Day 21: The Wholistic Gospel

I said yesterday that the gospel is not coterminous with the doctrine of Christ's substitutionary atonement and justification by faith alone. The reason I emphasize this point is because, to hear many renditions of the gospel, you'd just assume that those doctrines represent the full extent of the good news. That's how it often sounds.

But the good news is really much bigger than that. It might be said to contain four significant concepts (or chapters): creation, fall, redemption, new creation. This is the big picture that encompasses the whole Bible story. Somewhere along the line, though, American evangelicals got the very American idea that the most effective way to win people to Christ was to play on their fear of death and the hereafter by offering them 's the bit about justification). And the way he saves you is by taking your place on the cross, receiving the just punishment for your sin on himself, thus winning your pardon (and there's the substitutionary atonement bit).

But you can see what's left out of that: creation and new creation. Which is to say, they're leaving out the magnificent story of God's plan for the world. That plan, which was attested to my many prophets of the OT, may have seemed dormant in Jesus' day. Or perhaps God had changed his mind! But the good news of Jesus Christ was the plan had been set in motion in the life and ministry (and the very being) of Jesus himself. 

Jesus is the way, but specifically, he is the way to life with God in the new and spotless creation. That's the gospel. Any telling that leaves all this out is going to mislead.

An article at Together for the Gospel makes the point well.

If our mission is to be holistic, then we have to position the central climax of the narrative within the revealed beginning and end. We can’t skip the first and final acts.

 I think there are many entry points to this story. You don't have to simply start with Genesis. Some of the wonderful prophecies of the new creation found in Isaiah and elsewhere could be a starting point. The book of Revelation, too, with its picture of a redeemed creation inhabited by God and the blood-bought children of God.

Another entry-point might be the NT concept of the kingdom of God (that's where Jesus started his telling of the story). And I think it might also be interesting to start the tale with the Holy Spirit. Or of course you can begin at the foot of the cross and show how that event stands at the fulcrum-point of the whole plan of God for his creation.

Needless to say, this kind of conversation is not likely to happen at work or in passing. It takes a little time, it invites dialogue, and it works based within an established relationship. I have the idea that it might useful to rehearse some of these different starting points, telling the gospel to myself over and over, using different entry-points. Say it, say again, and say succinctly, so that you might be prepared, in season and out, to share with others.