The Gospel is the most important message of our faith, and yet so few of us know what it is, much less how to live it. Too many Christians think that the Gospel is, “You can go to Heaven when you die if you believe in Jesus”, or something along those lines. But this common misunderstanding gets it the wrong way around. We think the Gospel is about us, but it’s really about God.

As we try to understand what the Gospel is, maybe the best place to start is with Jesus. What did he think the Gospel was? What did he mean when he said, in Mark 1:15, “Repent and believe the good news (the Gospel)”? One thing he didn’t mean was how we typically read this: “If you stop sinning and believe in me then you can go to Heaven.” (Not that that statement isn’t true or important, it’s just not what he is saying here.) What does Jesus have in mind when he utters the word “Gospel”?

In order to answer this question, we have to go back to the only Bible Jesus had—the Old Testament. “Gospel” is not a word we find often in the Hebrew Scriptures, but there is one very important passage where it is found. It is this passage, Isaiah 52:7, to which Jesus is alluding in Mark 1:15. It reads: 

How beautiful on the mountains
            are the feet of those who bring good news,
who proclaim peace,
            who bring good tidings,
            who proclaim salvation,
who say to Zion,
            “Your God reigns!”

It may not be easy to spot if you’re just giving this a cursory reading because Isaiah is building tension, but the “good news” is “Your God reigns”. You could circle good news (which, in the Greek Old Testament is the same word as good news or gospel in the Greek New Testament) and draw an arrow to the message “Your God reigns”. Whose God reigns? The God of Zion. And who is that? YHWH. The Creator God. God the Father. The Gospel of the Old Testament (and, therefore, the Gospel for Jesus and his disciples) is: YHWH is King.

When Jesus delivers his first line in Mark, he is saying, “The time has come! The kingdom of God is near. Lay down your agenda and believe that YHWH is King!” I’ve written about this elsewhere, calling it Gospel 1.0.

I call it Gospel 1.0 because Jesus has changed everything. Jesus came and, through his life, death, resurrection and ascension, provided a subtle but crucial nuance to the gospel.

When Jesus came preaching through Galilee he announced, over and over again, that the kingdom of God was now coming upon Israel. In fact, Luke records his first public teaching as the reading of a kingdom-passage from Isaiah. After reading this passage, Jesus sat down and simply said, “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” In other words, Jesus was saying that the kingdom of God was “breaking upon you through me.” YHWH is becoming King (truly, fully, and over against all the other gods of all the other nations that had oppressed Israel) in and through the life and ministry of Jesus. (This is a summary of what N.T. Wright writes in, among other places, The Challenge of Jesus.)

So Jesus is essentially walking around ancient Israel saying, “Believe the gospel that YHWH is King, and watch it happen through me.” The funny thing is that Jesus was probably not the first to say this (there were plenty of other would-be Messiahs in his day). But Jesus is the only one who could back it up, not by defeating Rome, but by defeating sickness, demonic powers, and in several instances even death itself.

Ultimately, of course, Jesus defeated his own death. His resurrection was the decisive victory over Israel’s (and all of humanity’s) true enemy—Satan, ruling through sin and death. His ascension was not so much spiritual space travel as it was the act of the true cosmic king taking his rightful place on the singular throne over all creation. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians, the Father put everything under the authority of the Son. In other words, Jesus is King.

This is the Gospel 2.0—the good news as Christians understand it. Jesus is King (or, if you prefer, Lord). Because of the obedience of the Son, the Father placed him on the throne and put him over all things (except for himself, of course). The kingdom of God, then, is ruled and mediated by Jesus. It is his kingdom. YHWH is King because of what his Son did; and because the Son did what he did, the Father made him king. That’s the Gospel 2.0—Jesus is King.

At the end of his book, the apostle John writes this intriguing little statement: Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room enough for the books that would be written. As he looks back on his three (or so) years with Jesus, John is basically admitting, “I’ve forgotten more about Jesus than I’ve written here.”

Even if Jesus only did the things recorded in the gospels, he did a lot of amazing things. And even if he only said the things recorded in the gospels, he spoke so many powerful words. In fact, there’s enough in the four gospels to challenge you and chasten you for the rest of your life.

But there are certain things that come up again and again. Or maybe they can be found lurking beneath the surface, lying behind the words Jesus spoke and the things he did. They are a through line, a scarlet thread woven through the whole tapestry, holding it all together. One of those through lines in the words and deeds of Jesus, perhaps THE through line, is forgiveness.

The forgiveness of sins is both Jesus’ mission and his message. He teaches his disciples to pray for it and to practice it. He heals the sick as proof of his authority to announce it. And he goes to the cross in order to accomplish it. Few things were more important to Jesus than the forgiveness of sins.

In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus teaches his disciples to both ask for and extend forgiveness. Forgive us our sins, as we also have forgiven those who sin against us. There is an expectation that followers of Jesus will be people who forgive, and they ask God to forgive them as an extension of their forgiveness of others.

