SOME TIME AGO, Christianity Today ran a series of online articles called “Is Our Gospel Too Small?” The premise of the articles was to ask the question whether an understanding of the “good news” of Christianity as the forgiveness of sins through Jesus was actually selling the biblical gospel short. Isn’t it true, the articles asked, that when the Bible talks about the “good news,” it is talking about something much more than, as one author indelicately put it in another place, “getting our butts into heaven when we die”? And even if the gospel is about the forgiveness of sins and justification before God, the authors asked, isn’t it also about the remaking of the world, the end of oppression, setting captives free, the creation of a society based on righteousness and justice instead of unrighteousness and injustice? And if that’s what the gospel is about, the authors asked, then isn’t that what we as the church ought to be about as well?
Those questions are not easy to answer. You can’t just say yes or no to them, which is why we’ve thought it might be helpful to write a whole book about these issues! The fact is, the question of what exactly the gospel is, and what it includes and does not include, has caused no end of controversy even among evangelicals. What we hope to do in this chapter, therefore, is look carefully at the way the New Testament talks about “the gospel” and try to come to some conclusions on this matter of whether our gospel is “too small.”
Both of us have over the past several years been immersed in the world of evangelical discussion about the gospel. We’ve attended the conferences, read the books, looked at the blogs, and written a few things ourselves about this most controverted and important of topics. One of the things we’ve concluded over the years is that in many ways evangelicals seem to be talking past one another on this question of what the gospel is.
On the one hand, some would define the gospel as the good news that God is going to remake the world, and that Jesus Christ—through his death and resurrection—is the down payment on that transformation and renewal. They look at the gospel with the widest possible lens, taking in all the promises that God has made to his people, including not only the forgiveness of sins but also the resurrection of the body, the transformation of the world, the establishment of God’s kingdom, and all the rest.
On the other hand, there are those who would define the gospel as the good news that God has acted to save sinners through the death of Jesus in their place and his subsequent resurrection. They look at the gospel with a narrow lens, focusing particularly on that which lies at the foundation of salvation.
The conversation between these two camps has gotten quite tense, even heated at times, with one side accusing the other of being “reductionistic,” and that side firing back with the accusation that the first side is “diluting” the gospel and losing the heart of it.
A good deal of this confusion can be untangled, we think, by making some careful observations about how this conversation often plays out. It seems to us that these two groups—those who say the gospel is the good news that God is reconciling sinners to himself through the death and resurrection of Jesus (let’s call them “zoom-lens people”), and those who say that the gospel is the good news that God is going to renew and remake the world through Christ (call them “wide-angle people”)—are really answering two different though highly related questions. Of course both groups say they are answering the question “What is the gospel?” (and they are!), but if you look closely at how they talk, it turns out there’s quite a lot being assumed by both sides about that simple-sounding question.
To a zoom-lens person, the question “What is the gospel?” translates as “What is the message a person must believe in order to be saved?” And so he answers by talking about the substitutionary death of Jesus in the place of sinners and the call to repent and believe. To a wide-angle person, though, the question “What is the gospel?” translates instead to “What is the whole good news of Christianity?” And of course he answers by talking not just about forgiveness but also about all the great blessings that flow from that, including God’s purpose to remake the world.
Now with that in mind, you can see where the confusion comes from. When a zoom-lens person hears a wide-angle person answer the question “What is the gospel?” by talking about the new creation, he thinks, “No! You’re taking the focus off the cross and resurrection! A person doesn’t need to believe that to be saved! That’s diluting the gospel!” On the other hand, when a wide-angle person hears a zoom-lens person answer the same question by talking only about the forgiveness of sins through the cross, he likewise thinks, “No! The good news doesn’t stop there! There’s more to it than that! You’re reducing the gospel to something less than it is!”
The fact is, depending on how you think about it, neither the wide-angle person nor the zoom-lens person is off base. It’s true that when someone asked in the New Testament “What must I do to be saved?” the answer was to repent of sin and believe in the crucified and risen Christ. It’s also true, though, that the Bible sometimes (even often!) talks about the gospel with a wide-angle lens. It includes in the whole good news of Christianity not only forgiveness of sin, but also all the other blessings that come to those who are in Christ.
