What is the Gospel (2)

In the last post we sampled some Scot McKnight's ideas in The King Jesus Gospel. We concluded by saying that the author believes the gospel is the Story of Jesus as it is embedded in the Story of Israel.

McKnight's big idea is that the gospel is not equal to SALVATION. The gospel is the power of God for salvation (Rom 1.16) and the gospel is preached so that hearers will receive salvation; but the gospel, the good news about Jesus Christ is not essentially salvation.

How does McKnight support this hypothesis?

He says, ponder 1 Cor 15.1-8, 12-28. Paul speaks expressly of the gospel he preached to the Corinthians and he starts with the fact that 'Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures and that he was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures and that he was seen by Cephas (Peter), and then by the twelve. . . seen by over five hundred brethren at once . . . . Then last of all He was seen by me also' (1 Cor 15.3-8). A death-burial-resurrection-appearances theme is evident.

So when the gospel is preached, Christ is preached as the One who died for our sins, who was buried and rose again on the third day etc. but Paul adds this crucial phrase: ACCORDING TO THE SCRIPTURES. He uses it twice in two verses.

Which scriptures is he talking about? He's talking about what we call the Old Testament (OT) and what the Jews call the Tanakh, a word based on the three parts of the OT: torah, prophets and writings. All but the first 11 chapters of the Tanakh document God's dealing with the Patriarchs, and with Israel. These OT Scriptures testify to the Christ, the Messiah. Isaiah 53 tells us in detail about the Messiah's dying for sin and our healing. We remember that Jesus used these scriptures with the two disciples he met on the Emmaus Rd.

McKnight then says, examine the preaching of the Jesus Christ and note that primarily Jesus preaches Himself as the realisation of the pious hopes of Israel! Jesus Christ is the good news embodied; revealed even in his name (Yahweh saves)! No wonder some of the leaders--not all--but many rail against Jesus because of what he says about himself. Jesus's primary message is 'Look at Me!'. (Young ego-centred children use that phrase but Jesus is centred in the will of his Father. His 'look at me' is a getting followers to look to the Father through Jesus.)

But we need to see that that's the gospel (according to McKnight)! The good news is that Jesus's story is the capstone and fulfilment of Israel's story. (I'm not so enamoured of the term 'story' which is big in theology circles at the moment but I'll say more about this at a later time.)

And then says McKnight, look at the 'sermons' throughout the Acts of the Apostles. If you go through them you will find that over and over they focus on Jesus death, burial and resurrection as the culmination of Israel's travail. Now in two places that does not happen (Acts 13, and Acts 17) but nevertheless we find it in Acts 2.14-39; 3.12-26; 8-12; 10.34-43 with 11.4-18; 13.16-41. McKnight adds Acts 14.15-17; 17.22-31 and Stephen's sermon in Acts 7.2-53.

McKnight's thesis is that Israel's story 'frames' all the apostolic preaching of the gospel from Jerusalem to Rome (Acts 28); however the point becomes whether he can fully sustain this thesis.

What is the Gospel? (1)

Scot McKnight believes that the question, What is the gospel?, is a crucial question for the church. He also believes the church to be confused about the 'real' answer to the question, the biblical answer.

I've not long finished a stimulating book by McKnight, The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited (2011).

Provocatively he argues that Evangelicals (those supposedly concerned about the evangel, the gospel, good news) today are not really evangelical at all! They are more accurately called soterians! (He's coined this word to denote those who are primarily concerned with salvation at the expense of the gospel.)

He believes that evangelicals--and included in this description would be many charismatic and Pentecostal churches as well--have built 'salvation cultures' (p. 29) rather than 'gospel cultures'. The two he affirms are not the same thing even though the former is part of the latter. Once might say that the gospel is the big picture whereas salvation is one of the smaller pictures within that.

So we might ask, So what is the gospel?


He's not quick to answer that until he mentions some of his concerns about modern-day evangelicalism and also the traditional, mainline denominations (one of which I attend).

Starting with the latter first, he says that to baptise babies or young children and then onto confirmation is leading to big problems. In many cases, the baptised are never brought back to church. Their parents don't ever bring them back and hence they never get the instruction preceding confirmation. The mainline, traditional churches generally as we know are slowly dying of old age. They often have 'members' of the church who have never personally believed on Jesus Christ as the Son of God.

