In this 3-minute video for The Gospel Project, Matt Chandler explains the difference between a moralistic interpretation of the story of David and Goliath and a gospel-centered approach.

I love listening to pastors who exalt Christ everywhere they can as they proclaim the Scriptures. Christ-centeredness is one of the core values we are seeking to implement in The Gospel Project. (For more information, check out the website we launched late last week.)

At 2:00 CST this afternoon, I will be joining Ed Stetzer on his monthly web broadcast “The Exchange.” We will be discussing The Gospel Project curriculum that I am helping develop, along with a number of issues related to the gospel-centered movement. If you enter the chat room, you can submit questions and additional topics of discussion.

Watch it live here.

UPDATE: The website for The Gospel Project has been launched.

A little over a year ago, I transitioned out of pastoral ministry and took on the role of editor at LifeWay Christian Resources of a new small group curriculum for churches.

Beginning Stages

My first two months at LifeWay (November-December 2010) were primarily focused on helping develop the vision for the new curriculum. In conjunction with Ed Stetzer (general editor), I began mapping out what topics this curriculum might cover. We put together some different options – some focused more on systematic theology, others focused on a variety of approaches, etc.

We also began putting on paper the core values we wanted to keep at the forefront of this curriculum. “Theologically robust” (which we renamed “deep, but not dry”), “Christ-centered,” “Grand-narrative-focused,” and “Mission-driven” are the important elements we want to see in every quarter and (hopefully) every lesson. We took these buzz words and fleshed out how they might apply to a curriculum.

Advisory Council

Then we brought together an advisory council to speak into the project, leaders like D.A. Carson, Matt Chandler, James MacDonald, J.D. Greear, Eric Mason, Juan Sanchez, Collin Hansen, Kimberly Thornbury, Joe Thorn, Danny Akin, and Jay Noh. We met with members of the council in Dallas and Chicago earlier this year and received helpful feedback and great insight into this curriculum.

The meetings with the advisory council were very helpful. The group helped us refine the vision, make needed adjustments, and craft a three-year cycle that brings together systematic theology within the framework of the Bible’s grand narrative. After both meetings, we went back to the drawing board – affirmed in our general direction yet helpfully challenged in some of the particulars.

The Writing Begins

We went back and forth on a few different names for this new curriculum, finally settling on TGM (Theology, Gospel, Mission), a name that helped us crystallize the three components we wanted to have present in every lesson. Earlier this year, we began gathering writers for the initial quarters. The writers’ meetings have been wonderful. I can’t believe I get to meet and work with such great people!

Some of our writers include: George Robinson (professor of missions and evangelism at Southeastern Seminary who has done extensive work on the evangelistic tool The Story), Jared Wilson (pastor in Vermont, author of LifeWay’s Threads study Abide, and Gospel Wakefulness), Juan Sanchez (pastor of High Pointe Baptist Church in Austin, TX), Halim Suh (pastor at Austin Stone Community Church), Jonathan Leeman (editorial director of 9Marks), Geoff Ashley (discipleship pastor at The Village Church in Dallas, TX), etc.

The curriculum launches in Fall of 2012. The second and third installments of the material will take people on a journey through the Bible in 26 weeks. George Guthrie (Union University professor and author of Read the Bible for Life) has been instrumental in helping us think through how best to accomplish this task.

Major Development – “The Gospel Project”

At the same time I was working on editing the adult curriculum, a student team and a kids team were working on similar products for those age groups. A couple weeks ago, Eric Geiger, the new vice president over the Church Resources Division at LifeWay, recommended that we bring these three curriculum options under one umbrella. This change shifted me from being editor of the adult piece to being managing editor of all three lines. My task is now to oversee the gospel-centered content development across all age groups. Ed Stetzer is now general editor of all three lines as well.

These changes also meant we would need to (yet again) change the name, so as to accurately reflect the emphasis for all age groups. We’ve settled on the name “The Gospel Project.” The new name communicates the ongoing nature of this curriculum roll-out. It also communicates that this isn’t just about creating Bible studies. The curriculum itself isn’t the project that’s most important; we are. We are the gospel project. Our prayer is that as small groups of all ages work through these studies, the gospel will work on us. The church is God’s gospel project.

I’d appreciate your prayers for me and for the teams who are working on this new product. We believe “The Gospel Project” has the potential to serve the church in a good way, as it provides a gospel-centered resource for children, students, and adults.