Another way to put the point is that neither of these two questions is illegitimate. Neither is more biblical than the other. In fact, the Bible asks both the question “What must a person believe in order to be saved?” and the question, “What is the whole good news of Christianity?”—and it answers both in terms of the word gospel.
As we read it, the New Testament seems to use the word gospel in both of these ways. Sometimes it looks at the good news of Christianity with a wide-angle lens, calling “gospel” all the great blessings that God intends to shower on his people, starting with forgiveness but cascading from there all the way to a renewed and remade creation in which they will spend eternity. Other times, though, the New Testament looks at the good news of Christianity with a very narrow focus—with a zoom lens, if you will—and is quite happy to call “gospel” the singular blessing of forgiveness of sins and restored relationship with God through the sacrificial death of Jesus.
Maybe it will be helpful if we look carefully at some wide-angle passages, some zoom-lens passages, and finally some passages where the Bible itself seems to move from zoom to wide-angle over the course of just a few words.
Wide-Angle Lens
There are more than a few passages in the Bible that seem to take a broad view of the gospel and even apply the word translated “gospel”—euangelion—to the entire package of blessings that Christ secures for his people. Here are a few of the most important.
Matthew 4:23
And he went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people.
This is the first mention of the gospel in the book of Matthew, so we should expect that the evangelist would provide us with some explanation of what was included in this “gospel of the kingdom” that Jesus was preaching. And he does, back in verse 17 of the same chapter, where he records that the message Jesus preached—at least in summary form—was “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
We should notice several things about Matthew’s use of “gospel” here. First, the burden of Matthew’s entire book to this point has been to prove that Jesus is in fact the long-awaited Messiah. His opening genealogy, as we saw in the last chapter, is highly stylized to make that point, as is the story of the coming of the magi and even the way Matthew uses Old Testament texts to describe the character and mission of the Messiah (Matthew 2).
It’s also significant that Jesus’s declaration in Matthew 4:17 is exactly the same—word for word, in fact—as John the Baptist’s declaration in Matthew 3:2—“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” For all the similarity between their messages, however, there’s an important difference between what John the Baptist preached and what Jesus preached. When John preached that the kingdom of heaven was “at hand,” he meant that it was near, almost here but not quite yet. In fact, that understanding lay at the heart of his entire ministry. John was preparing Israel for the coming of the kingdom (Matt. 3:3).
When Jesus preached that the kingdom was “at hand,” though, he meant something slightly different. He meant that the kingdom was here, right now. How do we know that? We know it because of the way Matthew introduces the beginning of Jesus’s public ministry in Matthew 4:12–16. Noting that Jesus withdrew from Judea and moved to Capernaum in Galilee, Matthew quotes from Isaiah 9:1:
The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali,
the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles—
the people dwelling in darkness
have seen a great light,
and for those dwelling in the region and shadow of death,
on them a light has dawned. (Matt. 4:15–16)
There’s much we could talk about here, but the important thing is that Matthew is asserting that the kingdom is no longer just near; it has dawned! On the people who had been most hammered by the Assyrian invasion, who were mocked as the backwater, mongrelized laughingstocks of the nation—on these people God has chosen to let the first rays of the dawning kingdom break. Thus when Jesus preached that “the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” we cannot understand it any other way than in the light (!) of Matthew’s quotation from Isaiah 9:1.
