9.17.2025

On Wednesday nights we’re studying the gospel of Mark, which opens with the words, “The beginning of the gospel [or good news, depending on your translation] of Jesus Christ.”

What is the gospel? 

Gospel is a word I hear tossed around a lot. It can refer to a style of music or it can refer to doctrine. Most people will answer something like “the gospel is ‘good news’ about Jesus Christ, specifically his life, death, and resurrection, and the salvation offered through faith in him Jesus died on the cross for our sins.” I googled that, but it’s a typical summation.

I grew up in a culture where we “shared the gospel” in a memorized formula in order to persuade someone (usually during a guerilla-style attack) to become a Christian. We would knock on someone’s door on a Saturday morning and share the 4 Spiritual Laws, a set of principles outlining the Christian gospel of salvation, popularized by Bill Bright and Campus Crusade. We would share the principles, hoping the hearer would be persuaded to make a commitment. 

Or we would accost people at the Mall and share the Romans Road. This claimed to be a “plan of salvation” or “Gospel presentation” taken from the book of Romans, when it was really just a collection of scriptures (Romans 3:23; 6:23; 5:8; 10:9-10) ripped out of context and strung together to make an argument Paul is not making. 

Both of those presentations, while they contain some truth, are inadequate because neither one presents the gospel as offered in the Bible. 

But if the Romans Road or the Four Spiritual Laws are not the gospel . . .  then what is?

I’m glad you asked. 

First, what do we mean by “gospel”? Our word comes from the Old English “godspell” meaning good (god) and news (spell). And it translates the Greek, euangelion. If you change the “u” to a “v” you can see the word “evangel” and everything related to it: evangel, evangelist, evangelism. 

Most modern translations use “good news” instead of “gospel” so I’m going to stick with that.

That Greek word, euangelion or “Good News,” was used in the ancient Greco-Roman world to describe significant political announcements. Imagine this: it’s a Monday morning, you’re in the market square, buying olives, when the angelos (the Greek word for messenger and yes, the word angel comes from this) who is traveling from town to town on behalf of the emperor, proclaims the euangelion, the “good news.” That good news could be a military triumph or the enthronement of an emperor, like Caesar Augustus. Some 4 or so years before Jesus was  born, one of those proclamations was carved into stone, declaring: “the birthday of the god Augustus was the beginning of the good news [euangelion] for the world that came because of him.” 

And if you catch a resemblance between the phrase, “the birthday of the god Augustus was the beginning of the good news” and the opening verse of Mark’s gospel, “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ,” its probably not a coincidence.  

Because just as the non-Jewish people, the Gentiles, heard the word gospel or good news, and thought of an official royal announcement, so did the Jews. 

This was the heart of the Jewish hope, as expressed in Isaiah 40:9-10, “Get you up to a high mountain, O herald of good news to Zion; lift up your voice with strength, O herald of good news to Jerusalem; lift it up, do not fear; say to the cities of Judah, “Here is your God!” See, the Lord God comes with might, and his arm rules for him.”

We read it also in Isaiah 52:7-8, “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.” Listen! Your sentinels lift up their voices; together they shout for joy, for in plain sight they see the return of the Lord to Zion.”

Just like for the Gentiles, the Jews looked on the words “good news” as a Royal Announcement: God was returning to reign. God had departed Jerusalem (Ezekiel 10) and, though promised, had never returned to his people. 

Until now. In Jesus, God is returning! That’s the good news of the gospel promised in Mark 1:14-15, “ Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the good news of  God  and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

That’s the good news. That’s the gospel. Over and over, Jesus’s teaching is summarized as being “the gospel of the kingdom” (Matt 4:23; 9:35; 24:14; Luke 4:43; 8:1; 16:16; cf. John 3:3, 5). And where there’s a kingdom, there’s got to be a King! 

So, most of our ideas about the good news or the gospel are too small. We make them to be about me and my salvation when in reality, the good news is about what is happening in all the world. The gospel, or “good news,” is not about giving you fire insurance to escape hell when you die, but is the story of what God is doing in Jesus: God is dethroning Satan and taking back the rule of earth.

What does that mean for us? I’ll get into that next week!

Blessings,
Pastor Terry