Day 17: The Gospel of the Kingdom

Sometimes you will hear preachers, while explicating a passage, explain the Gospel in a way that the passage just won't support. This usually happens when the passage comes from one of the Gospels and mentions the word "gospel" (or "good news"). For example, Luke 16:16.

“The Law and the Prophets were proclaimed until John. Since that time, the good news of the kingdom of God is being preached, and everyone is forcing their way into it."

Now, the "good news" Jesus is referring to here is not the doctrine of substitutionary atonement, though many preachers, in a kind of knee jerk, explain the good news by recourse to that doctrine. But the good news that was being preached since John was obviously some form of, "Repent, for the kingdom of God is has come near." {Matt. 3:2] Or, sticking with Luke, what did the angel say to Mary?

“Do not be afraid,Mary; you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”

Note: the angel did not say, "he will be a sacrifice for the sins of the world, turning away the wrath of God." But instead he spoke of Jesus' reign as king over an everlasting kingdom. That, as I've said before, is the big picture good news.

In other words, the "good news of the kingdom of God" is something different than, Christ died for your sins, in your place, taking upon himself the wrath of God that you deserved. We have absolutely no indication that that is what Jesus is talking about when he refers to the good news of the kingdom of God.

In my opinion, we ought to work hard at getting this straight. Now, Jesus told his disciples much more than this, as time went on (Luke 8:10). But do a word-search for "kingdom" in the Gospel accounts and you will see that it is probably the most important word associated with his "good news." The fact is, we should never pass the word "kingdom" without stopping to think about all that it means and implies, for the story of the kingdom of God (or in Matthew's account, the kingdom of heaven) is bigger even than the story of the cross. The cross is absolutely integral, absolutely essential, in the grand sweep of the kingdom story, but the cross has a purpose, and that purpose is to make the reign and rule of God available, his presence available, and to reclaim creation as the place where his will is done completely. 

Through Jesus, all this is available to those who believe, which is surely very good news.
Perhaps this is why, when he taught his disciples to pray, he did not teach them to say, "thank you, Jesus, for atoning for my sins," but he taught them to say, "may your kingdom come, may your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."

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See Darrell Bock's Recovering the Real Lost Gospel for a well-written explanation of the Gospel.