God's Gospel

The apostles and New Testament writers are zealous that we Christians understand, delight in, and proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but they are equally zealous that in handing it on we do not pervert its content or its message. It is a requirement we would do well to ponder more deeply.

This is particularly a great concern of Paul's in his letter to the Galatians: "Not that there is another gospel, but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ" (1:7). That Gospel is "of first importance" (1 Corinthians 15:1-11). The apostolic Gospel is a given, relating events which happened once for all and which are absolutely central to the Church's identity, life, and mission.

The Good News

Jesus referred to the "good news" of the Kingdom of God drawing near and breaking into history in His own person, words, and deeds, calling for the obedience of faith, repentance, and discipleship. After His death and resurrection and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the apostles used "the gospel" to refer to what God had done and was doing through Jesus, the exalted Lord.

They had the authority to flesh out and give proper interpretation to the Gospel, because they were chosen, trained, and sent forth by Jesus Himself and guided into truth by the Holy Spirit. Through their preaching and witness, as the Spirit opened the hearts to those who heard, Israel was renewed and Gentiles were brought into the people of God.

The earliest written account we have of the apostolic Gospel is found in St. Paul's summary in 1 Corinthians. "I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received," he tells them,

that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than 500 brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. . . . Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed (15:4-11).

This summary of the faith is very early. Paul wrote the Corinthians in approximately 55 A.D., reminding them of what he preached to them when he first came to Corinth in approximately 44 A.D., when he preached to them that which he had previously received. A. M. Hunter, the New Testament exegete and theologian, refers to this passage as "A gem of pre-Pauline paradosis," that is, of something authoritatively handed down before Paul.

Paul says whether it was they (those who were apostles before him) or himself, so all the apostles had preached and continued to preach. Paul had heard this apostolic Gospel from the time he observed the martyrdom of St. Stephen. Thus what we have in this text is a fixed form summarizing the Gospel which had taken firm shape within several years of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ.

The Gospel is thus not Paul's invention. It was that which Paul received, into which he was brought by the risen Lord, and which he himself with the other apostles preached. In this passage, we have not only the earliest written evidence and record of the resurrection, but also the earliest written summary of that "Word" which comes out of the resurrection and the apostolic circle itself. This is indeed the Gospel. No Church can be "Apostolic" which departs from this Gospel.

Not "a" Gospel

The word Gospel is used here in the absolute sense: "the" Gospel, not "a" Gospel. There are not a number of gospels, there is only one Gospel. Even the four evangelists wrote of the Gospel, according to their particular traditions, memory, and audience. We do well to keep that in mind, for we ourselves are not called to produce a new Gospel or another Gospel, but simply to attest to the Gospel to all the world and give it contemporary and relevant expression and application. The central meaning and content, however, does not vary.

The center of the Gospel is, of course, Jesus Himself, who is the Christ, the promised, anointed One. If one turns to the picture of the apostolic preaching in the Acts of the Apostles, one finds a bit more about Jesus as the Christ than one has in the bare outline of 1 Corinthians 15.

Scholars such as C. H. Dodd, A. M. Hunter, E. M. B. Green have identified the following material in the kerygma (Gospel) about Jesus:

1. That God had visited and redeemed His people by sending the promised Messiah as the fulfillment of His plan and purposes attested in the Old Testament;
2. That the Messiah came as prophesied in the royal seat of David in the person of Jesus of Nazareth; and
3. That the kerygma presupposes that it is the one, living, and true God whom we encounter in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

This led both the New Testament writers and the early Church to the confession of Jesus as the Incarnate Lord. A pre-Pauline tradition, found in Philippians 2, is clearly an incarnational hymn. Paul himself expressly tells in Romans 1:4 that it was in the Resurrection itself that Jesus is disclosed, marked out, and revealed to be Lord, so that the divinity and full humanity of Christ are part of the Gospel from the beginning.

It did, however, take the Church some time to spell out the full measure of that, awareness in doctrinal form. This was done in the first four great Councils, culminating in the classic statements of Chalcedon in 451. All of this, however, is implied and to a degree explicit in the apostolic preaching and teaching and in the kerygma itself.

The events of the Gospel

The Gospel is based on historic events (as the Creed underlines it): that Christ died, was buried, arose, appeared, and ascended to Heaven. "These things were not done in a corner," as the Scripture puts it, but before eye witnesses. Actually, there are three witnesses: the Old Testament, the Apostles, particularly their writings in the New Testament, and in a somewhat different way the apostolic community, the Church.

The first witness. is the Old Testament. Jesus died for our sins "in accordance with the scriptures." He rose on the third day "in accordance with the scriptures." The Old Testament records God's preparation for the Messianic, redemptive events of the Gospel itself. As the apostles reflect on those events, they draw not only upon the teaching and life of Jesus, but upon the Old Testament teaching these events fulfilled.

The human witnesses are, of course, the Apostles. They are those whom Jesus had gathered and discipled; who had seen Him and committed themselves to learn of Him; whom He had prepared to be the bearers of His ministry and mission after His death, resurrection, ascension and outpouring of the Spirit.

It is to them that the Spirit is promised, to bring to their remembrance those things which they had so carefully been prepared to remember and to lead them into all truth, reflecting on the significance of these things in the light of the resurrection. An apostle of Jesus, in the narrowest sense, was an eye witness of the resurrection — "Of these things we are eye witnesses."

