. This isn't a math textbook trying to be objective. It's a witness - under oath - who desperately wants you to see what he saw.

Now - different writer. Totally different vibe. Luke. And Luke opens like a reporter. Almost like a journalist writing the cover letter to his own investigation. He says - a lot of people have written accounts of this. So I decided to do my own. I investigated everything. Carefully. From the beginning. Talked to the eyewitnesses. And I'm writing you an orderly account, so you can have - his word - "certainty" (Luke 1:1-4).

You hear the difference? John says, "I was there, I touched him." Luke says, "I wasn't there - so I went and checked. Did the legwork. Here's what holds up." Two totally different people. One's a witness. One's an investigator. And both got written down. Which - hold that thought - is gonna matter a lot when we map out what to read, and in what order. Luke the investigator comes back later. Remember him.

So put it together. Why does this book exist? Because a bunch of people ran into something. A someone. So far outside anything they expected - that some of them wrote it down as eyewitnesses, and some of them chased it down like reporters. And all of them wanted you - the person who wasn't in the room - to get in on it.

This is not a rulebook that fell out of the sky. It's testimony. From people who were either there - or tracked down everyone who was.

So it's fair to ask the next question. The obvious one. Okay - then who is he? This person at the center of all of it. That is the whole game.