There is good news. There is the Good News.
And we have it.
The world is full of bad news. We have the Good News.
Never be ashamed.
There is good news. There is the Good News.
And we have it.
The world is full of bad news. We have the Good News.
Never be ashamed.
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I’m afraid the title is more ambitious than my few paragraphs offer. To make my task more manageable, I offer a few idea-starters about the gospel as taught by Jesus, Paul, and the early church bishop, Athanasius.
The gospel Jesus taught
In contrast to Matthew’s and Mark’s summary of Jesus’s “gospel of God” (Mark 1:14), Luke 4:18–19 depicts Jesus preaching selectively from Isaiah 61:1–2:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because
He has anointed me
to evangelize the poor.
He has sent me
to declare liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind,
to set free the broke(n) with a full release,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor (my translation).
When Jesus omits “and the day of our God’s vengeance” (Isa 61:2b) and rehearses God’s blessing of a foreign widow and an enemy general, he turns the gospel of God his hearers expect inside out. “He isn’t just our God and he blesses our enemies,” Jesus reveals. Their reaction, like their “God,” is one of deadly vengeance.
Perhaps this is why Jesus begins his evangelizing with the word “repent.” Apparently, even John the Baptist missed it, as Matthew 11:1–15 makes clear. Jesus says those who even barely grasp his message have far greater insight than John. John’s gospel of violent, fiery judgment, it seems, put him at odds with Jesus’s view of the nature of the kingdom of the heavens. “Repent,” then, as Jesus uses it, retains its core meaning of “shift your paradigm” with reference to God and God’s kingdom. For John, repentance focused on the personal sacrifices required for holiness; for Jesus, repentance kept its eyes on the merciful nature of God toward all persons (Exod. 34:5–7; Jonah 4:2b). “For I delight in mercy but not sacrifice; and in knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings” (Hos. 6:6, my translation).
Jesus’s gospel is about his Father and his Father’s nature. The Father’s nature was so misunderstood, Jesus claims no one but he knows the Father (Matt. 11:27). He then immediately invites those wearied and burdened by compromised gospels of God to come to him for rest, to take on the easy, restful yoke of learning as a disciple of his gentle humility and light burden. “No one knows the Father except the Son”: not John the Baptist, not the Pharisees or the scribes, not Moses or Elijah, not Jesus’s disciples, no one except he … and his post-resurrection disciples. The Father is known rightly and fully only through his Son (Heb. 1:1–3b).
The gospel Paul taught
Jesus’s gospel reframed a self-serving view of his Father’s compassion; Paul’s gospel applied Jesus’s message more widely. Two passages are especially rich: 2 Cor. 5:11–21 and Eph. 2:1–10.
In 2 Cor. 5:14, Paul claims that Christ’s death universally incorporates humanity. In his death, all died. When this insight becomes clear, a whole new world comes into focus. Paul knows this from his own experience: before he embraced it, he viewed Jesus as a renegade false prophet whose death was just. Once the scales fell from Saul’s eyes, he saw the new creation. He no longer saw through Adam’s blind, fearful, ashamed, sin-focused eyes. Jesus Messiah incarnated into the old, blinded, fearful, ashamed, sin-wracked Adamic humanity, embraced it and us fully and carried it and us into Death. And by God’s own unilateral act of cosmic justice, Jesus (and it and us) were raised to newness.
Paul makes a parallel point in Ephesians 2, but goes farther. In 2:1–3, Paul sets the cosmic stage: we were all dead in our sins, naturally characterized by impulsive anger, like the rest of humanity. The “we” in 2:1–3 is undoubtedly all Adamic humanity. “But,” Paul contrasts, “God, being rich in mercy, because of his abundant love with which he loved us — even while we were dead in our sins — co-enlivened us with Christ: you are rescued by [God’s] favor!” Not only did we all die with Christ, God raised us all up and seated us all with Christ. This rescue from Death is anchored in God’s favor, accomplished by God’s faithfulness, given as unconditional gift, and integral to God’s (new) creation-act.
Paul extends Jesus’s gospel to include Jesus’s cooperation with the Father in rescuing Adamic humanity from its errant view of God and the self-caused alienation “in our own minds” (Col 1:21). The rescue for all humanity has been a fait accompli since Jesus’s resurrection. The message of what God has done in Christ is proclaimed so that, by awakening to its truth, all persons can dwell in the present blessings of the new creation.
The gospel Athanasius taught
Just as Paul authoritatively interpreted Jesus’s gospel in scripture, Athanasius’s views both reflected and influenced the understanding of the early church (ca. 200–400). In contrast, Augustine’s perspectives (post-400) dominated the Latin church and, through it, the Reformers and most of contemporary Evangelicalism.
In his On the Incarnation of the Word, Athanasius explains that humanity, brought to life out of nothing, maintained life by keeping a clear knowledge of God’s nature (i.e., the Logos) within them. Humanity’s existence depended on an uncompromised trust and dependence on God. Once the devil deceived humanity into mistrust, humanity cut itself off from its source of life and knowledge. Thus, by degrees, humanity not only lost its ability for clear reason, it began to disintegrate into physical death and, beyond that, into the corruption of utter nothingness; that is, into Death. Return to nothingness was not a God-imposed punishment, but a God-warned natural consequence of cutting our own umbilical cord.