In this TGC roundtable, J. D. Greear, Greg Gilbert, and I talk about how gospel-centeredness must lead to mission. Evangelism requires contextualization. Good contextualization starts with the questions that people in contemporary culture are asking, but it necessarily moves us to bring in the additional questions the Bible would have us ask.

In the end, the point of gospel-centeredness and clarity regarding the gospel message is not that we will master the gospel but that the God of the gospel would master us. Right doctrine is vital. So is love for neighbor that represents the heart of Christ the King.

Mastered by the Gospel from The Gospel Coalition on Vimeo.

Here’s a roundtable discussion on an important question posed by J.D. Greear – “If we look back 20 years from now on the growing gospel-centered movement, what might we notice that we neglected?” The main areas of concern regard the believer’s heart and the believer’s mission.

• Regarding the heart, we don’t want to be gospel-centered in just a cerebral sense but gospel-centered in the way we love Jesus more.
• Regarding our mission, we want the practice of “preaching the gospel to ourselves” to translate into proclaiming the gospel to others.

In short, the gospel makes us want to know God and make Him known.

The Christian post summarizes the discussion here.

Don’t Be More Gospel-Centered Than Jesus from The Gospel Coalition on Vimeo.

A pastor friend of mine, Chris Brauns, recently asked me a few questions about how to keep the centrality of the gospel at the forefront of a church’s search for a pastor. Chris has written a very helpful book called When the Word Leads Your Pastoral Search (Moody, 2011), and he has developed a Web site full of resources for churches looking for a pastor. Earlier this year, Chris and I had a blog conversation about his book.

Last week, Chris asked me some specific questions about the importance of a candidate’s view of the gospel. Our conversation is below:

Chris Brauns: Would you first give us a concise definition of the gospel?

Trevin Wax: People hear the question – “What is the gospel?” – in different ways, which may lead to different responses.

Some pastoral candidates will hear the question in terms of evangelism, How would I share the gospel with an unbeliever? Usually that will lead him to articulate a message that begins with God as Creator and Judge, articulates the reality of human sin and the brokenness of our world, climaxes with the announcement of Christ crucified and raised so that we might be justified before God, and then calls for the response of repentance (turning from sin) and faith (trusting in God’s mercy).

Other pastoral candidates will hear the question in terms of New Testament exegesis, How did the apostles define the word “gospel”? Usually that will lead to a Jesus-focused announcement: He fulfilled the Old Testament prophecies and promises through His perfect life, He died on the cross for our sins, conquered sin and Satan forever, and is now exalted as Lord over all.

I think it’s good to specify with a pastoral candidate what you mean by the question. If you ask, “What is the gospel?” and they answer exegetically, you might follow that up with a question about how they share the gospel with an unbeliever. If they answer evangelistically, you might follow up with a question about how the Scriptures define the word. Whichever direction you take, you’ll want to make sure that Christ’s death and resurrection is at the center of the candidate’s message.

CB: Do you think that it would be easy for churches looking for a pastor to assume his definition of the gospel?

TW: Absolutely. Too many times, pastoral search teams want to get to know a pastor on a superficial level, asking questions about ball teams or favorite foods rather than probing theological viewpoints to see how one’s methodology necessarily flows from one’s view of the gospel.

When listening to a pastor’s sermons, it’s important to see how Jesus is represented.

• Is He present in the sermon?
• Is He described as a helper or motivator?
• Or is He presented as the crucified King?

Churches often look to the superficial elements of a preacher (Was he funny? Did he keep me interested? Will our people like him?) rather than the core issues that flow from his view of the Bible’s storyline and the gospel announcement.

CB: I am very thankful for your book Counterfeit Gospels. It helped me think more clearly about a balanced view of the Gospel. How might it help churches looking for a pastor?

TW: Ideally, Counterfeit Gospels might alert pastoral search teams to ways in which we evangelicals can drift from the centrality of the gospel. The analysis of different counterfeits that are prevalent in society may help a search team distinguish between a candidate who proclaims the gospel clearly and biblically and a candidate whose thoughts on these matters are foggy and uncertain.

CB: Are there any interview questions you would suggest for pastoral search committees that would help them evaluate a candidate’s commitment to the gospel?

TW: The question of personal evangelism is a must. If everyone in your church was as committed to personal evangelism as is your pastoral candidate, what would that do to your church?

I don’t think commitment to the gospel can be measured only in one’s fidelity to ideas. Instead, we ought to measure one’s commitment to the gospel in terms of how prone we are to share this unbelievably good news that has transformed our lives.

