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“Why didn’t Jesus write any books of the Bible?”

If we’re going to be pedantic, there’s an argument to be made that he did. The Bible refers to the Holy Spirit as “the Spirit of Jesus”. It also tells us that same Spirit superintended the writing of the Bible. “Men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” and “All scripture is breathed out by God”, literally in-Spirit-ed.

If we accept what the Bible says about the process by which it came into existence, then technically speaking Jesus didn’t just write one book of the Bible, he wrote them all.

Okay, maybe that’s a little bit of a cheat. Fair enough. Let’s try to answer the question as intended. We could also argue that Jesus did indeed write a portion of at least one book of the Bible. Chapters 2 and 3 of the book of Revelation have the apostle John taking word-for-word dictation from the risen Christ, essentially acting as Jesus’ secretary. The seven letters to seven churches in Asia are messages directly from the Head of the Church to his body on earth, not in the words of an apostle but in words personally selected by Christ.

The Red-Letter Bible

The tendency to put words spoken personally by Jesus on a different level from the rest of scripture is most evident in what we call red-letter Bibles, the first of which was published in 1901 and instantly became very popular. Some Christians find it inspiring to see the words Christ spoke highlighted so they stand out from the rest of the text. One recently-saved older believer in my own church tells me he was deeply moved by his first encounter with a red-letter edition. He still marvels at the fact that the Lord’s actual words have been preserved for us to this day. It is indeed marvelous.

I’m speculating, but perhaps Jesus didn’t write a book of the Bible for that very reason. It’s possible he was disinclined to create a two-tier scripture that might move his followers to treat the words he uttered in a human body as a different, higher level of truth than those spoken by God in the OT (“Thus says the Lord”) or taught by the Spirit throughout. I have good reason to believe that would not sit well with him.

Jesus and the Old Testament

Consider: when Jesus spoke about the existing scripture of his own day, he did so in terms that showed he thought about it as more than sufficient as it stood, as the unbreakable word of God. He affirmed its historical reliability, treating Adam and Eve, Noah’s flood and the prophet Jonah as facts, not stories or myths. He assured his listeners that not even the tiniest, most microscopic part of the law would pass away until its fulfillment, and that scripture “cannot be broken”. He explicitly quoted from the Old Testament at least 48 different times across four Gospels and alluded or referred to the scripture on something like 300 other occasions.

His arguments demonstrated that he had grown up paying unprecedented attention to the most obscure details of scripture’s wording. “If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?” The stunned silence that followed that sharp-eyed query makes it safe to say nobody but Jesus had ever given thought to the question. Another time, he used the present tense in Exodus 3:6 (“I am”) as incontestable evidence Abraham, Isaac and Jacob still live, much to the chagrin of the Sadducees. “He is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” Then he brought it home with blazing confidence: “You are quite wrong.”

For Jesus, the Old Testament text was the definitive, mouth-stopping answer to every debate. This being the case, diluting the perceived value of the rest of scripture by producing a book of his own does not seem an idea our Lord would entertain. He came to show us the Father, not to replace him in our affections.

Singling Out the Words of Christ

The desire to single out word-for-word teaching from Jesus and put it on a different level from the rest of scripture is profoundly misplaced. One reason is that a red-letter Bible does not reproduce the actual words of Christ. He spoke in Aramaic and his followers wrote down what he said in Greek, after which various teams of experts over the centuries translated it into English for us. Whatever importance there is in the words of Jesus — and they are very important indeed — we will not find it in English words or letterforms, but rather in the content of Christ’s message and its intended meaning. The words are only a means of getting to his ideas.

A second reason is that we only have the words of Christ that we do because other men of his day wrote them down for us. If we do not believe the Holy Spirit carried along each of those writers, enabling them to produce completely trustworthy accounts of his life, on what basis do we believe that we have his words reported faithfully? Sound thinking about Jesus and the word of God demands we treat “all scripture” as he treated it, as the final authority for everything related to life and godliness, not merely as an exercise in technical perfection.

The Real Issue

The book of Hebrews begins with the declaration that Christ himself was God’s ultimate message to mankind. In the past, God had revealed himself through various ways, but in Christ he spoke perfectly, not merely in the words of Jesus but through his actions, character and mission. Jesus was the word of God incarnate or embodied, a walking parable.

The gospel of John makes a similar case, calling Jesus “the Word”. For this reason, the words of scripture about Christ are every bit as important as any words he actually spoke. God’s message to us was not only what came out of our Lord’s mouth, but everything he did. When he wept, it was a message. When he was grieved, it was a message. When he touched people to heal them, it was a message. When he wrote in the dust with his finger or drove the moneychangers from the temple, he was sending a message from God. He did not need to speak to be God’s Word. He was God’s Word every minute of his incarnation, including when lying in a manger in Bethlehem or hanging on a cross between heaven and earth having already given up his spirit.

So why didn’t Jesus write any books of the Bible? I suspect to do so would have been superfluous. The entire scripture speaks of him already.