The Gospel is the story of God’s unfolding kingdom program, instituted with power through Jesus’s death for sins, resurrection, and exaltation as King.
When we evaluate the different proclamations of the gospel in the New Testament, we soon discover a diversity of gospel expressions had been declared. This begs the question, is there more than one gospel? Despite the tension, I believe there is unity among the variations. My understanding is that the gospel is understood to be the story of God’s unfolding kingdom program, instituted with power through Jesus’s death for sins, resurrection, and exaltation as King. To be clear, the gospel is about Jesus and not me.
Traditionally, scholars have agreed upon the definition of the term εὐαγγέλιον, good news or gospel, but understanding its intent has been varied. The good news is anchored in the substitutionary death and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah. Indeed, this is Paul’s gospel (1 Cor 15:1-5; 2 Tim 2:8). However, in Western Christianity, the gospel is often centered on sinful people rather than on Jesus the Lord. In this blog, I will identify and discuss the gospel’s milieu, meaning, malformity, and mission. Scripture presents the good news as a dramatic story of God’s purpose for the world through salvation, and by way of response, humanity is invited to dwell in a relationship with the triune God. The biblical narrative is about God creating a good world and placing in it for his glory both man and woman. Much is lost in a quest to simplify and misapply a topic that requires thorough explanation and definition.
The gospel is about what God does. He has extended himself into the world many times and most personally at the incarnation, to remain with his people through his Spirit, and to begin recreating the world through his Spirit-led people. From beginning to end, the gospel is his Story. All scripture references are from the New International Version, 2011.
The Milieu of the Gospel
The Old Testament Promise
The gospel is not an isolated event in scripture. Therefore, its identification and definition must follow the gospel story as it is revealed in the holy writings. A practical and helpful way to begin a discourse on the topic of the gospel is to determine God’s intent at creation. Athanasius reminds us that “there is thus no inconsistency between creation and salvation; for One Father has employed the same Agent for both works, effecting the salvation of the world through the same Word Who made it at the first.”[1] One cannot grasp the gospel without discerning the God Story and his participation with humanity from the onset—in Genesis. It is here we review critical elements rooted in both, God’s story of creation, and that of Israel. Man and woman bear the imago Dei (Gen 1:27; 9:6), and together enjoy complete and open fellowship with their loving Creator until sin enters the story (Gen 2:18-3:24).
After the sin of Adam, human stewardship of the earth and loving relationships toward one another were hindered, but the second Adam—Jesus, who was “declared the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead (Rom 1:4),” has faithfully taken his rightful place as king over his creation. Athanasius agrees, “the first fact that you must grasp is this: the renewal of creation has been wrought by the Self-same Word Who made it in the beginning.”[2]
The gospel’s purpose is understood as “to bring about the obedience of faith” (Rom 1:5) that had been lost. God worked through Israel first, and now the church. Israel was to be a “light for the Gentiles, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth” (Is 49:6).[3] That is, to bring to fulfillment God’s original intent in creation. Israel may have failed to live responsibly before God, but Israel’s Messiah did not fail. Now through Jesus, people and all creation can be liberated from the bondage to decay and are free to join with God as his Spirit-led extensions in the world (Rom 8:19-25).
The apostle Paul, from whom a proclamation of the gospel was communicated, writes that the gospel was preached to Abraham. He communicates to the Galatian believers that “the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, ‘In you shall all the nations be blessed.’ So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith” (Gal 3:8-9). The promises God made to Abraham (Gen 12:1-3) anchored the gospel in Torah. The gospel existed as a promise and its fulfillment began with Jesus at the incarnation.[4] The sending of the Son begins the climax of the gospel narrative and in Jesus as promised Messiah, God fulfills his covenant through Israel for the world.
If we accept the seed of ultimate Promise to Abraham (Gen 12:3; 17:7), and that same ultimate Promised seed of David (2 Sam 7:12-14), and the Seed to which Paul referred as one and the same (Gal 3:16), we begin to grasp the gospel Story in all its glory. Jeannine Brown rightly concludes that “the biblical authors both assume and contribute to the meta-narrative of Scripture because they are convinced that they are participants in the biblical story.”[5]
The New Testament Fulfilment
Jesus proclaimed that he was sent to preach the gospel of the kingdom (Luke 4:43) and since the good news is directly associated with the kingdom reign of God on earth, it is not surprising that many sects within Judaism had been anticipating its arrival (Luke 17:20; Mark 15:43). However, the first century Jew had in mind an earth-bound kingdom. N. T. Wright explains, that the theological and historical grasp of the kingdom of God to this audience was “considered a slogan whose basic meaning is the hope that Israel’s god is going to rule Israel (and the whole world), and that Caesar…is not.”[6] Bates rightly clarifies this dilemma, “For these people, the kingdom was about location and a change in the worldly benevolence through God-ordained human leadership.”[7] The idea and yearning for a kingdom were in the heart of every Jewish person even though their understanding of what such a ruling government would be was varied.
Each time Jesus spoke, acted or performed a miracle as Messiah, his kingly résumé was authenticated and the powers of darkness took notice. This provided proof that he was indeed fulfilling the Messianic promises as the Davidic king who had come to inaugurate God’s kingdom. John refers to the overview of Jesus’ works in his Gospel (21:25). Jesus was the appointed Savior-King promised in the Old Testament, and was designated as such at his baptism, and finally enthroned Messiah and king at his resurrection and exaltation.[8] It is noteworthy that in scripture, the kingdom of God was described as righteous living on earth (Matt 5-7) rather than dying and going to heaven. The language of the gospel and the kingdom are inseparable.
