What is the Gospel? Redux

In February of 2005 I did a post called "What is the Gospel?" and I thought I would mention that to you in light of some recent discussions on the topic. 

It started with a question from C. J. Mahaney on the Together for the Gospel Blog.   Mark Dever answers:

So there it is--the gospel is about our holy and loving God, creator and judge, His creation of us in His image, our sin against Him, His amazing provision of us in Christ, whose life, death and resurrection was for us.  He then calls all who hear this message to turn away from their sins and trust in Christ alone for forgiveness of sins, restoration of a relationship with God, and even adoption as His children, now and forever!

Mark Lauterbach at Gospel Driven Life offers seven elements of the gospel we all ought to be able to agree upon.  He also recounts a conversation between Charles Simeon and John Wesley that is very helpful. (Hat Tip - John Schroeder)

But, as is often the case, I think Joe Carter at Evangelcal Outpost comes through with the wisest words on this.  And of course I think his words are the wisest because they are most in line with my own thinking!

Joe says:

What is the gospel? The gospel--the "good news"--is news about Jesus Christ.

What is the most serious threat to the gospel in the evangelical church today? The church’s simplism of the gospel; narrowing the aboutness of Christ in order to make it presentable in a way that is formulaic and manageable.

For example, biblical passages such as John 3:16 or Ephesians 2:4-6 are often referred to as “the gospel in a nutshell.” By referring to these verses we can provide a simple summation of the “gospel”, allowing us to “witness” to those with short-attention spans. But as life-altering, world-shatteringly important as those verses are—and I cannot overemphasize just how good that news is for us---the gospel cannot be squeezed into a “nutshell.”

Indeed, the entire universe is not large enough to contain the good news about Jesus! The gospel is more than just news for fallen man. Even if there were no anthropos or no cosmos the seraphim would still proclaim the good news about Christ. The gospel is greater than just the redemption of fallen human nature, greater than the redemption of all creation. The gospel is not about me and it is not about you. The gospel is the news in toto about the Savior, Redeemer, and Sustainer of creation: Jesus Christ.

The most serious threat to the gospel is, therefore, the attempts to limit the gospel about Jesus to a propositional truth, to a narrative, to a story, to a verse, a book, to a Bible, or to a million other “nutshells.” True, the gospel is contained in all of those forms. But any attempt to share the gospel that does not proceed from “the gospel is…” to “but the gospel is also…” is simply inadequate. Even if we were able to proclaim all the news that is contained in those nutshells, though, it would not exhaust the good news about Christ.

Joe hits a home run with those words.  In my own post, referenced above, I suggested that we ought to think of all of these gospel summaries we commonly use, like EE, Four Spiritual Laws, Romans Road, Way of the Master, etc., as pedagogical devices something akin to summaries of people and events you might find in junior high history textbooks or encyclopedias.  They are valuable, they contain truth and they can communicate enough information to familiarize you with the subject, to some small degree.

But there is a world of difference between an encyclopedia entry on George Washington and a full biography of George Washhington.  Similarly, the greatest value of these gospel summaries is in their ability to point people to the full gospel contained in the pages of Scripture.

I think our forefathers were wise in calling the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the "gospels."  The whole of those books contain the gospel.  If someone wants to know what the gospel is, it is entirely appropriate to hand them a Bible and to tell them to start reading the book of Matthew and keep reading through the book of John - then they will understand the gospel because then they will have read the story of Jesus, which is the gospel.

But having done that they will not have exhausted the knowledge of the gospel - they need to keep reading through the book of Acts epistles which explain and apply the gospel.  But having read through the epistles they will still not have exhausted the gospel, they need to go back and read through the Old Testament to understand more and more of the gospel.

The thing that is always difficult in these discussions of "what is the gospel?" is the presuppositions we bring to the discussion.  As Joe intimates, the thing that is often presupposed, but not stated, in the question "what is the gospel?" is "what is the best formula?"  Is it EE or the Four Spiritual Laws, etc?  Also, it is usually presupposed that the gospel will be shared in a single encounter.

Often a single encounter is all you have so you have to share as much of the gospel as you can.  But in the Bible evangelism usually takes place over many encounters, and snippets of the gospel are given at a time.  One of my favorite books on a theology of evangelism is Conversion in the New Testament by Richard V. Peace, and he suggests that the gospels are more properly the story of the evangelism of the apostles.  With that in mind he points out that the evangelistic process took three years and included many different facets including teaching, conversation, story-telling, example, community, etc..  The gospel wasn't reduced to a formula.

In short, the gospel is a big story, it is the whole story of God's work of redemption of His people through the work of His Son Jesus Christ.

 

Comments

[Brian]

From Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, November 29:

The type of Christian experience in the New Testament is that of personal passionate devotion to the Person of Jesus Christ. Every other type of Christian experience, so called, is detached from the Person of Jesus. There is no regeneration, no being born again into the Kingdom in which Christ lives, but only the idea that He is our Pattern. In the New Testament Jesus Christ is Saviour long before He is Pattern. To-day He is being despatched as the Figurehead of a Religion, a mere Example. He is that, but He is infinitely more; He is salvation itself, He is the Gospel of God.

What do you think? The gospel isn't a set of points or beliefs, rather the gospel is actually the person of Jesus Christ. Something I've been pondering recently...

[pgepps]

Yeah, I liked Joe's post and I like yours. For sure, the Gospel is "the Good News about Christ" and expands to include all sorts of things.

