Since we last wrote to you, we have been on the Internet in pursuit of information about what Christians think the Gospel is. The results are surprising, not to say bewildering and often confusing. Some 50 samples were tested. These were statements tackling the subject head-on:
“What is the Gospel?”
Complexity was the order of the day in many cases. According to some “Gospel” is a sort of wax-nose word needing to be bent into different shapes to fit different contexts. So at any point in the course of the New Testament you are not quite sure what “gospel” means.
There is need to bring some order out of chaos on this most basic of all subjects. An agreement over the definition of the Gospel could help churches take a giant step towards unity.
It seems to me incredible that those expert teachers and writers who have given us our New Testament documents were so inadequate that they left us in doubt about what the Gospel is. I am certain they took utmost trouble to convey to us an understanding of the New Testament’s most central term.
Several examples of the Gospel defined on the Internet plunged in with dogmatic certainty — but they began not with Jesus but Paul. It is beyond dispute, they argued, that Paul defined the Gospel once and for all in I Corinthians 15:1-3, where he limited the Gospel strictly to the facts about the death and resurrection of Jesus.
No attempt was made by these sources to explain how, if indeed the Gospel is about the death and resurrection of Jesus only, Jesus himself preached the Gospel for 25 chapters in Matthew, Mark and Luke without so much as a word about his death and resurrection.
Furthermore many ministries seemed unperturbed by the fact that if Paul really thought that the Gospel consisted only in facts about Jesus’ death and resurrection, he must have been in violation of the Great Commission by which Jesus commanded everything he taught to be taught worldwide as the Gospel (Matt. 28:19, 20).
So what about I Corinthians 15:1-3? Did Paul really say that Jesus’ death and resurrection comprised the whole Gospel? The answer is no. If we read carefully we hear Paul saying that he preached the death and resurrection of Jesus “among things of first importance” (v. 3). He did not say they formed the total Gospel. Henry Alford, in his celebrated commentary on the Greek New Testament, with an eagle eye for detail and precision, stated: “Paul declares to them the whole Gospel: not merely the Death and Resurrection of Christ which were important parts of it.”
Paul’s letters deal with special problems, and it is wise to go to other passages to find out what Paul said about the content of his Gospel. In Corinth the issue at stake was the resurrection. And to that problem Paul directs his attention unambiguously. If, however, we listen carefully to Paul in Acts 20:25 we find that his own summary of Gospel ministry everywhere was this: “I went about preaching as Gospel the Kingdom of God” (note that the Greek kerusso — “herald” — implies the announcement of the Gospel).
So there it is: Paul and Jesus are in perfect harmony. Both were tireless proclaimers of the Gospel about the Kingdom of God (Acts 8:12).The use of I Corinthians 15:1-3 as an out-and-out proof text for a watertight definition of the Gospel breaks down under careful scrutiny. There is one Gospel, and all the apostles followed the lead of Jesus in preaching it. When churches resolve to define the Gospel as Jesus and Paul did, a giant step towards unity will be achieved. But we have a long way to go. Tradition dies hard, and there is a pervasive lack of analytical study amongst churchgoers. “What we have always heard” seems to make sense, until someone comes and challenges the status quo in a closely-argued exegetical encounter.
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