When you regularly attend church, there are some fairly uncommon words that you get used to hearing. “Gospel” is one of them. We talk a lot about it, but what is it, really? “Good news,” you might reply. That is true: but what is the good news about?
“The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” is how Mark opened his New Testament book, diving right into John the Baptist’s preaching and Jesus being baptized (Mk. 1:1). Matthew described the start of Jesus’ own ministry as “proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people” (Mt. 4:23). Luke described Jesus “teaching the people in the temple and preaching the gospel” in the final days leading up to the crucifixion (Lk. 20:1). Clearly then, the “good news” has something to do with Jesus…but what about Him exactly?
To fully appreciate the significance of Jesus proclaiming the “gospel of the kingdom”, we must go back 700 years before His birth to a prophecy from Isaiah. Foreseeing the Jewish people’s coming captivity and exile, the prophet proclaimed, “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns’” (Isa. 52:7). At a time of great desperation for God’s people, the “good news” proclaimed that God still reigned. One day, the watchmen would “sing for joy” when they witnessed the “return of the LORD to Zion”, at which time God would comfort His people and “all the ends of the earth” would see His salvation (Isa. 52:8-10). As the Apostle Paul so beautifully explained in Romans 10 – even quoting this passage from Isaiah in verse 15 – Jesus fulfilled this hope.
While those who knew Isaiah’s hope looked for the LORD’s return, names meaning “God with us” and “God saves” were associated with Jesus from before His birth (cf. Mt. 1:21-23). Through both His teaching and miracles, He brought the comfort the prophet so longed for as the captives received liberty and the blind recovered their sight (cf. Lk. 4:18-21). More than just proofs of His identity, these acts were part of the “good news of the kingdom”. Every illness Jesus healed and heart He changed demonstrated God’s mighty reign in people’s lives. Through Jesus the Christ – which means “Anointed One” or “King” – people weighed down by the burdens of sin were set free from their captivity to live new, abundant lives under His rule.
While a reign typically ends with the ruler’s death, Jesus’ death and burial actually brought His reign to its ultimate fulfillment. The sinless Son of God was “glorified” through His death on the cross, and He drew all people to Himself by being “lifted up from the earth” (cf. Jn. 12:27-33). When Jesus rose from the dead on Sunday morning, He defeated death itself, giving Him absolute authority until He comes again to destroy that “last enemy” and to deliver the kingdom to the Father (cf. 1 Cor. 15:20-28).
This is the “good news” – the “gospel” – of Jesus Christ: He reigns. We see it in His life, as He exercised power over sickness and evil. We see it in His victory over sin by dying on the cross and over death by His resurrection. We see it in how all of that fulfilled prophecies that were already ancient when He walked the earth. One day, all will see it when He comes again, causing every knee to bow and every tongue to confess, “Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:9-11).
Until then, this is the good news we preach without shame: there is no other gospel (cf. Rom. 1:15-17, Gal. 1:6-9). It is good news that we not only hear but that we obey and are saved by (cf. 2 Thess. 1:5-10). Our obedience to it begins when we die to sin, being “buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:4). Yet long after the waters from our own baptisms dry, we continue to receive and stand in the gospel (cf. 1 Cor. 15:1-2). Our submission to and confession of the good news of Jesus’ reign leads us to lives of lavish, self-sacrificing love like His (cf. 2 Cor. 9:12-14). Just like lives changed when Jesus healed illness, undid death, and taught the “upside down” values of God’s kingdom – just like the world changed when He died on the cross, was buried, and rose from the dead – our obedience to the gospel of His kingdom reign changes us. And that is good news.
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