What is the Gospel?

“Gospel” comes from a Greek word that means “good news.”  Today we can say that the good news has so many dimensions. First, there is a loving and beautiful God who brought us into existence along with this world and who wants to fill us with his beauty and goodness and truth. On days when the world seems cruel and meaningless, this is GREAT news!

The good news is also that this God loves us despite our manifest selfishness and lack of love and beauty so much of the time. He can love us because His Son became the mediator who suffered the punishment we deserve so that God and we can become friends after being enemies. And that same Son lived a perfect life to earn for us an eternity with this beautiful God and all his saints, whom we can enjoy and get to now for eternity.

But before we get to heaven, there is so much more to this life, where we can “partake of the divine nature” through the Church and its sacraments, being filled afresh each week or even day with the body and blood of the Son of God, in other words his humanity and not just his divinity.

So the good news is that there is real love and real beauty and real goodness that we can gradually know and become part of.  Our lives then have meaning and purpose. And because God gives us gifts, a unique set to each of us, we can play a role in this life in God’s work of redemption. We can know what Mother Teresa called “the joy of loving,” and see the church and the world changed a bit by what we do and are.  That is joy. . . and good news.

The gospel is that Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, became flesh, and did what we did not—he lived a perfect life of obedience, and yet, he took our place on the cross, enduring the eternal wrath and curse of God which our sins deserved and rose again from the dead for our justification. The Apostle Paul puts it this way in 1 Corinthians 15:3-4, “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance to the Scriptures.” The “good news” is not about a moral worldview or a religious experience. It is about Jesus Christ. He is the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but now has been made manifest and known.

The promised Saviour is the Satan-crusher (Genesis 3:15) and is called ‘the Lord our righteousness’ in Jeremiah 23:6. Paul likewise describes the Gospel as concerning ‘the righteousness of God’ (Rom 3:21-22). Too often want to make it all about us, and we think God exists to forgive us as if that’s his job. We need to think more deeply. The Gospel is about God’s provision of righteousness through the obedient last Adam (1 Cor 15:45); a righteousness accessed through faith, so that God is both just and the justifier of whoever believes in Jesus (Romans 3:26). Justification is by Christ as the meritorious foundation in his obedient life in my place and in bearing my sins on the Cross fulfilling all required and being raised and glorified in our nature so that he lives in the power of an indestructible life. He gains what the first Adam forfeited. Faith is the instrument that unites me to Christ in his saving work. Deeds truly good because they proceed from a renewed heart that seeks to please God are evidences of justification. They are fruits of the new relationship not causes of it.

Let me begin by saying I love what Frame and Storms have written. I would simply add that the gospel is also the good news that I have been rescued from Satan- the enemy of my soul, and that Jesus is establishing his kingdom.  

What makes all of this so wonderful and perpetually relevant for the people of God is that in all of this, the gospel reveals something of the worth, beauty, splendor and glory of Jesus.  Through the gospel, there is the perpetual revelation of the glory of God in the face of Jesus through the gospel, and this revelation is one that touches my mind and heart so that I know that I know….that I know God as the Spirit bears witness with my spirit.

As we continue to answer what “is” the gospel, I would say that it “is” the centerpiece of discipleship.  Paul exhorted Peter that he was failing to “live in line with the gospel.” At the heart of all discipleship is the gospel.  By that I mean that we encourage one another to live out its implications, to believe and remember its truths forward, and to see the finished work of Jesus come to bear in our lives.  

The gospel is also the power of God.  It is the only power on earth, in the universe for that matter that has the power to take the most broken aspects of our lives, families and society and to redeem them at such a profound level that they bring glory to God (radical, dynamic authentic change).  The power that spoke light into darkness and water to wine also breaks the hardest hearts and progressively turns people into the image of Christ as the same God speaks through the gospel.  

The gospel is also the message and strategy for mission.  The gospel is what the nations need! Nothing else has the power to sustain a people in persecution, to build the church, and to captivate the hearts of the lost.  It is the gospel that is going out to all the earth bearing fruit and not returning void. While we are called to meet the most basic needs of people (feeding, shelter, relationship, etc) we do so while we also seek to meet their most fundamental need, to be reconciled to God the Father.  

Finally, the gospel is the way I read and understand scripture.  If I am reading Moses or if I am reading Paul, I am looking for something that shows me the glory of Jesus in the gospel.  

The gospel is essentially Jesus Christ, his mission and kingdom. If we focus only on justification by faith and escape from hell we are missing a big part of the gospel. The good news is not about my salvation, it is about the divine messianic King, who became a sacrifice for me to bring me into his kingdom. In this way, the gospel relates to the whole of life, present and future, not only to the past. Paul is ready to preach the gospel to the Roman believers (Rom. 1:15). Did he not believe they were already disciples? I think Paul’s understanding of the gospel is much broader than ours. The gospel is applicable to our daily life: we need forgiveness every day, we need to submit to our Lord and his will every day, we need to pursue his goals in this world every day. Scot McKnight’s book The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited speaks well into this.

The gospel is the good news that the God who created all things has chosen not to condemn all mankind for our sins against him, but instead to send his Son, Jesus Christ, to redeem sinners from all nations. Christ accomplished redemption by living a sinless life and dying as the substitute for sinners. Christ rose from the dead and applies redemption in all who repent of sin and trust in him alone for salvation by the work of the Holy Spirit.

The short answer is that the gospel is the good news that those who trust Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior can become part of the family of God and enjoy life in his presence, starting now. The longer answer is that the Father almighty – the maker of heaven and earth – sent his Son to represent the fallen human race, to identity with us to the point of death itself, and then be raised to new life, defeating the evil powers and principalities, including death itself, so that those who put their faith in him can, through the Holy Spirit, experience his new life and so finally fulfill their original purpose, which is to glorify God and enjoy him forever, with others. The gospel is the true story of who God is, who Jesus Christ is, and who we can be in Christ through the Holy Spirit. It is the true story of what God did to repair his relationship to a humanity that had lost its way. The practical implication of the gospel is that we no longer have to live our lives anxious about tomorrow. The future – fellowship with God and the people of God – is not something to fear but to anticipate with hope, patient endurance, and joy. 

The Gospel is the good news that God in his grace saves the lost through the work of his Son Jesus Christ and restores us to fellowship with God.  This is the treasure, the pearl of great price, that is true and valuable even if it had no consequences for practical life.  But it does!  Thanks to Christ’s atoning death our sins are forgiven, we are freed from guilt and shame. The gospel thus opens up for those who believe a life of fulfilling service in obedience to God.  This life of obedience is fulfilling (because it is right) even if it did not change society; but it does and it has changed entire civilizations because the life of obedience is the only way to live in fullest communion with God by glorifying him in all that we do. The gospel is all about joyful and meaningful communion with God, communion made possible because of what Christ has done for us.  The good news is that we have fellowship with God.

The gospel is the good news of Jesus Christ, the savior of the world. We have all sinned and fallen short of God’s glory and his will, in what we have done and what we have not done. Christ, the lord of creation and the cosmos, came to suffer and die for our sakes. Even more, the gospel has implications for all of life and for all of creation. The good news, the reality of Christ’s sacrifice, resurrection, and rule, reaches as far as sin does.

The “gospel” is the good news that life in all its dimensions is good, beautiful, meaningful and enormously satisfying when lived in fellowship the Lord Jesus and his committed followers.