A 360-degree View of the Gospel
The claim, the message, the storyline, the goal, and the way God achieved the goal of the gospel.
And he went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people.
Matthew 4:23
When Jesus came preaching the gospel of the kingdom, He announced the good news that the Sovereign Creator was ready to execute His long-promised rescue mission of His fallen creation. For three years, this gospel was Jesus’ primary message and the driving force behind His actions. Consequently, the New Testament has many direct and indirect references to the gospel.
The Challenge
Looking at the gospel in the New Testament is like looking at a cut jewel with many facets reflecting light. The challenge we face is to make sense of all we find in the New Testament related to the gospel. Over the centuries, theologians and teachers of the church have focused on different facets to the exclusion of others as they tried to find a central idea that defines the gospel. Their explanations included theories about how their understanding of the gospel achieved God’s purposes. And, of course, this resulted in arguments about the best explanation among these competing theological proposals.
My Proposal
My purpose in this article is not to catalog and summarize all the various theological theories developed over the centuries that attempt to define the good news in gospel, weighing one against the other. Rather, my purpose is to account for all the direct or indirect references to the gospel across the New Testament with a focus on what these biblical references seem to claim that God has done and what results from those actions. I have found that all these gospel statements fit together into a coherent and compelling whole.
My proposal for organizing the New Testament’s stated or implied references to the gospel follows.
My Assumptions
I acknowledge that no one comes to biblical interpretation without preconceptions and assumptions. It is impossible to make sense of new data if you lack any framework of understanding to tell you what you are seeing, what else it is like, what it is related to, and, therefore, what it probably means. The following are my assumptions, reflected in how I interact with the biblical material concerning the gospel.
Humans were created in God’s image on the earth to represent Him within creation. While image bearing implies similarity to another, the thrust of the Genesis account of humans as image bearers is that they serve a purpose and role within God’s creation that is unique from every other form of life. Humans manage the Creator’s purposes “on earth as in heaven.”
Jesus was both Israel’s God, Yahweh, and the second Adam (I Corinthians 15:45-49); He was fully God and man. Paul tells us that Jesus is the “image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation” (Colossians 1:15). This means that Jesus, as the second Adam, is a reset of the human race, restoring the original creation plan and purpose for humans as God’s image on the earth. As such, Jesus is the firstborn of many brothers (Romans 8:29).
The Bible, containing both the Old and New Testaments and many layers of stories and characters, was written in a variety of literary genres. Nevertheless, the entire Bible is one large story: the story of God, the creator, and how He resolved the problem of Adam’s sin in the Garden of Eden. The plan and process by which God successfully resolved the damage done by Adam’s sin are the gist of the gospel of the Kingdom.
Looking at the Gospel from Every Angle
The many explicit and implicit references to the gospel can be fit together into a coherent and compelling whole. We can visualize a 360-degree view of the gospel of the Kingdom that organizes the biblical data. This visualization allows us to walk around the gospel concept and look at it from the different angles provided by the diverse statements of the New Testament. In this way we can resist the temptation to elevate some biblical references as the key or the core of the gospel while effectively ignoring other passages.
Again, I am not trying to sort through the philosophical or theological theories about how these things might work. Those theories involve massive, if not endless, debates. My approach is to organize what the bible says God did in, through, and as Jesus, not theorize how those actions or events achieved what the texts claim were accomplished. I have categorized these angles of view as:
The claim of the gospel
The message of the gospel
The storyline of the gospel
The goal of the gospel, and finally
How God achieved the goal of the gospel
Now that we have described the structure we will use to organize the many ideas and concepts associated with the gospel in the New Testament, let's walk around the 360-degree circle to see if a coherent picture emerges.
0° - The Claim of the Gospel
The overall claim of the New Testament is that God has done everything needed to rescue creation, fix everything wrong with the world, and restore humans to the life God created them to live with Him. The scope of the good news in the gospel is not limited to human sin and guilt but extends to resolving all the damage to God’s good creation that resulted. The gospel is a claim concerning the factuality of the hope of new creation (Isaiah 65: 17,18; Romans 8: 19-22).
… those who follow Jesus, those who find themselves believing that He is the world’s true Lord, that He rose from the dead—these people are given the Spirit as a fore-taste of what that new world will be like. If anyone is “in the Messiah” (one of Paul’s favorite ways of describing those who belong to Jesus), what they have and are is… new creation (2 Corinthians 5: 17)! Your own human self, your personality, your body, is being reclaimed, so that instead of being simply part of the old creation, a place of sorrow and injustice and ultimately the shame of death itself, you can be both part of the new creation in advance and someone through whom it begins to happen here and now.
N. T. Wright
Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense
90° - The Message of the Gospel
The underlying message at the center of every New Testament presentation of the Gospel of the Kingdom is that God rescued creation by making Jesus the LORD over all and the King who saves.
Peter’s first gospel sermon after the Pentecost outpouring sought to clarify what God had done with Jesus despite their recent eagerness to crucify Him.
Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing. For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says, “ ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.” ’ Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.” Acts 2:33-36
Matthew Bates has described the message of the gospel like this:
There can only ever be one true gospel. In a simple sentence, Jesus is the saving king. A more expansive summary brings out its trinitarian structure: The gospel is the true story of how Jesus the Son was sent by God the Father to become the saving king who now rules forever at his right hand through the sending of the Holy Spirit, fulfilling God’s promises in Scripture.
Matthew W. Bates, Gospel Allegiance, p.86
180° - The Storyline of the Gospel
This message of the Gospel of the Kingdom is embedded in the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. These four ancient biographies tell the story of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection and anticipate His ascension (see Acts 1:6-11). The four gospels show how God enthroned Jesus as King and revealed him to be the one promised by Israel's prophets who would be the savior of God’s creation.
The four gospels also give us a close look into the way Jesus lived as an image bearer. Looking at Jesus’ life is a look at what God intended for humanity from the beginning. We see what it looks like to live in a proper relationship with the Sovereign Creator and how to be busy with the mission assigned initially to humanity. In Jesus, we see the perfect example of what it looks like for a human to function with the responsibility, authority, and power to implement God’s will on earth as in heaven, which was God's purpose for humanity all along.
270° - The Goal of the Gospel
Therefore, the gospel’s goal is to resolve the alienation between humanity and its creator caused by the corruption of sin and death, the tragic consequences of human rebellion in Eden. The goal is to restore humans to their relationship with God and their role as image bearers in creation, now in this age and the new heavens and earth.
Reflect for a moment on the role of human beings within this plan – something Christians today don’t often talk much about, but which the early Christians took for granted. In Romans 5.17, and then in chapter 8, those who receive the gift of covenant membership will reign in life. That is the human vocation, the image-bearing vocation, highlighted then in Romans 8.18–30. We are, says Paul in 8.29, to be ‘conformed to the image of God’s son, so that he might be the firstborn among a large family’. Paul is resonating with Psalm 8, which celebrates the human vocation to be ‘crowned with glory and honour’ with all things put under their feet – the vocation fulfilled in Jesus and now shared with Jesus’ people.
NT Wright, Into the Heart of Romans
The goal of the gospel includes but goes far beyond the common, but more limited, evangelical presentations which focus solely on the forgiveness of sins and the hope of heaven.
360° - How God Achieved the Goal of the Gospel
Since the gospel is central to everything else in The New Testament, it is unsurprising that we discover a dizzying array of statements related to it and its work of saving, transforming, and restoring fallen humans. I suggest the following structure to map out how all these various ideas work together to achieve the gospel’s goal of restoring humans to their relationship with and role in God’s kingdom.
At its core, the New Testament’s conceptual organization outlines how God accomplished the goal of the gospel through three major achievements:
The gospel tells us that God revoked the curse of sin and death, which devastated all of God’s creation.
The gospel tells us that God has removed the obstacles blocking the life and work of His human image bearers.
The gospel tells us that God provided everything humans need to succeed in life and work as image bearers in His Kingdom.
1. God Revoked the Curse of Sin and Death
The goal of the Gospel was achieved when God resolved the curse of Sin and Death. This universal human predicament goes all the way back to the first image bearers’ idolatry and rebellion in Eden. Sin refers to the larger, underlying human condition of rebellion against God and a broken relationship with Him. This condition leads to death, physically and spiritually.
The work of Christ is first and foremost a victory over the powers that hold mankind in bondage: sin, death, and the devil. These may be said to be in a measure personified, but in any case they are objective powers; and the victory of Christ creates a new situation, bringing their rule to an end, and setting men free from their dominion.
Christus Victor, Gustaf Aulén
Humans could not resolve this calamity on their own. But God, being the Sovereign Creator, did what humans could not do for themselves. He condemned Sin in Jesus’ human body and broke its power on the cross. He also defeated Death by raising Jesus from the dead by the power of the Holy Spirit.
For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive… The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. I Corinthians 15:21, 22, 56, 57
Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned— for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come. But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. And the free gift is not like the result of that one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ. Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous. Romans 5:12-19
What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. Romans 6:1-14
2. Through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, God removed obstacles to the life and work of image bearers
Jesus’s death, burial, and resurrection achieved the gospel’s goal. Jesus was “obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:8) so that humans could be restored to their original relationship with God’s family and to their unique role as image-bearers on earth by removing the obstacles that stand in their way.
What are the obstacles that stand in the way? I would suggest three: our sins, captivity to malevolent powers, and our estrangement from God.
Jesus removed the obstacle of our SINS.
Jesus resolved the need for forgiveness and freedom from sins committed and willful rebellion against God, the king.
And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. Matthew 26:27, 28
God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him.” Acts 5:31,32
In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace. Ephesians 1:7
God has not set up arbitrary rules which, if we break them, cause us to be guilty of sins. Rather, Sin is like a virus or a plague that consumes a person. We become infected through our idolatrous intimacy with the powers that are not God. Sins are the symptoms of this disease that erupt like boils and tumors in our lives and eventually kill us. Humanity contracted the disease of Sin and its inevitable consequence of Death because the first image bearers turned away from the holy and pure safety of a relationship with the sovereign creator. Instead, they chose to enter an adulterous relationship with the perverted false gods who oppose God’s kingdom and seek only the destruction of God’s image-bearing humanity.
