Since the gospel creates the church, a biblical understanding of the gospel is significant in the life of the church. The opposite is also true: a wrong understanding of the gospel is detrimental and could lead to the death of local churches. Thus, Greg Gilbert’s What Is the Gospel? provides a significant contribution as he clarifies and defends the biblical gospel and the centrality of the cross.
What Is the “Good News”?
First, Gilbert defends the biblical gospel from vague, unhelpful definitions like “the gospel of the kingdom” language (16–20). This language is confusing because it is partly correct (but would you want to ride a plane with a “partly correct” engine?). The problem is that cultural transformation, the coming kingdom, and the lordship of Christ are often emphasized as the climax of the gospel rather than Jesus’s death and resurrection as atonement for the sins of mankind so they could be reconciled to God. Gilbert points out that “the proclamation that ‘Jesus is Lord’ is not good news unless there is a way to be forgiven of your rebellion against him, so the fact that God is remaking the world is not good news unless you can be included in that (106).” If the gospel is “good news,” then the “Jesus-is-King-(full-stop) kind of gospel” is no gospel (good news) at all.
God, Man, Christ, Response
Second, Gilbert presents a succinct yet thorough presentation of God, man, Christ, response. This is the bulk of the book, chapters 2–5. Many who critique this summary of the gospel as man-made may need to familiarize themselves with Romans, since this is how Paul presents the gospel (See Naselli’s summary of Romans).
The Sharp Edge of the Gospel
Gilbert also dispels the common notion within evangelicalism that “talk about salvation being from meaninglessness or purposelessness without tracing those things down to their root in sin,” leading “a person to continue thinking of himself as a victim and never really deal with the fact that he himself is the criminal, unrighteous, and deserving of judgment” (52). When this thinking is not corrected, it impairs the person’s view of God’s holiness, man’s sinfulness, and God’s grace in Christ. To remove the sharp edge of the gospel is to remove the very beauty, power, and effectiveness of the gospel.
What the Gospel Is Not
Fourth, Gilbert clarifies terms that tend to be misunderstood in evangelicalism. For example, sin is not merely breaking of relationship, but “the traitorous rebellion of a beloved subject against his good and righteous king” (52). The gospel of Christ’s death and resurrection is effective for God’s people (65–70) who are marked out by faith and repentance. Most importantly, Gilbert identifies penal substitutionary atonement as the heart of the gospel (68). Finally, Gilbert defends the gospel from easy-believism. Gilbert says,
If we understand repentance rightly, we’ll see that the idea that you can accept Jesus as Savior but not Lord is nonsense. . . . Faith in Christ carries in itself a renunciation of that rival power that King Jesus conquered—sin. And where that renunciation of sin is not present, neither is genuine faith in the One who defeated it.” (80)
Conclusion
The Gospel is the good news that the holy Creator-God loved the sinners who rebel against him that he sent his own Son, Jesus, to live a perfect life, die on the cross, and rise on the third day as payment for the sins of those who will repent and believe in Jesus. This is good news for all peoples. Do you believe this?
LeeJaredGarcia.Com 