The gospel is vitally important to Christians. It’s at the core of the Christian faith. But what, specifically, is the gospel?
The word’s roots mean “good news.” That’s the meaning of the Hebrew term bsorah and the Greek equivalent euangelion. But people have been giving and receiving numerous kinds of good news all through history, so what kind is meant in the Bible?
Previously, I looked at how the word gospel is used in different groups—particularly Protestant ones—and some of the problems with these uses.
You may have noticed that in our previous discussion, we didn’t look at how Scripture itself uses the term. So that’s what we’ll turn to now.
Is the gospel really all about sin and salvation, about being rescued from hell and brought to heaven through the death of Jesus on the cross? Or is the gospel about something else?
The concept of the gospel leaps to prominence in the New Testament, and one of the things that’s clear about it is that it’s not coming out of nowhere. St. Paul writes that he is
a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures (Rom. 1:1-2).
If we want to understand the New Testament’s gospel, it’s important to look back into the Old Testament to see what was prophesied.
When the Old Testament speaks of good news being announced, it frequently has in mind the announcement of a military victory (2 Sam. 4:10, 18:19-31; 2 Kings 7:9; etc.). In other words, God has given his people victory in battle, and this meaning needs to be borne in mind.
The term good news becomes particularly prominent in the book of Isaiah, which—together with the Psalms—is one of the books that Jesus quotes most frequently in the four Gospels. Since Isaiah is a prophetic work, it is here that we would be most likely to find material directly prophesying the emergence of the gospel in the New Testament.
It is thus no surprise when we consult Isaiah and discover that the end of the book—which frequently deals with the coming age of the Messiah—has multiple references to good news. For example, we read this:
Go on up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good news;
lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good news;
lift it up, fear not;
say to the cities of Judah, “Behold your God!”
Behold, the Lord God comes with might, and his arm rules for him;
behold, his reward is with him, and his recompense before him (40:9-10).
Here the good news that is announced to Israel is the arrival of God as king. He comes with mighty power, and his right arm is going to rule. This hooks into the theme of military victory that we have already seen associated with the idea of good news.
Next, we read this:
How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news,
who publishes peace,
who brings good news of happiness,
who publishes salvation,
who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.” (Isa. 52:7).
Here the good news being announced is that there will be a time in which Israel’s God reigns, resulting in a time of peace, happiness, and salvation—the last of these being a common Old Testament reference to salvation from one’s enemies in battle, again hooking into the theme of military victory.
Finally, we read this:
The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor;
he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor (Isa. 61:1-2).
Here the good news being announced includes encouraging the brokenhearted, proclaiming liberty to those who are captive or in prison, and the reason for this is the arrival of the year of the Lord’s favor—so once again, God brings about a new and improved state of affairs for his people.
We thus see Isaiah building up a picture of a coming time when God will arrive with powerful might and a strong right arm; he will reign and bring peace, happiness, and salvation from their enemies to his people; and in this time of the Lord’s favor, he will encourage the brokenhearted and announce liberty to captives and those in prison.
That is the essential content of the good news or gospel that Isaiah focuses on.
How well does Isaiah’s understanding correspond to the way the concept is handled in the four Gospels? The earliest reference we find to Jesus preaching the gospel is in Mark 1:
Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel” (vv. 14-15).
This fits very well with the understanding of the gospel in Isaiah. Here the gospel is presented as being “of God”—that is, it is good news from or about God—and it is announced that “the time is fulfilled”—meaning that what has been previously prophesied is now arriving. The thing that is now arriving is “the kingdom of God.” And the appropriate response is to repent or turn away from one’s sins and believe in the gospel, or good news, of God’s arriving kingdom.
All this fits with the vision of the gospel presented in Isaiah of a time when God would arrive with power and begin to rule in a new golden age, in which God’s people—those who have repented of sin and allied with God—will be blessed.
We also find a connection with Isaiah’s understanding of the good news in Luke, where we read this:
[Jesus] came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written,
“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.”
And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (4:16-21).
Here Jesus quotes Isaiah 61—a passage we read earlier—and he announces that it was being fulfilled in his ministry. So Jesus was directly hooking into Isaiah’s understanding of the coming time of good news in which God would reign and bless his people.
This understanding of the gospel as the arrival of the kingdom of God is a common theme in the New Testament.
If you search the New Testament for references to “gospel of” or “good news of,” you’ll turn up more than thirty references where the concept is qualified to indicate where it comes from or what it is about. Of these places, seven passages speak of the gospel “of God” (Mark 1:14; Rom. 1:1, 15:16; 1 Thess. 2:2, 8-9; 1 Pet. 4:17), and six passages speak of the gospel “of the kingdom” of God (Matt. 4:23, 9:35, 24:14; Luke 4:43, 8:1, 16:16).
These references are consistent with Isaiah’s presentation of the gospel as the time when God arrives and begins to rule in a golden age, and they reveal a strong New Testament linkage between the idea of the gospel and God and his kingdom.
You may notice that something has been missing from the passages we’ve just covered. Starting with Isaiah and continuing in the New Testament passages just mentioned, there has been a focus on the gospel as being about God coming to rule and establishing his kingdom. But there has been no mention of his Son Jesus Christ, his death on the Cross, heaven or hell, or anything like that. All of those concepts have been missing.
We can’t chalk this up to the individual passages simply failing to mention them. That proposal won’t work for the passages referring to the gospel and the kingdom in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
The reason is that Jesus did not begin his ministry and immediately announce his death on the cross. He was preaching the gospel. Mark 1:14-15 and Luke 4:16-21 both portray him doing that early on. But he didn’t reveal his coming death until much later (Matt. 16:21, Mark 8:31, Luke 9:22), and even then, the disciples didn’t understand what he meant (Matt. 16:22-23, 17:23; Mark 8:32-33, 9:32; Luke 9:45, 18:34).
Also, it wasn’t just Jesus preaching the good news. Before him, John the Baptist had done the same thing (Luke 3:18).
We thus see that—early on—there was a proclamation of the gospel that did not focus on Jesus and his death on the cross. Instead, the focus was on the time arriving for God to come and inaugurate his kingdom. That’s why the gospel is so frequently referred to as the gospel of God and the gospel of the kingdom.
What role Jesus would play in these events had not yet been revealed.
This has important implications for how the New Testament understands the idea of the gospel.
It is true that Jesus died on a cross so that we could be forgiven our sins, saved from going to hell, and brought to be with God forever. However, sin and salvation are not what the gospel is about. That is a fundamental misframing of the concept as the New Testament understands it.
Instead, the New Testament initial understanding of the gospel is as the good news that the time has arrived for God to begin to reign and inaugurate his kingdom.
This is done through his Son’s death on the cross—so Jesus has the pivotal role in bringing God’s kingdom about—but it is the arrival of God’s kingdom that is the good news itself.
It’s to the relationship of the gospel and God’s Son that we’ll turn next.