Jesus removed the obstacle of our CAPTIVITY.
Jesus resolved our need for deliverance from the principalities and powers currently ruling on the earth. Sin not only incurs guilt, but it also takes captives. The powers that seduce the human heart away from devotion and obedience to the creator suggest that they offer a “better way” and freedom to enjoy what God would deny us. But they lie.
[T]hrough the Second Man He bound the strong one, and spoiled his goods, and annihilated death, bringing life to man who had become subject to death. For Adam had become the devil’s possession, and the devil held him under his power, by having wrongfully practiced deceit upon him, and by the offer of immortality made him subject to death. For by promising that they should be as gods, which did not lie in his power, he worked death in them. Wherefore he who had taken man captive was himself taken captive by God, and man who had been taken captive was set free from the bondage of condemnation.
From Against Heresies, Irenaeus (130-202 AD) quoted in Christus Victor, Gustaf Aulén
The gospel is the good news that God has secured the release of those who have become captives and prisoners of sin and death.
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… Isaiah 61:1–2
I will rescue you from your own people and from the Gentiles, to whom I am sending you to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me. Acts 26:17,18
He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. Colossians 1:13, 14
Jesus removed the obstacle of our ESTRANGEMENT from God.
Jesus resolved the need for reconciliation with God and restoration to his family. In our post-enlightenment culture of humanism and individualism, we are generally unaware that we were not created to be alone. The opening scenes of the Bible reveal a compelling intimacy in the relationship between the Creator and His human creation in the garden. The tragedy of the fall certainly includes the loss of this intimacy given to us so freely at first.
For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. Romans 5:10, 11
For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. Ephesians 2: 14-16
For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. Colossians 1:19, 20
“For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.” Romans 5:10,11
3. Through Jesus’ ascension and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, God provided everything image bearers need to succeed.
Third, the goal of the gospel was achieved through Jesus’ ascension and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. God did what was needed for humans to succeed as His representatives, both in the present and the New Heavens and New Earth.
What do newly restored and redeemed image bearers need that the gospel provides? I would suggest we need three things: transformation, empowerment, and equipping.
Jesus provided for our need to be TRANSFORMED.
Life lived under the power of Sin corrupts and distorts our humanity. Apart from the work of the gospel, we are not ready to live in an intimate, personal relationship with God or carry the responsibility, authority, and power humans were created to carry. Paul explained it in his letter to the early disciples in Ephesus.
[Y]ou must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ!—assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. Ephesians 4:17–24
I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. Romans 12:1, 2
Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. 2 Corinthians 3:18
And this renewal of our minds is not a self-help technique. Paul writes that God does this transformation through the Holy Spirit given to us through Jesus Christ, our Savior, as part of the gospel.
But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. Titus 3:4-7
Jesus provided for our need to be EMPOWERED to live and serve out of the resources of God’s Spirit and power.
This empowerment resulted from the Holy Spirit coming upon them, something Jesus had promised the Father would do.
And while staying with them he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, he said, “you heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now. Acts 1:4–5
By the coming of the Holy Spirit, Jesus’ disciples were enabled to take up the kind of life and ministry that they had seen in Jesus himself. Peter assured the early church that, by the power of God’s spirit, Jesus’ disciples could live and love as Jesus did.
His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. 2 Peter 1:3,4
We can also serve and minister like Jesus by the power of God's spirit. Paul described his own experience this way:
For I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me to bring the Gentiles to obedience—by word and deed, by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God—so that from Jerusalem and all the way around to Illyricum I have fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ. Romans 15:18,19
Jesus provided for our need to be EQUIPPED for life and ministry.
As transformed people empowered by the power of God’s spirit, we are expected to grow in the understanding and skills needed to participate with God in the work of the Kingdom.
“And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” Ephesians 4:11-13
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. 2 Timothy 3:16–17.
Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. Hebrews 13:20–21
Conclusion
In this proposal, I have tried to show the relationship between the variety of direct and indirect statements about the gospel in the New Testament. I realize that, like any other theological proposal about the gospel, I am imposing an organizational structure on the New Testament texts that is not explicit in the Bible itself.
Nevertheless, I have found this summary extremely helpful in discerning God’s larger purposes and the good news within the gospel Jesus preached and his disciples carried across the world.
This work has also shown how the gospel tells me who I am. In our cultural moment, identity is the battleground for much of the hostile and toxic conflict ripping our societies apart. We are told to find our identity in our gender, our ethnic origins, or our political affiliations.
The gospel shows me that my identity is defined not by the incidentals of my current world but by the love and original intentions of the Sovereign Creator. As a result of my exploration of the gospel, I have come to the following conclusions about who I am and why I am on this earth.
I am created in the image of God.
As a disciple of Jesus, I am being restored to my responsibility, authority, and power to manage the goodwill and purposes of the Sovereign Creator on earth as in heaven.