“Like cold water to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country.”
Proverbs 25:25
More than two thousand years ago, the savior of mankind made his appearance. It was “the beginning of the good news,” the “glad tidings” of great joy. That’s what the gospel proclamation about the Roman emperor’s advent claimed.
The proclamation was carved in stone in 9 B.C. on the east coast of Asia Minor at the Ionian town of Priene, after the brilliant Octavian had consolidated the Roman Empire under his rule following years of civil unrest and war.
Now titled Caesar Augustus and “filled with virtue for the benefit of humanity,” this “savior” of the Romans and their descendants who “surpassed all previous benefactors,” had ended war and established a universal peace throughout the Roman world. Thanks to the victories won by his Roman armies, “the birthday of the god Augustus was the beginning of the good tidings [euangelion] for the world.”
But only a few years later, a multitude of the armies of heaven appeared in the Judean countryside to some lowly shepherds with glad tidings of their own:
Born to you today is a savior, who is Christ the Lord, in the city of David (Luke 2:11).
We do not know if Octavian ever heard about this, or what he would have thought about it if he had. But outside his notice, in the days of the Caesars, as promised centuries earlier, “the God of heaven set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people” (Daniel 2:44).
Octavian would not live to see it. He died when Jesus was still a teenager.
What Is the Gospel?
“Gospel” translates the Greek word εὐαγγέλιον [euangelion]. According to its roots, it means “good news.” But in the Bible and in the Roman world it often had an almost technical sense of an official, public, and royal proclamation.[1] It speaks of the active rule of a king over his people for their blessing and benefit; the establishment of conditions of peace, order, and righteousness. So we have it in Isaiah:
Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good news [εὐαγγέλιον];
lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good news [εὐαγγέλιον];
lift it up, fear not; say to the cities of Judah,
‘Behold your God!’
Behold, the Lord Yahweh comes with might,
and his arm rules for him;
behold, his reward is with him,
and his recompense before him.
He will tend his flock like a shepherd [i.e. like a King];
he will gather the lambs in his arms (Isaiah 40:9-11).
Or again, the one who brings “good news” [εὐαγγέλιον] is one who:
Publishes peace,
Who brings good news [εὐαγγέλιον] of happiness,
Who publishes salvation,
Who says to Zion Your God reigns . . .
for Yahweh has comforted his people;
He has redeemed Jerusalem.
Yahweh has bared his holy arm before the eyes of the nations (Isaiah 52:8-10).
Later in Isaiah, an “anointed” one of Yahweh brings the “good news” [εὐαγγέλιον] to the afflicted, and it’s a proclamation of “liberty to the captives,” the “opening of prison to those who are bound,” the “year of Yahweh’s favor,” the “day of vengeance of our God” against the enemies of his people, and “comfort for those who mourn” (Isaiah 61:1-2). It entails also the anointing, planting, and glorification of God’s people, their re-creation as “oaks of righteousness” (v. 3).
The gospel proclamation of Isaiah has reference to all of this, both to Israel’s position in the world with respect to the nations, and to Israel’s relationship with God and their own spiritual condition. When the gospel of the reign of God over his people takes the great leap toward its fulfillment in the New Testament, we see God’s kingship enacted in all these ways, and we see it enacted specifically through his anointed agent, his Son.[2]
The story of how this came about, and what it would mean for Israel and for the world, is the basic story of the New Testament.
The Euangelion of the Gospels
When Jesus’ birth was announced to Mary, the angel called him the “Son of the Most High” who would be given “the throne of his father David” and would “reign over the house of Jacob forever” (Luke 1:32-33). Mary recognized this as the Lord helping “his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and his offspring forever” (Luke 1:55). Zechariah, father of John the Baptist, saw that with the coming of Jesus, God had “visited and redeemed his people and raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David,” which would mean salvation from enemies and the freedom to “serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days” (Luke 1:68-69, 74-75). The angels who appeared to the shepherds in the fields accompanied their gospel with the message “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased” (Luke 2:14).
God was about to act, and Israel was to be renewed.
