What is the Gospel?

Greg Gilbert, of IX Marks, wrote a very helpful article identifying two different camps that give different answers to the question, “What is the Gospel?”

Camps A and B

There is the camp that says the gospel is “the good news that God is reconciling sinners to himself through the substitutionary death of Jesus (call them “A”) and those who say the gospel is the good news that God is going to renew and remake the whole world through Christ (“B”).”

Two Different Questions

In his article, What is the Gospel?---There Are Really Two Conversations Going on Here, Not Just One, Gilbert says the two camps are really answering two different questions. Those two questions are these:

1. What is the gospel? In other words, what is the message a person must believe to be saved? And

2. What is the gospel? In other words, what is the whole good news of Christianity?

He says, when both camps hear the question, “What is the gospel?,” they hear it from the perspective of their own camp. So both camps, can both misunderstand the scope of the question and provide too narrow an answer when defining the gospel.

Broad and Narrow Sense of the Gospel

Gilbert then goes through and show that the New Testament provides both a narrow and broad understanding of the gospel. The narrow sense is the specific good news of “forgiveness of sins through the substitutionary death and resurrection of Jesus.” The narrow sense is all that God accomplished through Jesus Christ, including “God’s purpose to renew the world through Christ.”

The Broad Sense MUST Include the Narrow Sense

Gilbert then makes the point that “the broad use of the word ‘gospel’ necessarily includes the narrow.”

To proclaim the inauguration of the kingdom and the new creation and all the rest without proclaiming how people can enter it --- by repenting and being forgiven of their sins through faith in Christ and his atoning death --- is to preach a non-Gospel.

In other words, there is no gospel without the narrow sense. You can speak about the narrow sense of the gospel --- forgiveness of sins --- and have “The Gospel” without talking about the broad sense --- God’s purposes to renew creation. But, you cannot speak exclusively about the broad sense without the narrow sense and have “The Gospel.”

See "The Gospel is The Fountain"