Regardless of a pastor’s biblical knowledge, there is no such thing as “spiritual maturity” apart from living a Great Commission life.

CB: What in a candidate’s background might warn a church that a pastoral candidate does not really see the Gospel as of first importance?

TW: I’m not sure that background will determine this question. A better way forward is to look at the pastor’s preaching. Is he clearly relying on the gospel to bring about life change for his listeners? Or is he relying on something else to “deliver the goods” every Sunday? Does he see the power as residing in this message he’s been given? Or does he see the message as an add-on to his own skills, a more popular message, etc? These are issues that generally come out in public preaching and in personal conversations with the candidate.

CB: Do you have any other advice or suggestions for churches in the midst of a pastoral search?

TW: Don’t settle. Better to spend more time finding the right pastor than to settle for the wrong one. Keep the gospel in view as you search for a candidate. Look out for counterfeit messages that drift from biblical teaching. And pray, pray, pray for God’s direction.

This interview was first posted at PastorSearchResources.Com.

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. Here is a recent definition put together by Mike Mercer (Chaplain Mike) at InternetMonk.com.

• The Gospel (Good News) is the divinely-authorized proclamation that the appointed time has arrived and God has come to restore his blessing to his broken creation.

• The Gospel announces that the climactic act of God’s story has been accomplished through the birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, his promised King who fulfilled the story of Israel and inaugurated the Messianic Age. Christ’s finished work atoned for sin, defeated the powers of sin, evil, and death forever, and reconciled this lost and dying world to God.

• The Gospel invites all people to turn from their own wisdom and ways that separate them from God and his blessing, and to trust Jesus for forgiveness and new life in the Holy Spirit as members of his new community of faith, hope, and love.

• The Gospel promises that God’s Kingdom inaugurated in Jesus will be consummated when he returns to raise the dead, pronounce final judgment on all evil, and transform this fallen creation into a new creation in which heaven (God’s realm) and earth (the human realm) are one.

Or more simply, “Let us proclaim the mystery of faith: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.”

- Mike Mercer 

Today, I’m happy to welcome a pastor-friend of mine, J.D. Greear, to the blog to discuss his new book, Gospel: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary. J.D. is pastor of The Summit Church in Raleigh, NC. Gospel also includes a small-group companion piece called Gospel Revolution. 

Trevin Wax:  J.D., few people would be so bold as to call their book Gospel. (I can think of four other books with this title, but they’re all in the Bible!) But that’s what you’ve done. You’ve expressed in laypeople’s terms the type of confidence and security that comes from believing in the gospel of Jesus Christ. In a nutshell, what is the insight into the biblical gospel that has revolutionized your spiritual life in the past few years?

J.D. Greear: Ha, yes. I figured with a title like “Gospel,” no one could really critique it. I hope readers will forgive the hubris.

The burden behind the book is that many of us who grew up in conservative, evangelical churches have failed to avail ourselves of the power of the gospel. We know it as the forgiveness of sins but not as the power of transformation.

The Great Commandment leaves us in a dilemma: it tells us that God’s expectation of us is that we love Him with all our hearts, souls, and minds. But how can true love be commanded? Obedience without desire is drudgery, both to us and to God.

What the law cannot do, however, the gospel does. It is only as we learn of the richness and beauty of God’s love for us that we grow in love for Him. The Spirit of God uses the message of God’s acceptance of us in Christ to produce in us what religion is entirely unable to produce: a desire for God.

Nothing we are commanded to do for God will change us as much as dwelling on the news of what He has done for us.This is where so many of our church traditions have gone wrong—not in emphasizing bad things but in emphasizing good things at the expense of the gospel.

Trevin Wax: You and I come from similar backgrounds – strict observance of the letter of the law, lots of focus on rules, church standards, check-list Christianity, etc. You’ve mentioned that, in the past, even some of your mission work and pastoring was done from this kind of mindset. What was the turning point for you?

J.D. Greear: Honestly, it was listening to Tim Keller preach at the Resurgence conference about 5 years ago. I don’t want to say it was all brand new, but in that moment it felt like so many things clicked—like Luther when he described how all in a moment a flash of light burst through all these truths sown into his mind over the years and he saw how every verse, every story, had always been about justification by faith. I saw how justification by faith had always been the point—not just for salvation but sanctification as well. All the verses I had learned as a child in AWANA, the mission trips I had gone on, and the John Piper books I had read in college had been pointing at standing in hushed awe of the God of the gospel, an awe that leads to worship and then to life change.