This is why Jesus’ preaching is regularly summarized as “the gospel of the kingdom” (e.g. Matthew 4:23; Mark 1:15)—that the promised reign of God over his people was at hand, which would entail pardon, peace, comfort, and blessing for some (hence his many signs of healing, provision, and cleansing), but a winnowing judgment of vengeance for others (Matthew 3:1-12; Mark 13:1-36). Israel’s saving would include a purge. After all, the great obstacle to God’s people finding peace and blessing had always been their own sin, its endless repetition, and the repeated judgments incurred by it.
The Law of Love
So Jesus came also as a teacher, as a greater Moses who explained the essence of the Law and what righteousness truly looked like. Famously, he boiled down God’s moral demands to love for God and love for neighbor (Matthew 22:36-40). His own life modeled the love, service, and faithful devotion that God called for. But the gospel message was not just instruction for a better or more refined way of practicing true virtue. It was that, but Israel had long labored under the yoke of the Law and this had never succeeded at effecting in them the righteousness that God required (Acts 13:38-39; Galatians 3:10; Romans 9:31-10:4). A new law, one renewed around the imperative of love, would not be enough. The gospel message would also be a message of forgiveness for sin.
Ransom for Sin
Jesus would not just be a teacher. He would also be Israel’s sin-bearer, the fulfillment of the whole system of atonement and sacrifice that had operated for centuries but that could never finally put away sin (Hebrews 10:1-4). There are hints even in Isaiah that this would be the case, since the gospel of Jerusalem’s redemption (Isaiah 52:9) is followed immediately by a portrait of the sin-bearing servant who suffers in order that others may be accounted righteous (Isaiah 53:10-11). In Jesus, God would reign over his people, but not without first giving his life on the cross as a ransom for them (Mark 10:45). As the king, Jesus stood as head and representative of his people, so that his death in their place served as an acceptable offering for the debt to death incurred by sin, and the curses of Israel’s record of covenant-breaking were paid by Christ becoming a curse on their behalf (Galatians 3:13).
Overcoming Death
The gospel of God’s reign over his people in and through his Son was not interrupted by Jesus’ death, because having died, he was then resurrected. Jesus’ death brought purification and pardon for sin, and because it perfected love and faithfulness, it also qualified him to reign as king. Because of his obedience unto death, “God highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow” (Philippians 2:9-10). God gives life to the dead (Romans 4:17), and when the sacrifice of Christ was completed, God raised him up and invested him with all authority in heaven and earth (Matthew 28:18; Acts 2:33-36). His resurrection was real and bodily, it represented in time and space the defeat of death, and constituted—again in time and space—the first fruits of a resurrection harvest still to come for all who belong to him. Without this, there is in fact no gospel at all.
Not Just Israel
The Christian gospel is a historical gospel. It concerns historical, sociological, and political realities as well as spiritual, and I have described it here somewhat narrowly focused on this primary historical context as a message concerning God’s relationship to his covenant people Israel—which is largely the focus of the Bible itself. But as quoted above, Mary had recognized that the birth of Christ involved fulfillment of the “mercy spoken to Abraham” (Luke 1:55), and the mercy she refers to certainly includes God’s promise that in Abraham and in his seed (Christ) “all the families of the earth will be blessed” (Genesis 12:3).
So the death of Christ was more than sin-bearing on behalf of Israel for the curse of the Law, and the Son of David is not king over Israel alone.
Behind the curse of the Law and Israel’s special covenantal failures was the alienation of all humanity from our Creator because of sin. The crown of thorns that Jesus wore might have been intended to mock him as “King of the Jews,” but it represented more deeply the curse of original sin that stretches back to Adam (Genesis 3:18). Sin had entered the world much further back than the law-giving at Sinai. So Jesus was the Passover Lamb not just for Israel, but for the world (John 1:29). After his resurrection, Jesus charged his disciples that “Repentance of forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations” (Luke 24:47), and Paul describes his mission in the same terms: “to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations” (Romans 1:5).