But what exactly has dawned? We’ll consider “the kingdom of heaven” more in the next chapter, but suffice it to say for now that the Israelites’ great hope was that one day, God would restore the fortunes of Israel and establish his perfect rule over the earth, vindicating his people and punishing their enemies, and he would do so through a divine King who would reign forever on David’s throne. When John the Baptist and Jesus begin to preach, therefore, that the kingdom of heaven is “at hand,” it is an electrifying message. It means that all the grand promises that God made to his people in the prophets are—they think—about to be fulfilled. The kingdom is about to be established (Isaiah 9), the new covenant is about to be cut (Jeremiah 33), the knowledge of the glory of the Lord is about to cover the earth (Hab. 2:14), the nations are about to stream to Jerusalem (cf. Isaiah 61), and the Lord is about to create new heavens and a new earth (Isa. 65:17). Even Matthew’s quotation of Isaiah 9:1 tells us that more is in view here than the forgiveness of sins. Certainly it’s not less than that, but Isaiah 9:1 is the introduction to Isaiah’s prophecy that culminates with the Messiah sitting on David’s throne and ruling “with justice and righteousness from this time forth and forevermore.” What is in view here is a whole new world. That’s what Jesus calls “the gospel of the kingdom.”
One other important thing to notice is that this good news also includes a call for response—the way a person can be included in this dawning kingdom. Here in Matthew 4, Jesus preaches (as does John, for that matter), “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” The gospel of the kingdom, as it’s given here, is the good news that (a) the kingdom has dawned, and (b) those who repent can enter it (see also Mark 1:14–15).
Luke 4:18–19
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
Returning to his boyhood home of Nazareth, Jesus stands to read from the prophet Isaiah to those gathered to hear him. He opens the scroll, Luke tells us, to Isaiah 61 and reads verse 1 and part of verse 2. When he sits down, as a synagogue teacher would have when he was about to begin teaching, Jesus simply says, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21). Those words cause a stir among the people, who at first marvel and speak kind words about him (v. 22), but quickly turn into a mob that would throw Jesus off a cliff if they had the power to do so (vv. 29–30).
What has caused such a reaction is that Jesus, as he has done publicly again and again in his sermons, is proclaiming that Scripture’s greatest promises are being fulfilled right now—in him. Not only so, but he is making a poignant statement to the people that his mission is one of grace, not judgment—at least not yet. Many of those listening to Jesus would be tracking along with his reading in their own minds, and therefore they would be surprised when he stops and closes the scroll in the middle of a sentence! The very next phrase in Isaiah’s prophecy after “to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor” is “and the day of vengeance of our God.” Jesus doesn’t read that part—quite deliberately. This isn’t the day of vengeance. Not yet. It is the year of favor, the time of good news!
The passage in Isaiah 61 has attracted a good deal of attention recently, especially from those who argue that gospel has a broad, world-encompassing meaning. And in this case, they are absolutely right! Isaiah 61 begins a beautiful, triumphant poem about God’s final victory and the establishment of his reign through his Servant. Jerusalem would be rebuilt as a precious crown in God’s hand (61:4; 62:3), God’s and Israel’s enemies would be destroyed by God’s mighty arm (63:1–7), and former troubles would be utterly forgotten (65:16). The poem culminates, in fact, in that amazing vision we considered in the last chapter, where God creates new heavens and a new earth where the sound of weeping and distress is heard no more, where infants no longer die after living but a few days, where the wolf lies down with the lamb, and where no one, God says, will hurt or destroy anyone or anything in all his holy mountain. That’s what Jesus is saying has been inaugurated with his coming. Of course, Jesus isn’t suggesting all these blessings have arrived in their fullness. But the Servant of God who will eventually usher in all those great blessings, he has arrived!
Acts 13:32–33
And we bring you the good news that what God promised to the fathers, this he has fulfilled to us their children by raising Jesus. . . .
These verses come at the end of a sermon Paul preaches in the synagogue of Pisidian Antioch. Having read from the Scriptures, the rulers of the synagogue ask Paul and Barnabas whether they have any exhortation for the people. (Perhaps they’ve had some experience with them before that day?) At any rate, Paul stands and addresses the people in a fairly lengthy rehearsal of the history of Israel. The point of the address seems to be to establish Jesus’s place in Israel’s story as the long-awaited Offspring of King David—even more, that he is the resurrected Messiah through whom all the promises come to fulfillment.
