• 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 

Gospel, Mission, and the Church from The Gospel Coalition on Vimeo.

Topics discussed:

• The Gospel: Creation/Fall/Redemption/Restoration vs. God/Man/Christ/Response
• The centrality of the cross in our gospel presentations
• Confusing the gospel and its implications or the fall and its implications
• 9Marks and Acts 29: Two camps in dialogue
• Mission of the church and the meaning of “missional”
• How our cultural contexts form the way we react to “missional”
• Taking care in not overwhelming people with mission
• The role of the church in mercy ministries
• How local churches are staying cross-centered while engaged in mercy ministry
• Should a pastor have a defensive or offensive posture when it comes to the gospel and mission?

Here are a few thought-provoking quotes:

Matt Chandler: “The atoning work of Christ is the gravitational pull on the mission and the gospel. If you tell the meta-narrative without the atoning work of Christ, you are no longer telling the meta-narrative.”

Jonathan Leeman: “Our entire lives are the backdrop for speaking gospel words.”

Trevin Wax: “We are suspicious of anything that sounds like it could be used as theological cover to not get engaged in mission.”

Kevin DeYoung:”Our mission is to make disciples of Christ as servants of people; our mission is not to serve people as disciples of Christ.”

Matt Chandler: “Our fundamental posture is offensive in nature. I want my fundamental posture, standing firm on the Word of God, to be: We have a saving, delivering God who is going to save others in this city.“

We are all rebellious traitors against God and his kingdom, and for that we are dying now and are destined to suffer forever in the ultimate despair of hell. We are actually God’s enemies (not merely in our imagination), and we deserve whatever torment we have coming. Worse, we are entirely unable to lay down our weapons and change sides, for as the apostle Paul reminds us, we are “dead in our transgressions and sins… by nature deserving of wrath… without hope and without God in the world” (Eph. 2:1-12). We are unwilling to change, and unable to change our hearts and minds so we would be willing.

God justly could have been content to destroy our insurrection and wipe us from the earth. But he took pity on us, and while “we were God’s enemies,” “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8, 10). The cross is a most unusual weapon of choice, but the death of his beloved Son was the only way that God could defeat our sin and death. Satan had become the functional ruler of us and of this world when he tempted Adam and Eve, God’s appointed rulers of creation to switch their allegiance to him. Now a Son of Adam, the Son of God, had come to earth to win us back.

Jesus did not conquer Satan in some heavy-handed way, using his overwhelming force to throw him down. God beat Satan on a level playing field. He became a creature, vulnerable to Satan’s attacks, and defeated the devil through weakness rather than shock and awe. In this way he did not so much overpower Satan as outwit him. He showed Satan and his demons to be fools, for, “having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross” (Col. 2:15).

Demons shrieked and danced around the cross, deliriously surprised by how easily Jesus had fallen into their trap. What they didn’t realize was that they had walked straight into his. Jesus knew what C.S. Lewis – in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe - called the “magic deeper still,” that “when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backward”. Death died in the death of Christ, for Jesus bore our penalty in our place.

Jesus took our sin and death down with him into the grave, and when he arose he left them in the dust. Paul explains, “He was delivered over to edeath for our sins and was raised to life for our justification” (Rom. 4:25). Jesus’ spectacular resurrection is not merely an authoritative illustration of a general truth that is embedded in creation. Rather it is the turning point of world history, for that is the moment that God reversed the cruse, releasing forever those who put their faith in Jesus. Jesus’ death and resurrection don’t merely reveal that death leads to life; they are the very things that make it true. Jesus triumphed over sin, death, and Satan by his cross and empty tomb, and anyone who trusts his finished work alone will join his victory.

- Michael Wittmer, Christ Alone: An Evangelical Response to Rob Bell’s Love Wins (148-150)

Jesus’ life is good news, for his obedience to the Father and fulfillment of the law is for us. While we as sinners fail to keep the law, Jesus was perfectly faithful. Jesus’ death is good news because his death was a payment for our sin, and by it we are cleansed from our guilt and released from condemnation. Jesus’ resurrection is good news because his victory over death is ours and through it we look forward to a resurrection of our own.”