The Son of David was always to inherit the kingdoms of the world (Psalm 2:7-12). The promised servant would be too glorious for his ministry to be restricted to Israel alone—he would be “a light to the nations” (Isaiah 49:6). In Christ Jesus, the blessing of Abraham would come even to the Gentiles, that they might also be counted as sons of God and receive the indwelling of the Holy Spirit (Galatians 3:7-9, 14; John 1:12-13). In short, in the death of Christ, the Old Covenant with Israel was superseded, the wall that divided Israel from the nations was torn down (Ephesians 2:11-22), and the blessings of the gospel were made available to all people—on the same basis of the grace of God provided in the death, resurrection, and rule of Christ, embraced by faith.
Under the rule of King Jesus, Israel has been reformed and reconstituted under a new covenant, not now as a nation with borders, but as the scattered assemblies of the body of Christ, a kingdom of priests among all the nations (Revelation 1:5). The churches of God are meant to serve as outposts or colonies of heaven (Philippians 3:20), where the members of Christ grow into one mature body, built up into the image of Christ, the head (Ephesians 4:15-16), transforming the nations from the inside like yeast, and forming them into offerings that will glorify the city of God (Revelation 21:22-26), until the whole earth is full of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord (Habakkuk 2:14), and the last enemy, death, is destroyed at the resurrection and in the re-creation of heaven and earth (1 Corinthians 15:25-26).
So What?
So what does this mean today? First, it means that Jesus is alive and reigns over his people from heaven as their good shepherd, and is present with them by his Spirit (Ephesians 1:22). It means that all people and nations are called to repent of their sins and pledge allegiance to him as Lord, to be baptized into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and to receive their new identity as his disciples.
It means that all who turn from sin and embrace Christ in faith as Savior and Lord will find in him full pardon for sin, gracious acceptance, and the promise that as he lives, they also will live. They will live because in union with the Son of God, they share in his life, his Father is their Father, and when the time comes they will be raised up, physically and bodily, to live and reign with him in a new creation redeemed and purged of sin and death.
It means that those who commit themselves to Christ in faith are freed from condemnation (Romans 8:1) and empowered by his Spirit (Galatians 5:16-24) to pursue love, righteousness, holiness, wisdom, and the maturity that befits those who are destined to reign with him over creation, as man was created to do (Genesis 1:28; Romans 5:17; 1 Corinthians 6:2; Revelation 22:5). That is what we are to be about now: zealously pursuing love and good works (Genesis 18:19; Titus 2:14).
Finally . . .
Through millennia of history, God in Christ is bringing many sons to glory (Hebrews 2:10), and clearly, we can see both biblically and experientially that this is a long process, often subtle, often hardly even visible, often frustrating, and always slow. But as God proved himself faithful over long centuries leading to the coming of Christ, we have every reason to think he is proving and will prove himself faithful until Christ comes again, the dead are raised, and eternal life becomes the reality that consumes sin and death.
[1] In the Greek Old Testament, when the Philistines had defeated King Saul and the Israelites, they “sent messengers throughout the land of the Philistines, to carry the good news [εὐαγγελίζω] to the house of their idols and to the people” (1 Samuel 31:9). Of course, in this case, what was gospel for the Philistines was bad news for Israel. Compare also 1 Kings 1:42-43, where David’s son Adonijah is celebrating his (presumptuous) ascension to the throne, when a messenger comes and delivers the “good news” (ironically, bad news for Adonijah) that David had actually proclaimed Solomon as successor.
[2] In Old Testament times, God’s rule over his people was typically enacted through anointed agents like David who was the shepherd and prince over Israel (2 Samuel 5:2), or Solomon who sat on the throne of Yahweh (1 Chronicles 29:23). Even the Persian king Cyrus could serve as shepherd of Israel, the builder of Jerusalem and its temple (Isaiah 44:28).
Daniel Hoffman holds a Master of Divinity from Reformed Theological Seminary (Jackson, Mississippi). He taught Bible and history at a Christian school and has written for Desiring God and The Imaginative Conservative.
