What did Jesus do? His life, told plainly from the Gospels

A child asks it at bedtime, or a friend asks it over coffee, half curious and half testing you: what did Jesus do, really? Most of us know the answer in fragments and have never had to say it out loud in one breath.

Here it is in one breath, then slowly. He taught, he healed, he forgave, he fed people, he crossed the water to reach his friends, he went to the cross, and he rose. Every one of those has a passage behind it, and the passages are short enough to read tonight.

What did Jesus do in his life?

He spent about three years walking the towns of Galilee and Judea, teaching, healing and forgiving, and then he gave his life in Jerusalem and rose on the third day. Peter, preaching years later, put the whole ministry into a single line.

"who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him." (Acts 10:38, KJV)

That is the plainest summary in the Bible, and it comes from a fisherman who was there. Here is what "doing good" looked like, act by act.

What he did	Where to read it
Taught crowds and a handful of friends	Matthew 5-7; Mark 4
Healed the sick and raised the dead	Mark 5; John 11
Forgave people others had written off	Mark 2:1-12; Luke 7:36-50; Luke 19:1-10
Fed the hungry	Mark 6:30-44
Crossed the water to reach his disciples	Matthew 14:22-33
Went to the cross	Mark 15; Luke 23
Rose, and ate breakfast with his friends	Luke 24; John 21

If you want the same life laid out in order, from Bethlehem to the empty tomb, we have written the whole life of Christ in order. This page is the shorter answer: what he did, and why each act still matters to someone reading at the end of a long day.

How did Jesus teach?

Mostly outdoors, mostly in stories, and to whoever turned up. He taught from a hillside, from a boat pushed a little way off the shore, at dinner tables and on the road between villages.

The Sermon on the Mount is the longest stretch of his teaching in one place, and it turns ordinary expectations over one line at a time: bless the poor, love your enemies, pray in secret, stop worrying about tomorrow. When he finished, Matthew says the crowd was astonished, "For he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes." (Matthew 7:29, KJV).

Carl Bloch's Sermon on the Mount, painted in 1877 and shown at the top of this page, seats him on a rock with the crowd pressed close around him. That is how Matthew sets the scene: "he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him" (Matthew 5:1, KJV).

Then there are the parables. A farmer scattering seed on four kinds of ground. A shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine to find the one. A father who runs down the road to meet the son who wasted everything. They are small enough to remember after one hearing, and most people can retell one decades after Sunday school.

When someone asked him which commandment mattered most, he gave two. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind." (Matthew 22:37, KJV). And the second: "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." (Matthew 22:39, KJV). Everything else he taught hangs on those.

Who did he heal, and how?

Almost anyone who reached him: lepers, a blind beggar, a paralysed man, a Roman officer's servant, a woman who had been bleeding for twelve years. He healed with a word, with a touch, once with mud and spit, and sometimes from a distance.

Mark tells two healings woven into one scene, and it is worth reading slowly. A synagogue leader named Jairus begs Jesus to come to his dying daughter. On the way, in a pressing crowd, a woman touches the hem of his clothes and is healed. He stops, turns, and will not move on until he has found her face and spoken to her.

"Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague." (Mark 5:34, KJV)

Meanwhile word comes that the girl has died. He goes anyway, takes her by the hand and speaks to her in her own language: "Talitha cumi; which is, being interpreted, Damsel, I say unto thee, arise." (Mark 5:41, KJV). She gets up and walks, and he tells them to give her something to eat.

That detail is the whole of him in small. Many readers notice how often the healings end with something ordinary: a meal, a walk home, a person restored to their family. He gave people their lives back, and then let them go and live them.

Why did he forgive people others had given up on?

Because, in his own words, that is what he came for: "For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost." (Luke 19:10, KJV). He said it in Jericho, at the house of a tax collector the whole town despised.

Forgiveness is the act that got him into the most trouble. Four friends lower a paralysed man through a roof, and before Jesus heals his body he says, "Son, thy sins be forgiven thee." (Mark 2:5, KJV). The religious teachers in the room are scandalised, because only God forgives sins. The healing that follows is his answer.

At a dinner in Luke 7, a woman with a reputation in the town comes in uninvited, weeps on his feet and dries them with her hair. The host is embarrassed for him. Jesus tells the host a story about two debtors, and then turns to her and tells her that her sins are forgiven.

If you are reading this after a year you would rather forget, those scenes are written for you as much as for anyone. He kept choosing to eat with the people everyone else had crossed off.

Why do the water stories matter so much?

Because they show him coming to his friends when they are most afraid. Twice the disciples are caught on the Sea of Galilee in a storm. Once he is asleep in the boat and wakes to calm the wind; once he walks out to them across the waves in the dark.