Jesus makes this more explicit when, immediately after the prayer, he teaches this: For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. In other words, forgivers are forgiven. Forgiveness is both offered and demanded, and is, therefore, a central theme of the life of the Christian. As it is a through line in the teaching and ministry of Jesus, so it is the scarlet thread in the lives of those who call him Lord.

Jesus didn’t die so that we can go to heaven. You’re not going to find that message in the Bible. Jesus died for the forgiveness of our sins. He died to release us from our unpayable debt to God, even declaring from the cross, Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing. We find freedom from the oppressive weight of our sins in his death, and as he has released us so we are to release others.

Forgiveness is one of the primary acts of obedience of the Christian. We are not to hold onto the sins committed against us, but instead we are to release others from the spiritual debt they owe us. Though forgiveness can be difficult because the wound of those sins is deep and encompassing, it is the path to freedom. As we release others, we ourselves are released from the bitterness, anger, and victimization that has festered in our souls for so long.

When Peter, who knew how difficult forgiveness could be, asked Jesus, “how many times must I forgive my brother? Seven?” Jesus responded with this parable:

“I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.

“Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.

“The servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.

“But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded.

“His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’

“But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened.

“Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.

“This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”

Forgivers are forgiven. Is forgiveness the scarlet thread of your life’s tapestry?

The Kingdom of God has long been a matter of primary importance for the people of God. God’s rule come on earth was what the Hebrew prophets longed to see. Jesus taught his disciples to pray with this request superseding all others: Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. True believers want God to rule the world—for him to take his rightful place as the King of kings—and they pursue his kingdom rule with their lives. But how? How do the people of God pursue the kingdom of God? In order to answer this question, let’s look back at first-century Palestine and see how Jesus’ contemporaries pursued God’s kingdom.

There are four general ways that first-century Jews sought to bring about God’s kingdom. (For a full treatment of this, read N.T. Wright’s The Challenge of Jesus, or if you’re feeling adventurous, his large volume The New Testament and the People of God.) Those four ways are: Separatist, Zealot, Compromise, and Purification.

Separatist

The Essenes were a community of believers who had finally had enough of the corrupt society in which they lived and decided to move out into the desert to form their own community. They were fed up with the Jewish leaders, the Roman occupation, and the corrupt temple worship, so they just disappeared and waited for God to do whatever he was going to do. The separated themselves from the corruption of the culture and pursued God’s kingdom by being faithful within their own community and waiting for God to act in judgment against the larger world. If you’ve ever seen the movie The Village, you may be able to understand the separatist community.

Zealot

You may have heard of a group of Jewish revolutionaries called The Sicarii. They were zealots who pursued the kingdom of God through violent uprising against the Roman overlords. They believed that God would bring about his rule on earth through a freed Israel, and that the Messiah would achieve a military victory over Rome that would be the symbol of God’s theological victory over the forces of evil. God’s kingdom comes about, therefore, through the violent uprising of his people and the military defeat of the pagan Roman Gentiles who ruled the land. The mantle of oppression must be thrown off through military might, and only then will God’s promises come true.

Compromise

Many of Israel’s most powerful leaders came to and held their positions of power through compromise with the Roman authorities. The mindset of these politicians was that you had to go along to get along, and if Israel wanted any semblance of nationhood, any hope for the future, then she would have to work with Rome rather than seek a violent revolution. Israel’s path to sovereignty and greatness (and, therefore, the future of the kingdom of God and the hope in the fulfillment of his promises) was compromise with the powers-that-be. You get what you can get while you can get it and hope that God will bless it in the end.

Purification

Unable to do anything about the impurity of the pagans who occupied the land, the Pharisees sought to achieve purity through careful obedience to Torah and the traditions of the elders. They wanted to change Israel from within, and in so doing, hope that God will recognize the faithfulness of his people and send his Messiah to rescue them. There was some thought that if all Israel could keep Torah perfectly for one day, then Messiah would come. The Pharisees hoped that, by remaining pure, God would mark them out as the True Israel, and whenever he decided to act, he would do so for the sake of those who had kept themselves pure.

When faced with corruption and sin within the church and debauchery and idolatry from the culture, we can all be tempted to respond in one of these four ways. Some of us separate into our own tiny group and watch everyone else go to hell. Others get angry to the point of violence, whether through word or deed. Still others reach a point of compromise, convinced that there’s no other way forward but to lay down certain principles. And others try the path of purity, hoping to compel God to act by their own faithfulness. But there is a fifth way—the way of incarnation.

Incarnation

Jesus didn’t pursue the kingdom through either of the previous four methods. He came and said, “The Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the good news.” Jesus’ claim was that the kingdom was coming about in and through his work and preaching. You might say that Jesus incarnated the kingdom—he made the rule of God come about on earth through everything he said and did, which ultimately led him to the cross and, through that, the empty tomb.

This fifth way is now our way—we are the body of Christ on earth. Jesus’ commission to us is to continue his work (that’s what it means to make disciples), and to see the rule of God come about on earth even as we wait for this to be ultimately accomplished when Jesus himself returns. We are not to be idle while he is away. We are to be about our Master’s business. And maybe the best place to start is to read, again, our Lord’s word to his disciples from the Sermon on the Mount.