The Apostles were those, first, who could testify that Jesus had died, was raised from the dead, and had appeared unto them. Second, they were those who were also commissioned by the risen Lord. Their preparation was completed by His sending them, as the word "apostle" ("sent ones") makes clear. Not all who saw the resurrection — the 500 to whom Jesus appears at once — were constituted thereby apostles. The Apostles were given authority to preach, teach, and exercise significant leadership in the early Church.

In one sense, the apostolicity of the Apostles continues in the Churches faithful to the Great Commission and the apostles' teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread and prayers, in the appointing of leaders to exercise oversight in the unity of apostolic truth, in the body of Christ. In another sense, the apostles' role is not historically repeatable, for they alone are eye witnesses to the events of the kerygma and they alone received the promise that the Spirit would lead them into all truth.

It is for these reasons that the early Church recognized apostolicity (faithfulness to the apostles' teaching) as the chief mark of Holy Scripture. Faithfulness to Scripture, Creed, Gospel sacraments, and the historic episcopate locally adapted — the four marks of the Lambeth Quadrilateral — are all marks of continuity with the apostolic witness of the Gospel.

Therefore, the primary witnesses to the kerygma are the Old Testament and the witness of the apostles that finds its culmination in the New Testament writings. A lively and subordinate witness is all those who embrace the Gospel: the Church, that community which the Gospel calls into being, which reads the apostolic writings, which celebrates the sacraments of the Gospel, and which pursues apostolic mission.

The Meaning of the Events

What then is the meaning of the Kerygma? First, Christ died for our sins. The Old Testament promised God's gracious gift of the One to bear the penalty for the iniquity of us all. The New Testament writers proclaim how God's righteousness and mercy met in the substitutionary atonement rendered on our behalf by the Christ, the suffering servant: "For the Lord made him to be sin who knew no sin that we might be in him the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21). Seen in His obedience unto death is the titanic struggle and then the sovereign, final victory over sin and Satan and death.

Second, Christ rose from the dead. That which was prefigured and anticipated in the transfiguration is now manifest openly to the disciples-apostles and vindicates the Son and establishes the truth of His teaching. It is the beginning of a sure and certain hope of the inheritance which is kept for all who are in Him, so that the last word is not death, but glory — glory not only for those who are in Him, but for the whole creation which even now groans and travails until His appearing. For it is in our body, made of the very stuff of the universe, that He has been glorified.

Third, Christ ascended to Heaven and sent His Spirit upon His followers. He appeared to the apostles to even now renew their relationship with Himself, to convince them of His victory, of the meaning of His death and resurrection and the power of His reign, that they might be filled with hope and constituted true apostles and that a community of faith might be gathered through their ministry of the Gospel.

The Christian Gospel, then, brackets human life with the atonement on one side and glory on the other, and says in between, "Live in fellowship with the risen Lord through the apostolic word and sacraments and be on mission, inviting all to repent, believe, be baptized and receive the Holy Spirit, having our lives increasingly conformed to Christ, thus seeking to bring peace, joy, justice, and righteousness into all the earth until such time as Christ comes in glory."

Of course, the Gospel will always meet with opposition, for the old Adam remains within all of us. Not all will now bow the knee to Christ. We do not yet see all things subject unto Him. Thus the Gospel requires of us internal and social warfare, but a war to be carried out with the instruments of grace and love, even love of the enemy.

No new Gospel

We, the Church, are not called to create a new Gospel. We need to give it contemporary application or expression, but its central core, substance, and meaning are not ours to change. The invitation of the apostolic preaching remains the same: repent, believe, be baptized, and receive the Holy Spirit. The Church's commission also remains the same: "Go, therefore, unto all nations and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to do all that I have commanded you, and lo I am with you always, even unto the end of the age."

How shall we preach the Gospel today? First, I would say, faithfully. We ourselves are often ignorant of the full content and meaning of the Gospel. The Church needs to be a more deeply, profoundly, and biblically informed people, if it is to be effective in preaching and teaching it.

Second, we need to witness to it. The credibility of the Gospel, in an age whose presuppositions are secular, will be greatly enhanced by our being people whose lives have been significantly affected by it — who bear in our own bodies the marks of the joy, the confidence, and the struggle which mark the Christian life.

We need congregations where love for one another as Christ has loved us may be seen, albeit imperfectly. We need congregations and individuals whose passion to be salt like yeast in the work-a-day world and in the social order. It is this reality, coupled with the clear and confident articulation of the Gospel that will ultimately commend it to a secular culture.

Third, we need to state all these things while listening carefully to the best scholarship of the age. The human mind is fallen; we cannot write blank checks to any scholarly enterprise. But since Christ is the One through whom the worlds were made, all truth coheres. Our task is to articulate the Gospel in that confidence and in that vocation.

Conclusion

Jesus said to those along the road when He was making His Palm Sunday entrance into Jerusalem that if the people did not cry out, even the stones would cry out. God will raise up His witnesses, He will gather His people to proclaim His Gospel. All nations will indeed be blessed through the faithful people of God.

The question before us is whether or not we have the desire and the courage to be part of His people, to serve the true and living God in the Gospel and give ourselves to that joyful and also costly task. Let's do it, and do it without reservation.

The Rt. Rev. Dr. John Rodgers was Trinity's second dean and Professor of Systematic Theology and also the founding Director of the Stanway Institute of World Mission and Evangelism. He is also a retired bishop of the Anglican Mission in America – he has come out of retirement to serve as Trinity's Interim Dean and President for the 2007-2008 academic year.