“Jesus Christ, God’s promised rescuer and ruler lived our life, died our death and rose again in triumphant vindication as the first-fruits of the new creation to bring forgiven sinners together by the Holy Spirit to live under his gracious reign as His Kingdom people.”

A couple weeks ago, I posted links to dozens of definitions of “the gospel” that have been collected on this blog. Several readers have asked for a PDF version of these Gospel Definitions, to make it easier to look over.

Here is a booklet pdf that includes all of the “Gospel Definitions” I have found so far. I will be updating this document periodically.

“I formulate the Gospel this way: it is information issuing in invitation; it is proclamation issuing in persuasion. It is an admonitory message embracing five themes. First, God: the God whom Paul proclaimed to the Athenians in Acts 17, the God of Christian theism.

Second, humankind: made in God’s image but now totally unable to respond to God or do anything right by reason of sin in their moral and spiritual system. Third, the person and work of Christ: God incarnate, who by dying wrought atonement and who now lives to impart the blessing that flows form his work of atonement.

Fourth, repentance, that is, turning from sin to God, from self-will to Jesus Christ. And fifthly, new community: a new family, a new pattern of human togetherness which results from the unity of the Lord’s people in the Lord, henceforth to function under the one Father as a family and a fellowship.” (44, emphasis added)

Packer, J.I. Serving the People of God: Collected Shorter Writings of J.I. Packer. Vol. 2. Carlisle, UK: Paternoster, 1998.

HT – Ray Van Neste

Since I have begun collecting online definitions of “the gospel” during the past year, I have received a number of requests from readers who wonder what I think about some of the definitions I’ve posted. Others simply ask, “How would you define the gospel?” Here’s my shot at it:

Biblically speaking, if we are to be very specific, “the gospel” properly defined is the announcement of good news regarding Jesus Christ: namely, that Jesus Christ of Nazareth has been crucified for our sins, raised from the dead according to the Scriptures, and is now Lord of the world. Put Rom. 1 and 1 Cor. 15 together, and that’s what you get. If someone asks me quite specifically what the definition of the word “gospel” is, I’m going to point to that short synopsis.

Of course, if someone asks me to share the gospel, then I can’t start with the announcement of good news. The gospel has to be set within the biblical framework in which it makes sense. So we must unpack the worldview truths about God as Creator, our human rebellion, God’s initiative in restoring sinners to himself through Jesus Christ, his launching of the new creation through the resurrection (and now through the church), and his future return. Furthermore, a clear gospel presentation should always call for human response: repentance and faith.

The gospel itself is a message about Jesus. But that message is for us.

There is also a Trinitarian layer to the gospel that needs to be recognized.

• God the Father justifies sinners by satisfying his own wrath through the death of Christ and by applying Christ’s righteousness to sinners who respond to him in faith.
• God the Son inaugurates the kingdom of God on earth through his life, death, and resurrection.
• God the Spirit breathes new life into sinners, giving us eternal life (“the life of the age to come”), uniting us to the community of faith, and empowering us to live in the world as a foretaste of the new creation.

Each of these aspects of the gospel should remain Christ-focused. Each points back to his life, death, and resurrection.

When these get out of balance, we run into problems.

The Pentecostal tendency is to emphasize the work of the Spirit. Emphasizing personal holiness to the neglect of the other aspects can lead to some fuzzy teaching on justification and leave little room for manifestations of the kingdom in contemporary society.

The Liberal tendency is to emphasize the Gospel accounts of the coming kingdom of God. Some go so far as to pit Jesus against Paul. In the end, Jesus turns out to be little more than a moral example. Political or social activism replaces the good news about the King inaugurating his kingdom by dying sacrificially for his people.

The Reformed tendency is to emphasize the work of God the Father in justification, sometimes to the exclusion of the launch of God’s kingdom or the Spirit’s work in beginning the new creation. Antinomianism, legalism or a separatist quietism can result if we overemphasize the Father’s work to the exclusion of the other aspects.

We need to hold these three strands together. The gospel is about what God has done to reconcile the world to himself. It is about the kingdom being inaugurated through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is about the power of the Holy Spirit to transform us into a new creation.

For almost two 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.

This post includes links to dozens of definitions of “the gospel.” I have alphabetized the ones that are by name, and I have separated the ones that come from groups, ministries, and confessions of faith. (See a pdf version of all of them.)

Definitions from Christians in the Past

Gilbert Beebe

F.F. Bruce

Jeremiah Burroughs

C.H. Dodd

Robert A. Guelich

J. Hampton Keathley

George Eldon Ladd

Martin Luther

M.F. Sadler

Richard Sibbes

William Tyndale

Zacharias Ursinus

Definitions from Christians in the Present

Danny Akin

Craig Bartholomew

Alistair Begg

Jim Belcher

Pope Benedict XVI

Michael Bird

John Blanchard

Lorraine Boettner

C.C. Broyles

Robert F. Capon

D.A. Carson

Knox Chamblin

Andy Crouch

Mark Dever

David Dockery

Millard Erickson

Graeme Goldsworthy

Tim Keller

A.B. Luter, Jr.

