What is the Gospel?
Ask this question of those inside and outside the church and you will get many different answers. Ask just those inside the church and you will likely get the same results. It’s not so much that people are wrong in their thinking, it’s that their understanding is incomplete. When this happens, instead of ambassadors who represent the Kingdom of God and King Jesus, we settle for a gospel of sin management in which we behave more like fire insurance salesmen, propagandists, self-help gurus or support group facilitators. This leaves people outside the Kingdom, remaining in their brokenness and never tasting the freedom and victory Jesus proclaimed (Luke 4:18). Recommended Video: Compelled: Speaking and Living the Gospel - Tim Mackie (The Bible Project)
The Story: Created, Broken, Reconciled & Invited
Like all stories, especially compelling ones, the Gospel has a beginning, a middle and an end. There is a protagonist and an antagonist along with major and minor characters. Not to be overlooked is a compelling conflict between good and evil.
(Graphic courtesy of Praxis)
+Created
The Story begins with "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." God, the protagonist and first character in The Story, is introduced as a creator and designer of everything. Told through Hebrew prose, we learn that God creates light, water, air, dry ground, vegetation, stars, planets, moons, animals and eventually humankind, male and female, in His own image.
After creating them, God blesses them and tells them, "Be fruitful and increase in number--being caretakers of all I've made." The last verse of Genesis 1 says, "God saw all that he had made, and it was very good." After all was completed, it is written that "God rested."
In the second chapter of Genesis, Adam, the next character in The Story is introduced (Adam is a generic Hebrew word for man.). We are told that God formed Adam from the ground, "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life," and placed him in a garden "to work and take care of it." God tells Adam that he "is free to eat from any tree in the garden with the exception of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil." Furthermore, God warns Adam that if he disobeys, he "will certainly die."
Finally, Eve, the third character enters The Story. God says of Adam, "it is not good for him to be alone." It becomes clear that "alone" is not how God intended us to live. In response, God creates Eve and they become husband and wife.
At this point in the story, everything was perfectly good--right and whole relationships existed between God and mankind and between one another. The writer of Genesis writes that Adam and Eve "were naked and unashamed--shame, guilt and brokeness were not a part of their existence. They were at peace inside themselves, and had a clear and pure purpose that also provided for their physical needs.
+Broken
In the next chapter (Gen 3), conflict enters The Story with the appearance of Satan, the antagonist, referred to as The Serpent. Approaching Eve, he asks, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’? You will not certainly die...For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
The rest is history. Humankind rebelled, deciding that God could not be trusted. With our insurrection came death, disease, violence, suffering, hatred and indescribable evil entered The Story. In ignorance, some question why a loving God could allow such things to happen. But, it wasn't God's doing, it was ours. We broke it--we changed The Story. Brokenness entered our relationships as we began hiding in shame from God and one another, even from ourselves. Humankind became adrift as we lost our sense of purpose and meaning. Naked and ashamed became our new normal.
So now, everything we find to be broken in our lives...every destructive emotion...every act of violence and selfishness...every hateful word...behind all of it is a lie that God and his ways are not be trusted...that He does not have the best of intentions toward us and that we are more qualified to decide for ourselves what is good.
While this part of The Story sounds quite hopeless, it quickly becomes clear that God is already at work to recover what was lost and to make a way for all things to be reconciled--for all that was broken to be made right. Over centuries, God would reveal through His prophets a plan to send a humble, suffering, servant king, the Messiah, to restore the Kingdom of God on earth.
+Reconciled
After what seems like an eternity...after 400 years of God being silent and not speaking through any prophet...when it seemed God might have changed his mind and given up on humankind...the next major character in The Story arrives, the long-awaited and prophesied King. The problem is, like a disappointing sequel, the king doesn't arrive in the manner expected and he doesn't look or act like a king. The expert critics (i.e. the religious leaders of the day) find him to be a disappointment. They reject his qualifications, pedigree, and even call into question the scandalous circumstances of his birth.
To make matters worse, he doesn't seem to take up the cause for which they were convinced the Messiah would champion--liberation from their Roman oppressors. Instead of gathering a military force equipped with swords, shields and chariots, Jesus gathers 12 disciples and begins teaching them about the Kingdom of God--a Kingdom He descibes as being "not of this world."
Instead of liberation from Rome, He offers freedom from our bondage to sin. To purchase that freedom, He offers his own life as a sacrificial lamb to pay for our rebellion which should have brought us death. Having died by crucifixion on a cross, God raised Jesus back to life. The power that raised Jesus from the dead is the same power that offers new life to all who would believe by giving their complete allegiance to Jesus as Lord and King. This is what is meant by one of the most famous passages in the Bible:
"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16)
This "eternal life" has led to our being reconciled to God and to one another. (John 17:3)
+Invited
Having been reconciled to God through Jesus, we are now invited to join Him in His mission to bring the Kingdom of God to earth. In 2 Corinthians 5, Paul describes it this way: "17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us."
After His resurrection and before Jesus ascended to heaven, He said to those gathered, "...go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you." We don't do this in our own power but through the power of the Holy Spirit whom Jesus sent to be a comforter, encourager and guide--empowering us to do the things Jesus did!
To be a disciple of Jesus is to be someone who not only obeys Jesus' teachings, they teach others to do the same. In this mission, to be a spiritual adult isn't enough, we are invited to join Jesus in his mission by becoming spiritual parents who make disciples who make disciples.