But what is happening in the evangelical world is sometimes not much better! Although some sort of personal response is called for and made, those decision-makers don't always go on to become disciples. They come to church perhaps and worship but during the week their discipleship of Christ is lacking. For example, from personal experience I am been shocked by what some 'Christian' converts claiming to be 'born-again' imagine is acceptable moral behaviour.

McKnight does not believe that people should not be challenged to make 'decisions for Christ' and elect to believe on him as the Saviour of the world--what he calls 'the decided' group. But it should not stop there. The 'decided' need to be discipled, to be disciples of Christ.

And yes I know, we still haven't got to the answer to the question of what is the gospel. To do that, McKnight says, we have to distinguish (but not separate) four elements: the Story of Israel/the Bible; the Story of Jesus; the Plan of Salvation; the Method of Persuasion. McKnight states that Evangelicalism, and even Catholicism and Orthodoxy would align the gospel with the Plan of Salvation. Under that understanding, the Plan and the Method are often merged (but that is another issue).

He believes the Story of Jesus as it is embedded in the Story of Israel is essentially the gospel (particularly as we find it in 1 Cor 15.1-8) and in the historic creeds of the church (Apostles' and Nicene Creeds).

Next time I will give an outline of how he arrives at that idea and whether it is sustainable.

Becoming a Trinitarian

The teaching of the Trinity looms large in my life because I was raised in a non-trinitarian family. Indeed my grandpa was also non-trinitarian; he died too early for me to appreciate what he might have to say about this teaching but the family attended an early Pentecostal church in Melbourne founded in 1907 that seemed to have the view that it would only quote scripture with regard to its beliefs and nothing else.

I say the latter because their statement of belief did not make definitive statements about God the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost but simply quoted scripture. (Interestingly, this church was very open to Trinitarians worshipping with them and was not hostile or antagonistic towards them; nor did it actively speak against Trinitarianism.)

It took me some time to work my way out of this frame of belief and it came about through a most unusual way. Although my family's belief about Jesus' deity was my no means identical with that of the Jehovah's Witnesses it had certain similarities.

In the 1960s, Witnesses were active in visiting homes and trying to get them to join their Kingdom Halls and being unhappy to become embroiled in argument for which I was equipped I purchased, Why I Left Jehovah's Witnesses by Ted Dencher (1966). Dencher had a chapter on why he believed in the deity of Christ which was to bring a momentous change in my beliefs. My family believed in the deity (godhood) of Christ too but they also believed in Christ's essential subordination. They understood God the Father to be Almighty but Jesus to be only 'the Mighty God' (Isa 9.6-7).

The Rights and Wrongs of Subordination
Orthodox Christian belief is much more nuanced than my family gave it credit for. I once heard a Muslim arguing against the deity of Christ and many of his New Testament quotations I had heard quoted with approval within my family!

But what Muslims and unorthodox Christians fail to understand is that Jesus in the flesh was subordinated to the Father (Phil 2.5-7; Heb 2.9) and no orthodox Christian believer should find that unacceptable. Hence, all the passages such as the Father being greater than the Son (Jn 14.28) and the idea of the Son proceeding forth from God (Jn 8.42) are perfectly in line with this subordinate state that Jesus adopted in coming to us in the flesh.

But to take the above Philippians passage (Phil 2.6-7) further: Jesus is said to be in very nature God before his incarnation but did not attempt to use his divine prerogatives for his own betterment but humbled himself. In Hebrews, Jesus is also said to be 'the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person' (Heb 1.3).

Names and Titles of Christ
What stunned me about Dencher's presentation was that he identified the number of times that Jesus uses names and titles reserved only for God. For example, who is the First and the Last? The Old Testament says in Isaiah 44.6, that Jehovah, YHWH, is the 'First and the Last'; but when we look at Revelation 22 we find that Jesus uses this same title if the chapter is read through carefully noting who the various speakers are (Rev 22.7; 12; 16; 20)!! Jesus says he is coming soon (v12) and then identified himself in verse 16.

