I’ve been doing quite a bit of reading on the Apostle Paul this Summer. It’s been amazing. Doing so has forced me to revisit this basic question: what is the gospel? Christians have creeds with exact formulas that help us understand the doctrines of the incarnation of Jesus, the Trinity, and other less important matters. But we do not have a creed that concretely defines what the gospel is. If you ask different Christians for a definition, you will get various responses. Some will be contradictory to each other. Others will be complementary. The denominational group one belongs to will frame and shape your answer accordingly. A Catholic/Orthodox will give you a very different formulation of the gospel than, say, an American Evangelical.

What is the gospel (at it’s simplest) based just on the Bible?

“Jesus is the Christ” is the BASIC gospel message in the Bible. See Acts 5:42; 8:4-5; 9:22; 17:2-3; 18:5, 28.

The New Testament obviously elaborates and expands on that by explaining the meaning and significance of the Messiahship of Jesus. The Apostle PAUL is the person who we are most indebted to for helping us understand/live the gospel. What is the gospel according to the Apostle Paul? Is there someone who could summarize his message in one sentence? Michael Gorman does just that. Let’s see how he summarizes Paul’s gospel:

Paul preached, and then explained in various pastoral, community-forming letters, a narrative, apocalyptic, theopolitical gospel (1) in continuity with the story of Israel and (2) in distinction to the imperial gospel of Rome (and analogous powers) that was centered on God’s crucified and exalted Messiah Jesus, whose incarnation, life, and death by crucifixion were validated and vindicated by God in his resurrection and exaltation as Lord, which inaugurated the new age or new creation in which all members of this diverse but consistently covenantally dysfunctional human race who respond in self-abandoning and self-committing faith thereby participate in Christ’s death and resurrection and are (1) justified, or restored to right covenant relations with God and with others; (2) incorporated into a particular manifestation of Christ the Lord’s body on earth, the church, which is an alternative community to the status-quo human communities committed to and governed by Caesar (and analogous rulers) and by values contrary to the gospel; and (3) infused both individually and corporately by the Spirit of God’s Son so that they may lead “bifocal” lives, focused both back on Christ’s first coming and ahead to his second, consisting of Christlike, cruciform (cross-shaped) (1) faith and (2) hope toward God and (3) love toward both neighbors and enemies (a love marked by peaceableness and inclusion), in joyful anticipation of (1) the return of Christ, (2) the resurrection of the dead to eternal life, and (3) the renewal of the entire creation.

There it is. Paul’s gospel in one long, complex sentence!