What Is the Gospel?

by Greg Gilbert

As I read it, the Bible seems to use the word “gospel” in two different, but highly related, ways. Sometimes it uses “gospel” in a very broad way, that is, to describe all the promises that God intends to fulfill in Christ, including not only forgiveness of sin, but also everything else that flows from it—the establishment of the kingdom, the new heavens and new earth, etc. There are other times, though, where it uses “gospel” in a very narrow way, that is, to describe specifically the forgiveness of sins through the substitutionary death and resurrection of Christ. In those places, the broader promises don’t seem to be so much in view. Here are some of the clearest places, I think, where the Bible uses the word “gospel” in the narrow sense:

1. Acts 10:36–43: “As for the word that he sent to Israel, preaching good news of peace through Jesus Christ (he is Lord of all), . . . To him all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”
2. Romans 1:16–17: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith.'”
3. 1 Corinthians 1:17–18: “For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel... ”
4. 1 Corinthians 15:1–5: “Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you... ”

1. Matthew 4:23: “And he went throughout all Galilee... ”
2. Mark 1:14–15: “Now after John was arrested... ”
3. Luke 4:18: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me... ”
4. Acts 13:32: “And we bring you the good news that what God promised... ”

So looking carefully into the New Testament, it seems to me that the word “gospel” is used in both a broad way and in a more narrow way. Broadly, as in Matthew 4, Mark 1, Luke 4, and Acts 13, it refers to all the promises made to us through the work of Jesus—not only forgiveness of sins, but also resurrection, reconciliation with both God and others, sanctification, glorification, coming Kingdom, new heavens and new earth, and so forth.

You might say that in those cases, “gospel” refers to the whole complex of God’s promises secured through the life and work of Christ. We might call this broader sense the Gospel of the Kingdom. In the narrow sense, such as we see in Acts 10, the whole book of Romans, 1 Corinthians 1 and 1 Corinthians 15, “gospel” refers specifically to the atoning death and resurrection of Jesus and the call to all people to repent and believe in him. We might call this narrower sense the Gospel of the Cross.

Now let me make two other things explicit.

First, the broad use of the word “gospel” necessarily includes the narrow. Look at those examples from Matthew and Mark. Jesus does not just proclaim the onset of the kingdom, as many have said. He proclaims the onset of the kingdom and he proclaims the means of entering it. Look closely: Jesus did not preach the gospel saying “The kingdom of heaven has come!” He preached the gospel saying, “The kingdom of heaven has come. Therefore repent and believe!”

This is crucial, the difference indeed between Gospel and not-Gospel:

To proclaim the inauguration of the kingdom and the new creation and all the rest without proclaiming how people can enter it—by repenting and being forgiven of their sins through faith in Christ and his atoning death—is to preach a non-Gospel.

Indeed, it is to preach bad news, since you give people no hope of being included in that new creation. The Gospel of the Kingdom is not merely the proclamation of the kingdom. It is the proclamation of the kingdom together with the proclamation that people may enter it by repentance and faith in Christ.

Second, it’s worth noting explicitly, again, the fact that the New Testament calls the specific, narrow message of forgiveness of sins through Christ “The Gospel.” Therefore, those who would argue something like, “If you’re just preaching the forgiveness of sins through Christ, and not God’s intention to remake the world, you’re not preaching the gospel,” are wrong. Both Paul and Peter (just to mention names from the above examples) seem quite happy to say that they have preached “The Gospel” if they have told people about the forgiveness of sins through the substitutionary death of Jesus, full stop.

If it is true that the New Testament uses the word “gospel” in both a broad and a narrow sense, how are we to understand the relationship between those two senses, between the Gospel of the Kingdom and the Gospel of the Cross? That’s the next question, and once we answer it, I think it will help us to be clearer in our own minds about some really important questions.

So how do the Gospel of the Kingdom and the Gospel of the Cross relate? I already have argued that the Gospel of the Kingdom necessarily includes the Gospel of the Cross.

But more specifically, is the Gospel of the Cross merely a part of the Gospel of the Kingdom, or something more? Is it central to it, peripheral to it, the heart of it, or something else? And for that matter, why are the New Testament writers willing to apply the word “gospel” to the particular promise of forgiveness of sin through faith in Christ, and not to other particular promises that are included in the broad gospel? Why do we never see Paul saying, “And that’s my gospel: that humans can be reconciled to each other!”?

I think we can get at an answer to all those questions by realizing that the Gospel of the Cross is not just any part of the Gospel of the Kingdom. Rather, the gospel of the cross is the gateway, the fountainhead, even the seed, so to speak, of the gospel of the kingdom. Read the whole New Testament, and you quickly realize that its univocal message is that a person cannot get to those broad blessings of the Kingdom except by being forgiven of sin through the death of Christ. That is the fountain from which all the rest springs.

That, I think, is why it is perfectly appropriate for the biblical authors to call that fountainhead “The Gospel” even as they also call the whole package—including forgiveness, justification, resurrection, new creation and all the rest—”The Gospel.” Because the broad blessings of the gospel are attained only by means of the narrow (atonement, forgiveness, faith and repentance), and because those blessings are attained infallibly by means of the narrow, it’s entirely appropriate for the New Testament writers to call that gateway/seed/fountainhead promise “The Gospel.”