- Joe Thorn, Note to Self: The Discipline of Preaching to Yourself

- Millard Erickson, Christian Theology, 1063

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.)

- Josh Moody, No Other Gospel

1. Story for the Individual
2. Story of Jesus
3. Story of Creation to New Creation

My online collection of “gospel definitions” has led me back to the New Testament, where I’ve spent significant time studying the way the word “gospel” is used. I’ve also compared New Testament usage to the gospel definitions on my blog. In the end, I am convinced that the different approaches to “the gospel” are more complementary than contradictory, but that we could be helped by a conceptual framework for the gospel and its implications.

Putting it All Together

From an exegetical standpoint, the word “gospel” is used in the New Testament primarily when speaking of the announcement of Jesus Christ. So, at its core, the gospel is the specific announcement about what God has done through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus to bring about our salvation. The announcement of Jesus is the gospel.

Yet this Jesus-centered message needs context. The “Story for the individual” group is right to insist that the back story (God’s character, our sin, etc.) is needed if the gospel announcement is to make sense. And the New Creation crowd is right to insist that we place our individual salvation within the bigger picture of God’s glory in the renewal of all things and the calling out of a people. This discussion brings us to the image that forms the heart of my book on the gospel.

The Three-Legged Stool

I propose that the gospel is like a three-legged stool. Each leg of the stool is important to understanding the message.

- The Gospel Story

First, there is the gospel story, the overarching grand narrative found in the Scriptures. The Bible tells us about God’s creation of a good world which was subjected to futility because of human sin. God gave the Law to reveal his holiness and our need for a perfect sacrifice, which is provided by the death of Jesus Christ. This same Jesus will one day return to this earth to judge the living and the dead and thus renew all things. The gospel story is the Scriptural narrative that takes us from creation to new creation, climaxing with the death and resurrection of Jesus at the center.

- The Gospel Announcement

The second leg of the stool is the gospel announcement, namely that God – in the person of Jesus Christ – lived a perfect life in our place, bore the penalty for our sin through his death on the cross, was raised from the dead to launch God’s new creation, and is now exalted as Lord of the world. The announcement centers upon Jesus and what he has done to reconcile us to God. Our response to this announcement is to repent of our sins and put our complete trust in the work he has accomplished on our behalf.

- The Gospel Community

The third leg of the stool is the gospel community. Our response to the gospel announcement (repentance and faith) is not a one-time event, but a lifelong expression of gratitude that wells up from the bottom of our hearts and overflows into love for God and his beloved community. We are shaped by the gospel into the kind of people who herald the grace of God and spread the news of Jesus Christ. God has commissioned the church to be the community that embodies the message of the gospel. Through our corporate life together, we “obey the gospel” by living according to the truth of the message that Jesus Christ is our Savior and the Lord of the world.

How They Relate

Here’s how the relationship between the gospel story, announcement, and community work:

STORY: Creation-Fall-Redemption-Restoration. This is the grand narrative of Scripture that provides context for the announcement.

ANNOUNCEMENT: Jesus Christ. The announcement of his perfect life, substitutionary death, resurrection, and exaltation is made within the context of the Story.

COMMUNITY: The gospel announcement calls for the response (repentance and faith) that God uses to birth the church. The church is the embodiment of the gospel. Though the church is not the “good news,” it puts on display the good news. Thus, the church is a result of the gospel, but I want to reiterate that it is a necessary result.

Why It’s Helpful to Think of the Gospel This Way

Thinking within the framework of the three-legged stool has helped me rethink lots of areas, including missiology. When we witness to the gospel, we need all three legs of the stool. We need to begin with the big story of Scripture, make the announcement of Jesus within that context, and then invite people to witness the gospel community in action, as we provide an embodied apologetic of the truth of the announcement.

Thinking within this framework has also helped me spot potential pitfalls in taking one leg of the stool to the exclusion of the others. The “story for the individual” can give the impression that the church is an optional implication of the gospel, not the necessary result of the announcement. Likewise, some can emphasize the vastness of God’s redemptive work in a way that pushes out the cross and diminishes the practice of urging people to repent of sin and trust in Christ.

