Perhaps no question has become more central (or responses more contested) to the identity and future of North American Christianity than this: What is the Gospel?
Many believe that the gospel has mainly to do with our personal salvation; others suggest that it can simply be equated with “justification.” Additionally, our understanding of the gospel seems to have lost its basic and necessary relationship to the life and mission of the Church. We stand in need of a renewed imagination of the gospel!
The gospel declares more than our personal redemption; it begins by declaring that Jesus is King, Lord, the Messiah who saves. The soterian gospel is too short and too shallow. King Jesus saves to create a kingdom people in a world where Caesar seeks to rule. Gospel living then is a missional life under Jesus, a life of fellowship with other kingdom people, and kingdom living involves summoning others to live under Jesus as King.
