The Problem with Our “Gospel”
Have you ever had one of those moments when you realize you made it this far in your life without knowing something seemingly obvious or basic? Often people describe these small awakenings with the phrase, “I was today years old when…”
“I was today years old when I realized ‘breakfast’ is called that because it is the first time you’re eating since the day before. You are breaking your fast.”
“I was today years old when I realized the division symbol (➗) is just a blank fraction with dots replacing the numerator and denominator.”
“I was today years old when I realized that the ‘st’ in 1st, the ‘nd’ in 2nd, and the ‘rd’ in 3rd is because it’s THE LAST 2 LETTERS OF THE WORDS.”
I wonder, if you are a follower of Jesus, how old were you when you came to know the gospel? Because although I’ve been a Christian since I was a child, I didn’t understand the gospel until I was in my 40s.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I thought I knew the gospel. The “gospel” I was familiar with went something like this…
God loves me and wants to be in a relationship with me.
But my sin fractured my relationship with God.
However, Jesus died for my sins.
If I believe in Jesus and repent of my sins, I can be restored to a relationship with God and spend eternity with him in heaven.
Now, all of these statements are true, but are they truly the gospel? I’d say no. Theologian Matthew W. Bates calls this the “truncated” or “abbreviated” gospel. New Testament scholar Scot McKnight refers to it as “The Plan of Salvation.” It is important, but it is not the gospel. In fact, it wasn’t until the mid-twentieth century that these propositional statements came to be known as “the gospel.”* And some significant problems arise from it.
For one, the plot of this “gospel” is centered on me. When we view this “abbreviated gospel” as the gospel, we tend to focus our decision to follow Jesus on the benefits we receive from saying yes to him: a restored relationship with God, heaven, peace, purpose, belonging in a community, etc. Again, all of these are true, but what happens when it feels like they’re not? What happens when we don’t feel close to God? When life is in turmoil? When we don’t feel a sense of purpose? When our church or our small group fails us? Too often people turn away from Jesus or at least become complacent in their spiritual journey because the “benefit package” didn’t live up to their expectations.
And second, saying yes to this “gospel” can become a big obstacle to actually following Jesus. In presenting “The Plan of Salvation” as the gospel, the focus becomes getting people to make a decision, to cross a line of faith, so that they can go to heaven when they die. Jesus becomes a sort of insurance policy for the future. Once people are “in,” they still need to be convinced to actually follow him. It’s how we’ve ended up in a place where the lives of so many of us in the church are often indistinguishable from the lives of those in the world.
The gospel we proclaim and respond to matters.
So what is the true gospel?
Two of the most straightforward explanations of what the gospel meant to the earliest Christ-followers are found in Romans 1 and 1 Corinthians 15.
“Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God— the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures regarding his Son, who as to his earthly life was a descendant of David, and who through the Spirit of holiness was appointed the Son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord.” -Romans 1:1-4
“Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, hat he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve.” -1 Corinthians 15:1-5
What is the gospel? The gospel is the true story of Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and ascension.
As Matthew W. Bates puts it:
“In reading Paul’s summary of the gospel, we quickly recognize that the gospel is not at its most basic level a tale about me and my quest for salvation (or even about “us” and “our” quest), but rather it is a grand, cosmic story about God’s Son and what he has done.” -Matthew W. Bates, Salvation by Allegiance Alone
The gospel is the good news about Jesus! It’s the story of who he is and what he has done. And when you truly understand and embrace it, you come recognize that Jesus is King. He sits on the throne as King of kings and Lord of lords! (Hebrews 1:3) And this one who is King says to you and to me, “Follow me.” That is the gospel decision each of us must make. Will we declare our allegiance to this King and follow him?
This is the gospel Peter, John, Mary Magdalene, Priscilla and Aquila, Paul, and countless others believed. And the power of this gospel gave them the courage and motivation to live lives that were strikingly different than the culture around them. The power of this gospel gave them the persistence and endurance to remain faithful even when from an earthly perspective the “benefit package” didn’t seem to be going their way. Jesus was King, and that’s all that mattered. They were going to follow him no matter what because they recognized that his story is at the center of history. He alone is worthy.
Maybe you’ve known all of this for a long time, or maybe you were “today years old” when you truly understood the gospel. Either way, I urge you to follow him. Jesus is King. He is worthy. He is the gospel we must proclaim.
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*For more on how “The Plan of Salvation” came to be taught as “the gospel,” see Chapter 6 “The Gospel of Revivalism” in Scot McKnight’s The King Jesus Gospel. It’s fascinating to discover how things we think have always been can turn out to be rather recent in church history.
