What is a gospel? Gospel (euangelion) means good news. Good news is not a moral command but a proclamation of truth (or what is offered as truth). Good news, if it is true and deeply received, occasions rejoicing and stimulates us to respond in goodness. Religiously speaking, a gospel is not just any good news but the core message of salvation.
History has seen many different versions of Jesus' gospel. Why?
Questions multiply. Is it wrong to interpret anew? Do spiritual concepts require fresh expression in every age to meet that generation's spiritual difficulties? If we want to interpret Jesus' message for today, where shall we go? Shall we go to Paul? Or shall we try to go to Jesus, as best we can? Is the New Testament our best source of information, or are there other sources worth consulting?
Discovering Jesus' gospel is difficult because the early Christians tended to proclaim a gospel about Jesus, for example, Paul's gospel of the risen and glorified Savior: He died to atone for our sins, and to believe in him is the door to eternal life. The New Testament accounts of Jesus' life and teachings are called Gospels because these accounts point to Jesus as the Son of God and the Messiah.
Consider: in the opening chapters of Mark, the earliest Gospel (written perhaps a year or so before 70 C.E.), we have many stories of healing (drawing our attention to the extraordinary power and status of the healer) and almost no reports of Jesus' teaching, despite Jesus' own emphasis on different priorities. There was a remarkable healing at sundown where the sick and possessed of the neighborhood are healed. The next morning, everyone was searching for Jesus in response to his amazing power. Jesus, however, had drawn apart for prayer. When one of the apostles found him and reported the popular response, Jesus responded, "Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do" (Mark 1.29-38). Especially during the early phase of his public ministry, Jesus repeatedly refocuses people away from himself. Sometimes instructs the recipients of his healing to say nothing to anyone (e.g., Mark 1.44). Even much later, after Peter's confession that Jesus is the Son of God, while Jesus acknowledges the truth of what Peter has realized, he instructs the apostles not to tell others (Mark 8.30; Matthew 16.20). Jesus' gospel is not centered on himself.
What was Jesus' message? Early on we learn, "The kingdom of heaven is at hand." Jesus undoubtedly had much more to say in his core message, but we this tip of the iceberg already permits a few inferences. First, the gospel was neither a theological discourse nor a commentary on the Torah. Second, the coming of the kingdom did not await the marching of armies to overturn the Roman rule. A majority of scholars today agree that Jesus' gospel centered on the kingdom of heaven (or kingdom of God). Therefore we will pursue the gospel by pursing the meaning of the kingdom. I believe that the NT supports the following ideas.
Proclaiming that the kingdom of heaven is at hand is roughly equivalent to proclaiming, "Come on in. The water's fine!"
The next place to pursue the inquiry into the gospel is to look at the meanings of family terms in Jesus' teaching.
For factual background, note the NT references to Jesus' family in the flesh. Matthew (1.1-17) and Luke (3.23-38) give genealogies linking Jesus to David through Jesus' father Joseph. Jesus, however, rejects the "Son of David" title. (In Mark the title is proposed at 10.47 and 11.10, but Jesus denies it at 12.37.) Mark 3.32 tells us that Jesus had sisters, and 6.3 mentions four brothers, making Jesus the oldest in a family of at least seven children. Jesus' father Joseph disappears from the scene after Jesus' bar mitvah in Jerusalem close to his thirteenth birthday. Jesus, on the cross, provides for his mother Mary by directing his apostle John to take up the duties of a son (Jn 19.26-27).
Jesus emphasizes the importance of the commandments to honor your parents and to be faithful to marriage when criticizing some of the practices of the time and when counseling with the rich young man (Mk 7.9-13; 10.19; Mt 15.1-9).
Nevertheless, when push comes to shove, if family loyalties directly conflict with spiritual priorities, Jesus decisively asserts the primacy of the spiritual. When some family members accept the gospel and others do not, division may result (Lk 12.41-53). Jesus called apostles away from their families to travel with him (Mk 1.16-20; cf. 3.13-19; note that this does not entail abandoning all their family responsibilities); and he promises a reward for those who make such sacrifices (Mk 10.29). You are not to love a parent more than the one you follow spiritually (Mt 10.37). (Question: How does this statement of priorities compare and contrast with the teachings of Theravadan Buddhist Dhammapada?)
