Every quotation below is spoken by Jesus, lifted whole and unedited. The
plain-English line above each one is ours, not his — a label, so you can find a thing
again. If the two ever disagree, his words are the ones that count.
The short list
Everything below is one of these forty, said again, said to someone else, or spelled out. Nothing down there is missing from up here, and nothing is counted twice.
Nothing matches that.
What this is. Everywhere in the gospels that he tells people how to live — every command,
every instruction, every piece of direct advice — gathered into one place and put in an order
you can actually use. Where the same instruction is given in more than one gospel it appears
once, and the other places it turns up are listed beside it.
What is left out, and why. Four things:
• Parables. The sower, the prodigal son, the ten virgins. They are stories, and what you are meant to do with them is a matter of reading. Where he ends a parable with a plain instruction — “Go, and do thou likewise” — that instruction is here and the story is not.
• What is going to happen. Prophecy, the end of the age, what becomes of Jerusalem. Where he attaches an instruction to it — watch, do not be alarmed, hold out — the instruction is here.
• What he says about himself. I am the bread, the door, the way. True or not, it is not a thing to do.
• One-off practical orders. Fill the jars. Go into the village and untie the colt. Show me a coin. He is arranging an afternoon, not teaching anybody how to live.
Where the line is genuinely arguable — an instruction given to one named person, a saying that reverses an earlier one, a wording that differs between two gospels — the entry says so on itself rather than quietly choosing. Open the note under it.
The old law. He said he came to fulfil the law of Moses, not to scrap it, which raises the obvious question of how much of it comes with him. The honest answer from his own words is narrow: he quotes and endorses about a dozen older commands by name, and they are gathered in The old commands he named himself. He never works through the rest of the law, so nothing has been added on his behalf.
What is left out, and why. Four things:
• Parables. The sower, the prodigal son, the ten virgins. They are stories, and what you are meant to do with them is a matter of reading. Where he ends a parable with a plain instruction — “Go, and do thou likewise” — that instruction is here and the story is not.
• What is going to happen. Prophecy, the end of the age, what becomes of Jerusalem. Where he attaches an instruction to it — watch, do not be alarmed, hold out — the instruction is here.
• What he says about himself. I am the bread, the door, the way. True or not, it is not a thing to do.
• One-off practical orders. Fill the jars. Go into the village and untie the colt. Show me a coin. He is arranging an afternoon, not teaching anybody how to live.
Where the line is genuinely arguable — an instruction given to one named person, a saying that reverses an earlier one, a wording that differs between two gospels — the entry says so on itself rather than quietly choosing. Open the note under it.
The old law. He said he came to fulfil the law of Moses, not to scrap it, which raises the obvious question of how much of it comes with him. The honest answer from his own words is narrow: he quotes and endorses about a dozen older commands by name, and they are gathered in The old commands he named himself. He never works through the rest of the law, so nothing has been added on his behalf.
King James Version · 1769 text · public domain