When Paul finishes the story of Israel down to King David, with God’s promise to him of an heir, he says plainly, “Of this man’s offspring God has brought to Israel a Savior, Jesus, as he promised” (Acts 13:23). Then he tells how John the Baptist also pointed to Jesus as the coming Messiah, and tells how the Jews in Jerusalem put Jesus to death, and finally how God raised him from the dead. It’s here, at the culmination of the sermon, that Paul declares that he has brought to these Jews the “good news that what God promised to the fathers, this he has fulfilled to us their children by raising Jesus.” By “the fathers,” Paul undoubtedly means the patriarchs of Israel of whom he has just been speaking. And as we’ve already seen, the promises God made to those fathers—to Abraham and his sons—were enormous in scope. Land, Offspring, name, and blessing all were promised to Abraham, and all will be ours in the life, death, resurrection, and return of Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 3:21–23).
In all these passages we’ve seen that gospel can refer to the whole series of hopes and promises fulfilled in Christ. We are never told that the gospel is “God will remake the world.” But, no doubt, the scope of these biblical promises is cosmic. Christ is the one we’ve been waiting for and all things will be made right through him. Surely, this is good news.
Zoom Lens
Though there are many passages, like the ones we’ve just discussed, that speak of the gospel in a very broad way, there are other passages that seem to focus “the gospel” much more narrowly on the forgiveness of sins through the substitutionary death of Jesus on the cross. Here are a few examples:
Acts 10:36–43
As for the word that he sent to Israel, preaching good news of peace through Jesus Christ (he is Lord of all) . . . . To him all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.
The sermon Peter preaches here is one he never thought he would preach. It is in the home of a Gentile, Cornelius, and happens only after God has convinced Peter in a vision that, as Peter himself puts it, “God shows no partiality.” It is an important lesson for Peter to learn, for this is the moment when the gospel of Jesus penetrates into the Gentile world.
The sentence structure of verses 36–37 is a little stilted, but the message comes through clearly enough. Peter is about to explain to these Gentiles for the first time the “good news of peace through Jesus Christ,” which the Lord first sent to the people of Israel. But what is this “good news of peace”? Is it the parenthetical phrase “he is Lord of all”? Probably not. For one thing, the phrase is an aside; it’s not the point to which the sentence builds, and it’s therefore an unlikely candidate for defining “the good news of peace.” Not only so, but unless Peter expects his Gentile listeners to import huge amounts of Old Testament understanding into the way they hear that phrase, there’s nothing in it that necessarily speaks of peace. It seems more likely that this is Peter’s confession (again!) that Jesus is Lord not just of Jews, but “of all.” It’s as if Peter has to remind himself over and over that the peace Christ brings is not solely for Israel, but for the whole world.
So what’s the “good news of peace”? The best understanding is that the good news of peace refers to the last phrase of the sermon: “To him all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name” (v. 43). The word “everyone” in that sentence is crucial because, again, Peter is more than a little surprised to be preaching this sermon to these people in the first place! Much to his astonishment, the good news of peace is that everyone who believes in Jesus—not just the Jews—receives forgiveness of sins. In other words, they are reconciled and brought to peace with God. It is the same idea, in fact, that Paul would draw upon in Ephesians 2: “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace” (vv. 13–14).
Of course there’s much more Peter could have said, and perhaps would have said had the Holy Spirit not interrupted him at that crucial point! He could have talked about the coming kingdom being for Gentiles, too, or the resurrection being not just for Jews, or the new heavens and new earth being a place where Jews and Gentiles would live together. But here, at least, he does not. “The good news of peace,” he’s quite happy to say, is the good news of forgiveness of sins to everyone who believes.
Romans 1:16–17
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”
These sentences are widely understood to be the “topic sentence,” the thesis, of the book of Romans. Paul declares that the gospel does not make him ashamed because it is “the power of God for salvation.” The emphasis—as one would expect from Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles—is that this salvation is not just for Jews, but also for the whole world.
