Steven Sim

We often hear Christians say, we must “spread the gospel”, or “share the gospel” (I would personally use the more pompous words “proclaim or declare the gospel”). But as with the usage of other words in any languages, familarity breeds contempt, or rather familarity breeds complacency. Christians may take it for granted that we know and understand this term well. And often, the meaning of words may be diluted in our over-usage.

When Josephus (Jewish War book 4) wrote of the ascension of Vespanian as the new caesar (emperor), with subordinate kingdoms coming to pay tribute of congratulation to him, he used the word euangelion (good news)

When a new emperor was crowned in Rome, his emissaries will go into all the Roman colonies (i.e. “to all the world”) to proclaim the euangelion to all the nations that a new king reigns, a new saviour has come to the world to bring peace and to establish justice among the people.

When Isaiah (Isa 52:7) spoke of his beautiful prophetic message, of god's people who brought the good news, who says to Zion: ”Your God reigns”, the translators of Septuagint (Greek Old Testatment which is popular during Jesus' time) found it fit to use the word euangelion

Similarly, in the psalm celebrating the kingship of Yahweh, the Septuagint used the word euangelion (Ps 39:9-10).

One of the earliest versions of the record of Jesus' life (or “gospel”, which incidently is the latinized version of the greek word “euangelion”), the book of Mark, begins with these unpretentiuos words: The beginning of the  euangelion of Jesus Christ, the Son of God (Mk 1:1). Christianity was based on and breathed the euangelion.

The following three questions shall form our discussion on the euangelion:

1) One cannot take for granted the habitual usage of a word and be too sure that everyone understood the meaning of the word in the same way. We'll ask the preliminary question of what is the meaning of gospel (euangelion)?

2) “I am not huge on religion”, a dear friend commented recently. Let us explore what is the significant of the gospel in our lives and the world around us. in other words, we shall ask what is the impact of the gospel to man/woman and his/her world.

3) Evangelism - this has come to be understood as the primary task of the church to the world. Evangelism simply means “proclaiming the euangelion (or evangel)”. How do we then go about doing it? Some key themes which come to mind “4 spiritual laws”, Francis of Asisi, social gospel, saving souls, etc. In this question, we also want to explore what is the requirement of the gospel to the christian and to her world.

What is the euangelion?

Christians were long taught to say that the gospel is about god's love and is summed up in John 3:16. While it is correct and beautiful, this does not do justice to the many layered meaning of the word. During our discussion, the different layers surfaced when each of us began to share what we understood by the gospel:

1. The gospel is about god's love

2. The gospel is John 3:16

3. The gospel is about the life and work and death of Jesus

4. The gospel is about the Christ

5. The gospel is a mystery

When put together, each begin to form a clearer picture for us to even begin to grasp what the gospel is all about.

Without doubt, the gospel is about the love of a Creator god, and rightly, John 3:16 is the summary of the story of this god and his love. It has to do with a battered world where pain and suffering, evil and sin and death plagued mankind and the rest of the Creation (i.e. “the world”). There is obviously something terribly wrong with the world as it is. And the Creator god, out of his great love, has initiated and executed a rescue plan to make things right. This involved god sending the son whom he loved, to come into his own, to claim (or “to redeem”) his vineyard from the stubborn evil usurpers. The king has come into his holy temple to judge the nations. But instead of waging a violent war, or organizing a bloody revolution (because he said “my kingdom is not of this world”), the Son, Israel's true king went to face his enemy, represented by the superpower of the age - Rome and all her claims of glory and greatness - like a lamb led to its shearer. 