It was both intolerable to and unworthy of God that he would do nothing to rescue those created in his own likeness, especially because they had been tricked by falsehood, and because a neglect to rescue them would demonstrate weakness. Thus, a rescue by the Logos that had created humanity was needed. The incarnated Logos fully incorporated all humanity into his own body, joining corruptible to incorruptible, and sacrificed himself (and us in him) to death to settle Death’s claim. Since Christ is the incorruptible Logos, Death could not contain him. By Christ’s death, Death died. Because we died his death and he ours, physical death is no punishment and Death-as-annihilation is no possibility. Moreover, once Death died, Christ then offered himself (and us in him) to the Father, who raised him as firstfruits and will raise us-in-him at the final resurrection.
The Gospel inside out
The gospel of God is not an invitation. It has no steps for us to climb to seek and gain God’s favor. It is not an offer that, by accepting, we activate its benefits. No, the gospel is far greater.
The gospel is the astounding declaration that, despite having gotten God all wrong in our thinking, having mischaracterized, misrepresented, maligned, mistreated, and had malice toward him, God has never been against us. To be sure, God has been against all our fearful, ignorant, misguided, vengeful characterizations of him and their effects, but he has endured them to be with us so that we might truly glimpse him and repent. He did not leave the glimpses to chance, but manifested himself entirely in the Lord Jesus Christ and the new creation life in which we participate. The basis of the gospel has always been God’s compassionate nature toward all creation; its benefits have always been active for all persons, but its enjoyment is possible only to those whose eyes see. Repent, and believe the gospel of God!
Peace and all good to all, always.
(©2016, Brandon L. Fredenburg. Permission granted to reprint with the original title and byline. For non-profit use only.)
Brandon L. Fredenburg is a professor of Biblical Studies and assistant dean for the College of Biblical Studies and Behavioral Sciences at Lubbock Christian University. He lives, ministers, and teaches in Lubbock, Texas.
Yesterday’s post was motivated by a growing trend I see in Christians today: the avoidance of the concept of sin. Jesus didn’t come because of sin; he came because people were being oppressed. The kingdom isn’t about helping sinners find redemption; it’s only about allowing otherwise good people to join in a great cause.
I blame it on the typical pendulum swings that the church goes through. There was a time in the past when gospel preaching was all about convincing people that they were going to hell, then offering them a chance at salvation. (which was often presented as a chance; you MIGHT get to heaven if you do things right from now on) The gospel was all about baptism. What about the kingdom? Well, the church is the kingdom, baptism gets you into the church, so it’s still all about baptism.
Over time, people rightly came to reject this distortion of the good news. Now it’s all about the kingdom. We help usher the kingdom into this world, attract others to the kingdom by the way we live, and live kingdom-style from now on. Jesus died to conquer Satan’s kingdom and establish his own. People outside the kingdom aren’t lost because of sin in their lives; they are lost only in terms of not having yet found the kingdom. (Some go further, moving on to universalism; everyone will eventually become a part of this irresistible kingdom, either in this life or after death)
I’m glad we’re talking more about the kingdom. I think we need more emphasis on the king than on his kingdom, but it’s healthy that we’re recognizing that the gospel includes a vibrant kingdom. But I’m sorry we lost the concept of sin along the way. Frankly, we lost the holiness of God, which made us lose sin.
I think the good news of the kingdom includes the bad news that we are sinners in need of grace. We need to see that when men come before the throne of God they cry out “Holy!” and they cry out “Woe to me a sinner.” (Isaiah 6) They fall on their knees and recognize their unworthiness (Luke 5:8). No one who has seen the holiness of God says, “Well, I’m essentially a good person.” They look and see their humanness, their flesh, and don’t like what they see (Titus 3:3; Ephesians 2:3).
In our people-pleasing, politically-correct culture, we’re scared to call sin by its name. We’re scared to recognize that the greatest need of our world is the forgiveness of sin. We need justice. We need mercy. We need love for one another. But the biggest problem mankind has is the problem of sin. And the only answer for that problem is Jesus Christ.
If Jesus is not at the center of your explanation of the gospel, you got it wrong. If the King and his Kingdom aren’t the theme of your presentation, you got it wrong. If the cross isn’t the power behind the message you present, that message is being driven by bad theology.
“For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” (1 Corinthians 2:2)
Would people say that about you after hearing you talk about the gospel?
What is the gospel? I’ve heard people point to 1 Corinthians 15 to get a definition of the gospel: “Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.” (1 Corinthians 15:1-5) The death, burial and resurrection are often signaled as the totality of the gospel, with some merely writing DBR when they want to refer to this concept.
But was Paul offering a complete definition of the gospel? I’m not so sure. For one thing, the apostles preached the gospel before they even understood that there would be a death, burial and resurrection (Luke 9:1-6) Seems like the gospel they proclaimed was the Kingdom of God. John the Baptist preached the gospel (Luke 3:18), as did Jesus (Matt 4:23; 9:35; Mark 1:14; Luke 20:1).
Paul also talks about judgment being a part of the gospel (Romans 2:16), which fits well with the “eternal gospel” proclaimed in Revelation 14:6-7. In writing to Timothy, Paul speaks of Jesus’ descent from David as being part of the gospel (2 Timothy 2:8). To the Galatians, Paul says that the gospel was preached to Abraham when God promised to bless all nations through him.
So what do you think? Is it just DBR or do we need to broaden our definition of “gospel”?
(And is there any significance to the fact that the image above, found via Google, comes from a Church of Christ website, or is that just coincidence?)