What is the Gospel: good news about God’s story.

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When one hears the term “Gospel” many ideas come to mind. Some think of the four ancient biographies of the life of Jesus, others think of a formula presented for conversion, or to some a creedal confession comes to mind. The Gospel encompasses many of these realities, but when you begin to dig into the whole of the scriptures you will begin to see that the Gospel is far grander and more exhaustive than often assumed or portrayed.

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The word “Gospel” is a translation of the Greek term “euangelion” which literally means “good news” (eu = good and angelion = news). So at its core the Gospel is not a teaching, religious concept, or advice, but news. It is good news of something that has been done. If you look at the English root to the word “Gospel” you will find that it came out of the old English word “godspell” which means “good story”. This also captures the heart of the Gospel well, because the Gospel is a truly good story. It is the story of God’s redemptive work within His creation. ​

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One way to describe the Gospel is that it is the good news that God’s good story of the redemption of His creation has not been abandoned but is coming to completion through the person and work of Jesus .

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​The Gospel as good news:
The idea of news carries with it the claim of an event, something that has occurred. Many claim good advice, a good teaching, or good practices, but these things are not news. Though Jesus had many great teachings and modeled for us how one should properly live, His teachings and example are not the Gospel. The Gospel is not instruction for what we must do, but news of what Jesus has done on our behalf. The Gospel is the grand news that God’s messiah, the Son of the living God, has come to live the life we were supposed to live, to then take upon himself the death that we deserve so that we may receive the life that only He deserves, and He has been physically raised from the dead, conquering death as the first fruits of all who trust in Him, and will then one day return to establish God’s Kingdom on earth for all eternity.

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A common proclamation of the early Christians is a good summary of this good news: “Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ shall come again.”

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The Gospel as news can also be viewed through the lens of what has been accomplished on our behalf. From this perspective you could summarize the Gospel as the good news that Jesus has taken upon Himself our sin, the destruction we have caused, and separation from the Father (spiritual death) that we deserve so that by faith we may receive the life and perfect communion with the Father that only He deserves. Or as the Apostle Paul put it in his letter to the church in Corinth, “For our sake he made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God”.​

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​The Gospel as God’s good story:
The good news of what Jesus has done needs to be understood within God’s story. It is when we begin to understand God’s story that the full weight of how incredibly good the news of Jesus’ death, burial, resurrection, and return truly is. 

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When you approach the Bible as a whole you will find that it is ultimately a story. It is a story making sense of creation and the human condition through the lens of God’s intention and His mission to bring redemption to His creation. When approaching the Bible as a story you will see a thematic flow of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. The Scriptures begin in Genesis giving an account of how God created a perfect creation in which humanity lived in perfect relation to God, each other, and creation itself. Then the scriptures describe the rebellion of man and we have story after story depicting the destruction that has come from our broken relation to God, creating a broken relation with each other and a broken creation. Yet in the midst of all of the brokenness there are many pictures and promises of a coming redemption. All of this carries us to the story within the story, the news that the redemption that has been promised has become reality through Jesus. The story continues depicting the redemption that was accomplished by Jesus, now being applied by the Spirit to the church and through the church to the world. And though the story is still being written, we get a future glimpse of the story’s completion at the end of the bible with a picture of a renewed creation in which there has been a complete restoration of all that was lost in the fall.

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In essence the Gospel is the good news of Jesus’ death, burial, resurrection, and future return, which is very good news because it tells us that God’s story of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration is coming to completion.​

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With the Gospel being good news about God’s story, there is nothing that we can do to add to the Gospel. We are left with the call to believe and trust in the good news of what Jesus has done so that our story can be reoriented around living out God’s story of redemption in our world.