The Multifaceted Word "Gospel"
Recently
I began teaching an exegesis class on the Gospel according to John for GoldenGate Baptist Theological Seminary and the Salt Lake Baptist Association. GGBTS has a Contextualized Leadership
Development program in which non-seminary trained leaders in the local church
can take seminary type classes from professors that have completed their Master
of Divinity Degree.
Before
jumping into exegesis of John, we spent our first week wrestling with the word
“Gospel” and how this word has a multifaceted meaning. For many of us this word means the
basic Gospel message; Christ’s life, death, and resurrection to bring us
salvation. To others it elicits
thoughts of the first four books of the New Testament and the record of
Christ’s life found there. So how are
we to think about this word “Gospel”?
What we think about the word “Gospel” will have major implications as we
dive into the Gospel according to John or any other of the New Testament
Gospels.
Paul
in Romans 1:1-6 gives us a very thorough description of the “Gospel of God” he
has been set apart for, rooting his Gospel in the prophecies of scripture about
Christ, Christ’s life, and how Christ’s life effects us through grace. The Gospel can be seen as something
proclaimed such as in 1 Thessalonians 2:2. Mark records the Gospel to be about the life of Christ in
Mark 1:1. Matthew records the
Gospel to include the idea of God’s restored reign when he speaks about “Gospel
of the kingdom” in Matthew 4:23. Finally,
Isaiah likes to think of the Gospel as good news to the afflicted in Isaiah
61:1. As a quick survey of the
word in the Bible shows us, this “Gospel” word may be bigger than we often
think.
I
have included a great video featuring my New Testament professor at Southern Seminary, Dr. Jonathan Pennington, discussing this very word “Gospel.” This is a promotion for his upcoming
book on the Gospels called Reading the Gospels Wisely. I had the
privilege of hearing the material in this book in lecture form and have read
pieces of it. I highly encourage
you to put this book on your wish list; it is on mine. The content in this book has been
invaluable to my development in thinking about the “Gospel” as recorded in the
“Gospels.”
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