The Gospel is about what God has done
Wednesday, October 8, 2008 at 7:46AM The Gospel is about what God has accomplished through the person and work of Jesus Christ. This is big news. It involves rescue from judgment for sin and a restored relationship with God, and his restoration of creation.
The Gospel is good news about what God has done, never about what we must do or have done. It's good news, not good advice.
The Gospel is:
- good news for the poor and victims of injustice because God (not us) has acted
- about individual salvation and the restoration of the cosmos
- about individual salvation and the kingdom (reign) of God
The Gospel is not:
- what we do to promote justice
- about loving God or loving our neighbors, because this is both Law and a right response to the Gospel (what we do), but it is not the Gospel (what God has done)
Our efforts to promote justice, obey God, and love others are necessary implications of the Gospel, but they are not the Gospel itself. It is wrong to ignore the implications; it is also wrong to confuse the them with the Gospel.
God is uniting all that's been torn apart in Christ (Ephesians 1:10). That is Gospel. We work to unite what's broken around us. That's not Gospel; that is our response to the Gospel.
The Gospel is all about what God has done, not what we are doing.
Reader Comments (5)
Your first bullet seems a bit soft. I think you need to explain that a little more. Poor in spirit (and ready to repent) OK but I don't understand what you mean by victim of injustice
Jacob: There are a few places that Jesus described the Gospel as good news to the poor (Luke 4:18, 7:22). I don't believe this means only poor in spirit. The gospel is good news for sinners who need forgiveness, but it is also good news for the literal poor. Jesus has taken his place among the poor, and has promised a kingdom in which we can be free from all that enslaves us, personal and social.
Hey Darryl, great post. When i read it, a deep amen sounded in my spirit. So i hesitate to interact much with what you said, for fear of being preceived as one of those annoying 'hair-splitters'. But to borrow language from Doug Pagitt i am a contrarian. I wonder if you are making too precise a distinction of where the gospel begins and ends. You state "The Gospel is about what God has accomplished through the person and work of Jesus Christ." And then go on to say "the gospel is not what we do to promote justice." Is it not possible that the 'best news' for those living under the oppressive injustice of some system or power is that God has unleashed a covenant people to live out an alternative way that they can participate in. A Jesus people who will promote and live out God's reign. So in a sense what you call 'our response to the gospel' actually is (in part) the good news work of God for someone else. Me or you promoting justice for that person, is part of God's good, redemptive news for their lives. (The body of Christ 'incarnating' the Gospel) Why can't part of God's 'gospel/good news' be that we don't have to live for stuff, for reputation, for prestige, but we can live to love God & neighbor. I completely agree that that needs to be a response to God's salvific work, but i don't think it's outside the realm of possibility that such a hope might also be 'good news from God'. I fully endorse a soteriology that says the gospel isn't what we do, but what God has done for us. And out of that understanding what God has done for me/us has to have a good news echo that touches the lives of others, so that the blessing (good news?) we have received becomes a blessing (God's good news?) for others. Thoughts? See ya for lunch
Darryl, I have spent a lot of time thinking about the idea of "promoting justice," because that's what my life looked like for a long time. I spent most of my energy promoting justice. And interestingly, in the process, I found I was using that to justify myself. I even found that I was excusing my own sin because of an argument that went something like "I'm working really hard for good, so I'm entitled to be angry, to hate those who oppose me, to be unloving to those who are enemies of my cause." What I also found ultimately was that temporal justice remains just that - temporal. You may know that I spent several years representing death row inmates. One of the worst moments of my life to date came when I talked to a client who was about to die. In the first real conversation he had ever been willing to have with me - the last time I spoke with him - he said that I, and a couple of the other attorneys I worked with, were the only people who had ever cared about him. I felt really good about that for quite a while. Patted myself on the back even. But then it struck me that though I had shown him kindness, and promoted justice for him, I had never told him about the hope I have in Jesus. And without my giving him an answer for the hope I had, my "kindness" and my "promotion of justice" was ultimately pointless. What I struggle with is the possibility that it is not the promotion of justice that we are really called to, but instead the doing of justice, personally, individually, so that we can promote, not simply societal justice, but eternal hope. I don't have this all worked out by any stretch of the imagination, but I think in some sense advocating causes is easy. Living justly is hard. Because living justly requires a continual understanding that without Christ, what we justly deserve is condemnation. Micah 6:8 Jeremy Lowrey
Trevor: I think you're on to something. I'm in the second half of Ephesians 2 this week, and it says that part of the Gospel is that God has created a new humanity or community. I think we can say that God has acted through Christ to create a new community of love and reconciliation. Obviously this is good news, but it's still about what God has done. I just can't find any place in Scripture where what we do - even as a result of the Gospel - is called the Gospel. It's always announcing what God is doing/has done. Jeremy: Excellent comment. Thank you. Societal justice always needs to be tied to our eternal hope. A very good reminder.