Third Leg: The Gospels and the Gospel
One more point and then we’ll consider what it means for the church to be the gospel today. If we want to understand the gospel, we have to go to the apostolic definition, 1 Corinthians 15. And we have to go to the apostolic gospel sermons, for the apostles ought to know what the gospel is and how to preach it, and those are found in Acts. The third leg is almost cheeky in how it surprises us. Here it is, and I make this point by asking a question: Why do you think the Gospel writers and especially the early churches called the first four books of the New Testament the gospel? The answer is simple, and it virtually clinches our case: they called Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John “the gospel according to . . .” because the first four books of the New Testament are the gospel. They were not using the term “gospel” as a genre, as we do today. They were marking the substance and content of the first four books, and they called them the gospel.
The point needs emphasis. Again, when we say they are gospels we are not speaking of a kind of literature, a genre. Instead, we’re saying that they called Matthew “the gospel” because Matthew’s Gospel is the gospel. Why are they the gospel? Did they preach justification by faith? Penal substitution? Double imputation? A new kind of justice? A new kind of peace? Well, you can try hard as you want to show they did, but the honest soul knows that when he or she is done trying to wrestle the first four books into those terms that it could only be accomplished with force and coercion and twists and pleadings to make them say those things. I’m suggesting this is wrongheaded. If you equate gospel with justification by faith, as the right does, you will be disappointed with the Gospels, and that is one reason why some today avoid the Gospels when they preach and why some are wondering if they are preliminary to the gospel. In other words, though I’m putting cheeky words in their mouths, they are saying, “Poor Jesus, born on the wrong side of the cross, didn’t get to preach the full gospel.” What I’m saying is that some are driven to this because they have failed to ask basic questions and go to the basic texts. They failed to ask if it plays in the original Peoria. My friend, I’m appealing to you to reconsider the original gospel. The gospel is defined in 1 Corinthians 15, it is preached in the book of Acts, and it is detailed in the four Gospels.
So here is our conclusion: the Gospels are called the gospel (always singular, never plural) because they are preeminently the gospel. I quote an Australian, John Dickson, which ought to clinch my point: “All of the Scriptures point to the gospel, but only the Gospels recount the gospel in all its fullness. The Gospels and the gospel are one.”4 If Dickson is right, and our sketch above suggests he is, do you realize what this means for evangelism? What this means for the basic framework of theology?
We need not delay: if we are right on 1 Corinthians 15 and the gospel sermons in Acts, you can see why the Gospels are called The Gospel: because they, too, tell the story of Israel coming to completion in the complete story of Jesus as King and as the one who saves us from our sins. To make this point one other way: when asking if Jesus preached the gospel, it is customary to show how Jesus’s soteriology fits ours, or Paul’s soteriology. After wrangling with the texts long enough to show they fit, we stand up with a flag of victory and say, “See there, Jesus preached the gospel.” But this is mistaken if we are right about the gospel. Instead, we need to be asking this: “Do the Gospel writers, and does Jesus himself, make sense of life by showing that Jesus is himself the completion of Israel’s story?” We don’t ask first, “Does Jesus preach justification?” We ask first, “Does Jesus preach himself?” I could go on, my point has been made.
Church as Gospel
Our aim today is not just to argue this theological point about what the gospel was in the original Peoria, even if it is arguably the single-most important theological point that needs to be made. Instead, I want to tie the church to the gospel by saying the church is designed to be the gospel. This immediately connects us with the idea of the missio Dei,5 that is, the idea that the church does not have its own mission, but that its task is to join in God’s mission. Speaking of God’s mission invokes words like Israel, kingdom, and church as well, although we can’t resolve all these issues in this setting.6 Probing this discussion through the window of gospel will permit us to see enough to know our task.
I’m going to circle around now and say that the church is the gospel to the degree that it embodies the gospel of 1 Corinthians 15, the sermons in Acts and the Gospels themselves. That gospel is a story—a story about Israel coming to fulfillment in the story of Jesus. In essence, then, the gospel is about Jesus, and the church is to declare that story in word and in deed. The operative word for us is “embody.” But to embody that story, we have to learn the story, we will have to indwell the story, and only then can we embody the story in our world today. To each term we now turn.
Learn the Story
If we are to become truly “gospelized” people, we will have to become people of the Book, or people of the story, people who find the Bible’s story about Israel, Jesus, and the church to be their defining story. We live in a biblically available culture though not a biblically literate culture. You and I have the Bibles at our fingertips, whether in “hard copy” or on our computers and smartphones. The Bible is available, but we don’t know the Bible’s story or stories. To remedy this we are going to have to read the Bible for ourselves and draw others into that Bible; and we will have to stop preaching our favorite texts and start preaching the whole Bible, and a lectionary is a good place to start; and we might begin doing more reading from the Bible during our Sunday morning services, learning the art of the public reading of large chunks of Scripture.
I want to take Mary as an example of learning to read the Bible aright, which means a good place to start is at the low point of her life as recorded in Scripture, at Mark 3:21, 31–35:
Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat. When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.” . . . Then Jesus’ mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call him. A crowd was sitting around him, and they told him, “Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.” “Who are my mother and my brothers?” he asked. Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.”
Mary hears of the good and unconventional deeds of Jesus down on the Sea of Galilee at Capernaum. She, along with her sons and daughters (Mark 6:3), comes to the conclusion that Jesus “is out of his mind.” Dick France, after sorting out the evidence, renders the scene in these words: “Jesus’ people back home [i.e., his family] have heard reports on the rowdy scenes in Capernaum, and decide that it is time to take Jesus in hand for his own sake and for the family’s reputation, on that assumption that, to use a modern idiom, he has ‘flipped.’”7 We, together with the second evangelist, know Mary has got her facts wrong. Yes, she’s probably worried Jesus could lose his life; yes, from what she knows, her son, who is born to be Messiah, is losing favor fast with those in power; but, no, this isn’t contrary to God’s will. But Mary doesn’t know that.
Why? Because she believed every word the angel told her: that her son was destined to occupy the throne of David forever. Why? Because the song she sang, the Magnificat, sings of an imminent victory of God over the Romans and the disestablishment of injustice and the establishment of justice and peace. Why? Because her relative priest, Zechariah, said