God wasn’t just trying to correct my behavior; He was recapturing my heart—and He wouldn’t do that through a list of what I was to do for Him but through the message of what He had done for me. Tim Keller certainly was not the first one to preach the gospel to me, but in that moment, by the grace of Jesus and the power of the Spirit, it all made sense. It was my “John Wesley listening to Luther’s commentary on Romans” moment. I get emotional just thinking about it. It’s one reason I was so honored to have Tim Keller write the foreword for this book.

Trevin Wax: As I read through your book (a second time!), I paid closer attention to the “gospel prayer” you use as a tool for spiritual formation in your own life. How has this prayer helped you, and why do you recommend it to others?

J.D. Greear: I didn’t write it all at once; it developed over the course of about a year and a half as I tried to grasp what it really means to align my thinking with the gospel. I taught it in several “versions” to our church before settling on the form it is in now.

Peace, joy, radical generosity, audacious faith, and unwavering trust are all the fruits of dwelling on the gospel. I have certainly seen that in the last 5 years. That is the “secret,” if you will, of the gospel: these fruits are not produced, at the heart level, by focusing on them; they come by focusing on Jesus. That is what makes the gospel truly a “revolutionary” message.

Trevin Wax: One of the statements from that prayer is “Your presence and approval are all I need for everlasting joy.” There are some who might interpret this line as sounding a little like a prosperity-gospel teaching. I can imagine a TV preacher twisting it to mean something like Be happy in Jesus because He loves you and is with you. How does the biblical gospel keep our need for God’s approval and presence from turning into a self-centered, sentimentalized view of status-quo living?

J.D. Greear: The prosperity gospel presents God as a means to an end. Cloaked in the language of faith, it teaches us to use God as a means to the things we really love. The true gospel makes God Himself the end. Faith’s desire is not a bunch of things from God; faith is seeking more of God Himself. After all, that’s what the forgiveness of the gospel is all about: not the rewards of heaven or escape from the punishments of hell but reunion with the God in whose presence is fullness of joy. So, in saying, “You are all I need for everlasting joy,” the point is not “You are all I need to gain access to other things that will give me joy” but “You Yourself are all I need for joy.” I hope I make all this clear in the book, but you’ll just have to buy it to see (smile). 

Trevin Wax: One last question… just out of curiosity. How in the world did you manage to get Tim Keller to write the foreword?

J.D. Greear: Ha! He told me that he doesn’t do that a lot anymore, but then I told him that my book was “simultaneously better than he ever imagined but more in need of his endorsement than he’d ever dared hope,” and that seemed to win him over.

In this TGC video, J.D. Greear, Greg Gilbert, and I have a conversation about finding assurance in Christ’s finished work for us, recovering the gospel as the best motivation for long-lasting obedience, and defining the gospel biblically.

This discussion reminds me of something I posted a couple years ago: “Gospel Confrontation and Gospel Comfort.”  An excerpt:

We all need the gospel.

Some people think they are Christians because of a one-time decision that never bore genuine fruit in life. They need gospel confrontation: the gospel changes us.

Others doubt they are Christians because they recognize their sinfulness. They need gospel comfort: the gospel saves us.

The gospel should comfort the conflicted and confront the comfortable.

Yesterday, we began looking at Scot McKnight’s provocative new book, The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited (Zondervan, 2011), in which he gives us his answer to the important question: “What is the gospel?” I laid out four points of agreement with Scot’s proposal.

1. Evangelicalism has a problem, and the problem goes back to our conception of the evangel itself.
2. Going back to the Bible is the only way forward.
3. The words “gospel” and “salvation” are closely related but do not refer to the same thing.
4. The gospel needs the Old Testament story in order to make sense.

Today, I hope to articulate a few of my concerns regarding The King Jesus Gospel. I agree with Scot that we can’t afford for the church to be “in a fog” about the gospel, which is why I have appreciated books such as What Is the Gospel? by Greg Gilbert, Recovering the Real Lost Gospel by Darrell Bock, and why I have attempted to delineate between true and counterfeit gospels myself. But I worry that there are some places where The King Jesus Gospel might lead to increasing fogginess rather than clarity. Here are three concerns:

1. Sharp Distinctions Can Lead to Subtle Distortions

One of my quibbles with the whole “keep the gospel and its implications separate” discussion within the gospel-centered movement is the unfortunate tendency for very important things to get diminished over time. A few months ago, I had a robust dialogue with John Starke on why we should never let the church (gospel community) out of sight when thinking about the gospel announcement of Jesus crucified and raised. I agree that certain distinctions must be made, and yet I want to stay true to the way the Scriptural authors hold the announcement and its purpose (creation of the church) together. Making too sharp a division is more problematic than keeping them too close together.