This framework has also made sense of my experience in times of suffering. When I’m facing a trial, the gospel story explains the fallenness of our world and reminds me of the future hope. The gospel announcement gives me the tools to deal with suffering, and also reminds me that my life has significance in relation to (not apart from) Christ as the focal point of human history. The gospel community has embodied the gospel to me during suffering by holding me up and reminding me of the promises I have in Christ.

In the next few weeks, I’ll give you a peek into my my book, where I analyze “counterfeit gospels” by showing the damage they do to the three-legged stool.

For now, I look forward to your feedback. Does the three-legged stool approach help you think about the gospel and its implications? If so, how?

As I have posted various definitions of “the gospel” on my blog, I have noticed that people hear the question “what is the gospel?” in different ways.

Telling the Story for an Individual

Some hear this question and immediately think about how to present the gospel to an unbeliever. Their presentation systematizes the biblical teaching of our sin and Christ’s provision. They usually begin with God as a holy and righteous judge. Then we hear about man’s desperate plight apart from God and how our sinfulness deserves his wrath. But the good news is that Christ has come to live an obedient life and die in our place. We are then called to repent of our sins and trust in Christ. (Greg Gilbert takes this approach in his helpful book, What Is the Gospel?.)

Telling the Story of Jesus

Others hear “What is the gospel?” and think of how the New Testament authors would define the word, which leads to definitions that zero in on the announcement of Jesus. They focus on Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. The gospel, according to this second group, is telling people who Jesus is and what he has done. (Martin Luther, Graeme Goldsworthy, and John Piper take this approach.)

Telling the Story of New Creation

Still others hear the word “gospel” and think of the whole good news of Christianity, how God has acted in Christ to bring redemption to a fallen world. They focus on the grand sweep of the Bible’s storyline and how Jesus comes to reverse the curse and make all things new. (Tullian Tchividjian, Tim Keller, and Jim Belcher take this approach.)

Robust Gospel Discussion

Though there is significant overlap among these groups, advocates of each position sometimes discuss and debate the others.

The Individual-Story crowd says, If you only focus on the announcement of Jesus, you leave out the reason we need good news. In other words, zeroing in on the “Christ” part of God-Man-Christ-Response doesn’t tell you enough.

The Jesus-Story crowd says, You’re adding too much to the gospel, confusing the truth about our sin or our necessary response of repentance with the good news itself, which is only about Jesus. In other words, don’t add doctrines to “the gospel” that the New Testament doesn’t describe as “gospel.”

The New Creation crowd says, If you only focus on individual salvation, you leave out the cosmic sweep of what God is doing. You also leave out the necessity of the church. In other words, the picture of God’s redemptive activity is bigger than just God-Man-Christ-Response or even the Jesus-announcement. You need the bird’s eye view of Creation-Fall-Redemption-Restoration.

For the most part, I am encouraged by these discussions. How marvelous to see Christians – young and old – seeking clarity on the message that is at the heart of our faith! It is important to think clearly about the gospel, and the motivation behind these debates is to get the message right and – hopefully – to then take that message everywhere from our neighborhoods to the nations.

What’s Your Take?

I believe there is a helpful and biblical way to synthesize this robust discussion on the gospel. Everything mentioned by these three groups is good and is in some way connected to the good news. But we need hooks to hang all these good things on. We need to see how they fit together, and we need to make sure that the heart of the gospel stays where it is supposed to be. Providing a framework for thinking through this issue is the purpose of my book on the gospel. But before I give you a sneak peek at that framework, I want to hear from you.

• How do you define the gospel?
• When someone asks you “what is the gospel?” do you tend to think about how the Bible uses defines the word or how best to share the gospel with an unbeliever?
• Though the New Testament generally defines “gospel” in terms of the Jesus-Announcement, are there hints in the Bible that the word “gospel” can be used more expansively?
• What role does theological reflection play in how we define the gospel?
• How can we make sure that the cross and resurrection stay at the center of our gospel definition and are not pushed to the periphery by important implications of the gospel?
• What might be the dangers of pushing any of these three ways of defining the gospel to an extreme?
• When you hear the buzzword “gospel-centered,” which of these three ways of defining the gospel do you think of?

- Darrin Patrick, Don’t Call It a Comeback: The Old Faith for a New Day , 157-158

(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: Rediscovering the Good News in a World of False Hope.)