In verse 17, Paul gives us at least a nutshell summary of what he understands the gospel to do. “In it,” he says (and he means “in the gospel”), “the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith.” Two different phrases in that sentence tell us what Paul understands the gospel to be about. First, he says that in the gospel, “the righteousness of God” is revealed. That phrase has elicited a huge amount of discussion.1 Does it refer to a righteousness that is from God in a legal sense—a righteousness that is imputed to us but is actually an alien righteousness? Or does it refer to a moral righteousness in us, or perhaps to God’s own holy character? Alternatively, does it refer to the righteousness of God, defined as his wrath against human sin? What does Paul mean by saying that in the gospel is revealed the righteousness of God?
Without doubt, the best way to get at what he means is to trace the rest of his argument through the book of Romans. Beginning with the declaration in 1:18 that “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men,” Paul spends most of the first three chapters of the book indicting all of humanity with a charge of sin and rebellion against God. Chapter 1 is aimed primarily at Gentiles, chapter 2 at Jews, and then in chapter 3 he draws it all together with a devastating charge that “all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin” and that “every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God” (vv. 10, 19). Then, having established the hopeless condition of all mankind, Paul turns to the good news: “But now,” he writes, “the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law” (v. 21). There’s that phrase again—“the righteousness of God.” But what does it mean? And what does it mean that it is manifested now “apart from law”?
The answer becomes clear a few verses later, when Paul explains how Abraham came to be “counted righteous” before God (Rom. 4:3–6). That phrase helps us to understand what Paul means when he talks about “the righteousness of God.” The question Paul is answering through this section of Romans is, How can a person be counted righteous before God? In other words, how can a person gain from God a final verdict of righteous as opposed to guilty? It’s that final verdict of righteous that Paul is calling here “the righteousness of God.”2 It’s a righteousness from God, a righteousness that is counted to us, or imputed to us, even though it is not our own. Paul’s answer to that question, of course, is that a person will never receive a righteous verdict from God by works of the law, but only through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Thus he says in verse 6 that that person is blessed “to whom God credits righteousness apart from works.” And he uses the same idea in Philippians 3:9 to say that he hopes to be included in Christ, “not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.” Thus, the “righteousness of God” that Paul says in Romans 1:17 is revealed in the gospel is precisely this—the righteousness from God that comes to those who have faith in Christ.
For our purposes here, the important thing to notice is that at the beginning of this book, when Paul describes in summary what is revealed “in it [the gospel],” what he says is that the gospel reveals the glorious news that an imputed “righteousness from God” is revealed and available to sinful human beings through faith. Of course he could have talked about much more, and in fact, he does: one of the Bible’s most beautiful passages about the future renewal of the creation is found in Romans 8. But here at the beginning, when Paul wants to describe in summary what the gospel reveals, he points to justification by faith in the crucified and risen Jesus.
1 Corinthians 15:1–5
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.
Apparently some of the Corinthians have begun to deny a resurrection from the dead. So Paul argues here from the gospel itself—the message proclaimed by him and the other apostles—that this position cannot possibly be correct. After all, the resurrection of Jesus from the dead is at the very heart of the Christian gospel, and to argue against it is therefore to argue that Jesus is still dead, and that is to argue that the Christian faith is worthless. Paul reminds the Corinthians of the basic truths of the gospel by quoting what seems to be a well-known creedal formula. These truths, he says, are not ones that he made up himself, but are “of first importance.” The Corinthians must “stand” in them. This statement of the gospel really consists of four main clauses:
(1) That Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures
(2) and that he was buried
(3) and that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures
(4) and that he appeared to Cephas and the Twelve.3
You can easily see that this “creed” is structured around two key facts (that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures and that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures), each followed by a confirming historical fact (the burial of Christ confirming that he really died, and the appearance to Peter and the others confirming that he really rose). These two facts together with their confirmation are “the gospel I preached to you,” Paul insists. They are what, at the end of it all, Christians must understand to be “of first importance.”