It’s also perfectly appropriate for the New Testament to call that fountainhead “The Gospel” and at the same time not call any other particular blessing of the broader package “The Gospel.” So we don’t call human reconciliation “The Gospel.” Nor do we even call the new heavens and new earth “The Gospel.” But we do call forgiveness through atonement “The Gospel” because it is the fountainhead of and gateway to all the rest.

There are some important implications that flow from this.

First, it is worth saying again: Those who argue that “the gospel” is the declaration of the kingdom are simply wrong. The gospel is not the declaration of the kingdom; it is (in the broad sense) the declaration of the kingdom together with the means of entering it.

Second, to say that the Gospel of the Cross is somehow not the gospel, or less than the gospel, is wrong. So long as the question is, “What is the message a person must believe to be saved,” the gospel of the cross is the gospel. Jesus, Paul, and Peter say so.¹

Third, to say that the Gospel of the Kingdom is somehow gospel-plus, or a distraction from the real gospel, is also wrong. So long as the question is “What is the whole good news of Christianity,” the gospel of the kingdom is not gospel-plus; it is the gospel. Jesus, Paul, and Peter say so.

Fourth, it is wrong to call a person a Christian simply because they are doing good things and “following Jesus’ example.” To be a Christian, to be a partaker of the blessings of the Kingdom, requires one first to go through the gate—that is, to come to Christ in faith and be forgiven of sin and atoned for.

Bunyan tells the story in Pilgrim’s Progress about the characters Mr. Formalist and Mr. Hypocrisy whom Christian meets on the path to the Celestial City. After a moment’s conversation, however, Christian realizes that they had jumped the wall to the path rather than going through the Wicket Gate. The upshot: These two are not Christians, regardless of how well they are now navigating the path.

To change the characters a bit, there are many people out there who must realize that Mr. Jesus-Follower and Mrs. Kingdom-Life-Liver are not Christians—not unless they have come to the crucified Jesus in repentance and faith for the forgiveness of their sins. A person can “live like Jesus lived” all he wants to, but unless he goes through the Wicket Gate of atonement, faith and repentance, he’s not really come to Christ. He’s simply jumped the wall.

Fifth, I believe it is wrong ever to say that non-Christians are doing “kingdom work.” A non-Christian working for human reconciliation or justice is doing a good thing, but that is not Kingdom work because it is not done in the name of the King. C.S. Lewis was wrong; you cannot do good things in the name of Tash and expect Aslan to be happy about it.

Sixth, the ultimate goal of any mercy ministry—whether done by an individual Christian or a church—has to be to point the world back to the gate. Much could be said here, but I think understanding all this rightly can provide a powerful missionary motive and a penetrating witness to the world.

When you renovate a barber shop in the name of Jesus, for instance, you need to tell the owner (to put it sharply for brevity’s sake), “Look, I’m doing this because I serve a God who cares about things like beauty and order and peace. In fact, the Bible says and I believe that God is one day going to recreate this world and inaugurate a kingdom where paint won’t peel and trees won’t die. But [and here we get to the point] I don’t think you’re going to be a part of that. Because of your sin. Unless you repent and believe in Christ.” And then you tell him the good news of the cross. If you just renovate the barber shop and proclaim the coming kingdom, you’ve fallen short of proclaiming the gospel. The gospel of the kingdom is the declaration of the kingdom together with the means of getting into it.

Seventh, as I’ve argued before, I believe that many in the so-called emergent church—for all their insistence about how astonishing and surprising their gospel is—have missed entirely what really is astonishing about the gospel.

That Jesus is king and has inaugurated a kingdom of love and compassion is not really all that astonishing at all. Every Jew knew that was going to happen someday. What is truly astonishing about the gospel is that the Messianic King dies to save his people—that the divine Son of Man in Daniel, the Davidic Messiah, and the Suffering Servant in Isaiah turn out to be the same man. That, moreover, is ultimately how we tie together the Gospel of the Kingdom and the Gospel of the Cross. Jesus is not just King, but Crucified King. Next to that, what many in the emergent church are holding out as an astonishing gospel is not astonishing at all. It’s just boring.

Eighth, everything we’ve said so far drives toward the conclusion that evangelistic, missiological, and pastoral emphasis in this age belongs on the gospel of the cross—on the fountainhead, the gateway of the broader gospel of the kingdom. That is because all the rest is unattainable and indeed bad news unless we point people there. Not only so, but this is the age in which God’s overarching command to every human in the world is “Repent and believe.”

There’s only one command that is actually included in the gospel itself (whether broad or narrow): Repent and believe. That is the primary obligation on human beings in this age, and therefore it must be our primary emphasis in our preaching, too.

1 . Jesus very clearly preaches the Gospel of the Cross (in Mark 10:45, for instance) even if he doesn’t explicitly tie the word “gospel” to it in his recorded words. On a more general note, even as we recognize the benefit of word-studies, we should not tie our definition of the gospel and our identification of it in the text too tightly to occurrences of the word “gospel.” Otherwise, we’d have to say that John never talks about it, for he never uses the word in all his New Testament writings.