Israel was called to be both a blessing and a judgement to the world. She was to be the primary people of god, through whom YAHWEH will reach out to the world. But alas, how many times she has failed. Yet, through Jesus, her king, the chosen one (or the Christ), the promised heir to the davidic throne, she did. He went out against her enemies, suffered in their hands and died in her stead, and painfully acting out at every steps the will of god for Israel. This is the double twist of the story - on one hand, Jesus was taking up the judgement on behalf of Israel the stubborn nation, on the other hand, Jesus was fulfilling the old promise where YAHWEH himself will come to rescue his people. In the former, Jesus proved to be the representative of Israel, the suffering servant who will go out on her behalf - her king, the crucified ”king of the jews”. And in becoming and doing for Israel what only YAHWEH can be and do, Jesus becomes a blessing to the whole world, because when Israel's god finally act, the whole world shall see and experience the reign of his true king (c.f. Isaiah 52:10).

We then come back to the question, what is the euangelion?

Let us consider what sort of message did Paul expect to hit on his readers, when at the begining of his letter to the people of god in Rome, he greeted them saying:

Paul, in the service of King Jesus, called to be an emissary, given the task to proclaim the good news of god which he promised beforehand through his messangers in the holy book, concerning his Son, who is of the royal line of 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, King Jesus our Lord, through whom we have received grace and the appointment as emissaries to bring about faithful loyalty for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you who are called to belong to King Jesus  (Rom 1:1-6)

We must remember that to Rome, the superpower of 1st century world, there is only one King; the Emperor, the Caesar and there is only one Lord; the Emperor, the Caesar. And Jesus, being sentenced to the most terrible punishment of the Roman empire as “King of the Jews”, will be seen as punished for act of treason and rebellion against the Emperor, for setting himself as an opposing King. And Paul wrote to the capital of the superpower, declaring, as it were, he is the ambassador, the emissary in the service of this subversive King and his task was to proclaim the euangelion, the good news concerning this King.

If anything, Paul's words were risky, dangerous if not outright outrageous and subversive. His gospel was not merely a set of points about the world going into the drain and let us say some prayers so that we all can escape the world and go to heaven, wheverever that is. His gospel, his euangelion is about the ascension of Israel's annointed one, her true King and therefore the world's true Lord. And as we have seen above about Jesus acting on behalf of Israel and becoming and doing only what YAHWEH promise to do himself, Paul's gospel is saying ”Israel's god reigns” (or “the kingdom of god is at hand”). It is setting up one king against the others, god against the powers and principalities, represented by Caesar's empire. It is god claiming ownership of ALL the world and righting all wrongs. And therefore we will all sound weird to Paul if we go around telling people that there is a problem with the world and we should all go somewhere else, “go to heaven”, when god's agenda was clearly to get hold of the world and to work out his rule in this his Creation.

What is the impact of the euangelion to us and our world?

Today, “religious” seems to be a curse word. At best it describes a person who is mostly cut off from the “real” world of material and reason into the semi-magical world of faith, spirituality and private morality; at worst, being religious can mean being a (murderous?) fanatic of an other worldly ideology. If religion is understood as such, it came as no surprise then when someone says, “I am not huge on religion”.

But as we have discussed, the gospel is not a private announcement to individuals to retreat from the world, nor is it a one-way ticket to a faraway planet called “heaven” where angels float and babies do not grow up. Make no mistake, YAHWEH may be a personal god, but he is not a private god. He is not a god contented to be enshrined in amulets, sacred places, temples, churches, mosques. Solomon did not at any time believe that the magnificient temple he built can contain god. The gospel speaks of the beginning of god's reign, in all the world. And someone said that, if god is to be king at all, god must be king of all. There is no separation of sacred and secular from god's point of view. This is my Father's world - that is the claim of the gospel. Some Christians believe that the world belonged to the devil. True, Jesus' kingdom is not of this world, the source of the kingdom is god himself, the values of the kingdom are not like those of earthly kings, yet the rule of god, the kingdom, is here, in the world. Jesus did not accept the devil's offer of the authority over the world because he knew he will at last receive it, not by the way of bowing down to the devil, but by defeating him, and defeating him on the cross - the throne of love. Paul, therefore, can say this, that Jesus Christ has reconciled the world to god (cf 2 Cor 5:18-19 and especially Col 1:19-20).

