Why Does It Matter?

We began this series ten blogs ago by looking at the typical understanding of the gospel within the evangelical world: 1) Our sin has separated us from a holy and righteous God. 2) In order to remedy this situation, God sent forth Jesus, his only Son, to die upon the cross as the sacrifice for our sins. 3) By placing our faith in the work of Jesus on the cross, we can be forgiven of our sins and reconciled to God. 4) Having accepted Jesus as our savior, Christians gain assurance that when we die, will go to heaven where we will dwell in eternal joy in God’s presence.

We’ve carefully worked our way through the Scriptures, studying the meaning of the gospel. Let me try and summarize what I hope we’ve learned.

• If you are going to have a fully Biblical understanding of the gospel, you must see it as the culmination of the long story of God, creation, and Israel. We’ve worked very hard to sketch out that story. I hope by now it’s almost second nature to you! 1) God created mankind as his image-bearers; that is, they were given authority to exercise God’s reign over the creation, so that the world would flourish as God desires. 2) Faced with human rebellion, God chooses a man named Abraham, and promises Abraham that he would rescue and restore all creation through Abraham’s family, the people of Israel. 3) God redeems Israel from slavery in Egypt and makes a covenant with them. Israel is called to be the genuine image-bearing human beings God requires. Through proper worship and obedience, Israel will bring God’s blessing upon themselves. 4) Furthermore, God has called Israel to be a light to the nations. In other words, Israel should be a model to all the world. People everywhere can look to Israel and understand God’s gracious purposes. 5) In order for Israel to fulfill this key role, she needs a king who will lead her in righteousness. 6) This great expected king of Israel was called the Messiah; he would be a descendant of David. 7) When the Messiah took the throne of Israel, everything would fall into place. The king would bring Israel back to covenant faithfulness, so that she could receive God’s blessing. And when Israel was set right then God’s blessing could go out to all the nations. 8) When humanity finally reflects the image of God, then all creation will flourish. God’s kingdom will have come.

• Again, I realize that this is a lot to hold in your head at one time. But for too many Christians, Jesus jumps onto the stage of history seemingly out of nowhere to die on the cross for our sins. Now Jesus death is an extremely important part of the gospel. I don’t want to diminish that by one iota. But it’s only part of the fullness of the gospel. And if you really desire to understand the gospel, you simply have to get the bigger story into your head and your heart. The corollary to this is that the shrunken form of the gospel many people have accepted prevents them from understanding their own scriptures. An example: Read Zechariah’s song in Luke 1:67-79. He talks about God’s redemption of Israel, salvation coming from the “house of his servant David,” and God remembering his holy covenant with Abraham. It’s not until verse 77 that Zechariah brings up “the forgiveness of sins.” I think many Christians probably latch onto that small fragment and leave the rest of the song behind, scratching their heads as they move on. Another exercise: Read the book of Acts with careful attention to the gospel declarations there. (We’ve already sketched this out in the last blog.) As you read, ask yourself, “Does this sound very much like the presentations of the gospel that I hear in my church?” There will be some stuff that overlaps; namely, Jesus death and the forgiveness of sins. But I would be willing to bet a nickel that much of what you read may sound quite foreign when compared to a contemporary, evangelical “gospel” presentation. My point is this: if your “gospel” presentation is only tangentially related to what you’re reading in the Bible, then it’s high time to re-think things. I certainly hope this blog series has helped you do that.

• When the first Christians announced the gospel, the simplest, most fundamental thing they said was: “Jesus is the Christ!“ (When the gospel was announced to non-Jews, this announcement was altered to “Jesus is Lord!” or “Jesus is the King!”) This is the very center, the most important content of the gospel. And astonishingly, the common understanding of the gospel in most evangelical circles ignores this completely! Please note that if you don’t have the grand story in mind – the framework we’ve laid out above – then this announcement will make little sense to you. It will be like picking up a thrilling book and reading the last chapter. Since you don’t know the characters and the plot, you’re going to be confused. Well, despite being written by numerous different authors over the span of many centuries, the Bible works the same way. If you jump straight into the New Testament, you’re going to be puzzled. But if you have the story of the scriptures in your head, then the moment when Jesus is revealed as the Messiah will be like a dazzling sunrise that illuminates everything else. You’ll immediately realize that the Messiah is the long awaited king of Israel who will not only redeem Israel but will bring blessing to the whole world. All things will be set right again.

