What Is the Gospel

“At the heart of the Pastoral Epistles is the gospel of Jesus Christ: God has acted in grace and mercy through the death of Christ with an offer of forgivness, to which people must respond in faith, turning from evil, receiving empowerment through God’s Spirit, and looking forward to eternal life… In all this, the Pastoral Epistles are fully Pauline.”

• William Mounce

The heart of the Gospel=the proclamation that God has acted.

Acted how? In Jesus Christ

Acted in what way? In grace and mercy, meaning it is a pure gift. In response to death, which demands a life giving work. In the grander scope of this quote what you have is an acting to do what God promises to do, which was defeat the Powers of Sin and Death so as to bring about the new reality of the kingdom of God on earth as it is in Heaven. God doesn’t use death. God doesn’t operate through death. God doesn’t demand death. God defeats death in Jesus the Christ (the king, or promised Messiah)

What flows from this action? The proclamation of the full forgiveness of sins, meaning that as occupy space in a world enslaved to Sin and Death, Jesus’ person and work removes all such obstacles to the free participation in the newly inaugurated kingdom of God in the here and now. Why was sin an obstacle? For two reasons. It is a colonizing effect on our lives that prevents the sort of participation that can bring transforming and life. And second, based on how the old and new realities function together, the ancients understood this movement from one space to another, from one kingdom to another, to move through the fire that stands at the entrance to Eden amd to the tabernacle. And becasue God cannot exist where Sin and Death exists, to move through that fire can only transform or destroy according to the new reality. This why the life giving properties of Jesus’ person and work- the blood- remove the pollution of sin, making it so that through faithful participation in the kingdom of God we are then transformed. This is not satisfying a God who must punish us with death, but a grace gift that reaches into our sin soaked world with the good news that God has at long last done what He promised to do in and for the world.

This to me is the Gospel.