What Is the Gospel?

 

Following his resurrection, Jesus appeared to his disciples and commanded them to “preach the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15). Most of us are aware that “gospel” (euangelion in Greek) means “good news.” But what exactly is the good news that the apostles preached? What should be our message to the world around us, to our “unchurched” and unbelieving neighbors? The apostle Paul addresses these questions in his first letter to the Corinthians:  

Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. 

For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve. After that He was seen by over five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep. After that He was seen by James, then by all the apostles. Then last of all He was seen by me also, as by one born out of due time. 

For I am the least of the apostles, who am not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me. Therefore, whether it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed. …. 

But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive. But each one in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, afterward those who are Christ’s at His coming. Then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father, when He puts an end to all rule and all authority and power. For He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be destroyed is death (1 Corinthians 15:1-8, 20-26). 

According to Paul, the good news of the gospel is, firstly, that “Christ died for our sins.” The good news begins with atonement, with the sacrifice of Jesus on a cross of crucifixion, to save us from the judgment our sins deserve. Because of that sacrifice, we are accorded great blessings from the Father, namely: forgiveness (Eph. 1:7); righteousness (or justification) by faith (Rom. 3:21-24); and reconciliation with God (Rom. 5:1-2).  

 

Yet the good news is not simply that Jesus died, but “that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures.” His resurrection, well attested by the facts of history, provides an objective basis for hope. Paul in verses 20-23 argues essentially that because Christ rose from the dead, believers in Christ will also rise from the dead: “…even so in Christ all shall be made alive.” Elsewhere  Paul says, “But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you” (Rom. 8:11). The entire chapter of 1 Corinthians 15 amounts to a historical-theological defense of resurrection – not merely the resuscitation of a body, but the raising up of an altogether new and incorruptible body that will live forever in the presence of God.

 

Finally, the gospel is that “the kingdom of God is at hand” (Mark 1:15). This “gospel of the kingdom” (Matt. 4:23; Mark 1:14) is good news because humanity now has access to peace and righteousness (justice) under the rule of a completely good and powerful King. Jesus has come in the authority of the Father to establish his kingdom. Having defeated “the last enemy,” death (v. 24-26), Jesus will one day “deliver” that kingdom to the Father. Until that time Jesus is slowly but surely taking dominion over all things that oppose Him. “For He must reign till he has put all enemies under his feet” (v. 27). Here again is cause for great hope: “And the God of peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly” (Rom. 15:20).

 

The Call to Repentance

Readers of the New Testament may recall that both John the Baptist and Jesus Christ began their public ministry with a call to repent – "for the kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Matt. 3:1-2; Matt. 4:17). Along with John’s prophetic announcement that he had come to “Prepare the way of the Lord,” these identical declarations suggest to me that repentance somehow "clears the way" for God’s kingdom to arrive, to become accessible. They also offer a clue as to where human beings really stand with respect to freedom and morality.

As countless philosophers and theologians have argued over the centuries, the reality of good and evil in the world cannot be rightly understood apart from moral responsibility, which implies moral freedom. But the problem actually runs much deeper than that. Libertarian freedom, the unrestricted ability to choose between options, was lost, or at least severely curtailed, in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve freely decided to transgress the commandment of God. That catastrophically fateful decision triggered a spiritual chain reaction that left humanity disconnected from God, under a curse of pain and frustration, in bondage to sin, and most importantly, banned from paradise, i.e., strictly unable to return to their original free and happy state.

The way I read both Scripture and experience, we humans are now beset with an innate sinful bias that continually skews our desires and decisions toward sin and selfishness, even against our strongest determinations to be unselfish and good. For this reason, I believe, Jesus did not preach for men to simply choose to do good. Rather, he urged people to repent, which implies that humans are in a sort of spiritual default state of moral corruption. The difference between repentance and merely choosing good over evil is subtle but critical. A personal determination to be good is doomed to failure because the sinful nature or bias mentioned earlier will always find its expression – and as most of us have discovered in the course of life, it doesn’t take much evil to completely ruin a good situation (one act of adultery has been known to destroy a marriage, for example).

Repentance, on the other hand, involves some decidedly non-humanistic dynamics: First, repentance is a response to the call of God. In other words it is initiated by the Spirit of God. This explains why Paul described repentance as a gift: it simply cannot take place apart from God’s gracious initiative to call and convict men of their sins (2 Tim. 2:25; cf. John 6:44; Rom. 2:4). Second, repentance is miraculous. Only by the power of God’s Spirit can a person burdened by long-standing sinful bondages turn to Christ and find deliverance (John 8:34-36; Rom. 6:17-18). Finally, repentance reconnects us with God – the source of “every good gift” as James put it – and therefore refreshes the heart with a sense of liberty and grace. “Repent therefore and be converted,” proclaimed the apostle Peter, “that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord” (Acts 3:19-20).