Of course Paul goes on to trace the implications of Christ’s resurrection—that those who are united to him by faith will also be raised—and we’ve already seen how the Bible, in other places, calls the whole complex of God’s promises, including the resurrection of the dead, “the gospel.” But at least here, in a summary form that is almost certainly an early Christian confession of faith, the “gospel” is said to be the good news that Christ died for our sins and rose from the dead—full stop.
1 Corinthians 1:17–18
For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.
For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
Not much needs to be said here for our purposes. The point is in the simple correspondence between “the gospel” and “the word of the cross.” In Paul’s mind, the good news is the news of the cross, the “foolish” message that through the crucified Christ, God will “save those who believe” (1 Cor. 1:21).
Looking carefully at the New Testament, then, we can see that the early Christians seem to have used the word gospel in two different ways—a broad way and a narrow way. On the one hand, they often used gospel to refer to the whole complex of promises that God makes to those who are redeemed through Christ. We might call this broad sense “the gospel of the kingdom.” On the other hand, though, there are also places where the New Testament writers were quite happy to apply the word gospel to the message that sinners can be forgiven through repentance and faith in the atoning death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We might call this narrow sense “the gospel of the cross.”
How, though, do we pull these two senses of gospel together? How do the gospel of the cross and the gospel of the kingdom relate? Are they two gospels? Are they two different things, but connected like two wings of a bird? Is the gospel of the cross part of the gospel of the kingdom? If so, is it central to it, or peripheral to it, or just one part among many, or something else entirely? For that matter, why are the New Testament writers content to call the one blessing of forgiveness of sin through the death of Christ “the gospel,” but no other single blessing by itself ever warrants that dignity? Why do we never see Paul saying, “And that’s the gospel: that the earth will be renewed”? Or why does he never preach, “The gospel is the good news that Jew and Gentile can be reconciled to one another through Jesus”? Why is the forgiveness of sins so readily called “the gospel,” while no other particular blessing is?
Let’s try to get at these questions by making a few things clear.
First, there is only one gospel, not two. I (Greg) remember speaking about these things at a conference several years ago. I went on at some length about these two senses in which the New Testament seems to use the word gospel, and at the end of my talk, the first questioner raised his hand and said, “So . . . you’re saying there are two gospels and we can choose which one we want to preach?” No, certainly not. There is only one gospel—one message of good news—but the New Testament writers seem to have no problem zooming in and out on that one message, sometimes looking at the whole thing and calling it “gospel,” and other times zooming in particularly on forgiveness through Christ and calling that “gospel,” too.
Second, the gospel of the kingdom necessarily includes the gospel of the cross. You cannot proclaim the “full gospel” if you leave out the message of the cross, even if you talk for an hour about all the other blessings God has in store for the redeemed. To do that would be like picking up an armful of leaves and insisting that you’re holding a tree. Unless those leaves are connected to the trunk, you don’t have a tree; you just have an armful of dead leaves. In the same way, unless the blessings of the gospel of the kingdom are connected to the cross, you don’t have a gospel at all. Take a look again at those passages from Matthew and Mark where Jesus preaches the arrival of the kingdom. If you look closely, you’ll notice that Jesus never preaches simply, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand.” He always preaches, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” or, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand; therefore repent and believe the gospel.” That is a crucial thing to keep in mind; indeed it is the difference between preaching the gospel and preaching something that is not the gospel at all. To proclaim the inauguration of the kingdom and all the other blessings of God without telling people how they may become partakers of those blessings is to preach a nongospel. Indeed it is to preach an antigospel—bad news—because you’re simply explaining wonderful things that your sinful hearers will never have the opportunity to be a part of. The gospel of the kingdom—the broad sense of “gospel”—therefore, is not merely the proclamation of the kingdom. It is the proclamation of the kingdom together with the proclamation that people may enter it by repentance and faith in Christ. Perhaps, in fact, it would be more accurate (though clunky) to speak of the gospel of the cross and the gospel of the kingdom through the cross. And that leads to another point.