Now, Scot is essentially taking the “gospel and its implications” discussion one step further, separating even personal salvation from the gospel announcement. To be fair, Scot does not in any way seek to diminish the saving effects of the gospel. He writes:

“The Plan of Salvation flows out of the Story of Israel/Bible and the Story of Jesus. The Bible’s Story from Israel to Jesus is the saving Story. Just as we dare not diminish the importance of this Story if we wish to grasp the gospel, so also with the saving effects of the story.” (37)

So far so good. But then Scot writes this:

“This Plan of Salvation is not the gospel. The Plan of Salvation emerges from the Story of Israel/Bible and from the Story of Jesus, but the plan and the gospel are not the same big idea.” (39)

From an exegetical standpoint, I agree that the gospel can’t be reduced to the Plan of Salvation. The gospel is the saving story of Jesus Christ, which results in salvation. It’s not the order of salvation itself or a plan for sharing the gospel. And yet, in 1 Corinthians 15, it seems clear to me that Paul has in mind Jesus’ work and its application to sinners. It’s both Story and Plan, not either-or.

In short, the Bible doesn’t separate the story from its significance for sinners. Both are included in the apostolic proclamation. Scot’s decision to so sharply distinguish between the gospel and its saving effects is ultimately unhelpful. It seems to set up categories needlessly, and even when we don’t intend to set up false dichotomies, we wind up with them anyway. Case in point:

“When the plan gets separated from the story, the plan almost always becomes abstract, propositional, logical, rational, and philosophical, and most importantly, de-storified and unbiblical. We separate ourselves from Jesus and turn the Christian faith into a System of salvation.” (62)

I don’t think we have to pit a propositional presentation of the gospel against the narrative of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. We need the Story so that the gospel doesn’t get reduced to merely a System, yes. But both are important, biblical, and clustered together when it comes to the apostolic thinking about the gospel.

It’s clear that Scot is seeking to avoid reductionism. He writes:

“We are tempted to turn the story of what God is doing in this world through Israel and Jesus Christ into a story about me and my own personal salvation.” (62)

But I fear that he is being reductionistic on the other side of the debate, framing the gospel in such a way that personal salvation is minimized. Like N.T. Wright, Scot is saying that soteriology is not the gospel. But when I examine the sermons in Acts or the letters of Paul or even the preaching of Jesus, I don’t see Story and Soteriology separated. Instead, I see them so deeply intertwined that we can’t grasp one without the other.

Don’t get me wrong. Scot is not denying the saving effects of the gospel. He writes:

“The apostolic gospel, the gospel that Paul ‘received’ and ‘passed on’ to the Corinthians, like every other apostolic church then and forever, is a gospel that has at its center that Jesus died ‘for our sins,’ and this death achieved the forgiveness of sins. As such, this story saves and brings people into the kingdom of God and ushers them into eternal life.” (88)

And he is right to see proper gospel proclamation as calling for a response. He goes so far as to state:

“There is no such thing as gospeling that does not include the summons to respond in faith, repentance, and baptism.” (127)

That’s the heart of an evangelist speaking, for sure! But even in his discussion of evangelism, he pits Jesus as Savior against Jesus as Lord:

“The gospeling of Acts, because it declares the saving significance of Jesus, Messiah and Lord, summons listeners to confess Jesus as Messiah and Lord, while our gospeling seeks to persuade sinners to admit their sin and find Jesus as the Savior.” (133)

Even though he immediately follows up that statement by saying, “We are not creating a false alternative here,” I worry that most people will choose one alternative over the other.

Sharp distinctions can sometimes lead to subtle distortions. Baptists who too sharply distinguish between repentance and baptism can unintentionally minimize the importance of baptism. Christians who too sharply distinguish between the gospel and its purpose (the church) can unintentionally minimize the importance of the church. And too sharply distinguishing between the gospel and personal salvation can lead us to unintentionally minimize the importance of justification by faith alone. That’s my next point.

2. Don’t Neglect the Power of Justification by Faith Alone.

It’s hard to imagine Scot McKnight agreeing with Martin Luther that the article of justification by faith alone is the doctrine by which the Church stands or falls. I am not calling into question Scot’s view of justification or his Protestant credentials. I know that justification is part of his theology. He affirms the penal substitutionary view of the atonement. He even argues for double imputation as a result of union with Christ.