Rick McKinley

Scot McKnight

Josh Moody

Roger Nicole

J.I. Packer

Darrin Patrick

Michael Patton

John Piper

Jeff Purswell

R.C. Sproul

Ed Stetzer

Sam Storms

Tullian Tchividjian

Derek Thomas

Joe Thorn

Steve Timmis

Allen Wakabayashi

Derek Webb

Michael Wittmer

N.T. Wright

Organizational and Corporate Definitions

Antioch Network

Evangelical Celebration

Dictionary.com

The Gospel Coalition

Evangelical Dictionary of Theology

Heart Cry

IVP Dictionary of the New Testament

Sovereign Grace Ministries

Wycliffe Bible Encyclopedia

Kingdom People Articles on “The Gospel”

The Trinitarian Gospel: Why We Need All Three Parts

The Gospel of God: Personal Atonement or Christ’s Kingdom?

Don’t Replace the Substitute

Gospel Confrontation and Gospel Comfort

“The gospel is the joyous proclamation of God’s redemptive activity in Christ Jesus on behalf of man enslaved by sin.”

- R.H. Mounce. Evangelical Dictionary of Theology.

HT – Chris Brauns

“I define the gospel in my Axioms message as being the good news that Jesus Christ came from heaven, died on the cross having lived a perfect sinless life, bore then in His body the full penalty of our sins, was raised from the dead. Those who repent of sin and place their faith in the perfect work of Christ can and will be saved. There’s the gospel.”

- Dr. Danny Akin, President of Southeastern Seminary, from a June 2009 interview at Kingdom People

“The ‘gospel’ is the good news that through Jesus, the Messiah, the power of God’s kingdom has entered history to renew the whole world. Through the Savior God has established his reign. When we believe and rely on Jesus’ work and record (rather than ours) for our relationship to God, that kingdom power comes upon us and begins to work through us. We witness this radical new way of living by our renewed lives, beautiful community, social justice, and cultural transformation. The good news brings new life. The gospel motivates, guides, and empowers every aspect of our living and worship.”

- Jim Belcher, Deep Church: A Third Way Beyond Emerging and Traditional

The Gospel is “good news.” It is good news only to the degree that the bad news can be understood first.

The world is a messed-up place. It is not just our generation that is notices this, but every generation has had to deal with their share of problems. Today is not really any worse than it was 100 years ago or 1000 years ago.

The good news is that God is fixing what is broken in every generation. This is called redemption. Redemption means to “buy back” or restore to a previous condition.

God is in the process of putting his messed up creation back in order. The Gospel is the good news that that which was broken is being fixed.

But the brokenness had its genesis in us, mankind. God is different. He is perfect and demands perfection because of his character. In other words, as the Bible puts it, God is righteous. Our brokenness is due to choices that we have made. All of us have messed things up. This is called “sin.”

We have sinned through our selfishness, pride, hatred, and perversion of his creation. It is not the way it was supposed to be.

God allows us to reject him and suffer the consequences, but he also offers us hope. This hope is the Good news. It is the hope that God has not abandoned us. It is the hope for redemption.

God loves us in spite of our perversion of good. God loves us in spite of our rejection of him. He did not wait for us to live up to his standard, which can never happen, but he sent his Son, Jesus Christ, 2000 years ago to live a life that we could not.

God the Son became man and never failed, never perverted, and showed us who God is. Because Christ lived a sinless life, he could take the place of man, creating a new race . . . a redeemed race.

Christ was rejected and killed on a cross by man. But God allowed this so that Christ could take the punishment that man—that you and I—deserved. In doing this, he died instead of you. He took your penalty of death and separation from God on a execution cross.

But since he was God the Son and since he never sinned, he did not stay dead. After three days he came back to life and proclaimed victory over all the death, perversion, sin, and penalties that man had afforded creation.

But this Good News does not apply to everyone. It is only for those who believe and trust in what Christ did for them. If you believe in him, you will have life. If you trust in him, not in yourself or your works, but in him alone, you will live forever, witnessing and being a part of a redeemed creation.

One day Christ will come back to call into account all people. You can either stand on your own, giving account for your own sin or you can accept the free gift of salvation and stand with Christ. The bad news is that without Christ, you stand alone and hopeless. The Good News—the Gospel—is that you can stand with Christ full of hope.

- Michael Patton, director of Reclaiming the Mind Ministries

Moved by His incomprehensible love for mankind, the Triune God was pleased not to abandon our rebellious and corrupt race to the misery and hell that it justly deserved, but to undertake to save a great multitude of human beings who had absolutely no claim on His mercy.

In order to bring this plan into execution, the second Person of the Godhead, the Son, took unto himself a full human nature, becoming in all things like his brethren and sisters, sin excepted. Thus he became the Second Adam, the head of a new covenant, and he lived a life of perfect obedience to the Divine Law.

Identifying with his own, he bore the penalty of human sin on the cross of Calvary, suffering in the place of the sinner, the just for the unjust, the holy Son of God for the guilty and corrupt children of man.

By his death and resurrection he has provided the basis

• for the reconciliation of God to humans and of humans to God;
• for the propitiation of a righteous Trinity, justly angry at our sins;
• for the redemption of a multitude of captives of sin whose liberty was secured at the great price of His own blood.

He offered himself as an expiatory sacrifice sufficient to blot out the sins of the whole world and secured the utmost triumph over the enemies of our soul: sin, death, and Satan.

Those who repent of their sins and believe in Jesus Christ are thus to be absolved from the guilt of all their sins and are adorned with the perfect righteousness of Christ himself. In gratitude to him they are to live lives of obedience and service to their Savior and are increasingly renewed into the image of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.

This good news of salvation by grace through faith is to be proclaimed indiscriminately to mankind, that is to every man, woman, and child whom we can possibly reach.

- Roger Nicole