Mar
21
2011
Gospel Definitions: Sam Storms
Sam Storms defines the gospel:
The gospel is the good news of what God has accomplished in the person of his Son, in his life, death, and resurrection, to secure the forgiveness of sins of all who will repent and believe in Jesus as Lord and Savior.
In other words, the gospel is something that God has accomplished. It’s not something that we do. Our faith is not the gospel. Our repentance is not the gospel. But they are the effects of it. So we could say that the gospel is an indicative, not an imperative. In other words, it’s an accomplishment by God; it’s not a command to us. The gospel is what God has achieved, not something that we are to attempt.
The content of the gospel, the essence of hte gospel, is God’s saving activity in Jesus as Lord – in his sinless life, his atoning death on behalf of sinners, his resurrection. This is the gospel.
The gospel does have consequences. For example, we have a responsibility to pursue justice, according to the biblical terms in which it is set forth. We have a responsibility toward the environment, toward creation. We have a responsibility toward racial reconciliation. We have a responsibility to pursue the welfare of the unborn. But these things are not the gospel. They are the consequences of the gospel. They are responsibilities that fall upon us as Christians because of what God has done.
When we talk about proclaiming the gospel, we’re talking about declaring the good news of what God has graciously and mercifully done in Jesus on behalf of otherwise hell-deserving sinners to secure everything necessary that they might enter into the fullness of eternal life and the forgiveness of sins.
(For three years now, I have been steadily gathering a number of definitions of “the gospel” in an ongoing series entitled “Gospel Definitions.” As far as I know, this is the largest grouping of gospel definitions on the internet today. Carefully working through these definitions helped me see the gospel as a three-legged stool, an idea that I treat more fully in Counterfeit Gospels.)