My concern with The King Jesus Gospel is not that justification is denied or distorted but that it’s not as central in Scot’s understanding of the gospel as it was for the Apostle Paul. Granted, I am not equating justification with the gospel. The gospel is what saves. Justification is how one is saved. But surely these things are inseparably connected. Otherwise, how do we interpret Paul’s letter to the Galatians, where a denial of justification by faith is tantamount to denying the gospel itself?

Of justification, Scot writes:

“The Plan of Salvation leads to one thing and to one thing only: salvation. Justification leads to a declaration by God that we are in the right, that we are in the people of God; it doesn’t lead inexorably to a life of justice or goodness or loving-kindness. If it did, all Christians would be more just and more filled with goodness and drenched in love.” (40)

It seems that Scot thinks we’ve overemphasized justification at the expense of the broader, all-encompassing good news of Jesus as the climax of the Old Testament story. But I sense that Scot is underestimating the power of justification by faith alone when he says, “it doesn’t lead inexorably to a life of justice or goodness or loving-kindness.” For Scot, the solution is to look elsewhere for results. In my mind, the solution is to be better grounded in the reality of justification by faith alone, which – when properly understood – awakens our affections to the goodness of God shown to us in the face of Jesus Christ in such a way that we are led to a life of goodness. In my opinion, we need more emphasis on justification nowadays, not less.

3. A View of the Story That Is Not Soterian?

One of the central claims of The King Jesus Gospel is that evangelicals have missed the biblical gospel by reducing it to a plan of salvation. We’ve made our own personal salvation so central that we deserve the label “soterians.” Scot wants us to frame the gospel according to the Old Testament storyline rather than according to our need for salvation. He writes:

“The apostles were not like our modern soterians because they did not empty the gospel of its Story, nor did they reduce the gospel to the Plan of Salvation. In fact, the apostles were the original, robust evangelicals. It all has to do with how the gospel is framed.” (117)

Agreed. That’s why I mentioned yesterday that one of my points of agreement with Scot is that we need the Story in order to make sense of the Jesus announcement. But then I read this:

“Gospeling was not driven by the salvation story or the atonement story. It was driven by the Story of Israel, and in fact makes most sense in that story.” (134)

And this:

“Look again at that gospel summary in 1 Corinthians 15: there is nothing direct about being reconciled to God or to others, nothing direct about being declared righteous, nothing about God’s wrath being pacified, and nothing about being liberated from our entrapments to sin, self, the system, and Satan.” (134)

It seems to me that this kind of statement does not take into account Paul’s declaration in 1 Corinthians 15 that Christ’s death was “for our sins,” which has Old Testament echoes of Isaiah 53 and which Paul unpacks in more detail in other texts. “For our sins” is freighted with soteriological meaning.

The heart of my differences with Scot’s proposal is not in defining the word “gospel.” It’s not in the gospel announcement’s need for the Story. It’s in the way we read that Story. There’s the rub. The reason I think it’s ultimately unhelpful to distinguish between a story gospel and a soterian gospel is because I think the story is soterian, that is, the grand narrative of Scripture is telling us about God’s glory in saving sinners through the cross and resurrection of His Son. The heart of Israel’s story is hope for salvation delivered by the coming Messiah-King.

When I read the Old Testament narrative, I can’t get through the Pentateuch and not tremble at the thought of standing before God without an animal sacrifice. I can’t read the story of Judges without shuddering at the pervasiveness of sin and the need for a Messiah-King. I can’t read Isaiah and not recognize my need for a righteousness that comes from outside myself.

Scot reads the announcement of 1 Corinthians 15 and wants to emphasize that Jesus is Messiah and Lord. I see the announcement of 1 Corinthians 15 as the gospel presentation by which we are being saved. The big story that the Bible is telling is a story of salvation – its promise and provision through the coming kingdom of a crucified Messiah. And this is why pitting the Old Testament storyline against atonement theology makes little sense to me. It’s not just that I view the gospel as a soterian. I view the story that way as well.

Conclusion

Overall, The King Jesus Gospel has been one of the most thought-provoking, challenging, and stimulating books I’ve read this year. Scot McKnight is prompting some good (sometimes strong) conversations. I hope that this review has been a charitable exercise in encouraging one another along as we seek to be true to the original gospel of the apostles.