What is the gospel?
- It is “…Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David….” (2 Timothy 2:8)
- It is “the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light.” (2 Timothy 1:10)
- It is the preaching or proclaiming of Christ. (Philippians 1)
- It is the unsearchable riches of Christ. (Ephesians 1:7-13)
- It is the word of truth. (Ephesians 1:13)
- It is the promise of God to Abraham that “In you shall all the nations be blessed,” which, of course, refers to Christ and his work. (Galatians 3:7-14)
- It is the revelation of Jesus Christ. (Galatians 1:11-17)
- It is the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. (2 Corinthians 4:4)
- It is that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures. (1 Corinthians 15:1-8)
- It is the word of the cross. (1 Corinthians 1:17-18)
- It is the preaching of Jesus Christ. (Romans 16:25)
- It is the naming of Christ. (Romans 15:20)
- It is the word of Christ; it is the good news that Jesus is Lord and God has raised him from the dead. (Romans 10:5-14)
- It includes the truth that “God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.” (Romans 2:16)
- Is was “promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures.” (Romans 1:2)
- It is “concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord…” (Romans 1:3-4)
- It is “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.” (Romans 1:16)
What I’ve done here is look at every mention of the gospel in Paul’s epistles, searching for clues to the content of the gospel in the statements made about the gospel. If you feel this list comes out of the blue, read the comments here.
I intended to hold this post until after Easter, since I’ve been more or less taking this week off from blogging. (Most of the poetry posts were queued up beforehand, waiting to publish automatically. All I’ve been doing each day is adding the links to other posted poems and correcting my misspellings and other goofs.) But I’ve changed my mind. After all, Easter is, first and foremost about the gospel, the good news that the Son of God came down and lived among us, died for our sins, was buried and then raised again on the third day.