The Mission of the Gospel
The gospel offers liberation[1] from sin and bondage to decay (Rom 8:19-23). Paul maintains that the Missio Dei is to bring salvation to the world (Rom 1:16; 8:19-22). Michael Gorman rightly concludes that “the mode by which salvation is conveyed to the world is the preaching of this good news both in word and in deed. And the mode by which that salvation is received is best described not as faith in the sense of intellectual assent but as faith in the sense of full participation, a comprehensive transformation of conviction, character, and communal affiliation (italics original).”[2]
Matthew Bate’s preference for translating the Greek term pistis as allegiance rather than faith in many New Testament passages is favored because it best fits the First Century language and contextual background.[3] I agree that the New Testament intent with pistis is not mere belief or faith, but loyalty to a reigning king—allegiance to King Jesus rather than to Caesar. This perspective embraces humility and pictures a servant’s loyalty and submission to a master.
The Great Commission Mandate Is Centered on Mission
The Great Commission (Matt 28:19) is a command to “make disciples…and teach them to obey everything I have commanded” yet it has often been reduced to an impotent gospel of conversion to propositions. Through the teachings of Jesus in his sermon on the mount (Matt 5-7) and his summation of the Great Commandments—" love God and thy neighbor” (22:35-40), Matthew reimagines the kingdom of God. Jesus’ command in the Great Commission is for his disciples to live daily as ambassadors of God’s ministry of reconciliation defined by the Great Commandments, illustrated through his teachings, and identified with a willingness to suffer as people loyal to their king.
Missional Gospel Hermeneutic
Michael Gorman advises believers to apply a missional hermeneutic to properly understand the gospel. The Pauline Corpus is grounded “in the theological principle of the Missio Dei, or mission of God.”[4] In this mission, God is concerned both with saving souls and saving the world he created. The re-creation process of God’s world began when God inaugurated his Kingdom through Jesus. There may appear to be tension between the gospel’s message and missional purpose, but this seems inappropriate. Gorman describes the gospel as not an either-or predicament but instead, as “a living exegesis of the gospel of God.”[5] In this approach to the gospel, it becomes a living reality of the loving, merciful, and caring God through the loving, merciful, and caring people of God.
My Personal Ministry Engagement
I concur with Gorman that the gospel is a witness in “word and in deed, and in the unpleasant consequences that often attend faithful witness.”[6] Ministering to people is messy. To sum up participation in the gospel, Gorman writes, “[A]s the church, by the power of the Spirit, becomes the gospel in its fullness by participating fully in the life of God manifested in Christ, the church offers an appropriate and credible witness to the gospel.”[7] As a minister of God’s missional gospel, I courageously declare that Jesus died for sin while also loving and participating in the pain and frailty of human fragility. I must be attentive to the needs and despair of oppressed youth so that I may create space for relationships to begin and flourish.
If one can support the truncated gospel with its mantra that Christians shall just preach the gospel, then the gospel has been misunderstood. This scheme proposes that society will change as the gospel changes individuals within a society. Supposedly, a civilization of born-again people whose gospel is anchored in propositional truth will naturally cause the social fabric of the community to evolve as well. Chattel slavery, misogyny, colonialism, and scores of other societal oppressive systems have proven this trickle-out gospel ideology to be false. Believers become the gospel as we participate in what Jesus is doing and this requires more than an orthodox belief system. Dennis Edwards describes the “way of Jesus as a reorientation to the values of the kingdom…the way of love…of loving God with one’s whole being and loving neighbors, even enemies.”[8]
In my context, serving adolescents is our mission. As an extension of the triune God, we create space for God to work by lovingly walking with youth through the tumultuous teen years without condemning rhetoric or self-righteous indignation. As bearers of the imago Dei, young people have intrinsic value, and I must reinforce that truth. At the Edgerton Teen Center, we declare the gospel as outlined in this paper, and whether a young person chooses to follow Jesus or not, we love them unconditionally. I have wonderful relationships with men and women who are now in their 40s, but who I met when they were teenagers back in the 1990s. Many of their children now hang out at our teen center. The mission of the gospel has no expiration date.
The apostle Paul recognized that true and false gospels were both active within the church (Gal 1:6-12) and he was always eager to proclaim Jesus. The New Testament gospel kerygma is varied and contextually based on the needs of the audience.
The proclamations of Jesus in the Gospels, and New Testament writers contain three basic elements. They are: (1) the resurrection of Jesus; (2) the call for a response, repentance, and loyalty to Jesus the king or Lord and kingdom living now; and (3) the promise of forgiveness, salvation, and presence of the Spirit for those who respond.[9] When we review Jesus’ messages during his lifetime and compare them to the different reports that marked the gospel proclamation after his resurrection, we discover the post-resurrection followers focused on Jesus the Lord—his kingdom, and a kind of salvation that leads the believer to love others.
In North America, there is an allegiance to power that has woefully entangled the church. The gospel must not be reduced to a belief in propositions attached to a decision-making experience that fails to offer an “empowering message to love those on the margins.”[10] At best, these messages communicate a truncated gospel, and at worst, a false gospel. The true gospel is the story of God’s unfolding kingdom program, instituted with power through Jesus’s death for sins, resurrection, and exaltation as King.
[1] Dennis Edwards, 41.
[2] Michael Gorman, 23.
[3] Matthew Bates, 22, 77-127.
[4] Michael Gorman, 53.
[5] Ibid., 43.
[6] Michael Gorman, 61.
[7] Ibid., 304.
[8] Dennis Edwards, 50-51.
[9] James Dunn, Unity and Diversity in the New Testament, 21.
[10] Ibid., 61.