Darryl's Blog
What is the gospel?
My latest column at Christian Week:
What lies at the heart of the emerging church? According to Scot McKnight, Professor of Religious Studies at North Park University, the emerging movement is not defined by theology. “The emerging movement is not known by its innovative doctrinal statement or by its confessional stances,” he says. “It is, instead, best to see it as a conversation about theology, with all kinds of theologies represented, with a core adhering to the classical creeds in a new key.”
If there is a theological core to the emerging church, however, it is likely around a single question: what is the gospel? Brian McLaren, a controversial voice within the emerging movement, once mused, “It will serve the church if we spend the next 15-20 years asking the question, ‘what is the gospel?’”
Answering this question is not as easy as it may seem. The easiest answer is to quote 1 Corinthians 15:1-4: “that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures...” According to others, however, we must define the gospel in a more completely biblical way. It’s here, according to one pastor, that emerging and traditional churches can learn from each other.
Two Aspects
Tim Keller is a founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, New York. Christianity Today calls Redeemer “one of Manhattan's most vital congregations.” It currently draws over four thousand attendees to its worship services each Sunday and has helped start over a hundred smaller churches in the New York City metropolitan area.
Keller spoke at a conference last May about integrating the way we define the gospel.
“Right now I find it helpful to think of two aspects to the gospel,” he says. “Let me give you the gospel in a nutshell. The gospel is that God himself has come to rescue and renew creation through the work and in the work of Jesus Christ on our behalf.”
Keller argues that there is both a trajectory of the gospel and the means. The trajectory or purpose of the gospel is a renewed material creation. The means is by sheer grace, and not by works.
“One of the biggest problems we’ve got is that the older evangelicals are really great at the second aspect of the gospel. The newer younger evangelicals are fairly good at the first. But I don’t know yet of a movement that seems to be bringing these together properly.”
Younger evangelicals, Keller says, love to speak of the Kingdom of God and joining him in his work, but don’t like to talk about atonement. Older evangelicals, in which he includes himself, only learned about the atonement and forgiveness of sins.
Neither understanding of the gospel is adequate. Younger evangelicals will not write hymns like Charles Wesley’s And Can It Be; older evangelicals will miss that the purpose of our salvation is a new creation and will instead focus on the individual.
“I think we have to pull it together,” Keller says.
Pulling it together means seeing the gospel as more than just saving souls who will one day go to heaven. The gospel is also concerned with God’s desire to renew all of creation. The mission statement of Redeemer Presbyterian is “to spread the gospel...to bring about personal changes, social healing, and cultural renewal through a movement of churches and ministries that change New York City and through it, the world.”
Another church, Imago Dei Community in Portland, puts it more simply: to take the whole gospel to the whole person to the whole world. “An all-encompassing gospel has implications for every part of every human being in every part of the world.”
Our Most Urgent Task
It is easy to get distracted about secondary issues. If Keller is right, secondary issues retreat behind one central question: what is the gospel? How can we, whether we are younger or older evangelicals, understand and live the whole gospel rather than a truncated version?
Keller says that he doesn’t yet know of a movement that brings the two aspects of the gospel together. Integrating these two aspects of the gospel may be the most urgent task facing our churches today.
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What would you say the gospel is Darryl?
I think a question that goes along with "what is the Gospel" is "what is the Truth" or what is the truth about the Gospel.
Hi George:
I'm quite happy with Keller's definition: "The gospel is that God himself has come to rescue and renew creation through the work and in the work of Jesus Christ on our behalf."
Darryl, when you say rescue and renew creation you're talking about people right? The new creation as in people who become new creations in Christ right?
There's a lot of talk these days about the environment and global warming and all that. Things we as Christians should also be concerned about obviously, but probably not as concerned as helping the lost come to know the Savior. After all isn't there going to be a brand new creation in the future? Revelation 21 "1Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more."
Shouldn't we as Christians be more concerned about pointing people to the God who they can spend eternity with? Isn't that what the Gospel is all about? Making disciples.
Hi George,
"Darryl, when you say rescue and renew creation you're talking about people right?" No, it includes people but it's much bigger.
