Tools for Monday: What is the Gospel? (Part 1)
With Easter upon us, it can be quite helpful to revisit the gospel. The gospel may seem somewhat second-nature to those who have a minimal amount of involvement in church life. In fact, the term has taken on a life of its own in contemporary Christian culture and may have even become detached from its biblical moorings.
For example, some people refer to the gospel as a simple synonym for “truth.” In other words, whatever is deemed to be true is said to be gospel. But this usage is not really what the biblical writers had in mind. Consider also the confusion between the “gospel” and a Gospel. We can easily interchange the gospel of Jesus Christ with the genre of literature (Gospel) in the first four books of the New Testament. Yet, if the gospel is isolated to a type of writing, then we’ve most certainly limited the biblical nature of the good news.
So, what is the gospel? The term is used frequently in the New Testament. Jesus’ main preaching themes revolved around the gospel (Mark 1:14). The early church referred to it as the gospel of Christ (Romans 1:16), the gospel of salvation (Ephesians 1:13), the gospel of peace (Ephesians 6:15), the gospel of the grace of God (Acts 20:24), and the gospel of the kingdom (Matthew 24:14). The word “gospel” in the New Testament Greek can be transliterated as “euangellion,” or the word from which we get the English term “evangelism.” In more modern English, the gospel means “good news.”
Specifically, euangellion refers to a positive proclamation regarding favorable outcomes. For instance, in ancient Rome, heralds (evangelists) would bring good news from the front lines of a battle to indicate that the victory was all but assured. This was good news. Christians appeared to have coopted what was a rather violent term in the ancient world and transformed it to refer to a positive proclamation of God to people. The details of the good news referred to the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Christ. Thus, the gospel is the proclamation of great news concerning the salvation, peace, grace, and kingdom of God.
The biblical gospel is simple but profoundly powerful and multifaceted. Over the next few Mondays, we’ll explore the nuances of the gospel and why it is still such good news for us today.