• The true gospel is above all else a kingdom announcement. We saw this especially with John the Baptist and Jesus himself. They declared, “The kingdom of God is near! Repent and believe the good news!” Yes, it’s gloriously true that because of Jesus death, individuals can be forgiven and reconciled to God. That is a crucial part of the gospel. But this is why the common understanding of the gospel is just too small. The gospel is first and foremost a proclamation that God is putting the whole creation back together again. Not just individuals, but families and communities, businesses and schools, governments and nations. We must never forget that the gospel is much more than a personal invitation. It’s helpful to think of the gospel as a mosaic. A mosaic is a piece of artwork which consists of small pieces of ceramic, stone, or glass. These tiny bits are carefully arranged to create a coherent whole. Sometimes, people create photo mosaics whereby the overall image consists of tiny small pictures. In terms of the gospel, each one of us can think of ourselves as one of those tiny pictures which make up the larger whole. We can rightly proclaim the good news that because of the death of Jesus, we’ve been forgiven and reconciled to God. But when we do this, we must remember that we are only one small picture within a much larger gospel portrait. And this larger gospel portrait involves all nations, all peoples, and the entire cosmos. Paul says exactly this in Ephesians 1:10, “[God’s] plan was to sum up the whole cosmos in the Messiah – yes, everything in heaven and earth, in him.”

• Rightly understood, the gospel governs every sphere of human activity. If we proclaim that “Jesus is Lord,” then he is Lord over the whole creation, and everything is subject to his authority. He said as much in Matthew 28: “All authority in heaven and earth belong to me.” If the primary meaning of the gospel involves the announcement of Jesus’ royal authority over all creation, then it opens up lots of interesting ways that we can be gospel advocates. The spread of the gospel might involve those who are working to feed and clothe poor children in the Congo, or those who work in government developing wise public policy, or those who care for our environment, or those who are striving to work in the business community with honesty and integrity. Anyone who is laboring to make the world function and flourish as God intends, under the authority of his anointed King Jesus, is an ambassador of the gospel.

• Proper understanding of the gospel eliminates the dichotomy between the so-called “social gospel” and the “saving of souls.” The social gospel was a movement within American Christianity in the early 20th century. Social gospel advocates sought to apply their Christian worldview to the world’s social problems, such as poverty, crime, racial tension, child labor, addiction, etc. Yet most often, those leading the social gospel movement were theologically very liberal. They tended reject the authority of the Scriptures, replacing it with human reason and modern science. The reality of human corruption was downplayed or forgotten. Jesus became a great human moral example, rather than the divine savior who died to atone for our sins. Theological conservatives rightly reacted to this movement by stressing the reliability and authority of the Bible, human depravity, our need for forgiveness, and Jesus’ sacrificial death on the cross. Yet the conservatives sometimes were so focused on the necessity of saving souls for eternity that they perhaps neglected efforts to address the problems of the world around them. Now that we’re able to fully grasp the grand scope of the gospel, I hope we shall see how these perspectives fit together. The setting right of individuals (through the atoning death of Jesus and the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit) and the setting right of the world, are both essential parts of the one magnificent gospel project: to establish the rule and reign of Jesus over all the earth.

• The resurrection is absolutely essential to the gospel. One of the very strange things we’ve noted is that the common understanding of the gospel, is that it makes no mention of the resurrection. But for Peter, Paul, and all the early Christians, the resurrection is utterly essential. A dead person is, by definition, not the Messiah. It would be pretty foolish to walk around proclaiming that a decomposing body had conquered sin and death. When God raised Jesus from the dead, he declared with astonishing power the same core gospel message we’ve noted above: “Jesus is the Christ.” When talking or thinking about the gospel, Christians simply must put the resurrection front and center.