Third, and more specifically, the gospel of the cross is the fountainhead of the gospel of the kingdom. It is the gate through which all the blessings of the kingdom are to be gained. The fact repeated over and over again throughout the New Testament is that the only way a person can become a partaker of the blessings of the kingdom is by coming in faith and repentance to the crucified and risen Lord Jesus for salvation. To put it in terms of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, a person can’t simply jump the wall and partake of the blessings of the kingdom; you have to go through the Wicket Gate of faith and repentance, or the blessings of the kingdom will be closed to you.
Incidentally, that’s why it makes perfect sense for the New Testament writers to call the gospel of the cross “the gospel,” even as they go on calling the whole complex of good news “the gospel” as well. Because the broader blessings of the gospel are attained only by means of forgiveness through the cross, and because those broader blessings are attained infallibly by means of forgiveness through the cross, it’s entirely appropriate and makes perfect sense for the New Testament writers to call forgiveness through the cross—the fountainhead of and gateway to all the rest—“the gospel.” That’s also why we never see the New Testament calling any other single promise of God to the redeemed “the gospel.” For example, we never see the promise of the new creation called “the gospel.” Nor do we see reconciliation between humans called “the gospel.” But we do see reconciliation between man and God called “the gospel” precisely because it is the one blessing that leads to all the rest.
Interestingly, there are a few places where the thought of the New Testament writers seems to move exactly according to this way of understanding the structure of the gospel message. The writers seem to “zoom in and out” quite readily and even within the space of a few words, from the gospel of the kingdom to the gospel of the cross, and vice versa.
Take, for instance, Paul’s sermon in Acts 13:26–40. We have already seen above that Paul uses the word gospel in that sermon to refer to all the blessings that God gave to the fathers. But it’s also instructive to see how, as the sermon progresses, he gradually “zooms in” from the whole grand panoramic of God’s promises to the glorious truth that it all begins and finds its foundation in the forgiveness of sins through the death of Christ. In fact, that’s how the sermon ends: “Let it be known to you therefore, brothers, that through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and by him everyone who believes is freed from everything from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses” (vv. 38–39).
Similarly, in Colossians 1:15–23, Paul begins with a glorious hymn about Christ that ends with the declaration that through Jesus, God intends to “reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross” (v. 20). But immediately Paul “zooms in” from “all things” to “you” (v. 21)! “And you,” he says, “who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death.” And that happens as they hold fast to “the gospel that [they] heard” (v. 23).4
In both these cases, the structure of thought is clear: “the gospel” certainly includes all the great blessings promised by God and foretold by the prophets, but the greatest promise of all—the one on which all the others depend—is the reconciliation of man to God through the forgiveness that comes through the death of Jesus.
Understanding the structure of the gospel message in this way helps us to avoid a good deal of unnecessary confusion, and it also helps us make progress in answering some important questions about the mission of God’s people in this age. Here are a few implications, some of which will lead us into the next chapter on the kingdom:
1. It is wrong to say that the gospel is the declaration that the kingdom of God has come. The gospel of the kingdom is the declaration of the kingdom of God together with the means of entering it. Remember, Jesus did not preach “the kingdom of God is at hand.” He preached, “The kingdom of God is at hand; therefore repent and believe!”
2. It is wrong to say that the declaration of all the blessings of the kingdom is a dilution of the true gospel. So long as those blessings of the kingdom are connected properly and essentially to the cross, they are undoubtedly part of the whole good news of Christianity, and the Bible quite readily calls that whole message—kingdom through cross—“the gospel.” In other words, so long as the question is, “What is the whole good news of Christianity?” the gospel of the kingdom through the cross is not gospel-plus; it is the gospel.