Four Gospel Writers Proclaiming One Gospel Truth
According to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, there was the Gospel. Therefore, it is best understood that these are four versions of one story of Jesus. That is, Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection are viewed as a unified and complete narrative. We are not referring to four different gospels but a singular one with the same conclusion yet variations in the telling. The essence of each gospel is about the calling of Jesus and his crowning as king, for the salvation of the world. Three significant takeaways are dominant in the Gospels.
Jesus’ preexistence is a mark of each Gospel account as depicted in, but not limited to, the transfiguration (Mark 9:7; cf. Matt 17:5; Luke 9:3) and opening of John’s Gospel (John 1:1-3). Jesus’ statement that “before Abraham I Am (John 8:58) is clearly a nod to his foregoing presence. By noting his eternality, Jesus’ gospel fulfillment reaches deep into the Old Testament story. The incarnation with its Immanuel—God with us language beautifully presents the proclamation, initiation, and forthcoming inauguration of God’s kingdom on earth (Is 7:14; 8:8; Matt 1-2; Luke 1-2).
Jesus’ substitutionary death for sin is grounded in the Gospels where ransom language speaks of substitutionary atonement (Matt 20:28; Mark 10:45; Luke 24:25-27; John 1:29). The Gospels draw on the foreshadowed Old Testament objective that Messiah will suffer (Is 53) and follows the pattern that life-for-life was taught throughout the sacrificial system (Gen 22; Ex 12; cf. John 1:29; Lev 17:11). The new covenant itself is a testimony to the plan of God directing creation history toward his end (Jer 31:31) and Jesus’ substitutionary interpretive language is used in the Gospels as well as in the Epistles (Matt 26:26-28; Mark 14:22-25; Luke 22:17-22; 1 Cor 11:24-25; Heb 8-9).
Jesus preached the coming kingdom of God. This message of God’s kingdom was announced in the Gospels (Matt 3:2; Mark 1:15; Luke 8:1; 11:20; 17:21; John 18:36). The Greek term for kingdom, βασιλεία, was declared by the Gospel writers when discussing the kingdom of God, or its equivalent, kingdom of heaven. The term[9] occurs some 135 times in the New Testament and over 100 of those references are found in the Gospels. This same kingdom message was later spoken through Paul (Rom 14:17; 1 Cor 4:7; Col 1:13). The Christian life is made possible through the power of Jesus’ resurrection and his exaltation as King.
The present kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36). Jesus will rule until “he has put all his enemies under his feet” (1 Cor 15:25). Certainly, no monarch reigns without a kingdom. Jesus is actively reigning, so the satan’s power over the worldly domain is limited. Bates correctly addresses Jesus’ kingdom over and above that of the evil one when he writes “the satan may be called ‘the god of this age’ (2 Cor 4:4), but his power is limited because it has been decisively broken through the cross and resurrection; the new age of Jesus’s kingly rule is currently overwhelming the old age (Col 1:13-14).”[10]
The contrast between the kingdom of darkness and kingdom of light is that of ongoing victory now and final victory later. N. T. Wright clarifies that the resurrection is not a happy ending to a sad story but rather “Jesus’s execution really had dealt a deathblow to the dark forces that had stood in the way of God’s new world, ‘God’s kingdom’ of powerfully creative and restorative love, arriving ‘on earth as in heaven.’”[11] In this, we see Jesus as the God-man who is qualified to defeat the evil powers arrayed against God and to bring together heaven and earth under his reign. In Jesus’ instructional prayer, he looks to the kingdom inauguration, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt 6:8-10). The long-awaited Seed of Abraham is on his throne (Gal 3:16; cf. Gen 12:1-3, 7). Bock wisely discerns that “[the Gospels] deepen our own perception of Jesus’ claims.”[12] Dennis Edwards reminds us how hermeneutically wise and freeing it is to understand “the gospel as story, not propositions.”[13]
[1] Athanasius On The Incarnation, The Treatise De Incarnatione Verbi Dei, Trans A Religious of C.S.M.V. (London: A. R. Mowbray and Co. Limited, 1963)1:2.
[2] Athanasius,1:2.
[3] Darrell Bock discusses the Lucan pattern of prophecy that “develops the portrait of hope in his declaration of God’s universal plan of salvation where Messiah is described in terms of light and glory and in terms of nations and Israel” in, Proclamation From Prophecy And Pattern, Lucan Old Testament Christology (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1987)84-88.
[4] Matthew Bates discusses the emphasis of Paul’s use of the verb ginomai, rather than an ordinary birth where gennao would be expected to denote Jesus’ preexistence, 32.
[5] Jeannine K. Brown, Scripture as Communication, Introducing Biblical Hermeneutics (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2007)46.
[6] N. T. Wright, New Testament and the People of God. Christian Origins and the Question of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992)302.
[7] Matthew Bates, 49.
[8] Ibid., 50.
[9] Word search in Kurt Aland et al., Novum Testamentum Graece, 28th Edition (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2012) ) Logos 8 Bible Software, accessed, November 3, 2021.
[10] Matthew Bates, 67.
[11] N. T. Wright, How God Became King, 246.
[12] Darrell L. Bock, Studying the Historical Jesus, A Guide To Sources And Methods (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2020)41.
[13] Dennis R. Edwards, Might From The Margins. The Gospel’s Power to Turn the Tables in Injustice (Harrisonburg, Herald Press, 2020) 37.