The preached gospel then demands two responses, surrender and loyalty, or in words more familiar to us: repentance and obedience. It has been highlighted that the Greek word which we normally translate as “to repent” (metanoia) was used by Josephus as implying “surrender” and “turning away” and can be used in a military surrender context (JVG - NT Wright). Although this does not discount our understanding of repentance as being turning away from sin and turning to piety, such usage of the word as Josephus' helps us to grasp further the significance of the gospel relating to god's rule. It is a call to surrender and give up our worthless struggle. God is already king, we are now called to recognize this fact and give our allegiance to him. Either that, or one day, when every knee shall bend in submission to King Jesus, we may find ourselves being subjected as defeated prisoners. Every man and woman is called to join the revolution on god's side, and as we do certain things such as displaying the crucifix or celebrating the lord's supper, we are in essence like a group of people in USA gathered now and then to celebrate Saddam Hussein's death as a chief revolutionary, declaring that he was right after all and Bush was wrong, that he loved his people, gave up his life for them and the scary thing (to Bush anyway) is he will come back triumphant!

And as we give up our vain cause to pursue god's (that is perhaps what is meant by “a man after god's own heart”), we find ourselves being drawn to praying, “your will be done”, and yes, “on earth as it is done in heaven”. This is submission and obedience; loyalty to the king and his agenda. Of course, if our view of the gospel is that “the world is going down the drain and let's go to heaven”, then god's will may be merely picking up as many passengers into our supersonic speed one-way train to shangrila. But if our gospel is about god's rescue operation, in that through becoming a servant to all, not least the suffering servant of Isaiah's prophecies, he became king of all, our obedience to the true king of the world, the rightful owner of the vineyard is to declare his good and pleasant reign and to act against the power and principalities (whether flesh or spirit) that go against this reign. We are to go out, in all the world, saying with Abraham Kuyper, “there is not an inch of realm which Jesus does not say, 'tis mine'”.

This means, not only becoming a more moral person, though that is true, but also standing up against god's enemy, the evil which threaten to continue the destruction of god's beautiful Creation. We are to go all out against sin; lying, cheating, adultery, murder. But the same, we are to go all out against structural evils, injustice, corruptions; in short, all unrighteousness - everything which is not right. How do we do that? We do that by first declaring, not always by words though, Jesus is lord and Caesar is not! Just as Caesar was offering a parody of Jesus' righteous rule, today, we have many different powers-to-be who offered the same package - justice and peace. Be it George Bush or Osama Bin Laden, be it IMF or World Bank, be it China or EU, be it our politicians or our employers, let this be clear, Jesus is lord and they are not! We are called to raise the flag of the Jesus-revolution, declaring he is king and then living as if he is king. In order to do this, Christians are to be diligent, to go into vigorous training and study in law, economics, politics, science, history, philosphy and every inch of realm of human living (where Christ claimed “tis mine” - include of course seemly insignificance things such as homemaking, cooking, washing the dishes, doing the laundry) and be the light in the darkness which sometimes charaterize these fields.

But are we called to hit everyone on the head with our gospel rod, labelling everyone and everthing useless and evil unless they have the label “christian” on them? No! Paul, while proclaiming his subversive message did not forget to remind the Roman church that they are to submit to the civil authority (and I believe he implied all other sorts of authorities) which was established over them by god's sovereign will (Rom 13). Like the Caesar in Rome, god is ruling through the local authorities he set up to preserve order and prevent anarchy. We know perfectly well however who the real boss is. And this is what will give us strength when we face the lesser bosses and kings. Knowing who is in charge ultimately and who has the real power, the choice should be clear whom we are to obey in the final analysis.

How then can such a gospel be seen as irrelevant to everything about a human being? If this is religion, no one can say, “I am not huge on religion” without being silly, because religion, as exemplified by the gospel we preached, is about the god and all the world, every facets of life, every nooks and corners, without exception.

Next:
Evangelism and the task of the Church