Many Christians think about the gospel as the entry gate into Christianity. It’s a gate that is opened with “Do you confess you are a sinner and accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior?” and walked through with a prayer of salvation.
There is truth in that. But only about as much truth is there in believing that the earth is a sphere or that LeBron James is a human being. Those are correct statements as far as they go, but so little of the truth has been stated. There’s so much more we can (and should) say.
At New Life, we believe that the gospel changes everything.
In this series of posts we are reflecting on our nine cultural values at New Life. Last week we affirmed that God is big and God is good.
When we talk of the gospel, we speak of the good news. It’s a term that Jesus coined for the announcement he declared through his ministry.
ELBOWING ROME IN THE RIBS
It’s not surprising that multiple times throughout the book of Matthew and at least once in Mark, the gospel is connected to God’s Kingdom. For instance, In Matthew 24:14, Jesus says, “And the gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (see also Matt 4:23, 9:35, 26:13, and Mark 1:15).
The reason that it’s unsurprising Jesus would connect gospel language with kingdom language is that he actually borrowed the term gospel from the Romans.
How did the Romans use the term gospel? The Romans coined the term “gospel” to proclaim the good news of their Caesars. Roman emperors were celebrated as the sons of the gods and so the gospel proclaimed the good news of the rule of Rome and Caesar: it was this rule that promised you peace, protection, and prosperity—as long as you bowed your knee to her reign. If you lived in Israel at the time of Jesus or just after, the gospel that you would have heard from your birth to your dying day was the gospel of Rome.
Rome spread her gospel across the known world, promising that if you humbled yourself under the rule of the great Caesar, you would receive protection, prosperity, and peace.
So, when Jesus says that he is bringing the gospel, he is elbowing Rome in the ribs. He’s saying that he has the true offer of protection, prosperity, and peace, not Rome.
THE KING CRUCIFIED
And then, the plot thickens. This man who proclaimed a competing gospel to Caesar’s is crucified by Caesar with “King of the Jews” affixed over his head. Jesus was killed for subverting the Roman gospel, for threatening the promised Roman peace (pax Romana).
But the story, as you know, doesn’t end there. The crucified King rose again, gave his followers the true Spirit of Peace, and his “not-of-this-world” Kingdom was launched.
That is why we say the gospel changes everything: because the gospel is the proclamation of a heavenly Kingdom we can walk in today. The gospel changes individual hearts, yes, but it also creates a new community.
WHILE WE WERE STILL SINNERS
The gospel transforms our hearts one by one. The way we love to reflect on that at New Life is that we are more utterly sinful than we realize, but more profoundly loved than we can fathom.
Paul shares this profound truth this way in Romans 5:8, “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” We who deserved the wrath of God for our rebellion were “saved by [Jesus] from the wrath of God” (Romans 5:9b).
The good news of Jesus Christ is that while we rejected our Creator and rebelled against his rule, he sent his Son to pay the penalty for our sins and reconcile us. We cannot grasp just how grievous our sin is. And yet, we are, at the same time, more loved by our Creator and Savior than we could ever imagine.
GOSPEL CITIZENSHIP
The good news of Jesus Christ also invites us into Christ’s Kingdom. It’s no mere personal decision, it’s a new citizenship. We live in the land of the gospel with other gospel inhabitants. The gospel land that we live in is completely different than any other land. It is a land where we forgive because we are forgiven, we serve because we have been served by Christ, we set aside demands for our rights because Christ set aside his rights, we set aside our freedoms for the sake of weaker brothers and sisters. In short, the gospel shapes our everyday life and retrains our fleshly impulses.
The gospel changes everything.
We believe that to our core. We won’t stop preaching it to ourselves and we won’t stop proclaiming it to the world until we meet the King of the Kingdom, the Prince of Peace, and the one who is the gospel incarnate: Jesus Christ.
New Life’s Culture Statements:
2. The gospel changes everything
4. God loves you and your neighbor
5. We are contributors, not consumers
6. Character outlasts charisma