After 2000 years—give or take two decades—of church history, one would think that a strong consensus or even certainty about crucial doctrines would have been achieved. Such is not the case when it comes to the ground-level word gospel, and it surprises some when I stake that conclusion in the ground with a flapping little flag.
So let me flap this little flag one more time. The first thing we have to do is ignore scholars, for whom the term gospel has endless nuance and careful articulation. And I say this as one of them, and I say it because our nuances frankly have not been translated into common communication. If you ask an ordinary evangelical Christian what the gospel is, chances are you’ll hear something like this: Jesus came to die for my sins so I can spend eternity in heaven with God.
If you have enough time to sit down over coffee with them and ask them to discuss the meaning of gospel, you will most likely get something like this: God loves us, but God is also immensely holy. God created us as image-bearers (what I prefer to call Eikons), but we sinned. God is now in a dilemma: God’s holiness drives God to punish us for our sin and our rebellion because God cannot tolerate sin in his holy presence. But God’s love drives God to do something about our condition. What God’s love did was prompt God to solve the problem of our rebellion by sending Jesus Christ, who—as God—satisfies God and—as human—satisfies our humanity. What Christ did was suffer our penalty: he took upon himself our sin and placed upon us his God-approved righteousness. If we simply accept, by repentance and faith and confession and baptism, his perfect substitution, then we can be made right again with God and reconciled with God forever.
And many of us would say, “Yes, that’s the gospel.” We might want to quibble here and there, but I think many of us would say that is an adequate representation of the gospel.
The problem is that no one so far as we know preached the gospel like that in the earliest church. There are seven evangelistic and gospel-shaped sermons in the book of Acts, and they are found in Acts 2, 3, 4, 10—11, 13, 14, and 17. They are preached by the two greatest apostles: Peter and Paul. If these records are an accurate summary of the gospel preaching, we can say they didn’t preach “our” gospel.
We can’t examine each of these sermons, but I want to look at one very clear summary of the gospel according to Peter, and I want to quote it because only by reading it can we see how Peter preached the gospel. It’s found in Acts 10:36-43, and it’s addressed to Gentiles (with some Jews listening in):
You know the message he [God] sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all. That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.
Not a word about God’s love and God’s grace or about God’s holiness that burns in wrath against sinners until they respond in faith to Christ. Not a word about Jesus as Savior. Not a word about justification or substitutionary atonement. Okay, I know what some think about such statements, but you read it, and you can see that those terms are not the framing terms for Peter. Those terms tell us truths—let that be clear—but they are not the way Peter told the gospel truths.
Instead, we get these ideas: Jesus is the Messiah; Jesus is the Lord. We get lots about Israel’s story coming to its completion in Jesus’ story. We get a narrative about Jesus’ life; we get a story about Jesus’ unjust death and God’s reversal of the injustice by raising Jesus from the dead. And we get the command that he told the apostles to tell this story to others. Jesus is the judge too. And people are to respond to him, and those who respond in faith will be given forgiveness of sins.
This sermon mirrors the others, so I want to answer the question we have been asked: The gospel is the announcement that the story of Israel is now complete in the story of Jesus, and this Jesus brings forgiveness of sins and empowers others to declare this story.
|
I would define the gospel in one simple sentence: God’s act through Jesus to bring life out of death. So now that I’ve defined it, let me explain (because any definition of anything worth defining needs further explanation).
The gospel is the good news that death (and its diabolic engine in the world, sin) will not have the last word for humanity and creation. The gospel rests in the action of God to take on death and sin so that we might find life up against our many experiences of sin and death. So at its core the gospel is relational; it is about God seeking to overcome what destroys relationship—sin and death. But the only way to overcome death and sin is for God to become death and sin, not because God in heaven needs some sacrifice to appease God’s anger over sin but because death has entered so fully into the world (into every corner and niche of human existence) that we need death to be overcome.
But death can only be overcome by suffering. Suffering is never good, but in a world where death is around every corner and stands as the destiny of every person, love must suffer; love must enter into the fragility of humanity. So the gospel is God entering into death for the sake of love because only God entering into death, only God suffering death on a cross can overcome death without using the weapons of death. In other words, the only way to overcome sin and death is to suffer sin and death. So for Paul, the cross is the ultimate sign of the gospel, for in the cross we are dead with Christ—we are with Christ. While sin separates us from God, God does the amazing act of reconnecting with us, not through our own action but through God’s—God’s action to take on death.
So the gospel is God taking on death so that we might be bound to God through our own experiences of death (just ask an eighth grader if she has experiences of death—rejection, fear, bullying, poor body image…). But the gospel is even more; the gospel is God entering into death so that we might live. God encounters us in our deaths, but the cross is not the goal of God’s action. Rather, from death God brings life; from cross comes resurrection. So the gospel is the overcoming of death with life. For Paul we are now dead in Christ, and therefore made alive, we share in his death and therefore in his resurrection. So the gospel is the promise of life out of death.
But here is the most important question, the one that makes the time reading this blog worthwhile: How do young people encounter the gospel? How do they participate in it? For me, because the gospel is the good news of God entering death, reversing the natural and tragic ways the world unfolds (from life to death, from death to new life), it then means that we encounter and participate in the gospel not through our cognitive belief or moral assimilation but in seeking God in our experiences of death, seeking for new life up against realities of doubt, yearning, and brokenness. This means that to help young people encounter the gospel is to invite them to share their experiences of death and together in community seek for the God of life to move, a God who takes all that is dead and brings forth new life—this is the gospel lived!
|
We talk about it. We write about it. We seek to share it and encourage others to do the same. Just what is this gospel we are called to proclaim? It is the good news of Jesus Christ. Okay. What does that mean? I like what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:2-4: “For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures…”
In Jesus Christ—the Messiah—has dawned the new age of the reign of God in which is the full restoration of relationships as God intended them under the sovereignty of God. Jesus came announcing the good news of the kingdom (Mark 1:14-15). Jesus’ life was a demonstration of life under God’s reign—love, right relations with people, forgiveness and reconciliation, restoration and newness. Jesus died on the cross. Jesus’ death and resurrection showed Jesus to be Lord and Messiah. Peter summed up the gospel when he spoke to Cornelius and said:
“You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all. That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.” Acts 10:36-43
In this passage, Peter shows the continuity between the two covenants, with Jesus as the fulfillment of God’s promise. He describes that Jesus was sent by God as the anointed one. Jesus was Immanuel, God with us. He not only died but rose again. This Jesus is able to forgive sins. Furthermore, this resurrected Jesus Christ is Lord of all people.
The gospel has significance for everyone, then. It is something to be shared, not a secret to be dearly held. It is noteworthy that Peter, like Jesus in his own life, points to God, the one who sent Jesus Christ, and puts the emphasis on God at work through Jesus Christ. God is the one who has shown Jesus to be Lord.
It is good news. Christ died and rose again for all people, and in Christ we are set free from sin and its consequences. We do have a problem, however, because sin doesn’t matter to many people, whether it be personal or systemic sin. Blinded as we often are by our deep sin of self-centeredness, we often judge, value, and behave based on how things affect us. Thus, for example, it may be okay to stretch the truth—that is, to lie—in the effort of self-preservation.
Nevertheless, when we accept the good news and trust in God’s work in Christ Jesus, we have no choice but to turn from self because we have owned up to our sins and sinful state and received God’s love and salvation. We are now oriented toward and around God and believe that God’s love is enough. God now sets us free to love God and others. Thus we can follow Christ’s ways of gentleness and humility, knowing that God is with us. That is good news.
|
Comments
Post has no comments.