Keller's point is that older evangelicals focus only on what you're talking about and miss the global implications. Younger evangelicals focus on the global issues and don't focus on individuals. Keller argues that we need both, and I agree.
Thanks Darryl, can you help me out with that a bit more? What are the global implications that these so called older evangelicals are missing out on?
Its interesting, I guess you would likely say I would be one of those older evangelicals then.
I just find that interesting as in blogosphere, especially emerging/liberal places, I have been accused of being such a new Christian (which I am all of 5 and a half years)and I just don't get it like they do and come talk to me in 20 years kind of thing.
This is a great topic "what is the gospel"
When I think about it in my own life I know its all about me being redeemed solely by God's grace based on the atoning work of Jesus Christ on the cross. I know I have been forgiven and have been given eternal life. All because of Him. Absolutely astounds me that God would choose to save a wretch like me. I so relate to what Paul says when he indicates that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of which he was one of the worst.
Isn't the Gospel all about saving sinners? As I consider the environment, I need to be concerned and do my part to take care of God's creation but where does God want me to focus my attention as I seek to reach out to a lost world?. What does the gospel say about that? Isn't it all about people? Everyday I jump on the train and then the subway (just doing my part by leaving the car at home) and pass by and among thousands upon thousands of people who are lost, who have no hope. Many of them somehow believe that God will accept them based on them being good people. Many of them don't believe anything about God or don't care. Many of them have been discarded by society and have no hope at all of any kind of a better future.
So here I am a sinner saved by grace, wanting to reach out to them. I want to share with them the Good News of the Gospel of Jesus Christ that can set them free like it has set me free. I want to tell them the truth about who Jesus is, who we are in our sin in relation to a holy and perfect and righteous God, but how we can be forgiven as we put our trust in Jesus Christ. I ask again Darryl what more is there to the Gospel than that? Did Jesus come to redeem creation or to redeem sinners?
How do we deal with Romans 8 about all this?
"18For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. 19For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. 20For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope 21that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. 23And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. 24For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? 25But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience."
Our messed up world including the environment is just one more indication of where we are, what sin has done. Ah, but we who know Christ, we have hope, we know what's coming and we wait for that new creation, that heavenly place where all things will be new and where we will dwell with Him forever.
Do you really have hope for this world that man is going to get it right on their own and clean it up? Not a chance, we can't do nothing good without Christ.
What are the global issues that are just as important as the redemption of man that leads to eternal life?
Thanks for your time Darryl a hugely important topic that has a sense of urgency to it I believe. I sure don't think it will serve the church to talk about it for the next 15-20 years like McLaren does, I think we got to get it right now, so we can collectively go out and reach out to a lost world.
Any thoughts?
Hi George,
I love your passion for what the gospel can do. I think we need that. The one thing I've noticed in myself in the past is that it's easy to stop there and not realize that the gospel is not just about the spiritual. It's about the reign of God over all creation. Just as sin has damaged every part of the earth, so God is renewing all things through the gospel. We can't afford to truncate the gospel and make it only about getting people to heaven.
I can't explore this fully here, but it's worth exploring at length and then living. I don't want to minimize at all what you're talking about, but I want to understand the gospel as it applies to all of life. As the article says, "An all-encompassing gospel has implications for every part of every human being in every part of the world."
Thanks Darryl, I can't explore it fully either right now, maybe another time.
So many questions though. If the gospel is not just about the spiritual, what else is it about and what is the authority for that?
When Jesus said that He is the light of the world and that He came so we can have life, what does that life mean if not eternal life?
Why is it that there seems to be this downplaying of the salvation issue when it comes to defining the gospel by emerging/liberal Christians? (not talking about you Darryl)Is there anything more important then the salvation of one's soul?
I'm so thankful for what the Lord has been teaching me personally in these last few months. As I focus on Him, and who He is and what He has done and how He is at work, and how I can't do anything without Him, it has just become so liberating. Its all about Him. The more I focus on Him the more of a burden I have for people, for His people and for lost people. That's because I know He has a burden for people and He wants His people to reach out to them with His love and point them to the throne of mercy and grace where they will find all they need.
I'm not expecting you to respond, I know you are busy and tomorrow is Sunday. Have a great day Darryl and a better Sunday.