The Meaning of the Gospel
I say all of this with a warm and happy smile, grateful to do this fortheloveofit.
This is perhaps a bit of free writing, certainly not like last last week which got long and laborious, and I don't know who would read it all. Often I go back and read what I wrote. But with last week's discussion of Gunton and gnosticism I could not stomach even half. Again, smile!
For this TT I remembered a discussion I had in the context of declaring for a secular audience the position of a para-church entity. We needed to choose our words carefully to avoid unnecessary trouble, while still being true to who we were as genuine Christian believers.
We were discussing whether to say we were followers of Jesus Christ or followers of the Gospel. It was a little more nuanced in my memory but that is the gist. I advocated for framing our position in terms of the Gospel. For ease of form I will express my reasons in bullets:
We are to be “wise as serpents and harmless as doves,” an admonition for prudence and wisdom. In some contexts naming Jesus can negate dialogue unnecessarily.
If we are known as Christians it is unnecessary to use language any more direct or potentially provocative than necessary. We are not trying to make a scene or even “prove a point.” We are trying to humbly and prudently describe who we are.
Saying “Gospel” helpfully implies all that is included in Scripture and the Christian tradition.
Thinking a bit further on this, I remember Chesterton's remark: “Nothing is irrelevant to the proposition that Christianity is true.” We are Christians who affirm the whole Gospel which is good for all of life. Is the same conveyed as well with the name "Jesus." Maybe, but I was suggesting otherwise.
If I were to try to say what the Gospel means without simply offering the creeds, I would say something like this:
The Gospel means all creation has purpose and meaning because it is authored by an “infinite, personal God” revealed in the person Jesus Christ.
All people are born sharing in the lostness that we all know to be true. We cannot set the world straight. There is something in our nature that always, eventually, goes awry, often catastrophically.
Only the one who made the world can fix it and, to paraphrase the ancient understanding of redemption, “only what the redeemer takes unto himself can be redeemed.” The only one who can take all creation on himself is the one who made it -- the one to whom creation is subject.
In the incarnation -- that central miracle of the Gospel --God took all creation on Himself. He became radically “with us,” took on flesh, became”very man of very man” whilst also “very God of very God.”
In doing so God began the remaking of all creation, and of you and me.
This is the Gospel and the crux of it is the Incarnation – Christmas.
I confess, though I love analysis, I weary of formulae. Yet, subjective whimsy will not do either. This understanding of the Gospel, though not brilliantly or exhaustively conceived or conveyed, does reflect the gist of the what we mean when we say ”the Gospel.”
And it declares that blessed hope which we hold by faith in Him whom we dare to believe is indeed the son of God. He has accomplished that great work of redemption, the “now and not yet” of salvation. In Him is something vastly more than, yet suggested in, the incomparable scene at the end of Jackson's Lord of the Rings. Here we know Frodo triumphed and his friends, knowing this, exult in true praise, shouting “Frodo!”
As I say, it suggests the greater story in which the myth was made real. One day all will know Jesus has accomplished what only He could, and by His death and resurrection delivered the world from doom. All who believe and have trusted Him will find themselves rejoicing in the triumph he made on their behalf. They will exult in true praise, shouting, “Jesus!”
This is the Gospel, the “Good News” greater than any other!
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