The gospel is my focus in study and research these days, and the subject of most my extra lectures I'm giving at various places, and I want to post two definitions of the gospel I've recently seen. How do you "define" the gospel?Here's a first option, which I've slightly edited, and one that is becoming more and more a way articulating the gospel for some:
"The gospel is not a call to follow Christ's example or his teachings. It is not a proclamation of his kingly reign. It is not an invitation to enter the Church. It does not include a promise of his return. These are all aspects of Christian teaching. But the Gospel, very specifically, is the starting point that prepares for the teaching. The gospel is the good news that Jesus came to save us from our sins by dying on the cross and rising from the dead."The second one comes from NT Wright, from his book called What Saint Paul Really Said: Was Paul of Tarsus the Real Founder of Christianity?
:My proposal has been that 'the gospel' is not, for Paul, a message about 'how one gets saved', in an individual and ahistorical sense. It is a fourfold announcement about Jesus:Two options on the table here. What do you think? Which best captures the gospel for you? What would add to each or either to make it better?
1. In Jesus of Nazareth, specifically in his cross, the decisive victory has been won over all the powers of evil, including sin and death themselves.
2. In Jesus' resurrection the New Age has dawned, inaugurating the long-awaited time when the prophecies would be fulfilled, when Israel's exile would be over, and the whole world would be addressed by the one creator God.
3. The crucified and risen Jesus was, all along, Israel's Messiah, her representative king.
4. Jesus was therefore also the Lord, the true king of the world, the one at whose name every knee would bow.
Add to Del.icio.us
Add to Technorati
Add to Digg
Add to Newsvine
Add to Facebook
Add to StumbleUpon
Subscribe
I cannot see how the New Testament can be separated into such parts. 50 days after Jesus'resurrection (if I remember that point correctly), Peter and the Apostles preached and everyone heard the speech in their own languages. Paul was struck on the road and thereafter spent all his time and energy presenting Jesus Christ to people, using what God presented to him and what he said was his own ideas to complement that information. The whole Bible leads to Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the living God, and we must do as it says within our own understanding and within meeting together as a congregation worshiping God..
Matthew is the most lengthy and therefore the most indepth but if John were added to it it would be more complete.
For the most parts, I reject them both.
The word gospel, I have found, is defined as "good news". I recognize good and evil to be abstracts, words without any sense recognizable existence, therefore it should be defined only as "the news". Matthew 28:19-20 is one of the places we find that to be the proper definition. The name which is the father's and also common to the son and holy ghost is I AM THAT I AM.
That name being the only name by which one can be saved says it all. It says good and evil do not exist, what is, is what it is, therefore everything any life does is what it is supposed to do.
As soon as one began to recognize that fact they began to find purpose for every thing happening rather than judging them. In that way they are purified from the mind of good and evil and cut away from all attachments causing them to use all thing according to the found purposes and receives life everlasting.
I don't believe either of the choices given are entirely correct. I believe that the Gospel is the good news that though he did not have to, Jesus (The Word of God) chose to leave the splendor he had known in Heaven and come to Earth to pay the debt we all owed for our sins and offer himself for our salvation from ourselves and from Hell. This includes being born to a virgin in a lowly manger, living 33 years on Earth, Being rejected, scorned, and beaten before finally being hung on a cross, buried in a borrowed tomb, and rising again after three days and he still lives today and is still willing to forgive our sins, turn our lives around and help us through life's toughest times. I believe this is the theme found in all of the books of the Gospel.
Faith comes by hearing and hearing the words of God.Hearing and hearing means a repeated act over and over,not necessarily just hearing,but for that sake,one requires to go to church to hear
pastors and spiritual messengers of the words of God.Faith requires
reading too day and night or 24/7 commitment,not litterary reading
but by your insights of what you have heard and read,apply or meditate
the words day and night as you live everyday.Before making list of
books or hymns of where you base your faith and belief,answer the
Question,do you Faith in God?Once you have answer,then your
references will automatically draw to you as you are seeking for the truth and will continue to shine.The simplest form where to
base your faith is when you start to ask and wonder who created
nature?There must be a baseline from inside of you to start your
search and so on and so forth...
Post a Comment
By submitting these comments, I agree to the beliefnet.com terms of service, rules of conduct and privacy policy (the "agreements"). I understand and agree that any content I post is licensed to beliefnet.com and may be used by beliefnet.com in accordance with the agreements.