3. It is wrong to say that the message of forgiveness of sins through the death and resurrection of Jesus is a reduction of the true gospel. Because the message of forgiveness is the gateway to all the other blessings of the gospel, the Bible quite readily calls the word of the cross “the gospel.” In other words, so long as the question is, “What is the message a person must believe to be saved?” the gospel of the cross is not “too small”; it is the gospel.5
4. No one is a Christian simply because he or she is living a “kingdom life.” To be a Christian is to have come to the Christ in faith and repentance, trusting him as the only one with power and authority to forgive sins and secure a righteous verdict from God. It is never enough simply to recognize him as a good teacher or a wise rabbi, or to “follow him” as an example of moral, kingdom living. This would be to sell him short. Not only so, but it entirely misses the way into the blessings of the kingdom. If you have not come to the King in repentance and faith—recognizing him as the one who was crucified in your place and now reigns in resurrected life—then you are not a citizen of God’s kingdom, and you are not a Christian. The New Testament could not be clearer. The only way into the kingdom is through the blood of the King.
5. Non-Christians do not do “kingdom work.” The phrase “kingdom work” is confusing and nonbiblical and probably should be jettisoned, but even if we grant its use, we should at least be agreed that it cannot be applied to good things that non-Christians do. When a non-Christian does a good deed, it is most certainly good (at a certain level), and it is an instance of God’s common, evil-restraining grace on all mankind. It is a singular kindness of God that human beings are not as bad as we could be. But that those good works are “good” is all we can say about them. They are not “kingdom work” because they are not done in the name of the King (see Rom. 14:23b). C. S. Lewis was wrong. You simply can’t spend a lifetime serving Tash (or even yourself!) and expect Aslan to be happy about it.6
6. Most importantly for our purposes, all this helps us understand why Jesus finally commissioned the church to bear witness to him and to make disciples. If it’s true that the blessings of the kingdom are finally enjoyed only by those who have come to the King in repentance and faith, then it makes perfect sense for the King to give his people as their ongoing commission the command to herald that fact. And as we’ve already noted, that is of course exactly what Jesus does: he commands his followers, in his last words on earth before his ascension, to tell the nations how the blessings of the kingdom can be theirs. And his followers do that! The story of the book of Acts rings with the refrain, “And the word of God increased.”
That is what the early Christians took to be their mission. As we’ll talk about at more length later, they were well aware that it had not been given to them to usher the kingdom of God into being themselves. God would do that without their help. Their commission, rather, was to declare that the kingdom had come, to call the world to enter its blessings, and to declare to them how they could do so. That’s why we see, in the book of Acts, the story of the gospel’s spread from Jerusalem to Judea, its crossing over to Samaria, and then its breaking the final barrier to penetrate the uttermost parts of the earth—rather than the story of Christians working for the social betterment of Jerusalem and Antioch. Those early Christians understood, as should we, that their commission from their King was to spread far and wide the good news of the kingdom and that the way into it was by coming to the King in repentance and faith. That was the only thing that would usher people into the kingdom and into a life of service to the king.
1For a brief, helpful introduction, see Thomas R. Schreiner, "What Does Paul Mean by 'the Righteousness of God'?" in 40 Questions about Biblical Law (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2010), 121–28.
2Note that "the righteousness of God" in Rom. 1:17 is immediately followed by discussion of a parallel term, "the wrath of God." The former stands for God's verdict of vindication; the latter, God's judgment of condemnation.
3The accounts that follow, of Jesus's appearing to others including Paul, should not be understood as part of the "creed." The language is not as tight and formulaic, and it is best understood as Paul's explanation of how he came to be an apostle along with Cephas and the Twelve.
4Also interesting is the thrice-repeated statement in Acts that the apostles "preached the good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ" (Acts 8:12; see also 28:23, 31). Is this another example of the broad good news of the kingdom and the narrow good news of the cross?
5Jesus himself very clearly preaches the gospel of the cross (in Mark 10:45, for instance) even if he doesn't explicitly tie the word gospel to it in his recorded words. On a more general note, even as we recognize the benefit of word studies, we should not tie our definition of the gospel and our identification of it in the text too tightly to occurrences of the word gospel. Otherwise, we'd have to say that John almost never talks about it, for he uses the word only once in all his New Testament writings!
6C. S. Lewis, The Last Battle (New York: HarperCollins, 2000), 188.