Four Windows, One Jesus
by Chad Colter

My rating: 3 / 5
Genre: Christian devotional

Four Windows, One Jesus is a 40-day devotional focusing on Jesus as portrayed in the four gospels. Each gospel is given 10 days (11, if you count the intro to each gospel’s section that is about as long as the daily devotional), with the intention to show the different facets of Christ that are provided by the 4 different gospel writers.

I think many will find a lot to appreciate in this devotional. I wrote down a few nuggets that I gleaned and that made me think about Jesus, myself, or my relationship with Jesus a little differently. The author pushes the reader to not just skim passages that are familiar or even thought of as boring, like the genealogy at the beginning of Matthew, but to slow down and try to focus on the text and why it has been included. As someone who has been a Christian for many years and has read/heard passages from the gospels many times over the years, I appreciate this slower approach. I also like that the reader is tasked with reading a passage for themselves and then reading the devotional about that passage, rather than 1) the devotional covering only a verse or two, which can be done well, but often ends up feeling a little shallow or out of context (though there are a few of these devotionals that cover only a verse or two as well) or 2) feeding you the passage instead of leading you to look it up in your own Bible.

However, I struggled with a few aspects of the devotionals along the way. There is a lot of repetition in each devotional, and the author’s overall literary style is not my preference. He weirdly seems to pit one gospel/gospel writer against another when the day’s passage is one that is also included in another gospel, comparing them in a way that, at least to me, seems to say that the other one has parts to it that aren’t worth thinking about right now (even though the idea here is supposed to be to bring the different views of Christ together). And in the same way, he seems dismissive of the Old Testament and other historical context, as he will vaguely reference something that would give a scene in the gospel more depth and meaning and tell the reader to not let that bog down the reading/understanding. But as my church’s pastor is fond of saying, “There’s no text without context.” Sometimes that context makes all the difference in understanding why what happened in the gospel matters or what it means! There were a few spots I noted that I think he may have interpreted something wrongly, but nothing I felt was theologically wrong.

I am not sure who the audience for this devotional is meant to be. I feel that some of his vague references to context would confuse newer Christians or those who don’t have a decent background with the Bible. More mature Christians might find enough of value here to make the book worthwhile, so I suppose that’s where the correct audience is best found. I could see a case being made for reading this with a group, because good discussion about what is brought up in the text (and even the question about whether or not the reader should ignore the context or whether one angle of an account is “better” in Mark vs. Matthew) could arise.

I received a free review copy from the author in exchange for my honest unedited feedback.

Find out more about Four Windows, One Jesus

See what’s coming up.

If you’ve read this book, or read it in the future, feel free to let me know what you think!