As opponents of Jesus spread the idea that Jesus was mentally unbalanced, Jesus' mother and brothers went to get him to come home (presumably to stop the embarrassment of the gospel movement). It when Jesus was speaking to a crowd that they came and asked that he stop and come out and speak with them. At such a moment, Jesus replied, "'Who are my mother and my brothers?" And looking at those who sat around him, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother" (Mk 3.33-35). Thus Jesus asserts the primacy of the faith family.
Jesus teaches that you must enter the kingdom as a child (Mk 10.13-15) and speaks of children of the kingdom (Mt 13.38). He calls disciples his children (Mk 10.24). He calls woman with hemorrhage "my daughter" (Mk 5.34) and calls the paralytic who seeks healing from him "son" (Mt. 9.2).
What meanings and values attach to accepting God as our Father that can make the primary relationship with God even more determining for one's life than a relationship with an earthly parent?
An issue for people in their late teens and early twenties, according to psychologist Erik Erikson, is the "identity crisis." Who am I? Can I identify with the ideas and values espoused by my parents? Shall I identify with my peers or a group of friends? The "Who am I?" question has a way of coming back at various stages in life. Jesus' response seems to be that the core answer to the question is that you are a son or daughter of God.
The most clear and obvious spiritual truth to many people is that all humankind are a family, that we are all brothers and sisters, all sons and daughters of God, no matter what we believe or don't believe. The Creator made each of us and loves each one, and we are all his children. Countless people find that obvious truth in Jesus' life and teachings. However, during the past century, conservative interpreters of the New Testament have challenged this interpretation. It is most interesting to explore to what extent the NT gives evidence that Jesus taught the universal brotherhood of man (siblinghood of humankind).
The NT never happens to record Jesus teaching the brotherhood of man. There is one verse, however, that clearly implies it. In Matthew 23.9 Jesus is in the midst of his last temple discourse, his final denunciation of the murderous hypocrisy of his enemies. He says, "Call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father who is in heaven." All humans, therefore, have a common spiritual father.
The parable of the Good Samaritan emphasizes that you do not have to belong to the religious in-group to be a stellar example of love (Luke 10.25-37).
Jesus' interest in all kinds of people, his readiness to party with sinners, his teachings that continually emphasize service to those who are marginalized, depressed, oppressed, poor, and beset with difficulties. Thus Jesus seems to practice the universal family of God.
In Sermon on the Mount, Jesus warns about being angry with a brother or insulting a brother, and tells that we should be reconciled (Mt 5.22-24). What is the scope of the term brother here? Is it spiritually acceptable to be angry with non-believers?
Did Jesus really, in effect, teach the universal family of God? Discussions will continue for the forseeable future. It is crucial not to let theological disputes fracture good relations between those who interpret things differently. Those who regard humankind as a brotherhood and those who regard humankind as a neighborhood can all live beautifully loving lives.
For Christians, Jesus is the Son of God in a unique sense. Scholars debate the meaning of the term Son of God and note that the term was used in the Hebrew Bible to refer to the king, God's anointed ruler on earth (Messiah). John's Gospel teaches that Jesus came down to earth from heaven. The idea that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine has been a mystery proclaimed by believers--and debated by followers of Jesus as well as by others.
Jesus did not go around pointing at himself and trying to get people to say, "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus." He pointed primarily to the Father, and the title that he took for his mission was the Son of Man. Nevertheless he did say, "I and the Father are one" (Jn 10.30). "No one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him" (Lk 10.22).
As opposition to the gospel movement grew, Jesus responded by taking the offensive in open warfare and by saying more about himself. The pivotal series of events are narrated in John 6. Jesus provokes the crowd to manifest openly its desire to have him be their wonder-working king and then frustrates their ambition. He challenges the legend that Moses' followers were sustained by bread from heaven, and says, "I am the bread of life."
Paul and other Christian teachers proclaimed a gospel about Jesus in contrast to the gospel of Jesus, and it is hard to estimate the consequences of that shift. Even if they proclaimed truth, they inverted Jesus' proposed sequence of discovery and growth. It is understandable that they did so, given their dramatic and thrilling experiences. Nevertheless, even in resurrection appearances, Jesus continued to speak of the kingdom (Acts 1.3).
Despite the fact that teachings about Jesus were not the leading edge of the gospel of the kingdom, it cannot be denied that some teaching about Jesus was part of the gospel in its fullness.
The outworking of these issues surrounding the gospel is part of the drama of our age.
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