Just these few differences with what I had been taught made me begin to question that family tradition which was held on both sides of the former generation. I value what I have learned from them but couldn't continue to believe what clearly I came to see was not scriptural. However, breaking away from my family's teachings was not easy.

The Emphasis in John's Account on the Disciples' Faith

I've been intrigued by Jn 2.11 where it is said that after seeing the sign of water into wine and the manifestation of Christ's glory, 'his disciples believed [put their faith, NIV] in him'.

What's intriguing about that you might ask?
Well, the text doesn't comment for example on the belief or otherwise of anyone else. Not the servants who filled the stone jars or the 'master of the banquet' (NIV)--all of these knew about the miraculous sign--but the active faith of the disciples.

The gospel writer is sophisticated and chooses his words and themes carefully and as responsible readers we must do that same. That this observation above is not just happenstance is seen in the fact that in the same chapter after Jesus has driven out the money changers out of the temple precincts, a similar statement is made (Jn 2.22). And in this statement, the author projects us into the post-resurrection period when the disciples 'recalled what he had said [about his body being raised in three days]. Then they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken' (NIV).

Even before John 2.11 we've heard about the faith of the disciple by either implication as in Andrew's, Simon Peter's and Philip's cases or directly as in Nathaniel's case. The latter scorns the idea that anything good can come out of Nazareth but is confronted by the Son of Man who knows him and confesses that he is the Son of God, the King of Israel (Jn 1.49).

Why is the writer so focussed on the disciples' faith?

At least one of the answers to that question is found in Jn 2.23-25. This little passage is slightly discordant in terms of the above because Jesus, we notice, doesn't take the faith of those who see his signs at face value. He calls a certain disciple group to trust in Him and in turn he is entrusting himself to them.

But apparently not to everyone because 'he knew all men'; he knew their instability and fickleness it would appear and his time 'had not yet come' to be handed over to be executed (which has been alluded to in verse 4 and verses 19-21).

The faith of the disciples is going to grow throughout the gospel account and even after the Resurrection; so we should take heart. The faith that we have today by God's grace is going to grow as we mature in union with our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Power of Pentecost

It's Pentecost Today! (Well yesterday it was anyway!) You know, the day the Church of 120 in the first century got its first dose of the Holy Spirit with power.

Being brought up in the AoG in the 50s and 60s we knew Acts 2.1-4 off by heart because we heard and we sang it often. In the church I was in, the choir used to sing a rendition of this passage and I can hear that choir's recital coursing through my heart's memory as I write this.

This filling with the Holy Spirit equipped the Church for service and the service was for the salvation of those around. It was not just for the edification of the apostles and disciples but for the salvation of others. That's the whole business of the gospel which is 'the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes' (Rom 1.16).

But Pentecost had been celebrated and still is within the Jewish community. Pentecost (denoting 50th day) was the 50th day after the Exodus reaching to the giving of the Law at Sinai. The day was associated with the harvest of first-fruits so one could understand the respondents to Peter's message to be an in-gathering of the First Fruits.

Interestingly this Feast is regarded as second only after Easter. Hence, although much is made of the Incarnation, Pentecost is considered more important by the Church.

Prayer
We also have today a number of strange practices abroad in the Church including praying directly to the Holy Spirit for which no biblical warrant exists. (In fact, it's hard to find any prayers in the New Testament addressed directly to the ascended Son either.) We should always pray to the Father through the Son and in the power of the Holy Spirit. All Paul's prayers follow this model.

Surely The Lord is in this Place: A sermon I wish I had written

My good friend Jeanette has done it again with a blockbuster sermon that I wish I had written or been present to hear. Preachers get a lot out of preparing a sermon and it's a shame that much of that work may just go out into the air and not be grasped.

However, I still believe in preaching and value it over 'dialogues', 'hi-tech' displays etc. which entertain more than they inform. Preachers are not entertainers so it can be hard to understand, in our western world which is 'entertaining itself to death', a phrase based on the educator's Neil Postman's graphic book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, that preachers are not sent for that purpose.

Someone has said that only recently have Christians had to ask themselves the question for the first time in history, how much time they should spend entertaining themselves!

Anyway, enough of my ranting for Jeanette's sermon is spiritually entertaining and refreshing.