The irrupting gospel

One of the most refreshing developments in recent Western Christian theology is the rediscovery of the Kingdom of God concept in the gospel. Jesus led the in-breaking of the presence of God into the world in a variety of stunning ways, including healing the sick, casting out evil, and feeding the hungry. He brought justice to the down-and-out. He had control over every aspect of nature in order to show us what the world ought to look like – that the world was not intended for suffering, despair, and oppression, or decay, but that we were intended to live in a physical and spiritual world of harmony, peace, joy, and life.

Gospel definitions?

What is the gospel?

For Christians, we hear the word so much that sometimes we don’t even bother to try to define what it is. On one level, this would seem to be a problem, because the gospel is the very center of Christianity. How can we know what it is if we can’t define it?

According to the gospel of Mark, the gospel is at least this: that the Kingdom of God was inaugurated by Jesus when he came to the earth. There’s a lot to unpack there, including the presence of God in Jesus and his power over evil, nature, hunger and death. And even though Mark does not say that the gospel is “Jesus loves you” or “justification by faith,” he would likely say that those things are included. The question is, “why didn’t he?”

Mark defies the Western desire for definitions in that he does not try to boil the gospel down to a set of principles. For Mark, the gospel was all about sharing the stories of Jesus in such a way that people were forced at almost every turn to make a decision about him. I have come to find that evangelism is much easier when I do the same.