04.20.07

Gospel — Facts or Person?

Posted in Reading, Mission at 7:25 am by Anthony

After being a Christian all of my life, I find it amazing that I’m still working on answering the very fundamental question “What is the gospel?” As a child I was taught that the gospel consisted of “facts to be believed and commands to be obeyed.” When I was in college students and teachers debated whether the gospel consisted of all biblical teachings or “the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ.” For a long time I accepted the shorter version, but as I’ve gotten to know Jesus better, I’ve found a lot of gospel — the good news of the kingdom — operating long before Jesus made it to the cross. Yesterday, in a commentary on Matthew by Stanley Hauerwas, I came across this statement.

That he [Jesus] must go to those in neeed indicates that the gospel is not and cannot be a set of beliefs. The gospel is the man, and this man must encounter actual men and women in order to call them into the community of the new age. Evangelism is people meeting and coming to know people. … A church that is not a missionary church is not a church. The book of Acts witnesses to the necessity for disciples of Christ to, like Jesus himself, be on the move. (p. 103)

Is the gospel a set of beliefs or a person? Or a set of beliefs about a person? Or a relationship with a person? Hauerwas’s point, and I think it’s a good one, seems to be that people whose lives are shaped by the gospel will be in relationship with people who need good news, who need Jesus, and that the gospel/Jesus cannot be shared apart from relationships. If the gospel is information, answering the question “What must I do to be saved?,” then that information can be conveyed without relationship. But when the jailor asked that question, Paul and Silas went to his home and shared with his family — in the context of real-life relationships, how “believing on the Lord Jesus Christ” was to be lived out. If lives are to be transformed, then it must happen through life-on-life sharing.

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