The second night is in Matthew 14. Peter asks to come to him on the water, steps out, sees the wind and begins to sink. The rescue takes one sentence: "And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him, and said unto him, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?" (Matthew 14:31, KJV).

Notice the word immediately. He does not let Peter flounder to teach him a lesson. We wrote about what walking on water meant and how painters showed it, and the scene is the one we made as Above the Waves: the figure coming across the sea toward a small boat, with the storm still up.

He also fed people on that shore. When five thousand had followed him out to a lonely place, Mark says he "was moved with compassion toward them, because they were as sheep not having a shepherd" (Mark 6:34, KJV). He taught them, and then he fed them from five loaves and two fish. The same picture of him as a shepherd runs through John 10 and through why Jesus holding a lamb still moves people.

Why did he go to the cross?

He said it himself, plainly, before it happened: "For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many." (Mark 10:45, KJV). The cross was where the whole life had been heading.

He went up to Jerusalem knowing what waited there. He was betrayed by a friend, deserted by the rest, tried overnight and crucified outside the city walls. Even there, Luke records him praying for the men driving the nails: "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." (Luke 23:34, KJV).

It is the same act as the dinner in Luke 7 and the roof in Capernaum, carried all the way. Forgiveness was never a side of his ministry. It was the centre, and it cost him everything.

What did he do after he rose?

He went looking for his friends, one by one. He said Mary Magdalene's name in a garden. He walked seven miles beside two discouraged disciples and was known to them when he broke bread at their table.

And on the shore of Galilee, where most of the story had happened, he lit a fire and cooked fish for men who had been out all night and caught nothing. "Jesus saith unto them, Come and dine." (John 21:12, KJV). Then he asked Peter, the one who had denied him three times, whether he loved him, three times, and gave him work to do.

Of everything he did, that breakfast may be the most human. The risen Lord of the whole story makes a meal for tired fishermen and gives a failed friend a second chance before the food is cold.

Keeping his life in front of you

You can answer the question in a sentence, but it takes longer to let the answer sink in. The Gospels are the place to start. Mark reads in an evening, and his first chapter alone has Jesus teaching, healing and praying alone before dawn. Luke 2 is the place for the years before all that, and we have set out what the Gospels say about his childhood. For what to read once you have finished the Gospels, see our guide to books about Jesus, from Sheen to Bauckham.

It also helps to see it. That is why we made CHRIST, a coffee-table book of the life of Jesus in art and Scripture: each image beside the passage it shows, the teaching, the healings, the sea and the cross, in the order the Gospels tell them. It sits on a table where someone can open it to one moment and read for five minutes.

The paintings and the book are all together in everything we make, in one place. Whichever you choose, the hope is the same: that the next time someone asks what he did, you will have one scene ready, and the passage to go with it.

Frequently asked

What was Jesus's first miracle?

Turning water into wine at a wedding in Cana, in John 2. John calls it the first of his signs: "This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory" (John 2:11, KJV). His mother told the servants to do whatever he said, and he had them fill six stone jars with water.

What did Jesus do for work before his ministry?

He was a carpenter, or a builder, in Nazareth. In Mark the neighbours call him "the carpenter, the son of Mary" (Mark 6:3), and in Matthew he is "the carpenter's son" (Matthew 13:55). The Greek word can cover work in wood or stone.

How long did Jesus's ministry last?

About three years, by the usual count. John's Gospel mentions three Passovers during the ministry, which is where the figure comes from. Matthew, Mark and Luke mention only the last one, so some scholars argue for a shorter ministry, but three years is the common reading.

What did Jesus say was the most important thing to do?

To love God with all your heart, soul and mind, and to love your neighbour as yourself. He gave both when a lawyer asked him which commandment was greatest, in Matthew 22:36-40. He said everything in the law and the prophets hangs on those two.

Passages cited: Matthew 5:1; Acts 10:38; Matthew 5-7; Mark 4; Matthew 7:29; Matthew 22:36-40 (quoted: 22:37, 22:39); Mark 5:21-43 (quoted: 5:34, 5:41); John 11; Luke 19:1-10 (quoted: 19:10); Mark 2:1-12 (quoted: 2:5); Luke 7:36-50; Mark 4:35-41; Matthew 14:22-33 (quoted: 14:31); Mark 6:30-44 (quoted: 6:34); John 10:11-15; Mark 10:45; Mark 15; Luke 23 (quoted: 23:34); John 20:11-18; Luke 24:13-35; John 21 (quoted: 21:12); John 2:1-11 (quoted: 2:11); Mark 6:3; Matthew 13:55.