The good news is that as many as will hear the gospel may repent. Here is one of many places where I part ways with my Calvinist friends. Because God is no respecter of persons he calls upon all of us, in love and grace, to call upon him, in repentance. And whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. The past has no hold on us; the call of God is heard only in the present. As Paul declared to the philosophers in Athens: “Truly these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent” (Acts 17:30).

The Dreaded Amputee Question

 

One reason Christians engage in apologetics is to provide answers to serious questions about the faith by relatively honest seekers. Some questions, however, appear not quite so serious. For me one such question is, "Why won't God heal amputees?" Made famous by Marshall Brain, this simple inquiry is presumed by some skeptics to expose the abject absurdity of miracles, of prayer, of God's love – indeed of theism generally – and therefore to send Christian apologists beating a hasty and shameful retreat before the overpowering logic of unbelief. Of course that hasn’t happened. For a sampling of effective, rational responses to the amputee question, consider offerings at Christian Skepticism, at Answers in Genesis, and at Triablogue.

Now my own immediate response to the question "Why won’t God heal amputees?" is something like, "Because He’s too busy trying to decide whether or not He can create a rock too heavy for Him to lift.” In other words the Amputee Question belongs in the same category as the old Rock Question – it's a clever rhetorical device that has almost nothing to do with the substance of the issues (like theodicy or the general efficacy of prayer) it purportedly addresses. But rhetorical questions such as these persist because they provide convenient substitutes for the hard work of constructing serious, sound arguments. That said, the following is my own response to the Amputee Question.

Right off the bat we need to brush past the loaded nature of the question itself. To ask "why God won't" do something is to take it as a given fact that there is something God won't do. It would be like asking "Why won't atheists just admit that they believe in God?" Hardly a matter for serious dialogue. Not all theists, certainly not this one, would take it as a working premise that God won't heal amputees. So to try to answer why God won't do what has not yet been demonstrated that he has not done (or will never do) is to get ahead of ourselves, and concede too much. Also, even if we were to concede that God has never healed an amputee, it doesn't follow that he won't heal an amputee, or lots or all amputees, in the future, including in the future eternal kingdom of heaven. (And it should be noted that it seems a bit calloused to use people with amputated limbs, many of whom firmly believe in God despite their painful physical and psychological experiences, as inanimate props in an argument for atheism in the first place.) 

Next we need to consider whether there is an actual argument here. As mentioned the question is almost purely rhetorical on its face. But an argument of sorts is at least implied. According to Upchurch and Galling at Answers in Genesis, the argument can be reformulated thus:

1. An omnipotent God would heal amputees.
2. Amputees are not healed.
3. Therefore, an omnipotent God does not exist.* 
 
Here the first premise states a theological proposition and the second states an inductive generalization drawn from human experience, followed by the conclusion that God does not exist. But none of the premises have been established, so on the face of it the argument is unsound. Few if any serious theologians would take the statements "An omnipotent God would heal amputees" or "The Bible promises to give us anything we want in prayer" as sound inferences derived from either systematic theology or careful exegesis of particular biblical data. Neither is it a fact that no amputees are healed (though it certainly appears that the vast majority are not); nor that prayer doesn't work. 
 
As to the second premise: it may seem at odds with experience to dispute the proposition that amputees are not healed. But for the argument to be successful the proposition that no amputees are healed needs to be confirmed. That assertion runs afoul not only of the problem of induction and proving negatives, but of specific instances of amputee healings documented by Craig Keener and others, and arguably, by certain miracles in the New Testament. On the other hand, if the essence of the question is "Why are some amputations, physical ailments, etc., not healed?" then this would be the same question most of us have asked, particularly when in pain. God doesn't heal most people with headaches or strep throat or kidney disease, so they take pain relievers and antibiotics and use dialysis. God doesn't heal most amputees, so they undergo rigorous therapy and use compensating devices like wheelchairs and prosthetic limbs. Non-healings have been a painfully obvious fact of life for all people for millennia, long before Marshall Brain first began to ponder the non-healings of amputees. Seen this way the Amputee Question is little more than an observation that there is natural evil in the world. 

The strength of the Amputee Question, then, is that in rhetorically effective and compact form it calls attention to two traditionally popular arguments, the logical argument from evil and the argument against miracles. The weakness of the Amputee Question is that countless philosophers and theologians of all stripes agree that these are no longer considered sound defeaters of theism.  

 
 

* For anyone who would object that such restatements are straw men, please feel free to construct a serious argument based upon the Amputee Question and present it here.