I do think there's some value to asking the question, "What must be present for something to be a presentation of the Gospel?" though. In some church/school communities I've been around, the idea of the Gospel being "Good News" has been so generalized that it was possible to go a long time hearing about "Gospel work" that involved a lot of UNICEF and not much Christ.

I also think it's good if we stay a bit more focussed on the meaning of our terms than some commenters on Joe's thread--and even, a bit, Brian's comment here--are doing.

If God has chosen to sum up all things in Christ--that is, all purposes and patterns of Creation and Revelation have Christ as their most important focus of intention and meaning--then we could turn *every* term into another term for "Christ." The Gospel is not just "Christ," though, anymore than the word "Law" or the word "Incarnation" just mean "Christ."

The Gospel is Good News *about* Christ, that is, it is a message *concerning* Christ. If we flatten to Christ too quickly (the way devotional mystics like Chambers are prone to do), we miss out on a very important way that God *unfolds* (or, to strike in two registers at once, "articulated") His self-disclosure.

That is, God didn't just appear as Christ, but He revealed Himself in Christ to particular persons in a particular way, and entrusted them with a message which, by His Spirit, they entrusted to paper and to us.

Skipping past that too quickly tends to deflate Word and Sacrament, and make pietistic "me and my Jesus" thinking king of the Christian walk--which it cannot and must not be.

Cheers,
PGE

[Leo]

This discussion reminds me (in a good way) of the fox and the hedgehog...and that quote made famous by Isaiah Berlin, and now Jim Collins: "The fox knows many things but the hedgehog knows just one."

Fox temperaments like to see the fullness of the "gospel" and don't like narrowing it down artificially. The "gospel" is huge and multifaceted, and it seems almost criminal to narrow it down to one or two concepts...even justification (as protestants tend toward). Hedgehogs like to summarize the gospel into one main concept in order to make it manageable - as you wrote - which can then lead a person to a fuller understanding of it...

I'd like to make a case for hedgehog and for making relevant formulas (plural) for the Gospel... Luther used justification by faith as the key issue and it cut to the heart in semi-pelagian Europe. Billy Graham's evangelicalism focused on the "personal" Jesus...Jack Miller's Sonship focused on Sanctification by faith. Nigerian Pentecostals focused on the power that comes thru Jesus' present day reign. Nigerian Pentecostals don't always understand justification very well, and middle class protestants don't really understand power. It takes some time to learn that they're all really talking about the same thing, but they are.

These were more than just summaries of the Gospel, they represent the "cutting edge" of the Gospel for their respective times and cultures. I would suggest that unless we find the cutting edge of the Gospel for our own local cultures, we are in danger of missing the trees for the forest. What I mean is, perhaps there is one point at which the Gospel interacts so strongly with our present world that it becomes the main point (so to speak - the cutting edge) of the Gospel for our time and place...

Now I think we always wind up reducing the gospel to a culturally bound formula, to think that we can grasp the whole of the "good news about Jesus" smacks of a bit of Enlightenment arrogance - that we finally see things as they are apart from our cultural context... The question is, is our culturally based formulation of the (perfect and super-cultural) gospel cut to the heart of our culture?

[pgepps]

Leo, how is a negatively-defined cultural Gospel better than a positively-defined one?

Sure, there will be exigences of rhetoric in any given conversation. You seem to be suggesting that because Nigerians think in terms of power, they need a Gospel of power; and because suburbanites think in terms of theology, they need a Gospel of justification.

In fact, it ends up sounding like you think each culture must hear the Gospel in whatever terms it chooses to think in already. Oddly, you started out with a Gospel against culture, and it was culture-captured before you could finish a brief post on the subject.

That's why it's important to try very hard to learn and teach the Gospel both in its breadth that never fits into one frame of thought erected by sinful humans, and in its specificity that can be spoken into and against any such frame. I think you're trying to say that, but you allow your bias for the "hedgehog" to be evident, since the point of the analogy you bring up in the beginning is that the fox never wins the argument with a hedgehog.

If you really think culture-captured slogans are the summum bonnum of Gospel proclamation, I'm fearful for your disciples' health. I very much doubt you do, though, so that's all good.

Cheers,
PGE

[Brian Thornton]

"But in the Bible evangelism usually takes place over many encounters, and snippets of the gospel are given at a time."

Can you provide some examples where evangelism in the Bible took place over many encounters, rather than just one encounter? All the ones I am thinking of were single encounters: Peter's first and second sermons, the conversion of Cornelius and his household, Lydia's conversion, the Ethiopian with Philip, the conversion of Saul, the jailer and his household, etc.

In response to your main question, "What is the gospel?", I think Scripture is clear that it has two main elements: law and grace. Today, we have removed condemnation by the law and are by and large only presenting grace..."God loves you and has a plan for your life...". Unfortunately, half the gospel - relating to evangelism - is NO gospel at all. One must first be convicted under the weight of their sin before a holy and righteous and just judge before being presented with the grace of what Jesus did in dying as a substitute for sinners...then and only then can one truly be saved through repentance and faith in Christ alone.

[Adrian Warnock]

Thanks for mentioning Charles Simeon, a name that is in danger of being forgotten. I hope you dont mind me mentioning that there is a chance of his works being made available once more. See This link for more information.

[David Wayne]

No problem Adrian - I just wish they didn't cost so much - almost $300 on pre-pub.

[Adrian Warnock]

David,
Its a 21 Volume set of commentary on every verse of the scripture. They have to recover the vast cost of converting it to an electronic resource. I suspect that having read some of the page scans, it will be worth every cent.