The gospel is central to the Christian faith, but few people realize how the Bible itself understands the concept.
Previously, I showed that—based on passages in the Old Testament—the New Testament understands the gospel to be the message that the time has arrived for God to inaugurate his kingdom and begin ruling in the world.
Once you realize this, you find echoes of the gospel in other passages that don’t even use the term. For example, if God’s kingdom is now arriving, who has been ruling the world up to now?
There are two answers to this question. One is the human kingdoms that have ruled the world thus far and oppressed God’s people. But now these kingdoms are being supplanted by the kingdom of God. In Revelation, we read,
Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever” (11:15).
So the kingdom of the world has been replaced by the kingdom of God and Christ. But this announcement—like the gospel itself—is not coming out of the blue. It’s also predicted in the Old Testament. For example, the prophet Zechariah predicts that there will be a day when “the Lord will be king over all the earth” (Zech. 14:9).
In Daniel, we read of a series of pagan kingdoms that oppress God’s people, and then we are told,
And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever (Dan. 2:44).
Later, we read about a similar line of pagan kingdoms, and we learn about the role of the Son of Man in their overthrow. Daniel says,
I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him.
And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed (7:13-14).
The idea of the pagan kingdoms of the world being replaced by God’s kingdom through the Son of Man—or Christ—is one of the expectations established in the Old Testament.
However, the pagan kingdoms of the world are not the only answer to the question of who was ruling before the time of God’s kingdom. The other answer is found on the angelic level—in the invisible world that operates behind the visible, earthly kingdoms.
Scripture gives us glimpses of that invisible world, such as when John tells us, “The whole world lies in the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19).
And when Jesus was tested in the desert, we read:
The devil took [Jesus] up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, and said to him, “To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.”
And Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve’” (Luke 4:5-8).
So God had allowed the devil to have spiritual control on the angelic level of all the nations of the earth. And to test Jesus, the devil offered him all these nations in exchange for worship, but Jesus knew that this was not God’s plan and rejected the offer.
Consequently, John tells us, “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8).
And in John’s Gospel, as Jesus is preparing to go to the cross, he says,
Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself (12:31-32).
Thus, Hebrews says that Jesus partook of flesh and blood so that
through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil (2:14).
All this forms the conceptual background to the New Testament understanding of the gospel. It’s the good news that—although the devil has reigned in the world up to now, and there have been a series of pagan empires that have oppressed God’s people—the time has finally arrived for God to come and begin reigning through his kingdom.
This happens because his Son defeats the powers of darkness by his atoning death on the cross and by his resurrection and ascension to the right hand of God, where he now sits and reigns while the final defeat of the powers of darkness and death is implemented. As St. Paul says:
As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.
Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death (1 Cor. 15:22-26).
We thus see that there is a central role for Jesus as the Son of God in the New Testament’s conception of the gospel, and that’s not surprising.
Of the more than thirty references you’ll turn up if you search for the “gospel of” or the “good news of,” they don’t all refer to God and the kingdom. Eleven of them—or about a third—refer to variations on the gospel “of Christ,” “of Jesus Christ,” “of our Lord Jesus,” and “of his Son” (Mark 1:1; Rom. 1:9, 15:19; 1 Cor. 9:12; 2 Cor. 2:12, 9:13, 10:14; Gal. 1:7; Phil. 1:27; 1 Thess. 3:2; 2 Thess. 1:8).
In addition, the four documents about the life of Christ are called Gospels—a usage that dates back to the apostolic age.
So Jesus has a very prominent place in the New Testament understanding of the gospel, but this is not the original way it was conceptualized. The Old Testament prophets, John the Baptist, and Jesus all initially announced the gospel as the arrival of God’s kingdom, and this is how it was publicly announced for years—all through Christ’s earthly ministry.
Only Jesus fully understood the role he would play in bringing that kingdom about, he disclosed this only gradually, and even his own disciples did not understand it until he rose from the dead.
Therefore, the role of the Son in the gospel was a secondary announcement. It was added to the original, primary understanding of the gospel of God and his kingdom at a later stage to explain how that kingdom would come about. That’s why the earliest announcements of the gospel put all the focus on God and his kingdom, and the announcements of the gospel in connection with the Son were all given later.
The primary proclamation of the gospel is thus the announcement that the time for God to inaugurate his kingdom has arrived, and the secondary proclamation is that this kingdom will be implemented through God’s Son.
But notice that there’s still something missing from the way the New Testament conceptualizes the gospel. The passages where the New Testament refers to the gospel just do not focus on individuals. They don’t focus on you, your sin, your forgiveness, you being delivered from hell, or you being united with God in heaven.
That’s not what we find in these passages, and that understanding reframes the gospel away from the New Testament’s conception to present the gospel as if it were about what happens to individuals like you and me. To put it bluntly, the gospel is not about us. It’s about God, his Son, and his kingdom.
Of the more than thirty references to the “gospel of” and the “good news of,” only one of them explicitly refers to salvation. In that passage, Paul says,
In [Christ] you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit (Eph. 1:13).
Here Paul identifies “the word of truth” with “the gospel of your salvation.” Salvation is one of the implications of the gospel for us. It is because of the gospel that we can be saved. But a single verse that mentions this fact does not radically change the focus of the New Testament in how its authors think of the gospel.
The primary proclamation of the gospel is still that the time for God’s kingdom has arrived. The secondary proclamation of the gospel is still that God’s kingdom will be implemented through his Son. And the fact that we can be saved through the Son is an addendum to these proclamations of the gospel, but it is not the essence of the gospel itself.
We thus see that there are a lot of misconceptions about the gospel—at least if people are taking their own definitions to be what the New Testament means by the word. I covered many of these alternate conceptions here.
Different groups can use terms however they like, but they are not representing the New Testament understanding of the gospel if they say it is equivalent to
- the whole of Scripture,
- the whole of Christian doctrine,
- the whole of Christ’s teachings,
- Lutheranism’s idea of anything that preaches God’s grace and forgiveness,
- the distinctive doctrines of Full Gospel Pentecostals,
- the distinctive doctrines of Calvinism,
- the idea of justification by faith alone,
- the idea of justification by grace alone, or even
- the idea that God has saved us—as individuals—through the death of his Son since we could not save ourselves.
No, the core of the gospel, beginning with texts in the Old Testament, is that the time for God’s kingdom has arrived and all opposing powers will be overthrown. The elaboration of the gospel is that God’s kingdom will be implemented through his Son. And a happy consequence of that fact is that we can be saved through his Son.
The New Testament’s understanding is not about us as individuals and how we can benefit. The gospel is not about us. Instead, the good news is about what God and his Son are doing in the world, what they’re doing to their enemies—like the devil and the pagan world order. How we can benefit as individuals, how we can get on board with God’s plan, is a consequence of the gospel, but it’s not the essence of the good news.
So what do we need to do to benefit from the good news? Jesus himself told us:
The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel (Mark 1:15).
Or, as St. Peter put it on the day of Pentecost:
Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38).