• A resurrection-based gospel prevents us from misunderstanding Jesus’ kingdom. For too many Christians, when they think about Jesus as king, it’s only in a spiritual sense. The salvation Jesus offers involves going to heaven when they die. But the true Christian gospel proclaims that Jesus physical body rose from the dead. Remember: the concept of God’s kingdom refers to implementation of God’s rule and reign over the created order, so that the whole world will flourish in the way God intends. God fully intends to rescue and restore the real, physical world around us and the resurrection of Jesus’ physical body is the first step in this project. The salvation God offers to us has nothing to do with evacuating our souls to someplace called heaven. Rather, it involves the resurrection of our own physical bodies to experience the joy of the redeemed creation. Therefore, the true gospel announces that Jesus is the king over the real world around us, not simply king in some heavenly sense.

• A proper understanding of the gospel will lead to a proper gospel response. The traditional gospel offers individual salvation through faith in Jesus’ death on the cross. This faith is defined as belief in who Jesus is and what he has done for us. Moreover, faith is set apart from any actions on our part, which are categorized as “works.” Protestants in particular are keen to make sure that works play no role in the gospel. But what if the primary content of the gospel involves the announcement that Jesus is the Christ, God’s anointed King? If that is so, then we can conclude the following: 1) As I’ve said before, “faith” is, strictly speaking, not part of the gospel but the proper response to the gospel. 2) If the gospel is about Jesus as King, then the proper response is to give him your allegiance or loyalty. You don’t respond to a king by merely telling him you believe in him; you submit to his authority. For many Christians, this is a very different way of thinking about faith. Yet it’s thoroughly Biblical. When the Bible talks about faith, the Greek word includes the concepts of belief or trust, but also carries the broader meaning of faithfulness, loyalty, and allegiance. (Biblical scholars call this the semantic range; in other words, the wider potential meanings a word carries.) 3) When we think about faith in this broader, more active sense, it will really help us understand many other parts of the Bible. For instance, remember all those Old Testament passages (like the 10 Commandments) we studied about the necessity of human obedience? Remember what John the Baptist had to say about the necessity of producing good fruit? Remember the tight correlation between repentance and forgiveness in the book of Acts and elsewhere? The main idea I’m setting forth here is that the proper response to the gospel is complete loyalty to Jesus. This is a whole person response, involving a re-orientation of our beliefs, thoughts, and actions.

• A proper understanding of the gospel gives Christian life clear direction and purpose. Many of the Christians who have responded to the common gospel presentation are left in awkward position. Yes, they’ve placed their faith in Jesus, and in his atoning death upon the cross. They’ve been forgiven of their sins and received assurance that they will spend eternity with the Lord. But now what? Such Christians undoubtedly are told that they should live a life of obedience and service to Jesus as an act of thanksgiving, on account of the salvation they have received. But the really important part is already done. Believe in Jesus, and boom!, look forward to future salvation. The rest is gravy. But what if the true gospel involves giving allegiance to Jesus the King? In this case, the continuing life of obedience and service makes much more sense. It becomes the natural outflow of the loyalty we’ve offered to Jesus at the first. It sweeps us up in the greater gospel project to rescue and restore all creation. We should gain a very clear vision of our ongoing purpose. We’re called to establish Jesus’ reign over our very selves by growing in holiness and Christ-likeness. And we’re called to extend Jesus’ reign to every person, every institution, and every corner of creation.

• A proper understanding of the gospel gives us the right perspective. The common perception of the gospel can have the unintended consequence of producing a sort of spiritual narcissism. Human nature is such that we tend to think of ourselves as the center of everything. The “gospel” then becomes a story about my predicament; I’m separated from God. Happily, God sends Jesus to get me out of trouble. The true Biblical gospel is radically God-centered. (or Theocentric if you prefer) It recognizes the grand narrative whereby the God who made all things is determined to rescue and redeem his whole creation from sin and death. Jesus is the hero of this story. Through his death and resurrection, he is enthroned as Israel’s Messiah and the world’s true Lord and king. By acknowledging Jesus as King we receive forgiveness, reconciliation, peace, joy, and new power from the Holy Spirit for righteous living. Yes, we’re still God’s dearly beloved creatures. It’s just a much healthier perspective to recognize that we’re a small (but important!) part of a magnificent mosaic.